Walter Cronkite thinks the White House made bin Laden release his new tape.

Aside from the obvious signs of Cronkite's mental illness, what does it say about the left when everyone simply assumes that terror threats are bad for Kerry?

Today's Best of the Web contains this nugget:

Why did the New York Times and CBS choose the missing explosives story as their final hit piece on Bush? And why does Kerry continue to pound away at it, even though it is being discredited? I think it's because they believe the terrorists in Iraq are planning a major offensive this weekend, an offensive using their most effective weapon--suicide bombers in cars loaded with the sort of high explosives that were supposedly lost through Bush's negligence. They'll try their best to kill as many Americans as possible, of course. And the more Americans who are killed, the better for Kerry. He'll claim they might have lived if only Bush had secured that cache of explosives in al Qaqaa.

1. Scary thought, but we wouldn't put it past them (the Democrats, that is).

2. Not so sure we've seen the October Surprise yet. In the past those have been about 72 hours before the election--enough time for the story to get around, but not enough to rebut it. But the news cycle has shortened. The Dems could be planning to drop their real stink bombs as late as Tuesday morning.

3. The terrorists would love to pull off more attacks regardless of the election. Also, their position in Iraq is so weakened that nearly all attacks now target Iraqi civilians. That's under normal circumstances. Want to bet on whether our troops are on heightened alert now? We think it unlikely that the bad guys will be able to pull of anything significant enough in the next 4 days to change minds in the US.

4. Kerry's target audience has always been what we would call the "stupid" vote--people who see him hunting and pay no mind to the fact that he is among the most anti-gun of all Senators, hear him talk about "killing" terrorists and ignore his 20 years of Senate votes to defund the military and CIA, etc. The fact that the al-Qaqaa story holds no water is irrelevant to Kerry voters. He says what they want to hear and they believe it, even if it's an outright lie.

John Fund has an excellent article up on vote fraud. A snippet:

Election fraud is expanding. This past March, in just one of many recent cases, Texas representative Ciro Rodriguez, chairman of the congressional Hispanic Caucus, lost a close Democratic primary after a missing ballot box suddenly showed up in South Texas, stuffed with votes for his opponent. Rodriguez charged fraud but could never definitively prove it. The circumstances were eerily similar to those that tipped a 1948 Senate race to Lyndon Johnson. Election officials found ballot box 13 several days after the election. It held 203 votes, all but one for LBJ. Amazingly enough, the voters had cast their ballots in alphabetical order.

Read the whole thing, then buy John's book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.

This article about the Amish vote in PA got us thinking. Pollsters can't even deal with cell phones, so how are they going to handle the house and buggy crowd?

Jim McDermott, one of the biggest hairballs in the US Congress, has lost a defamation suit brought against him by Republican John Boehner:

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered Congressman Jim McDermott to pay $60,000 plus attorney fees that could total more than $545,000 to a Republican congressman who sued McDermott for leaking his cellphone conversations to news reporters.

In a harshly worded decision received by attorneys this week, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan said McDermott's "willful and knowing misconduct rises to the level of malice in this case."

Unfortunately "Baghdad" Jim McDermott has a safe seat in Seattle. Read about him here, where he tied for #6 on the list of the twenty most annoying liberals of 2002.

This story will haunt our nightmares for some time:

McCain for president in 2008?

Final results from Australia's elections. John Howard has not only won reelection, but a majority in both houses of Parliament--the first PM to do so in 24 years. Good on ya Johnny!

Many anti-war (or pro-terrorist, take your pick) lefties had hoped for a Howard defeat ala Spain.

More: Here's a great Mark Steyn article on Australia's elections. Note this first appeared two weeks ago when it was clear Howard how won, but not by how much.

But Howard, for a man routinely described as having no charisma, manages to hit just the right tone. The French got all the attention in the days after September 11 with that Le Monde headline – "Nous sommes tous Americains" – but even at the time I preferred Howard's take: "There's no point in a situation like this being an 80 per cent ally."

The Democrats are raising an army of lawyers to contest the election before it has even taken place. At what point do such tactics cross the line into open civil war against our democracy?

"I can't imagine a better time to be a Marine. We're seeing history written with lightning."

Go read the whole thing. Hat tip to the fantastic folks at Polipundit.

Best video of the year. Period.

From the invaluable StrategyPage:

October 28, 2004: For the first time, British troops (an infantry battalion) is moving north into the Sunni Arab area, to provide more muscle for a showdown with Sunni Arab and al Qaeda gangs in that area. The British are moving into Babil province, a violent area south of Baghdad, which was swept by American troops in the last few weeks and is now being attended to by civil affairs troops. The Sunni Arab (mainly Baath Party diehards) and al Qaeda forces are desperate and are becoming increasingly brutal against Iraqis, particularly Sunni Arabs who join the security forces. Baath cannot get back into power as long as Iraqi troops and police are operating. Baath and al Qaeda have a combat advantage, as Sunni Arab monopolized senior military and police jobs for decades, leaving the new Iraqi security forces with a shortage of experienced commanders. Al Qaeda, of course, as plenty of volunteers for suicide bomb attacks. But while the Iraqi security forces are getting killed, and often break and run, they keep coming. The alternative is another dictatorship.

The IDF bags two more bad guys.

The politics of funny.

Hat tip to Polipundit.

Can this possibly be true? Ann Coulter writes:

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was quite explicit about using abortion as a tool to reduce the minority population. She said the goal of Planned Parenthood was to "give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization." Even today, talk to any white liberal about abortion and within 60 seconds he will raise the black "overpopulation" problem.

We hear a lot about the 2 million people in America's jails and how many of them are black, but we rarely talk about the 35 to 40 million abortions since Roe v. Wade and how many of those babies were black. When your position on black abortion is identical to the Klan's, maybe it's time to reconsider.

The Economist has endorsed Prince John. Here's the tag line:

With a heavy heart, we think American readers should vote for John Kerry on November 2nd

With friends like these, does Kerry need enemies? Well, it gets even better:

Many readers, feeling that Mr Bush has the right vision in foreign policy even if he has made many mistakes, will conclude that the safest option is to leave him in office to finish the job he has started. If Mr Bush is re-elected, and uses a new team and a new approach to achieve that goal, and shakes off his fealty to an extreme minority, the religious right, then The Economist will wish him well. But our confidence in him has been shattered. We agree that his broad vision is the right one but we doubt whether Mr Bush is able to change or has sufficient credibility to succeed, especially in the Islamic world. Iraq's fledgling democracy, if it gets the chance to be born at all, will need support from its neighbours—or at least non-interference—if it is to survive. So will other efforts in the Middle East, particularly concerning Israel and Iran.

Got that? Bush has the right policies, but we need a "fresh face" to make those policies succeed. In a nutshell, "somebody else." Hmmm. Where have we heard Prince John described that way before? Oh yeah! Right here!

Prince John wasn't just against the Vietnam War; he was working for the other side:

One of the two documents, a "circular" captured by the U.S. in 1971 and later translated, indicates the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese delegations to the Paris peace talks that year were used as the communications link to direct the activities of Kerry and other antiwar activists who attended.

Note that this information comes from documents captured on the battlefield by our troops fighting in Vietnam.

Tom Daschle is in Panic Mode. What he should be doing is working on his resume...

Current DrudgeReport headline:

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

Here's a working Washington Times link.

Two quick observations:

1. Bill Gertz is very well respected, and has avoided the weapons-to-Syria story for over a year. If he's reporting it now then something must have happened to convinced him.

2. The story is entirely consistent with Ion Mihai Pacepa's account of standard Soviet procedure for hiding WMD in emergencies. We noted Pacepa's article here. Scroll down to the last paragraph.

Yasser Arafat is seriously ill. Will old age and disease do what the Israelis should have done more than 20 years ago?

US Marine Snipers are taking care of business in Iraq. You guys rock and the folks back home know it!

Real Hobbits?

In battle, one of the surest signs that the enemy is losing is when he starts sending children out to fight. The Nazis did it in their final days. Now the Democrats are doing it in theirs:

Hundreds of public schoolchildren, some as young as 11, are taking time out of regular classes to canvass neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Madison and Racine in a get-out-the-vote effort organized by Wisconsin Citizen Action Fund - a group whose umbrella organization has endorsed John Kerry for president.

It's official. Terrorists prefer Kerry. From today's Washington Times:

Resistance leader Abu Jalal boasted that the mounting violence had already hurt Mr. Bush's chances. "American elections and Iraq are linked tightly together," he told a Fallujah-based Iraqi reporter. "We've got to work to change the election, and we've done so. With our strikes, we've dragged Bush into the mud."

Of course this strategy wouldn't work without the enthusiastic support of many in the Western Media. Thanks guys.

Political Vice Squad (howdy neighbor!) has a good run down on competitive Senate races. Jayson is predicting a 6 seat pickup for the Republicans. We hope he's right.

One week before the election. So much news. Conflicting reports. Last minute slime. What to do?

Well, we are taking our own advice. Specifically, we are re-reading Plato's Republic.

If we had the time we'd be out volunteering. Other than that there really isn't much to do, except get wound up into knots trying each minute to follow latest breaking story on months-old news. What a lousy way to spend ones time.

If you don't already know whom you will vote for then you shouldn't be voting. If you do know, then why torture yourself with the crap that passes for news these days?

Here is a story which is interesting at many different levels:

380 Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq

Lets spend some time on this one.

1. Although the story is getting headline treatment today, a week before the election, it's not clear when this actually took place:

Officials believe the material was looted following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003.

2. Not only is it unclear when the explosives were stolen, the story itself is over a week old.

...the IAEA didn't inform the U.S. government about the lost explosives until Oct. 15.

3. The focus of the story is on the explosives themselves, which is a typical left wing approach. The primary concern is and should continue to be bagging the guys who might be using the stuff.

4. Three Hundred and Eighty tons sounds like a lot. It isn't. In his book Treachery, Bill Gertz estimates that Iraq had up to 700,000 tons of ordinance prior to the 2003 war. To give a sense of how much that really is, he further estimates the entire US arsenal at 1,600,000 tons of ordinance. In Iraq, 380 tons is a drop in the bucket.

5. All this fuss over 380 tons of ordinance. Think about it. We knew it was there. It's gone missing. No one knows where. WHAT ABOUT THE WMD? One ton of WMD would be all the stockpiles we would ever need to silence the nay-sayers. One ton versus 380. For the left one ton of missing WMD is proof they never existed. But the missing 380 tons...

Well, you get the point.

Update: There's a post here about a story from that right-wing rag, NBC, which claims the 380 tons were gone before our troops even arrived in April, 2003:

NBC News: Miklaszewski: “April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. In a letter this month, the Iraqi interim government told the International Atomic Energy Agency the high explosives were lost to theft and looting due to lack of security. Critics claim there were simply not enough U.S. troops to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles, weapons now being used by insurgents and terrorists to wage a guerrilla war in Iraq.” (NBC’s “Nightly News,” 10/25/04)

Not that facts are of any import at the venerable NYT, but you know your liberal buddies will bring up the "missing 380 tons" every chance they get. The NBC story makes for a handy rejoinder.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rhenquist has been hospitalized. We wish him a full and speedy recovery.

Hamid Karzai has won Afghanistan's first ever presidential election. The world should be rejoicing. Instead there is silence. Seems that democracy has taken a firmer hold in Afghanistan than in the hallowed halls of the New York Times.

Sunday Post on the Christian Vote:

Much has been said about the Christian vote that stayed home in the 2000 election. Here's a representative post from Scott Elliot's wonderful site, ElectionProjection:

It has been estimated that 4 million conservative Christians who voted in the 1994 election stayed home in 2000. The drunk driving lightning bolt unleashed mere days before the election made the difference to many Christians. If even half those voters had voted last election, Bush would have won comfortably. I believe many of those bench-warmers are reconsidering this time around. They will vote in greater numbers this year.

We've heard this same thing from many sources, but we have a different theory. In the 1988 campaign George W was made the liaison between the elder Bush's campaign and the various Christian groups. He did his job well and courted the Christian vote with enthusiasm, telling them if they voted for his dad they wouldn't be sorry. Bush senior turned out to be a great disappointment. Christian voters were sorry. Our theory is that in the 2000 election the sins of the father were visited on the son. This year we hope Christian voters remember that forgiveness is divine.

We won't be posting any polls, though we'll certainly have something to say about the election results. The polls, however, offer little information in exchange for a great deal of emotional tumult. It's just not worth it.

So turn off the TV. Shut down the PC. Throw away the newspaper and cancel your subscription. Go do something worthwhile.

This would explain a great deal:

The Pentagon knows exactly where Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, it just can't get to him, John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, said Thursday.

About bloody time:

Porter Goss' initial moves as CIA director appear to herald a post-election purge at the already troubled spy agency, according to current and former top U.S. intelligence officials.

Read it all, then pray for a Bush win.

This from today's Political Diary:

Eric Holder, a top official in the Clinton Justice Department, says, "If every vote cast is counted, Kerry will be the president."

The first time you read this is sounds a little cavalier, but defensible. But have a second look. He isn't saying everyone should vote, or that everyone's vote should be counted. What he says is "every vote cast" (our emphasis).

We have never for a moment doubted that the Democrats plan to steal the 2004 election. But how far gone is our democracy when they openly cop to it?

The Israelis got another one. High ranking Hamas terrorist and "Father of the Qassam Rocket" Adnan al-Ghoul kept a date with an Israeli rocket which promptly disabused this world of his vile presence. Well done IDF!

There is a great article at Opinion Journal on the state of things in Iraq. We certainly agree with this quote about the decision to pull out of Fallujah last April:

That decision was easily the biggest mistake of the war...

Treat yourself to the whole thing.

Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit fame has promised that if he is elected president he will nominate Eugene Volokh to the Supreme Court. We would like to humbly recommend that Alex Kozinski be nominated as well.

Obviously we need more dolphins and fewer lawyers:

The world's whales, porpoises and dolphins have no standing to sue President Bush....
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, widely considered one of the most liberal and activist in the country, said it saw no reason why animals should not be allowed to sue but said they had not yet been granted that right.

Think we have the election wrapped up? Never underestimate the power of the Dark Side!

Meanwhile, Prince John thinks the UN is worth dying for, but not the US.

Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, "If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no."

Tired of dredging up Vietnam? Well, Jimmy Carter (who never met a murderous dictator he didn't lust after) thinks the Revolutionary War was a mistake. Yes, that Revolutionary War.

Matthews: As an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the war, insurgency against a powerful British force. Do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?

Carter: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War more than any other war until recently has been the most bloody war we've fought. I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war. Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonials' really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a non-violent way. I think in many ways the British were very misled in going to war against America and in trying to enforce their will on people who were quite different from them at the time.

Hat Tip to Best of the Web.

We've been trying out the Firefox browser as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. So far so good. We are madly in love with Firefox and think everyone should use it. The only downside so far is that a) we still need IE for some sites, and b) Windows 2000 mysteriously crashes every once in a while--but only when Firefox is in use.

With regard to the latter, we recall the story (true or not we couldn't say) that in the hallowed halls of MS during the development of Windows 3 the slogan was "Windows ain't done till Lotus won't run." Lotus 1-2-3 was, you may remember, the dominant PC spreadsheet software prior to the release of Windows 3.

A diamond mine in Montana? Maybe, but will it be competitive?

We saw Team America. Loved it. But it's definitely not for everyone.

We don't think there's much chance of Prince John winning this November, but in case he does, here's a presidential example we like to think he'd emulate.

Oil is over $55/bbl. Here's a prediction. No matter who wins the election, prices will drop off substantially once it's over.

Much has been said about the decision of some Canadian sellers to stop shipping bulk drug orders to US customers. This has been characterized as a blow to Prince John's plan to reimport Canadian drugs into the US. We think that misses the point.

Canada has strict price controls on drugs. Profits for drug companies are razor thin. Now, someone still has to pay for all the R&D and drugs that don't make it to market. That someone is the US customer. We pay higher prices so that drug companies can continue to develop new drugs. Canadians pay only for manufacturing costs of existing drugs. In effect, US customers are subsidizing Canadian health care.

Of course, reimportation is not the answer. Drug companies would simply stop selling new drugs in Canada, thus ending the US subsidy. The Canadians understand this, would like to keep the subsidy and so are erecting barriers to reimportation.

There's no such thing as a free lunch folks.

We think reimportation, by the way, should be allowed. It would reduce US prices, though not the way people think. Part of the price we pay for drugs is the Canadian subsidy. Reimportation is an oblique way of ending the subsidy, which we favor. Take that you Canadian leeches!

This is one of those stories we simply can't pass up. Ohio voter registrations paid for...in crack cocaine. Do we have to tell you which party? Didn't think so.

Iraqi police have captured 7 hostage takers in Kirkuk and freed at least 2 hostages.

More signs of Prince John's desperation over at This Isn't Writing.

America is still a great nation which still produces great patriots. Here's a perfect example.

War has a political aspect. Our enemies know that. Prince John knows it, and has a long history of fighting in the political arena on the side of America's enemies. The political battlefield has real casualties too.

Today the UN blamed violence in Haiti on some Kerry remarks. Here's an excerpt from StrategyPage:

October 18, 2004: The interim government accuses ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of directing actions of his supporters from exile, and causing what amounts to another civil war. Aristide is living in South Africa. But the government provided no proof for this charge. Aristide's followers represent many Haitians who share a desire for social reform. They have no other leader who is as widely known as Aristide. The problem is that Aristide is corrupt and as willing to use dictatorial tactics as are his opponents. The Haitian people don't have a very attractive choice when it comes to leaders. The commander of the UN peacekeepers blames U.S. senator John Kerry for much of violence, because earlier this year Kerry said that if he were president he would have sent American troops to protect Aristide. This, the UN commander believes, encouraged Aristide's followers to start fighting.

Want more? How about this quote from Russian President Vladamir Putin:

"International terrorists have set as their goal inflicting the maximum damage to Bush, to prevent his election to a second term.

"If they succeed in doing that, they will celebrate a victory over America and over the entire anti-terror coalition," Putin said.

"In that case, this would give an additional impulse to international terrorists and to their activities, and could lead to the spread of terrorism to other parts of the world."

As Glenn Reynolds is fond of saying, sometimes they aren't anti-war, they're just on the other side.

John Kerry on Guns:

The Dems know that being anti-gun is a losing position. So they've packaged Kerry as a pro-gun hunting fool. Here's an amusing rejoinder (not to the 'fool' part).

We have in the past expressed skepticism about polls.

Steven den Beste does it better.

We were wrong.

We had speculated here, here and here that John Forbes Kerry would never in a million years be the Democratic Nominee. We reasoned that the Democrats actually wanted to win the election, so they would never nominate a DOA candidate like Prince John: an effete, unlikable, liberal Massachusetts Senator with no legislative record, 4 months in Vietnam and a questionable stint as an anti-war activist. Ewww.

But they did, and we as a nation owe them a debt of gratitude. They gave us a sacrificial lamb. In retrospect this could only have been done as an act of deep and abiding patriotism with the clear intention of returning George W Bush to the White House for four more years. The Democrats could not fight the war on terror. They could not reform the tax code, medical care or social security. They could not rein in lunatic judges. So in a profound act of selflessness, they have allowed Bush to do these things.

To you, the Democratic Party, we offer our sincere thanks and gratitude.

Sigh. We predicted this would be necessary. We knew when battle inevitably resumed it would be much harder, bloodier, and costlier because of April's lunatic withdrawal. For all that, it's good that we are finally giving Fallujah its long overdue enema.

Read the latest.

The title of this piece on today's Opinion Journal is not just true--it is obviously true. It's also a great read:

Israel proves there is a military solution to terrorism

Someday we'll come up with a blogroll. In the meantime have a look at Daschle v. Thune, a blog dedicated to following this year's most important Senate race. It's a well written and deeply informative site. We started visiting occasionally just for the latest poll. We now find ourselves visiting several times a week to catch up on all the great content.

Daschle v. Thune is not just a blog about a Senate race. It's deeply political. A must for junkies. A treat for the curious.

Hugh Hewitt has asked, on his very fine blog, how much damage the Kerry campaign has done with its recent gay baiting. We think not much.

When a hockey team pulls its goalie it's a sign of desperation--and it almost never works. (Hey sports fans, has it ever worked?). We think the Kerry campaign has pulled its goalie.

Some quick observations:

• They did it twice. That's no accident. That's a strategy.
• That's the best dirty trick they could come up with?
• After November no one will be thinking much about Prince John and his Court Jester.
• Democrats aren't exactly known for being "straight" on the issues. It's a double standard, sure, but it's the standard we are all used to.

We think Vote Fraud will be the big story this year. There are many common sensical things that could be done. First, everyone go buy and read John Fund's book Stealing Elections.

Second, how about this:

Abolish Voter Registration.

State laws already require everyone over 18 to posses government issued ID. Usually that's a driver's license or simply an ID card. You are also required to keep the address on your ID up to date.

Instead of requiring people to register, each state will send the appropriate materials to each voter at the address on their government issued card. The materials will be the same as what you get now: sample ballot, address of polling place, application for absentee ballot, etc. On election day you show up, present your ID and vote.

What if you have no address or the listed address is old? What if you "forget" your ID. What if something else goes wrong? No worries. Fill out a provisional ballot. If everything checks out it's counted.

What about primaries? Let each party run its primary elections any way they like. We'd like to set it done online.

The advantages of this system include: getting third parties out of the registration loop; getting money out of the registration loop; reducing barriers for legal voting; and discouraging fraud by requiring photo ID.

Another advantage is that this approach is more politically sellable than other proposed reforms. How can Democrats complain about scaring away voters when you are removing the registration hurdle altogether? Make no mistake, they will complain anyway. But it won't ring true. You need ID to rent a movie, but that doesn't scare anyone away from Blockbuster.

Note that this proposal does not solve problems with absentee ballots. It also doesn't address hanging chads and malfunctioning touch screen systems. But it does close one big loophole and that's a start.

Our election predictions:

Bush 55% - 357
Kerry 43% - 181

Senate: GOP + 5
House: GOP + 9
Governors: GOP + 3

So much has happened. Where to start? How about this:

Dan Rather to the IRS: "The receipts are fake but the deductions are real!"

Hi again.

If we had any readers, they would probably want to know where we've been. Wait. That's not true. What they'd want to know is why no posts for...has it been 5 months? That's a good question. If we think of a good answer we'll let you know. Right now all we can think of are bad ones (got busy, forgot, dog ate our homework).

Hey. No one pays us for this. We have a regular job we *do* get paid for, and we show up for that one every single day.