Captain's Caption Contest #32: Keeping Your Eye On The Ball Edition

It's Friday, so it must be time for another Captain's Caption Contest! It's down to the wire now, folks -- only ten days of campaigning left in what seems to have been the Most Interminable Presidential Campaign Ever. Now's no time to waver! The candidates must be at their best, their sharpest, keeping their eyes on the ball ....

D'oh!

This week's guest judge is The Elder from Fraters Libertas, whose sense of fun amidst all this seriousness has been one of my primary inspirations for these weekly contests. The Elder and I will both be part of the guest-hosting Northern Alliance group filling in for Hugh Hewitt tonight! Make sure you tune in as we do our normal gig -- wrecking the studio, live-blogging, and causing mayhem on national radio.

As always, make sure you put your entries in our comments section -- NO e-mailed entries, please! E-mailed entries will be tied to the leg of Ohio geese and flown over John Kerry's official hunter surrogates. The contest will end on Sunday, October 24th at 8 pm CT, when The Elder will select the winners.

Let the games begin!

BUMP 10/23: Great entries so far -- The Elder has been reading them carefully. Keep it up!

Campaign ads, wolves, and bears, oh my!

The new Bush campaign ad is excellent. Other blogs have compared it to President Reagan's famous bear ad, which powerfully expressed the theme of his 1984 campaign. I think the Bush ad is just as good, perhaps even better. You can watch both thanks at the Daily Recycler and decide for yourself.

Tri-State Women Object To John Kerry

My friend and New York talk-show host Kevin McCullough had an interesting segment on his show yesterday in which he invited his female listeners to weigh in on John Kerry. The calls wound up taking all three hours of Kevin's show, and none of them found anything complimentary about the Democratic candidate for president:

I asked them simply to relay to me in their own words what they felt about the two candidates. Which one relates to them more? Who they admire more? The words they used to describe the candidates said it all.

Describing Kerry and/or Ms. Kerry:
"Unapproachable..."
"Arrogant..."
"...acts like He is better than everone else..."
"Was voting for him up until what he did with Mary Cheney..."
"Can't relate to me..."
"Insulting to mothers, schoolteachers, and librarians...who do they think they are..." ...

Describing Bush:
"Loves his wife...I'm not married, may not ever be, but that tells me all I need to know about what he thinks of women."
"Goes ga ga over Laura..."
"Compassionate..."
"Gracious...very kind eyes..."
"honest..."
"tells the truth..."

There's plenty more at Kevin's site. I'll be appearing on Kevin's show on Friday, between 1 and 1:30 ET, so make sure to tune in!

Powell refuses to pay tribute to nK

Secretary Powell bluntly rejected nK's demand for tribute by the US, which it insists must be paid before multilateral talks recommence. The AP reports:

In a statement apparently timed for Powell's visit, a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman indicated the North would agree to a new round of nuclear discussions only if the United States dropped its "hostile policy" and consented to a "reward" for a nuclear freeze the North is proposing.

Secretary Powell’s response to the typical nK blackmail was firm and entirely lacking in nuance.

Powell said any proposals from North Korea should be discussed as part of the negotiating process established more than a year ago that involves both Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

"This is a six-party discussion, not a U.S.-North Korea discussion or an exchange of U.S. and North Korean talking points," Powell told reporters during his flight to Tokyo, the first stop on a three-nation trip to East Asia.

According to the Boston Globe, nK actually set three conditions which must be met by the US before it would generously agree to another round of talks:

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman told the official KCNA news agency that the United States must drop its hostile policy and be prepared to join a compensation package in return for the North freezing its nuclear programs.

The North also said the United States must accept its proposal to discuss what it called "South Korea's nuclear problem" first at the talks, referring to tests with nuclear materials conducted in the South by scientists in the past that Seoul said were never authorized.

Since summits and international appeasement have been critical elements of Kerry’s campaign, one cannot expect him to hold the line against nK demands for tribute. He’s even promised to go back to the bilateral talks that worked so well for Clinton. Expect a dangerous reversal of current policy should he actually be elected come November.

Time: Bush Pulls Ahead, Up By 5

Time Magazine, which had the presidential race a dead heat a week ago, now says that George Bush is pulling away from John Kerry with a 5-point lead:

President Bush has opened a 5 point lead against Senator John Kerry, according the latest TIME poll. If the 2004 election for President were held today, 51% of likely voters surveyed would vote for President George W. Bush, 46% would vote for Senator John Kerry, and 2% would vote for Ralph Nader, according to the TIME poll conducted by telephone from Oct. 19 – 21. Among all registered voters surveyed, Bush leads Kerry 50% to 43%.

Last week’s TIME poll found 48% of likely voters would vote for Bush, 47% would vote for Kerry, and 3% would vote for Nader. That poll was conducted Oct. 14-15 and included 865 likely voters.

The internals on this poll look just as bad. Kerry lost ground on most of the issues as well as the overall number, going backward on the economy (-3, Bush up 46-45), health care (-5, Kerry up 46-42), and terrorism (-3, Bush up 56-37). Bush now ties Kerry among women, where Kerry had an eight-point lead in last week's poll, which I thought was inaccurate at the time.

As I wrote earlier, make sure you check the sample and the methodology. Time's sample looks solid; they've evenly polled Democrats and Republicans at 35%, about the correct demographic for likely voters. Among registered voters, Time actually polls more Democrats but comes up with a wider gap for Bush at 7%.

The momentum continues ...

Power Line's Hindrocket Honored In Rocket Competition

My friend and Northern Alliance colleage John "Hindrocket" Hinderaker received a singular honor from a competitor at the prestigious G. Harry Stine Memorial Launch this year. Team Vatsaas has named their entry the Hindrocket, and even modeled the entry from John's icon on the website. Team Vatsaas engineers predict that the 54" rocket will go a half-mile on launch.

Our justifiably proud friend writes on today's Power Line post:

We are truly honored to have this high-performance rocket named after us. It's another indication, I think, of how far the blogosphere has come. I'll bet no one enters a rocket named after Dan Rather in the the G. Harry Stine competition. As the event is going on this weekend, we expect to see photos of the Hindrocket's launching and flight on Rick's site, and we'll pass them on when Rick posts them.

We can't wait to see the pictures, but John is incorrect on one point. I believe that there was a rocket named the Dan Rather, but it had the unfortunate tendency to pull hard to the left and blow up in the faces of its owners.

Screamfest On Scarborough Show

Lorie from Polipundit e-mailed me last night, unfortunately after I'd passed out from exhaustion after guest-hosting the Hugh Hewitt show, that Lawrence O'Donnell had a complete meltdown during the Joe Scarborough show on MS-NBC when Swiftvet leader John O'Neill appeared on the show. She wrote that the debacle was twice as embarassing as the Chris Matthews/Michelle Malkin debacle. (Michelle weighs in on O'Donnell here.) The Daily Recycler has a video excerpt that you have to see to believe.

MS-NBC does not yet have the transcript up, mainly because it's difficult to retype "liar" 50 or more times. I'm not exaggerating. And I disagree that Lawrence O'Donnell had a "meltdown" at all. When you watch the video, O'Donnell seemed very much in control of himself -- he wasn't rolling his eyes or foaming at the mouth. He stared grimly into the camera and every time O'Neill opened his mouth, O'Donnell started screaming at the top of his lungs that O'Neill was a liar and a creep. Guest host Pat Buchanon -- no stranger to screamfests -- appeared flummoxed by O'Donnell, but several times tried to get O'Donnell to shut up, but to no avail. Why Buchanon didn't simply instruct the producers, on-air, to shut off O'Donnell's microphone is beyond me.

However, O'Donnell didn't just pull this strategy out of a hat. Democrats around the country have begun using intimidation and sheer rage to silence Republicans. Our local Bush/Cheney headquarters in St. Paul wound up being invaded by union thugs with bullhorns who tried scaring off families with small children from getting tickets to a Bush appearance earlier this month. They pushed their way into the offices, taking over the intercom system and refusing to leave, shouting and using the bullhorn to keep people from doing their jobs.

Nor was that an isolated incident. GOP offices around the country have had equipment stolen, people assaulted, and windows shot out. Bush hatred has deranged a significant segment of the Left in this country, to the point where their fascist leanings have come to the fore. Al Gore accused bloggers of being "digital brownshirts", but these people have become the real thing. They're using physical violence to intimidate their political opponents and deliberately ensuring that Republicans cannot speak in public to explain their positions. God help us if the Lawrence O'Donnells wind up in power again.

We'll have John O'Neill on the Northern Alliance Radio Network today, which starts at noon CT. Be sure to tune us in on AM 1280 The Patriot or over our web stream. We're going to get the answer to Pat Buchanon's question, and much more.

Republicans Push Norm Coleman For Leadership Post

A group of Republican Senators have sent a letter to their colleagues urging them to support Minnesota's GOP Senator Norm Coleman for the chair of their Senatorial Committee, an important leadership post:

A group of Republican senators wrote to colleagues Friday urging them to support Sen. Norm Coleman in his bid to become chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, cites Coleman's fund-raising and political abilities as reasons he should be chairman. Republican senators will vote Nov. 17 to choose either Coleman, R-Minn., or Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C. ...

The letter was signed by seven senators: former Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Larry Craig of Idaho, Jim Talent of Missouri and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia.

Coleman gets their support because of his fundraising ability as well as his leadership and demonstrated expertise on winning elections in tough markets. Norm has navigated his way through the rocky, populist shoals of Minnesota to become one of the most popular politicians I've ever seen. Having seen Sen. Coleman up close, I can tell you that he is quite impressive; he connects personally with everyone and has a memory that has to approach photographic. He's easily one of the most likable people I've met yet in politics.

He's running against Elizabeth Dole, a very likable and valuable member of the Republican contingent. Fortunately for the GOP, they have an embarassment of riches, and a tough choice to make.

Northern Alliance Guest Hosts The Hugh Hewitt Show Tonight!

The Northern Alliance Radio Network again hijacks the Hugh Hewitt radio show, starting from 5 pm CT. The Generalissimo will be on hand to shepherd us through, as long as we promise not to break all of the studio furniture.

We think we may have some breaking news in the first hour, so be sure to tune us in right away. I plan on live-blogging the show, so keep checking back!

5:15 - Just finished the first segment, did a bit of poll review and took a call. We're coming up on a breaking campaign-finance story that you'll want to hear ...

5:19 - I keep getting e-mails about THK carrying beer at an event. Can someone tell me why this is such a problem? Has no one ever carried a couple of beers around for friends? ...

5:22 - A representative from the national College Republicans alleges connections between Rock the Vote, MTV, and the DNC, despite RTV's claims of non-partisanship ...

5:58 - Great last segment on the John Kerry hunting fetish this week. Duane did a great job finding "The Hunting Song" by one of my favorite comedians, Tom Lehrer. The hour went by too quickly, as it always does. I'm out for hour 2, but I'll be back in hour 3, and I can live-blog a bit more ...

6:12 - Fred Barnes is talking polls with Mitch, King, Saint Paul, and Rocket Man. He's emphasizing the volatile nature of the polls and the wide variety of polling methods. That comes on the heels of the Scripps poll showing a four-point Kerry lead in Ohio among likely voters, with Gallup reporting a Kerry one-point edge there. ...

6:20 - You gotta love the DNC's response to the new Bush "Wolves" ad that addresses Kerry's attempted evisceration of the CIA after the first World Trade Center bombing:

Instead of giving voters even one good reason to vote for him, George W. Bush has chosen to scare the American people with images of wolves.

As opposed to scaring voters with urban legends about the draft? With the mythology of the million disenfranchised African-American voters, when Janet Reno couldn't find even one? Telling seniors that Bush has a secret plan to steal their pension checks? Ooooo-kayyyyy ...

6:25 - Saint Paul notes that the local Sinclair station is pre-empting an LL Cool J sitcom to show the "Stolen Honor" presentation. Even if they make little impact on the election, these veterans still serve their country by improving our television programming ...

6:33 - This just in: the DNC has denounced the Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team for using their logo to scare NBA fans with images of wolves. More as this develops ...

6:36 - Jesse Ventura endorsed John Kerry, but refused to speak to reporters about his statement. I'll post on this in a few minutes ...

6:45 - We're pushing to get volunteers to come out tomorrow afternoon to the Bush/Cheney HQ in St. Paul to make some calls and do some much-needed work to get the vote out on November 2nd. We'll be there from 4-6 pm after our show tomorrow, so come out and see us ...

7:02 - Back in the studio ...

7:07 - Minnesota Apologizes! We feel really bad about: Jesse Ventura; Minnesota electors for the past 32 years; Mark Dayton; Paul Wellstone's legacy; Mark Dayton again; Garrison Keillor; Al Franken; the Minnesota Timberwolves logo; Walter Mondale; Craig Kilborn; the Star Search band Limited Warranty. We're sorry, and we swear it won't happen again ...

7:22 - Peeps won't sing "Muskrat Love", and Mitch calls him a Mark Dayton ...

7:26 - Citizen Smash calls in -- great to hear from him. He's got the goods on the free "Stolen Honor" video. Go check him out! ...

7:30 - If you're a blogger, call in during this segment at 800-520-1234 -- we're talking to bloggers next ...

7:44 - Blogger segment begins! Call us and let us know what your biggest story is ...

7:58 - That's a wrap! Thanks to Duane, who guided us through another great night, and to Hugh for giving us the opportunity again. Hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did!

Iraqi Elections "On Track": UN

In a body blow to the hysterics and Chicken Littles in American politics, the top UN electoral expert in Baghdad told the Associated Press that Iraqi elections were "on track" and that there is no necessity for large-scale observation missions to establish their credibility:

Preparations for the crucial January election are "on track" and the absence of international observers due to the country's tenuous security should not detract from the vote's credibility, the top U.N. electoral expert here said. ...

"International observation is important only in that it's symbolic," Carlos Valenzuela told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. "I don't think that the process will be less credible without observers, absolutely not. They are not the essence. They are not essential. They are not important. If they can come, fine, of course."

Valenzuela was responding to a complaint from Iraqi officials that the UN was shirking its duties to provide electoral workers and observers. Up to now, the UN has played up the importance of its own role in establishing the credibility of any electoral results, but Valenzuela appears to have dismissed that entirely. He told the AP that the number of workers already in Iraq should be sufficient for their mission, and that the Iraqis have to establish their own credibility -- a common-sense statement, thankfully lacking in the self-aggrandizement provided so often by UN chief Kofi Annan. Annan would only acknowledge that Iraqi elections in January were still "technically possible."

Valenzuela is no rookie at this, either. He has led observer teams in several countries as they struggled to recover from war, and says that just as in past situations, events could impact the schedule. He stresses that the UN position has always been to enable local political "entities" to effectively observe the electoral process and correct any issues. In fact, since international observers usually are unfamiliar with the country and elections take place in such a tight time frame, the most any of them can handle is a few trips to a handful of polling places. Without creating credible local observers, the UN can't verify anything.

Those who claim that George Bush lives outside of reality, as John Kerry put it earlier, because he insists that elections will be held on schedule may find this a shock. However, we saw the Iraqis take back their sovereignty on schedule when everyone said that the US simply could not deliver it. I find no reason to doubt that Bush means to stick to his timetable, but just as in Afghanistan, the doubters likely won't stop claiming the sky is falling until after the balloting starts.

Kerry On Guns: You Just Stand There Looking Cute

John Kerry did a little image repair yesterday, using Ohio geese as sacrificial lambs in order to create an image of a robust outdoorsman and hunter that conflicts with his 20-year Senate record of supporting gun control. Unfortunately for Kerry, the pool reporters for his overt show of testosterone were not allowed to watch him actually pull the trigger:

John F. Kerry brought his campaign to a duck blind in far eastern Ohio on Thursday morning, and while he managed to clip one unfortunate goose, he was really aiming for undecided voters in this battleground state. ...

Clearly concerned about his low rating from the National Rifle Association -- he got an F on the NRA's last report card, and it is running ads in key states against him -- Kerry often makes a point during his stump speech of announcing that he owns guns.

Thursday morning, he happily emerged from the duck blind toting a Mossberg 835 Ulti Mag-pump action 12-gauge shotgun, but someone else was carrying his dead prey. "I'm too lazy," Kerry joked, adding that he was still "giddy" over the pennant victory Wednesday night of his beloved Boston Red Sox, catapulting the team into the World Series.

Let's forget for a moment that his record shows that Kerry would attempt to roll back gun-ownership rights, and that his base are the same people who would take them away altogether. There's something terribly hypocritical about toting a gun out for a campaign event and killing an animal that you have no interest in eating. In fact, it confirms the worst impulses often assigned to hunters -- that their guns are an extension of their genitalia and the hunt's only significance is to affirm one's masculinity. Most hunters I know don't fall into that category; they hunt for the food and for the camaraderie, the tradition.

Kerry sold that out yesterday just to prove his manliness. If his base can't admit to the irony in that, then they've bought into the hypocrisy.

And even worse, Kerry couldn't be bothered to handle his own kill, as the Washington Post points out:

Thursday morning, he happily emerged from the duck blind toting a Mossberg 835 Ulti Mag-pump action 12-gauge shotgun, but someone else was carrying his dead prey. "I'm too lazy," Kerry joked, adding that he was still "giddy" over the pennant victory Wednesday night of his beloved Boston Red Sox, catapulting the team into the World Series.

Twenty-five reporters and cameramen were taken on the carefully staged event, but none saw Kerry shoot anything. They were kept quite a distance away.

What they did see, however, was a glorious photo opportunity: Kerry emerging from the blind, victorious with the other men, perfectly outfitted in hunting gear. ... Kerry was joined by Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), Bob Bellino of the local Ducks Unlimited chapter and Neal Brady, assistant manager of Indian Lake State Park.

The hunting party bagged four geese. The other three men carried their own dead birds.

I wonder if someone else shot it for him as well. At the very least, the notion that a hunter can't carry out his own kill from the woods underscores the dissonance between the image Kerry intended to create and the impression he made on the reporters. Instead of looking like a man of the people, a man's man, he wound up appearing like an upper-class twit whose servants traipse behind him to keep the icky blood off of his hands. That may have been the most honest moment about the entire contrived event.

Nick Coleman: Democrats Bored With John Kerry

I don't want to step on Mitch Berg's toes here, so I won't deliver a full-out fisking of Nick Coleman's column today. However, Coleman's description of the John Kerry rally yesterday in Minneapolis sounds so odd that it bears a closer look.

Coleman's subject matter for his column is an oddball named "Mr. Fun" who apparently shows up at serious events to provide some comic relief, but his efforts went for naught at the Kerry rally:

I saw him walking past the police department bomb-squad truck outside the Dome, humming "Hail to the Chief." The bomb squad is not usually a spot that makes me laugh, but Mr. Fun was wearing white gloves and glitter on his face and a porkpie hat that said, naturally, "Mr. Fun." He was also wearing a shaggy red-and-black bumblebee shirt, sporting a green cape and carrying a white flag.

I hadn't seen anybody dressed this amusingly since the late Charlie McCarty was mayor of St. Paul.

The security guys wouldn't let Mr. Fun bring in the flag (which symbolized peace and purity) but after they had run him through the metal detector and gone through his fanny pack (which was full of chocolates) they couldn't find a reason to keep him out.

Okay, I can't help myself on this point. The white flag symbolizes "peace and purity"? No wonder the Democrats are so confused on national security! To most of us, Nick, it symbolizes "surrender." In fact, I have trouble understanding why the security guards would question Mr. Fun's brandishing of the flag, as it perfectly matches the rhetoric coming from the Kerry campaign, but perhaps they didn't want the visual association to be so clear.

As it turns out, though, the campaign needn't worry, as most of the crowd couldn't be bothered to stick out the rally to the end, even though John Kerry himself was on hand:

John Kerry came to Minneapolis and dropped in on the backside parking lot of the Metrodome and droned on for half an hour to a crowd of supporters who had been waiting for two hours in the cold before he was introduced by Walter Mondale and delivered his canned stump speech.

Thursday night's rally produced a nice campaign turnout, but it also was proof we have reached campaign burnout: Thousands of Kerry supporters left before their man finished talking, scramming like Twins fans in the sixth inning of a blowout, going home glad to have seen their champion but feeling no need for another inning of stale lines about how Bush should've killed Osama in Tora Bora.

Hey, LA fans leave in the sixth inning of tie games, so I think Coleman needs to give Twins fans a break. And that's exactly what happened yesterday at the Dome: Kerry fans left in a tie game. When I went to the George Bush rally in St. Paul two months ago, everyone was pumped up for the President's appearance; no one left early, and when he came to the stage, the crowd drowned him out for two or three minutes at the start of his speech. The Xcel Energy Center burst with enthusiasm, and even after he left, people continued milling about for a while, talking about the great crowd and the series of inspiring speeches given.

It says volumes about Kerry and his campaign that people who took the time and trouble to come down to the Metrodome -- no easy drive, and even tougher parking -- could not sit through the speech by their candidate. This is the man they want to be the next president of the United States, and they've already become bored and/or fatigued by his droning and redundant rants. Coleman stopped a young Bush-hater with an obscene T-shirt, the kind of voter from whom you'd expect a high level of enthusiasm, to ask why she bailed out early:

As the crowd streamed toward an early exit, I stopped 22-year-old Amber Martin, a barrista, from Fridley, who was wearing a funny T-shirt about Bush that I cannot repeat here.

"I wanted to see Kerry," she said, "but I already know everything he'll say. "Besides, I have a date."

She had a hot date on a Thursday night? Sure. It certainly wasn't Kerry. The enthusiasm has gone out of Minnesota's Kerry support like a slow leak from a balloon, and now that support looks like a chore rather than desire. It's a harbinger of November 2nd. When Democrats have better things to do than to stay through an appearance of their presidential candidate in the heart of Minneapolis, you can bet your last dollar enough of them will have better things to do on Election Day than vote for him. Minneapolis will go GOP for the first time in 32 years, thanks to a relentlessly uninspiring candidate.

Or, as Nick Coleman might put it: Senator, I know Mr. Fun, I've met with Mr. Fun, and I've worked with Mr. Fun -- and you, sir, are no Mr. Fun.

UPDATE: Oliver Willis thinks that I've crashed head-on into the spin, and links back to this Star Tribune report on the rousing success of the rally. I'll give Oliver a break, as he may not be aware of Nick Coleman's track record. However, for his edification and yours, Coleman is no GOP spinmeister; Coleman is a bitter partisan hack whose only complaint about the Democrats is that they're not leftist enough.

When a columnist like Nick Coleman tells you that "thousands" of people are heading for the exits at a John Kerry rally before the candidate is done speaking, that's not spin. Spin is what Bob Van Sternburg and Terry Collins provided when they described the event as a rousing success despite the large number of walkouts, something they should have known if they bothered to check with their senior colleague before filing their report.

I've attended these rallies, and it's not just like going to a ball game. You have to go through a complicated and lengthy security check, you have to wait in line for hours to get in, and once inside, you have to wait a couple of hours before you get to the main event. To go through all of that just to walk out when the candidate is still speaking demonstrates a lack of enthusiasm from which Oliver wants to avert his eyes. When thousands of people decide to do that, it's serious trouble.

Mekong Delta Blues!

I'm proud to be the first to release the new John Kerry campaign theme song, "Mekong Delta Blues", written and performed by the Sons Of The Blogosphere, a local group in the Twin Cities. You can download the file at this link and have a listen for yourselves. The Sons have kindly provided the lyrics to this soon-to-be classic:

I hear that swiftboat comin',
it's comin' 'round the bend,
I ain't had my head above the railing
since I don't know when

I'll show 'em Who's Their Daddy,
if I get the chance
And if it's the last thing that I ever do,
I'll turn this country into France!

The file is in a reduced monaural format, as I only have so much bandwidth I can spare for John Kerry, but I think you wil still hear the excellent professionalism of the Sons of the Blogosphere in this MP3. Hopefully, however, they will not be playing at his Inaugural Ball ...

Still More Madness: Gallup Has Bush Up By Six In Wisconsin

And now even more polling fun -- Gallup has George Bush leading John Kerry in the key blue state of Wisconsin by six points, 51-45, when matched head-to-head. When Nader is added into the mix, Bush extends his lead to eight points, 51-43. This polling took place between Oct 16-19, somewhat closer in than the Mason-Dixon polling and less of a weekend poll as well.

The demographics demonstrate a strong Bush surge with our neighbors to the East (head-to-head):

* Bush leads among men by 13 points and even edges Kerry among women, 48-47

* Bush leads in the 18-34 age bracket by seven, 52-45 (in the three-way, he leads by 10, 51-41) and 35-54 by 14. Kerry holds a five-point edge among seniors.

* Kerry leads substantially in Milwaukee (62-36), and edges Bush in the south by a single point (49-48), but everywhere else Bush leads by a wide margin, including the Milwaukee suburbs/exurbs (63-32).

* Bush leads all educational categories except post-graduate by margins outside the error range.

I think we can put Wisconsin in the Bush column along with Iowa, giving Bush an additional 17 electoral votes for November 2nd.

UPDATE: Gallup also has recent polling for Colorado that puts Bush ahead among likely voters by five points, 51-46, in a two-way race.

More Madness: Mason-Dixon Shows Bush Tied Or Ahead In Blue States

Now that I've warned you all about carefully vetting poll results, I'm going to through more of them at you. Mason-Dixon released its most recent polling data in those battleground states that went for Gore in 2000, and the news looks bad for John Kerry. Bush either tied Kerry or went ahead in all of the states they polled. I included the ratio of Dems/GOP MD used in each state:

PA - Kerry, 46-45 (49/44)
MI - Kerry, 47-46 (38/36)
OR - Kerry, 47-46 (41/37)
WI - Tie, 45-45 (35/35)
IA - Bush, 49-43 (37/40)

This polling took place over the weekend, Oct 15-18, a time that usually favors Democrats. Mason-Dixon sampled 625 voters in each state and normalized by county and demographics, as they usually do. I think that MD may have undersampled the GOP in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and maybe overpolled them slightly in Iowa.

Interestingly, in all five states, Bush is viewed more favorably than Kerry, and his unfavorability numbers are lower than Kerry in all five. These are two separate numbers, as Neutral was given as a valid choice. In fact, Bush's Favorable ratings exceed his Unfavorable ratings outside the margin of error in three of the five states, while Kerry only does that in Oregon. [Updated: I think MS-NBC switched the labels between Unfavorable and Neutral on their website, and I originally carried the mistake into this post.]

No gender demographics were given, which would have been very interesting to read, but the news is bad enough for Kerry as it is. Losing Iowa -- and a six-point gap looks pretty significant less than two weeks before the election -- indicates that the entire Upper Midwest is ripe for a Bush win. The momentum in the battleground states appears to be going exclusively towards Bush. Expect Kerry and Edwards to play a lot of defense in these states over the next eleven days.

UPDATE: Kerry Spot has data on two more states than MS-NBC's report gave, showing Bush up by five in New Mexico (49-44) and two here in Minnesota (47-45). I haven't seen the data reported anywhere else or any of the internals, but if both hold for Bush, that should be a net gain of 15 more electoral votes, or 32 overall from former Gore states counting Iowa and Wisconsin (see above).

UPDATE II: Just to close the loop, here's the results in the Mason-Dixon red-state battleground polls:

CO - Bush 49-43
MO - Bush 49-44
NH - Bush 48-45
OH - Bush 46-45
NV - Bush 52-42
WV - Bush 49-44

New Hampshire and Ohio appear vulnerable at the moment, but Bush still shows an edge in both states. That represents 24 electoral votes in play from the GOP, still less than Bush claims in blue states where polls have him ahead.

Polling Madness Continues

It's Thursday, which means that the normal slew of mid-week polling results have begun to come in. That may be all that's normal, however, as each poll seems to point in wildly different directions. For instance, we have the AP-Ipsos poll which shows Kerry edging ahead of Bush:

President Bush and Sen. John Kerry are locked in a tie for the popular vote, according to an Associated Press poll, while a chunk of voters vacillate between their desire for change and their doubts about the alternative. ...

The result is deadlock. In the survey of 976 likely voters, Democrats Kerry and Sen. John Edwards had 49 percent, compared to 46 percent for Republicans Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. That's within the margin of error for the poll conducted Oct. 18-20.

While several bloggers on the port side of the blogosphere trumpet these results, a couple of red flags appear in the data. First, Ipsos reports that the numbers have not changed since after the first debate, which would make it the only such poll to report no movement at all. Looking at the rest of the data, more such anomalies appear, such as a 15-point lead for Kerry among women, the only poll to report anything of the kind. The AP does not give any demographics for its sample, and Ipsos doesn't have the report on line (and I believe it would be for subscribers only). It smells pretty fishy.

On top of this poll, moreover, the Washington Post/ABC daily tracking poll reported its numbers for the past three days, and they tell a significantly different story. The Post tracking poll shows Bush pulling ahead to a lead of 6 points, 51-45. Their polling took the pulse of 1,260 likely voters, a 30% increase over the AP-Ipsos sample, and partially weights the results to match the registration numbers for each party. The relatively transparent methodology and the consistency among other national polls makes me believe that the Ipsos poll is an outlier and the Post poll probably shows more accuracy.

On the other hand, it looks like all of us on the starboard side of the blogosphere are equally skeptical of this Detroit News poll showing Bush ahead of Kerry in Michigan:

In the initial installment of a poll that regularly will track voter sentiment in the final two weeks of the campaign, Bush held a 47 percent to 43 percent lead over the Massachusetts senator. The incumbent president’s lead is well within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. The statewide poll of 400 likely voters was taken Monday and Tuesday.

Most recent polls have shown Kerry with a narrow lead in Michigan. A Detroit News poll in June had the candidates virtually tied, with Bush at 44 percent and Kerry at 43 percent.

Only 400 voters have been polled in this sample, making the results less than solid, although they intend on increasing the sample in the next few days. The internals to this poll look more accurate than in the Ipsos poll -- Kerry leads women by seven points while most national polls have Bush even or edging him, but in Michigan that could be accurate. But the News poll has Kerry up only seven among union voters, which sounds a bit thin. One factor that may account for the Bush edge is Proposal 2, defining marriage as between one man and one woman, which enjoys overwhelming support in Michigan and may be boosting the numbers for Bush. I'd definitely wait for more results in the Motor State before giving Bush a shot here.

When these polls come out, be sure to check the methodology, sample demographics, and the internal numbers to make sure they meet with reality. Otherwise, you'll pinball all the way to November 2nd.

Mighty Voter Fraud From Florida ACORNs Grow

The so-called nonpartisan voters assistance group, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), has generated suspicion for some time in conservative circles as a front-line player in leftist efforts to skew the vote. Now a former employee has filed charges against ACORN alleging that the organization deliberately set out to disrupt the Florida vote by illegally registering Democrats and suppressing Republican registrations:

Mac Stuart, of Opa-locka, has accused the organization, known as ACORN, of illegally copying voter registration applications and selling them to labor union groups, allowing people to sign petitions who were not registered voters and suppressing Republican voter registration applications. ...

Stuart, who was assistant director of voter registration for the group, was fired in early August after being accused of trying to cash a paycheck that wasn't his. In the lawsuit, he claims he was fired only days after voicing his concerns about ACORN practices at a group meeting in late July.

You can look at this one of two ways. Either Stuart is a disgruntled, terminated employee looking for revenge, or he is a whistleblower who got smeared when he attempted to stop crimes from being committed. Either could be true. However, if Stuart really did try to fraudulently cash a check, I doubt that he would be bringing the case to court, since apparently he avoided being charged for theft or forgery from the incident. ACORN could always say that it preferred to let the matter drop quietly, but if Stuart did violate the law, the presumption would be that his motivation for keeping it quiet would be much stronger.

Combine this with other irregularities, such as the NAACP representative paying for bogus Ohio registrations with crack cocaine, and I'd tend to suspect that the ACORN does not fall far from the tree. Floridians should take this into consideration when deciding which party truly represents their values. Remember what Hugh Hewitt says -- if it's not close, they can't cheat.

Another Priest's Perspective

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Father Lawrence Hummer of Chillicothe, Ohio, and his sellout to John Kerry during and after Mass. Instead of supporting two millenia of Catholic teachings, Hummer served up a big, wet kiss and a heapin' helping of moral relativity, excusing Kerry's stand on abortion because of his pacificist posture. I wrote that "Father Hummer, instead of taking this as an opportunity to teach a wayward Catholic and return him to the path of his faith, instead chose the moment to pander to his sins in order to further his own political goals."

Shortly afterward, I received this e-mail from Father Gregory Lockwood, a Catholic priest in Cincinatti who still labors under the impression that Catholic priests should lead and instruct the faithful on the Catechism rather than from personal politics. Fr. Lockwood, a veteran of the Navy and regular CQ reader, has this reaction to Fr. Hummer:

I’m sorry to report that Fr. Hummer would not be the only priest in Ohio to welcome John Kerry with his cheerleader’s pom-poms. There are all too many of my colleagues who have not moved out the ‘60’s or the knee-jerk pacifism or union-worshipping that goes with it. The problems are many and need not detain us here. There is, however, good news coming. I teach at the Catholic seminary in St. Louis (Kenrick Seminary) occasionally and the new guys coming in are outstanding for the most part (you could see this in the incident in St. Louis after the debate there where the seminarians held a prayer vigil at the Kerry rally afterward-those were my students). These men will be bishops sooner rather than later.

As has been said, “Help is on the way.”

Thank you for your service, Father, both to our country and to our Lord. You and your seminarians give us hope that a new generation of Catholic priests will step up to challenge us to meet universal truths rather than roll with the flow. Maybe the latter proves more popular with the congregations, but only the former will bring us closer to Christ, which should have been Fr. Hummer's primary consideration.

UPDATE: Fr. Lockwood's first name is Gregory, not Gary ... He writes: "The mistake is a common one, as a 1960’s-70’s hack actor named Gary Lockwood seemed to be on every cop and cowboy drama on television." Hey, I like hack actors!

Democratic Candidate's Son Caught Stealing Signs

In a comment to the post I wrote last night regarding the serial defacement of Bush/Cheney signs in Minnesota, CQ reader Smacky linked to an interesting story from Hawaii, where the same phenomenon has cropped up. In this case, political signs have disappeared, primarily those for Republican candidates -- and the culprit turned out to be the son of a Democrat running for office:

This election season, thousands of dollars worth of political signs have been stolen, defaced or otherwise trashed at an alarming rate from people's homes and private property. ... But recently, on Primary Election day in late September, an amazing thing happened. One of the "criminals" was caught in the act -- and caught on film.

Most interestingly, the culprit, Mike Golojuch Jr., is a frequent letter writer and spokesperson for his version of civil rights and free speech. He was caught stealing the signs of Rep. Mark Moses, R-Kapolei, for which Moses reported him to the police and filed a complaint.

Most relevant, Mike Golojuch Jr., who ran for state House in 2002, is the son of the woman who is currently the opponent of Moses in the state House race to represent Kapolei.

Moses is a Republican representing Kapolei for several years, and Carolyn Golojuch, a Democrat, is his only opponent in the Nov. 2, 2004, General Election.

The Golojuch family gets my nomination for the Phyllis Kahn Award for Defending Democracy. Son Mike may also get the political equivalent of the Darwin Award for allowing himself to get caught on film stealing the yard signs in broad daylight:

The gray car on the right, by the way, belongs to Golojuch. He used it as his getaway vehicle. Prominently displayed in the rear window is a large campaign sign for his mother -- just in case anyone didn't recognize him as he stole the campaign materials from the constituency his mother wants to represent.

Democrats: Too Radical To Get Elected Honestly, Too Stupid To Cheat Effectively.

Take A Shot At Fisking Nick!

You've seen all of the Northern Alliance gang do it -- me, Mitch, King, the guys at Powerline -- and hell, the Fraters Libertas gang seems to live for it. Now you can join in the fun, too! Mitch Berg has started the first Fisk Nick Coleman contest at Shot In The Dark, giving his readers an opportunity to take their own shots at the man Minnesotans love to hate hate to read.

How do you enter? It's easy:

1. Read Nick Coleman's latest column* (I haven't read it yet, but I'll wager it has something to do with the plight of the working stiff, the evil greed of Republicans, or how Nick Knows Stuff You Don't)

2. Pick one sentence or paragraph you feel desperately needs fisking

3. Leave your best fisking of that passage in a comment on Mitch's post.

That's it, but get your entries in as soon as possible -- Mitch will be closing the contest on Friday night. Don't miss out on putting your own pin into one of the biggest overblown balloons in the Twin Cities media scene. Good luck!

* - Northern Alliance is not responsible for any brain damage that might occur as a result of extended exposure to Nick Coleman. Symptoms include incoherent sputtering, humming the "Union Label" lullaby that Al Gore's mother sang to him as a baby, or incomprehensible nostalgia for union violence. If any of these symptoms appear, please go immediately to your closest Northern Alliance blog for an immediate antidote.

Guardian's Clark County Project Backfires

The London Telegraph reports on the efforts of its Labourite rival to influence American voters in Clark County, Ohio -- and it's clear that the results will not please the Manchester broadsheet or its constituents. David Rennie reports from Springfield that getting letters from foreigners presuming to instruct Americans on their best interests has created a groundswell of support ... for George Bush:

The first letters to be made public all urged Clark County voters to reject Mr Bush. As he watched the reaction of friends and neighbours, Mr Harkins was delighted.

He is the chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, and his neighbours' reaction was outrage. "It's hysterical," laughed Mr Harkins, showing off sheaves of incensed e-mails and notes from local voters.

The Republicans' delight compares with the gloom among local Democrats, who fear that "foreign interference" is hurting Mr Kerry.

Of course, the tone of the letters almost appeared designed to give offense (or 'offence', for those Brits who may be reading). Neil Evans from Kent told us that if Bush won a second term, Americans traveling abroad would have to learn to speak with a "Canadian accent," leading the Kerry voter Evans targeted to wonder whether the Kentish Oracle was a terrorist himself.

Left-wing celebrities were even less tactful. British film director Ken Loach wrote, "Today, your country is reviled across continents as never before. You are seen as the greatest bully on earth." Historian Antonia Fraser told Clark County that a vote for Kerry would be a vote "against a savage, militaristic foreign policy of pre-emptive killing."

What has been the reaction? According to a delighted Clark County Republican committe, the letter-writing campaign has energized the Bush base, enraging them with the smug superiority that these letters have expressed. The local GOP calls the letters a "gift" that will do more to get the GOP vote to the polls than anything else they could have done themselves.

Unless the Guardian intended on helping Bush get re-elected -- and I read the Guardian enough to know better than that -- I'd say that Operation Clark County could be termed a failure.

AQ Targets Chinese In New Focus On Musharraf

In a sign that the Pakistanis have done significant damage to its network, al-Qaeda operations now primarily target the Pervez Musharraf regime, seen as a cornerstone to the American-led war on terror. The kidnapping of two Chinese industrial experts aims to drive a wedge between Musharraf and his oldest ally:

Al-Qaeda linked militants involved in the fatal Chinese hostage crisis targeted Chinese in Pakistan to sabotage president Pervez Musharraf's economic agenda and avenge their comrades' deaths, analysts said.

They said the abduction on October 8 of two Chinese engineers working on a dam in the wild tribal region of South Waziristan was a pressure tactic to secure the release of Al-Qaeda militants detained in army operations in the region which hugs the Afghan frontier. ...

Since March Pakistani forces, sweeping Al-Qaeda and allied fighters from the rugged frontier district, have killed 246 foreign and local militants, a regional army commander said at the weekend. Troop casualties have been high, with at least 170 soldiers and paramilitaries killed in the same period. Hundreds of militants, some foreign and others from among local tribes, have been arrested.

Defence analyst retired Brigadier A.R. Siddiqui said "the feeling of revenge is very much there" among militants. "They first tried to kill Musharraf and now they want to hit him hard through other ways," Siddiqui told AFP.

AQ's new focus on Musharraf may indicate an inability to strike outside of its immediate area. The Spanish just captured seven AQ-affiliated terrorists planning a major bombing in Andalusia, but AQ has been fairly quiet outside the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. A great deal of credit for this goes to the Musharraf regime, which has pursued AQ relentlessly after the two assassination attempts.

Of course, it hardly helps Musharraf with either his allies or his people when Pakistan has to stage a hostage rescue from a man who the US released from custody on no more than a promise not to be a terrorist. Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Abdullah Mehsud ran the kidnapping operation from which the Pakistanis tried to rescue their two Chinese guest workers; one of them died in the attempt, accidentally shot in the melee. As I wrote yesterday, this is just one more reason why we should be less concerned about the opinions of the appeasers and the corrupt at the UN and make decisions on detainment in strict accordance to the Geneva Convention. Those captured on the battlefield bearing arms but wearing no insignia should be summarily executed as spies.

The Chinese invest heavily in Pakistan and Musharraf relies heavily on their support to keep his economy afloat and technology updated. If AQ succeeds in driving the Chinese out, Musharraf will have to greatly reduce or eliminate counterterrorism activities, if for no other reason than a lack of funds and arms. AQ understands this and apparently feels that Musharraf is the weak link in the coalition arrayed against them. Perhaps their "October Surprise" is this attempt to either neutralize or kill Musharraf and attempting to isolate George Bush in the region.

When Democrats Get Desperate

So much for the Democrats being the defenders of the First Amendment. In the last couple of days, we've seen the Kerry campaign sue a broadcaster to keep embarassing material and testimony from America's bravest Vietnam veterans from airing on television, and locally, we have people defacing yard signs and committing vandalism against people who express support for George Bush.

Here are a few images of Democratic support of free speech ...

Our friend Laura sends over this update on the Minnesota vandalism that the local press has decided to ignore:

The first one was on County Road 24. Installed October 19th, destroyed October 19th.

The last 2 are front and back view of same sign. After being installed on September 18th the sign was replaced or repaired 3 times before a frame and reinforcement was built by the property owner (Upsher Smith Laboratories on 23rd Ave in Plymouth). When they were unable to bring the sign down they shredded it.

Thanks to our local DFL, the average street life of a Bush/Cheney sign barely exceeds that of a Cadillac Escalade, if that. They profess support for freedom of speech and expression, but as you can see, that only applies to approved speech and expression. Supporting GOP candidates doesn't meet their standards for approval, obviously.

UN Finally Allows US The Privelege Of Protecting It

After over a year of avoiding the US military for their security needs in Iraq, the UN has given up and decided that the Americans can provide their mission with protection:

The United Nations no longer objects to American soldiers to guard its staff in Iraq after the search for separate contingents from around the world failed, diplomats and U.N. sources said on Wednesday. ...

U.N. officials originally distanced themselves from American troops when traveling outside of Baghdad, believing their staff would become more of a target of the sporadic and growing violence in the country.

But without volunteers, the United Nations asked the U.S. command of the Multinational Force to supply protection, whether or not American soldiers were involved, diplomats said.

Let's hear how well Kofi Annan gets assistance from the beloved international security organiztion he runs:

Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in London on Tuesday he had tried to raise a brigade but "we haven't done very well."

"And it's the same governments who are asking me to send in my civilian staff who are not going to give any troops to protect them," he said.

So the same countries that have been screaming for the UN to take over the administration and rebuilding of Iraq, and who have castigated the Bush administration for insisting on remaining in charge, won't lift a finger to support and protect the UN mission which they demanded. I'm shocked, shocked! to find such hypocrisy at the United Nations, as I'm sure everyone will be.

Had we given up the command of the adminstration and rebuilding, it's now clear that we still would have had to supply all or nearly all of the security forces needed in Iraq. The only difference would be that the mission would be commanded by the same UN that allowed Saddam to fleece billions of dollars from their so-called humanitarian program instead of the US, and we'd likely be looking at another Kosovo -- where we have sat in the same status quo for over five years without a hint of resolution, or even an agreed goal for which to work.

Perhaps the complaints of Iraqis who want the UN imprimatur on their democratic processes pushed Annan to accept American troops in the UN security team:

Iraq's interim government complained Wednesday that the United Nations isn't doing enough to help prepare for January elections, saying the organization has sent fewer electoral workers than it did when tiny East Timor voted to secede from Indonesia. ...

U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up operations seeking to curb insurgent violence so that Iraqi voters throughout the country can choose a new transitional government in January. The elected assembly is to draft a new constitution in a major step toward democratic rule after decades of tyranny and military occupation.

But Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari complained that the UN has not sent enough election experts to help prepare for the balloting.

"It is unfortunate that the contribution and participation of UN employees in this process is not up to expectations," Zebari told reporters.

He said the number of UN workers expected to help in the election was far smaller than the 300 workers the UN sent for the 1999 independence referendum in East Timor.

"Judging by the size of the process in Iraq and its complexity, we definitely need a larger UN presence in Iraq, at least to bestow trust upon the electoral process," Zebari said.

So far, given the outcry for their participation from governments around the world, the pathetic response by the UN has only underscored the organization's uselessness. Annan's pretense that the UN could do anything effective in a dangerous area without US sponsorship and security cost almost two dozen lives last year, when the former Ba'athist spies the UN hired for its guards allowed bombers to kill the chief of the UN mission. They've been AWOL ever since, and now this poor showing for the best opportunity to spread democracy reveals Turtle Bay as a pretender, an empty shell. Anyone who states that this organization can provide for global security has to either be seriously deluded or trying to delude others.

Kerry: America Not Worth Dying For?

John Kerry may try to stay on message on the campaign trail, but his past can still catch up with him, even through no fault of his own. Today, the Washington Post tried to bolster his standing as a diplomat and global thinker, and wound up torpedoing him yet again as a man who values world opinion over American security:

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."

The Post attempts to spin this response as an example of Kerry's nuance and principles to work within international forums for global change, but the effort falls flat. In fact, Kerry's comment reveals two major flaws in his thinking. First, American troops should only be deployed in battle to protect American interests and/or in support of our national security. We do not maintain our military just to cater to the whims of foreign governments around the world. Ans second, when we talk about protecting our national security, the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform always has meaning.

Think about this for just a moment. Kerry doesn't put the value on the life itself -- he only measures it by whether it makes other people like us or not. Someone with a grasp of military matters evaluates the mission, not its popularity, in order to determine its worth. Kerry instead exhibits an obsession with coalitions instead of missions, and the result is a complete paralysis on national security issues that America can ill afford.

Kerry's statement also demonstrates his tone-deafness. What man or woman wearing the uniform wants to hear their commander-in-chief tell them that their life is discounted when the French don't approve of the mission? And how does it sound to Americans in general to hear that America is not worth defending with our lives, but the collection of dictatorships and kleptocracies at Turtle Bay somehow ranks higher for sacrifice?

Kerry's staff should drop a note to the Post thanking them for the help, and inviting them to stop soon.

Billionaire Widow Sniffs: "Laura Bush Never Had A Real Job"

With less than two weeks to go before the election, one would presume that the Democrats would like to keep their candidates and their spouses on message as much as possible. After seeing what happened with the Mary Cheney debacle, one would also expect that the professionals would be coaching the Kerrys and Edwardses to talk about themselves rather than their opponents' families. Apparently, Teresa Heinz Kerry didn't get the memo, and the results are sadly predictable [emphasis mine]:

Q: You'd be different from Laura Bush?

A: Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job — I mean, since she's been grown up. So her experience and her validation comes from important things, but different things. And I'm older, and my validation of what I do and what I believe and my experience is a little bit bigger — because I'm older, and I've had different experiences. And it's not a criticism of her. It's just, you know, what life is about.

Fans of irony will love the notion of this woman, whose estimated billion-dollar fortune came from an inheritance after her wealthy husband died, sniffing at her perception that Laura Bush never had a "real job" -- or at least, not a grown-up one. Here's Mrs. Bush's resumé:

Laura Bush was born on November 4, 1946, in Midland, Texas, to Harold and Jenna Welch. Inspired by her second grade teacher, she earned a bachelor of science degree in education from Southern Methodist University in 1968. She then taught in public schools in Dallas and Houston. In 1973 she earned a master of library science degree from the University of Texas at Austin and worked as a public school librarian in Austin. In 1977 she met and married George Walker Bush. They are the parents of twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, who are named for their grandmothers.

It sure looks to me like Laura Bush had a couple of grown-up jobs, unless Teresa means to define teaching as a juvenile task. But what of Teresa's worldliness in the business world? What adult career has she had?

After studying at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and the University of Geneva, she moved to the United States and got a job working for the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations. In 1966, she married Senator John Heinz whom she met when they were graduate students and with whom she had three sons. Shortly after celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary in 1991, she lost her husband in a plane crash.

Let's recap -- after some postgraduate work, she got a job -- in the UN bureaucracy! And after that? She married into money! That's hardly her fault, but she should be the last one making snobbish remarks about anyone's lack of personal accomplishments, especially when she's dead wrong on the facts.

The Democrats must be tearing their hair out every time she comes into close proximity to a microphone. She continues to demonstrate her lack of class and tact, and while she's not running for the Presidency, it can't help John Kerry to remind people that electing him means we have to endure four years of her tackiness. (hat tip: The First Mate and Andrew)

Pakistan Bags Another One

Pakistani officials confirm that a major al-Qaeda operative was captured in Peshawar a few days ago, Agence France-Presse reports today:

Pakistani security forces arrested an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative in the northwestern city of Peshawar bordering Afghanistan, a security official said. The official identified the man as Abdul Rehman and said he was on the most wanted list of the US Central Intleligence Agency.

"He is an important Al-Qaeda operative who had been hiding in Pakistan," the official who could not be identified told AFP on Wednesday.

The Pakistanis continue to roll up major AQ players in their country, which indicates that the new democratic movement in Afghanistan ill suits them for continued operations. Reuters describes Rehman as a "communications expert" but not a senior man. However, they report that the Pakistanis also captured a more senior AQ leader, Saleh Nauman, ten days ago while he tried to flee Pakistan. The Pakistanis call Nauman a member of the new leadership in AQ.

The delay in announcing their capture indicates that they may have received some intelligence from one or both. The last time Pakistan captured a communications expert, Naeem Noor Khan, they rolled up a number of AQ cells in the days immediately following his arrest. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the AP now reports that 1,000 Pakistani troops are assaulting a potential AQ hideout in South Waziristan:

About 1,000 Pakistani soldiers backed by helicopter gunships, mortars and artillery Wednesday pounded a mountainous region near the Afghan border where a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers is believed to be hiding. ...

The assault targeted the village of Spinkai Raghzai in South Waziristan, a tribal region where the Pakistani army has been hunting Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida associates. But the top military commander in the region said Tuesday it was unlikely bin Laden was hiding in the area, as U.S. authorities suspect.

Abdullah Mehsud, a former prisoner at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who was released in March, had been hiding in the area. The one-legged militant, who is Pakistani, is believed responsible for the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers on Oct. 9. Since returning home, he has taken command of militants in South Waziristan and has forged ties with al-Qaida, Pakistani intelligence officials say.

This is another of the Guantanamo Seven who went right back to their terrorism after being released from American custody, thanks to pressure from our European allies and weak-kneed civil libertarians here at home. My guess is that the Pakistanis will be much less likely to give Mehsud a third chance to wreak havoc on civilian populations.

Guardian Criticizes Me For Criticizing Spain

It's not often that an American blogger finds himself mentioned in the foreign press, but yesterday the Guardian's (UK) blogger Simon Jeffery took me to task for criticizing Spain. In my post yesterday, I noted that Spain had captured seven Islamist terrorists planning a major operation in Andalusia, demonstrating that their precipitous withdrawal from Iraq did nothing to improve their security. Appeasement should have been discredited six decades ago, I argued, and Jeffery decided that them's fightin' words, by golly:

Taking the temperature of the more right wing blogs, you cannot help but wonder if they were rather the US was fighting its war on terror against France or Spain. The foiling this week of a suspected bomb plot in Madrid led to another round of anti-Spanish outbursts. "Perhaps the Spanish electorate will understand now that appeasing terrorists only leads to more terrorism, a lesson that Europeans learned the hard way 60 years ago," writes Captain Ed on Captain's Quarters. "Maybe this will wake the Spaniards to the dangers of withdrawal and appeasement."

If that's what it takes for Jeffery to declare a hot war between America and Spain, then the Guardian's editorial policy must indicate a state of nuclear war between Britain and the US. Having this moderate criticism extrapolated to the level of armed conflict with our weak-kneed Spanish "ally" has to be the silliest notion I've seen printed in the British press -- although I don't read the Sun often enough, it's true.

Even more silly is Jeffery's equating CQ with Slate on the political spectrum, which is where the French reference originates:

What riles is the policy shift instead of the country but the same cannot be said for France, it just riles on its own. In this context John Kerry's French relatives and command of the spoken language are something of a rallying point for Republicans - a "Barneycam" at the party's New York convention showed the president's dog in debate with a beret-wearing poodle sock puppet. There is therefore some surprise that the senator dared to speak French to Haitians in Florida. "Let's see: Your opponent is characterising you as an effete internationalist willing to 'turn America's national security decisions over to international bodies or leaders of other countries'," observes Chris Suellentrop at Slate. "In particular, he suggests, in all seriousness, that you want to call up Jacques Chirac for permission before deploying the military […] How should you defend yourself against these slanders? By speaking French on the stump, of course."

I met Chris Suellentrop (nice guy, by the way) and enjoy his writing, but if you told him that he and I represent the same point on the political spectrum, I suspect he'd laugh as hard as I did. Again, Jeffery not only confuses criticism with armed assault -- an odd position for a newspaper to take -- but demonstrates a cluelessness on American politics that is so complete as to question why the Guardian allows him access to a computer terminal.

And if you read this, Simon, I'm criticizing you, not assaulting you. You can get out from under your desk now.

Iranian Ayatollah Cuts Ties With Sadr, Says Insurrection "Incorrect"

In an odd twist, the BBC reports that Moqtada al-Sadr's mentor, Iranian Grand Ayatollah Kazem Haeri, has denounced Sadr for fighting US troops and has essentially fired Sadr as his representative in Najaf:

A senior religious leader in Iran has severed ties with radical Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr for encouraging his followers to fight US troops. Grand Ayatollah Kazem Haeri, one of the top authorities in Shia Islam, said Mr Sadr was no longer his representative in the holy city of Najaf.

A spokesman said that Mr Sadr's actions no longer reflected the ideas of the Grand Ayatollah's teachings.

But he praised a scheme to disarm Shia militias in Baghdad's Sadr City slum.

Haeri went on to blame US and British troops for damage done to shrines in Najaf, but scolded Sadr for mounting armed attacks in the first place. Haeri leads the Shi's from Qom, known for its radical view of Islam and its belief that Islam should not only guide the personal lives of its followers but also should provide leadership for public life as well. Given that, Haeri's renunciation of Sadr is rather puzzling.

Even more puzzling is Haeri's endorsement of the Iraqi government's disarmament plan in Sadr City. The Iranian ayatollah announced his approval of the Allawi plan to strip Sadr's forces of its heavy weaponry in the only political stronghold it has left. Allawi has spoken of his desire to offer the same plan across Iraq if it works well in the vast Baghdad slum that has been the haven of many terrorists operating in the Sunni triangle.

Does Haeri's statement indicate a retreat by the Iranians as the Americans begin to agitate for action on the mullahcracy's nuclear program? The timing certainly indicates something is up, as the Iranians made an offer today to "prove" that they are not pursuing N-weapons technology if the West allows them to use nuclear power peacefully:

Iran is ready to prove to the world it is not producing atomic weapons provided the West recognizes the Islamic Republic's right to peaceful nuclear technology, President Mohammad Khatami said Wednesday. ...

Iranian officials say they are open to talks but will never give up uranium enrichment -- a process which can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors or material for atom bombs.

"If our rights are recognized and they admit that Iran can have peaceful nuclear technology we will present everything necessary to prove that Iran will not produce an atomic bomb. But we will not give up our rights," Khatami said.

Should Iran reject the EU trio's offer, most European states are expected to back Washington's demand that Iran be reported to the U.N. Security Council when the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board of governors meet in late November.

Either the Iranians have become spooked by US insistence on some backbone in the nuclear-proliferation talks on behalf of the EU-3 or they have decided that Sadr wasn't going anywhere anyway, and cutting him loose publicly makes them look more reasonable. Either way, it represents some movement on behalf of the Iranians, who have gone out of their way to be belligerent during the weapons negotiations and in the aftermath of Saddam's fall. It's hard to imagine either of these developments occurring under an American administration that promises to fall all over itself to deliver nuclear fuel to the Iranians as a test of the goodwill of the same Islamist mullahcracy that openly sponsors Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Is Kerry Supported By Kosovo Terrorists?

The Australian blog House of Wheels believes it has discovered fundraising links between the John Kerry campaign and the Kosovo Liberation Army, an organization that the Department of Homeland Security appears to label as a terrorist organization. Leigh from HoW links to a heavily-footnoted essay by Andy Wilcoxson at a website defending Slobodan Milosevic, not exactly a source that fills me with a sense of confidence about the material. However, some of the connections Leigh makes appear to point to sloppiness among Kerry's campaign staff, at the least:

The leader of the KLA is a man named Hashim Thaci. Thaci, who goes under the nom de guerre "Snake," attended the Democratic Party’s convention in Boston earlier this year. Upon returning from the convention, Thaci told the Albanian-Language KosovaLive agency, "It was a very successful visit at the Democratic Convention, where the PDK [Thachi's political party] had been invited as a guest. It was confirmed once again that the Democratic authorities would recognize and respect the will of the people of Kosova for self-determination".

In addition to the KLA leader's attendance at the Democratic Convention was the presence of KLA members at a John Kerry fundraiser in New York.

In September, the Dutch Television station VPRO produced a documentary entitled "De Brooklyn Connectie." This documentary follows a KLA terrorist named Florin Kraniqi as he attends a John Kerry fundraiser, and then smuggles weapons into Kosovo for a war that is being planned against American and other UN Peacekeepers there. ...

At the 11:08 mark of the video, he goes to a John Kerry fundraiser together with a group of KLA members. They are shown writing checks to the Kerry campaign for thousands of dollars each.

While at the fundraiser, they openly identify themselves as the KLA. Kraniqi is seen introducing himself and his brothers-in-arms to Wesley Clark (Commander of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and former Democratic presidential candidate). Kraniqi says, "Mr. Clark. This is your group, your KLA." Clark then praises the group saying, "They fought against tremendous odds."

Then, Richard Holbrooke (Kerry's Sr. Foreign Policy Adviser), who apparently knows one of the terrorists, comes over and jokingly says, "He almost got me killed." To which Kraniqi quips, "He would not let his Kalashnikov go. He will keep his Kalashnikov." Then Holbrooke, Clark, and this group of KLA terrorists all have a good laugh.

Krasniqi, at least, shows up on Kerry's donor list as reported by Fundrace. Does that mean that Kerry actively seeks the support of terrorists and their cash? I highly doubt it, although if true the Kosovars' access to Kerry shows a complete lack of vetting by his foreign-policy staff. Richard Holbrooke should know better than to be taking money from people connected to organizations designated as possible terror groups by the DHS.

Based on the research done by Wilcoxson and the information in the Dutch documentary, this deserves a closer look regardless of the publication source. If radical Kosovars are plying either campaign with cash, it needs to stop and those responsible held to account.

The Afghan Success Story

Today's New York Times analyzes the impact of the successful Afghanistan elections which appear to affirm Hamid Karzai's leadership and demonstrate that the Afghanis enthusiastically support the ideas of freedom and representative government. Typically, the Times gives short shrift to the American efforts that allowed Afghanistan to shake off one of the most oppressive regimes in recent memory, but the point gets made anyway:

The success of the Oct. 9 election, experts and officials said, stemmed from three things: an aggressive American-led security and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan in 2004, pressure on neighboring Pakistan to rein in Taliban remnants, and most important, a passionate desire among average Afghans to choose the country's leader through a peaceful, democratic election.

Whether all three factors can be sustained, especially as the country looks ahead to far more complex parliamentary elections in the spring, is an open question. ...

A sea change in Bush administration policy in Afghanistan was also credited with aiding the election. After being heavily criticized for paying too little attention to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, the administration pumped $1.76 billion in reconstruction funds into the country in fiscal 2004. After blocking the expansion of an international peacekeeping force in 2002, Washington now advocates it. After initial leeriness toward nation building, the United States is deeply engaged in it.

In 2004, the Pentagon nearly doubled its forces in Afghanistan to 20,000 from 11,000, deploying small military reconstruction units across the country and marines to scour unstable southern areas. American-financed initiatives also trained thousands of Afghan soldiers, police officers and civil servants.

Supporters of Mr. Kerry have dismissed the administration's sudden push in Afghanistan as an election-year effort to produce a foreign policy success to counter continuing problems in Iraq. Administration officials say they have been steadfast in their support for Afghanistan since 2001.

Whatever the motivation, the huge security operation by beefed-up American, NATO and Afghan forces thwarted a variety of planned Taliban attacks, according to Afghan intelligence and American military officials.

Afghanistan provides a model for allowing a nation to rebuild itself after removing a totalitarian regime, especially one without an entrenched military/security apparatus. One reason the total troop commitment can be so much lower than Iraq, despite roughly equivalent population numbers, is that Taliban security elements were nowhere near as large as the military and intelligence operations under Saddam Hussein. That springs from a lack of oil revenue; the Taliban simply did not have the means to fund anything approaching the Iraqi security system, which was one reason the Northern Alliance could continue to operate. That allowed the US and its allies to keep their own troop levels lower and support Afghani efforts to eject the Taliban on their own.

Make no mistake; before the Americans removed the Taliban both through direct action and by uniting and supporting the native resistance, Afghans did not aim for democracy but for a change in authoritarian regimes. The Times can claim that enthusiastic Afghanis weakened the holdover Taliban elements, but the vote wouldn't exist in Afghanistan without the insistence of the US. Even some of our allies questioned the wisdom of holding elections in a country with no traditions of democracy, and here at home we heard the same objections about the imposition of democracy by force and gloomy predictions of its failure, both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nor have those objections come strictly from a lunatic fringe element in our political scene. John Kerry said essentially the same thing in May, when he discounted the importance of creating a representative government for Iraqis, a strange notion for a man campaigning for election as President of the US:

"With respect to getting our troops out, the measure is the stability of Iraq. [Democracy] shouldn't be the measure of when you leave. I have always said from day one that the goal here . . . is a stable Iraq, not whether or not that's a full democracy."

As I wrote at the time, trading democracy for stability is the same impulse that the West has indulged for a century in Southwest Asia, and that impulse -- to write off the indigenous peoples as unworthy of freedom -- created the problems we face now in the Middle East. If we are to truly defeat Islamofascist terrorism, we must change the oppressive nature of the regimes in the Islamic region so that powerlessness disappears and people can resort to ballots instead of bombs. Afghanistan's election and the insistence on establishing the same in Iraq prove that the Bush Administration understands and uses this truth to defeat the terrorists. Kerry's vision of laissez-faire law enforcement and management of terrorism to "nusiance" levels proves that he is completely inadequate for the task.

Jimmy, The Military Genius

It's been a long time since I've been exposed to the miltary genius of our 39th President -- so long that I've forgotten how idiotic one can be and still be elected to the White House. Fortunately, we have Hardball to allow us to bask in the undimmed genius of Jimmy Carter. Yesterday, Carter managed to write off the Revolutionary War as a mistake, and that was his opener for his interview with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you the question about—this is going to cause some trouble with people—but 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 up 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 colonial‘s 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 nonviolent 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.

I could buy the idea that the Revolutionary War was unnecessary, as Carter's presidency certainly gives us ample evidence of that much. However, since when did the Revolutionary War become the bloodiest conflict we've ever faced? The Civil War killed over 600,000 Americans, easily outpacing any other war in which we've fought. Even World War II only accounts for 407,000. Both of them dwarf our total casualties in the Revolutionary War, which cost less than 5,000 American lives.

This auspicious start to Carter's interview makes every reference Matthews makes to Carter's status as a "historian" utterly ironic. Read the rest of the interview -- it's as good a laugh as anything involving the sour and bitter Carter could ever produce.

Explaining Why We Fight To Our Children, Part IV

This is Part IV in a continuing series by my friend "Mike", a Navy SEAL who spent most of the last couple of years in Iraq as both an active-duty participant and a private contractor. "Mike" explains the war in Iraq to his young sons, and has graciously allowed me to share his letters with you. NOTE: Some images may be disturbing!

IRAQ PICTURE LETTER TO MY SON
PART 4. DADDY’S WORK IN IRAQ

In the last section we learned about the Captured Enemy Ammunition (CEA) mission that Daddy helps with. All of the ‘planned detonations’, which is when we blow things up, are closely supervised by former military explosives experts called EOD technicians. EOD stands for Explosive Ordnance Disposal. ‘Explosive ordnance’ is another way of saying ‘ammunition.’ The EOD techs try to blow something up almost every day so that we can get rid of the dangerous ammunition as soon as possible.

But there are many other things that have to be done to make sure that everyone is safe and Daddy helps with those things too. Sometimes Daddy goes out into the community near his FOB to meet with local people and help them with what they need. If Daddy’s team helps their neighbors, then those neighbors help in protecting Daddy’s FOB.
If they can read & write Arabic (their own language), they can even get jobs at the FOB.

It is all part of what we call “winning hearts and minds.” Most Iraqis are very glad we are here and are very scared about us leaving until good Iraqis can run the country. So we are teaching them the good things that we know.

Something for you to remember in Life is that ‘No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

Now we have to talk about a very troubling topic which you have asked about Daddy’s work.

You have heard that Daddy is working as a ‘contractor’ in Iraq. That is true. Daddy has taken a ‘leave of absence’ from his military reserve unit and fire department to work as a civilian which means that he is getting paid by a company instead of the government. A contractor agrees to work for certain periods of time and when the time is up the contractor can either go home or get another contract. Daddy is definitely coming home at the end of this contract.

You may have also heard on TV or on the radio that contractors are some of the defenseless people that terrorists prey upon in Iraq. It is true that some contractors have been kidnapped and killed in Iraq. But these contractors were unarmed which means they were not carrying guns. Daddy is definitely not one of those kind of contractors.

Daddy is always well-armed while working here in Iraq and there is no possibility that he or any of the contractors he works with will ever be captured alive and killed later by terrorists. Daddy and his friends only fire their weapons at people when they are bad people who are trying to hurt good people.

Sometimes Daddy helps to search people to make sure they don’t have weapons or explosives before they come on the FOB. Sometimes Daddy helps to ‘detain’ people in Iraq like when they are trying to steal ammunition from his FOB or other cache sites. They steal the ammo to sell to terrorists who use it to attack us or the people of Free Iraq. After Daddy’s team detains the bad people, they turn them over to the U.S. Army. Sometimes Daddy shoots at bad people if they are coming to hurt people on his FOB, or a convoy that we might be traveling on.

But Daddy also works as a medic and his main job is to help people when they are sick or injured just like he does on his main job at home. Only in Iraq Daddy is usually the only medic at the FOB (or on a convoy) which is very far from a hospital so he has to do a lot more than when he is a paramedic. His first priority is to help other American contractors that he works with. Daddy also takes care of American and foreign military people when they need help.

But Iraqi people that Daddy works with get sick or hurt more than others do. So Daddy helps Iraqis when they are sick or hurt more than anyone else. Sometimes Daddy has to sew up big cuts like this one. But if the cuts or injuries are too serious, Daddy calls in a medical helicopter to take the people to an American military hospital in Iraq.

If Daddy and his team can’t save the person, they die and Daddy is in charge of taking care of the dead person with dignity and respect.

Sometimes Daddy even takes care of children in Iraq. One time Daddy brought this burned child in through the main gate of a military base where there was a good temporary hospital. Even though the hospital staff wasn’t supposed to treat outside local people, they got special permission and we took care of him.

His burns were ‘debreaded’ each morning which means we cleaned and trimmed the dead skin. And every day he got new medication and bandages until he was all healed up.

Many children get burned in Iraq and unfortunately much worse than this boy.

We are very blessed to be born in America where we have so much and to be able to share it with others who don’t.

Senator Lightweight Explains His Cluelessness

A number of bloggers commented before the debates on how invisible John Edwards had been on the campaign trail. After his appearance in New Hampshire today, perhaps his supporters would prefer a return to milk carton for the man his hometown newspaper nicknamed "Senator Gone". Edwards tried to chide Bush for turning Iraq into a haven for terrorists, buying into the Michael Moore vision of prewar Iraq as a kite-flying paradise:

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards on Tuesday accused President Bush of failing the United States and the world in Iraq, citing unsecured nuclear weapons abroad and unprotected ports at home as further evidence of the president's "incompetence."

"He's created something that didn't exist before the war in Iraq — he's created a haven for terrorists," Edwards said.

I hate to break it to Senator Edwards -- maybe the Senate Intelligence Committee covered it during one of his many absences -- but Saddam's Iraq hosted a number of terrorists, including the one giving us the most trouble now, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was the last in a list of notables such as Abu Nidal, who Saddam bankrolled and sheltered for years. Saddam also bankrolled other terrorist groups such as the Groupe Islamique Armé in Algeria as well as the suicide bombers of Palestine. Saddam's IIS trained terrorists at Salman Pak, a camp built specifically for that purpose -- and one which used a jet fuselage to train fanatics.

Let us not forget, also, that Saddam's regime presented a perfect example of government by terrorism, a lesson we continue to learn as more information comes to light. For instance, just last week Al-Jazeera reported the discovery of mass graves containing hundreds, if not thousands, of Kurd men, women, and children. They reported that investigators discovered thighbones the size of matchsticks, indicating that infants were slain along with their entire families. Some children still grasped the toys they held as the utopian government of Saddam Hussein coldly murdered them for their ethnicity and pushed them into those anonymous ditches.

The notion that the American invasion created a terrorist haven in Iraq is to believe that terrorism either didn't exist before March 2003 or that terrorism is a rational response to American foreign policy. Either demonstrates a September 10th thinking that should disqualify Edwards as a serious candidate for any national office, let alone the vice-presidency. If any doubt existed about this diagnosis, Edwards confirms it by insisting that the Bush Adminstration exaggerates the danger of terrorism to scare people:

Bush is scaring people about terrorism and the war in Iraq to get people to vote against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, Edwards said.

"While they campaign on fear, we're going to talk about the facts," Edwards told about 500 supporters. "John Kerry and I are going to unite this country so we can win the war against terrorism."

Having the Kerry/Edwards campaign accuse anyone of using the politics of fear should result in jaws dropping across the United States. This comes from the candidate whose campaign has, in just the past month, used these canards on the stump to frighten the voters:

* Claimed that Bush will start a military draft, an idea only floated by their own party

* Accused the administration of having a secret January plan to steal Social Security checks from old ladies

* Gave instructions to its supporters to make accusations of vote suppression even if none existed

* Pushed the urban legend that a million African-American voters had their votes suppressed in 2000

The only ones using fear and loathing as campaign tactics are Kerry and Edwards. And if both Senators showed up for more than 28% of their Senate Intelligence Committee meetings, perhaps they'd know more of the facts of the terrorist threat than they've demonstrated on the campaign trail.

Ashley's Story

The new Bush campaign ad is worth viewing, which you can do here. Unlike the ever-reliable attack ads, Kerry is never mentioned and the message is quite positive. If any campaign ad can reach the so-called "security moms," this is probably it.

Heavy workload + Visit from parents = Light posting

We've had a huge event going on at work for the last two weeks, thus the minimal posting by yours truly. While the event is set to end on Friday, my parents will be visiting this weekend so I have to do the requisite cleaning and organizing (i.e. cramming things in closets). I should be back to regular blogging by Monday night!

Battlegrounders

For political junkies who haven't already become addicted to National Review Online, go check out their new Battlegrounders blog, which offers a state-by-state analysis of the presidential race. A bonus: the guys at Powerline are reporting from Minnesota.

What If Bush Followed Kerry's Example In The Debates?

CQ reader Jeff Dennis has been thinking about John Kerry's response to the question about homosexuality, in which Kerry managed to bury his campaign in controversy by using Dick Cheney's daughter as a rhetorical prop. Jeff thinks about how Bush might have handled a similar question in a compassionate-conservative manner, and he came up with this hilarious dialogue:

Q: Mr. President, in your last campaign you were heard over an open microphone describing a New York Times reporter as a "major league as***le."

To understand how you came to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe being an as***le is a choice?

A: I just don't know. I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that.

I think if you were to talk to Senator Kerry, who is an as***le, he would tell you that he's being who he is, he's being who he was born as. I've met people who struggled with this for years.

And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.

And that's to be honored.

Thanks for a great laugh, Jeff!

Bush Crosses 50% In ABC Poll

The Bush campaign got more good news this afternoon from the ABC News trackng poll taken over the weekend, which shows George Bush leading John Kerry by 5 points and Bush over the 50% mark for the first time:

Support for President Bush has crept above the critical 50-percent mark for the first time in two weeks, but one group — new voters — could be John Kerry's wildcard.

Fifty-one percent of likely voters support Bush, 46 percent support Kerry and 1 percent prefer Ralph Nader in the latest ABC News tracking poll, based on interviews Saturday through Monday. That's a slight lead for the president after a 48 percent to 48 percent dead heat the second half of last week.

The increase in Bush's support comes from weekend polling as well, which usually favors Democrats. The internals of this poll also augur well for Bush:

* Only 12% of voters classify their votes as "movable", and Bush leads among them by 4 points.

* Bush pulls almost three times more Democrats from Kerry (13%) than Kerry pulls Republicans from Bush (5%).

* Kerry only leads women in this poll 50-47, within the margin of error, while Bush leads men by 14 points.

Their sample comprises more Democrats than Republicans among the likely voters (36-34, with 26% being independent), making this a more reliable look at the situation at this point. Including this information, where the CBS/NYT poll does not, leads me to conclude that the pollsters used a more honest process than those who fail to disclose their samples, at any rate.

This poll shows that Bush has clearly regained the momentum after the debates. Kerry shot his bolt and came up short. Barring any surprises -- a tall order, with the Kerry/Edwards penchant for wild accusations and myth propogation -- Bush could be heading for an unequivocal victory two weeks from tonight.

Let He To Whom Kerry Would Give Nuclear Fuel Cast The First Stone

Ron Wright sent me this insight into the Iranian mullahcracy -- the one to which John Kerry and John Edwards want to give nuclear fuel to see what they do with it. In a case where a 15-year-old boy impregnated his 13-year-old sister, the mullahs have upheld a 150-lash sentence for the boy, but have confirmed a sentence for the girl of death by stoning:

Almost two months after having hanged a 16 years-old girl, the ruling Iranian ayatollahs are to commit another human crime by condemning another young girl to stoning.

According to Iranian and foreign press, Zhila Izadi, a 13 years old girl from the north-western city of Marivan had been condemned to death by stoning after being found that she had been pregnant from her 15 years-old brother. ...

While Zhila as been sentenced to stoning, her brother, jailed in Tehran, is to receive only 150 lashes, in accordance with Islamic laws.

Lovely. And in case you think this is an anomaly for Iranian justice, two months ago they hanged a 16-year-old girl for "acts incompatible with chastity":

Human rights activists in Denmark said though Zhila’s sentence had not been confirmed yet, but the fear is that, with the family’s approval, she faces the same faith as that of Ms. Ateqeh Rajabi, the 16 years-old girl hanged in public by the judge, a cleric, who condemned her on charges of prostitution. ...

Ms. Rajabi was publicly hanged on a street in the city centre of Neka in the northern province of Mazandaran, on 15 August, for "acts incompatible with chastity". Faced with domestic and international outcry of dismay, the authorities said the young girl was “mentally incompetent”.

However, informed sources revealed that Ms. Ateqeh was sentenced to death after, during the "trial", she expressed outrage at the misogyny and injustice in the Islamic Republic and its Islam-based judicial system.

“The lower court judge was so incensed by her protestations that he personally put the noose around her neck after his decision had been upheld by the Supreme Court”, the sources reported.

Let's not kid ourselves; Iran is not the only country to rule by shari'a, nor is it the only country to stone women to death for "crimes" for which men either receive lesser punishment or escape prosecution entirely. However, it is the only such nation that currently is building a nuclear-fission program and which has missile technology to deliver potential nuclear weapons around the region. It's also the only nation in the world to which John Kerry and John Edwards have offered to give nuclear fuel to see if they put it to peaceful use.

Such trust in the humanity of the Iranian mullahcracy may be touching, but unbelievably naive. America needs leadership that understands the nature of the regime in Teheran, not refugees from an EST seminar or a transactional analysis lecture series. Iran not only oppresses and murders its own people in pursuit of its vision of Islam, it also funds the very terror networks that target Westerners around Southwest Asia and the world. Iran is a prime example of our enemy in the war on terror: a state which funds, supports, and directs terrorists. America needs leaders who understand that.

Bush Doubles 2000 Support Among Blacks: Poll

The Associated Press reports that George Bush has doubled the support he received in 2000 from the African-American community, although he still trails John Kerry by a wide margin in this almost exclusive Democratic voting bloc:

President Bush has doubled his support among blacks in four years and Sen. John Kerry's backing among the key Democratic voting bloc is down slightly from the support Al Gore won in 2000, according to a poll released Tuesday. ...

The poll found Kerry receiving as much or more support than Gore among those age 18 to 25, those with less than a high school diploma and those making $60,000 or less.

But Kerry had 49 percent support from black Christian conservatives, down from the 69 percent Gore enjoyed in 2000. Bush was at 36 percent among the group this year, more than tripling the 11 percent he got four years ago.

Republican officials say they are making an effort this year to reach out to the black community. Campaign aides have cited Bush's support of school vouchers, public money that can be used to help pay private school tuition, and support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as issues that might win him more black votes.

The result is an increase from the 9% he got in 2000 to an estimated 18% now -- a paltry number, and shameful in the face of continued policy indifference from the Democrats, but still a significant gain. It's even more remarkable given that Kerry has been spewing lies about voter-suppression efforts, both now and in 2000, in order to hoodwink black voters to support him. The Urban Legends Tour hasn't gotten Kerry the results he desired, apparently.

Without a doubt, this result should have the Democrats worried about their prospects in swing states like Florida and Ohio, where such a shift could cost them any edge they may hope to gain. Worse yet, it may signal a trend among black voters to give the GOP another look, as decades of unkept promises and dead-end handouts have left a large number of them stuck in failing public schools and violence-racked neighborhoods. The damage that the Kerry campaign has done to the Democratic Party may take years to fully materialize, but if this trend continues, we can project that they will wind up even more marginalized than ever.

Flip-Flop On Picket Lines

John Kerry told the nation in June that "I don't cross picket lines. I never have," in explanation of why he left Boston Mayor Thomas Menino twisting in the wind at the Mayor's Conference. Now the Boston Globe reports that Kerry crossed two picket lines in Florida yesterday, police picket lines at that, in order to make a campaign appearance in Orlando:

Last summer, John F. Kerry refused to cross a police picket line and address the US Conference of Mayors meeting in Boston. Last night he rode in a motorcade that crossed two Florida police picket lines en route to a get-out-the-vote rally in vote-rich Orlando.

Aides said the demonstration, staged by members of the Orlando Police Department represented by Fraternal Order of Police Local 25, was sprung on the campaign without prior notice in an effort to embarrass the city's Democratic mayor, Buddy Dyer. Local media describe the union as Republican-leaning, the same label aides to Mayor Thomas M. Menino attached to the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association in the midst of its dispute before the Democratic National Convention in July.

Besides the obvious flip-flop on respecting picket lines, this article highlights two interesting aspects of John Kerry. First, he puts his scruples aside when convenient; he hardly needs to worry about carrying Massachusetts, but his labor sympathies disappear when we start talking about a swing state he desperately needs. Kerry can hardly afford to miss a campaign appearance in Florida, union sympathies or no. However, it plays hell with that unequivocal assertion that he never crosses a picket line and never will.

Second, and more subtly, Kerry has made a campaign issue out of supporting first responders, such as police and firefighters. How do you think they feel now? And if the Democrats are correct in claiming that the union staged the demonstration to embarass Kerry, it would indicate that the first responders support Bush more than they do Kerry, especially the rank and file who put up the picket line.

However, union officials disputed the notion that this was a spontaneous or stealth demonstration. They claim to have notified Democrats in plenty of time to make plans:

One of the pickets, Officer Paul Bruning, said the union notified Democratic officials in Miami last week of its plans to picket Kerry both at Orlando International Airport and at the Barnett Park Recreation Center.

"It's not against John Kerry; it's our mayor that's treating us poorly," Bruning said. "Boston police were at an impasse for two years, and after he refused to cross, they had a contract in two weeks."

More prevarications from Democrats, who appear to be learning it from the top down these days. Apparently, John Kerry won't ever cross a picket line, unless his principles might cost him an electoral vote -- in which case, stand out of the way, or get trampled by the Kerry Express.

Caption Contest Winners!

The votes are in, and the judges have rendered their decision -- and they had another tough time with their decision! David and Margaret from Our House may have been intimidated by the enthusiasm of the CQ crowd, just as Senator Kerry appears intimidated by this gang of toughs:

Here are the winners!

Captain's Award (Who's Your Dummy?) - Inkling:

Madame Tussaud's 2005 exhibition, History's Greatest Losers, was a hit with many American tour groups.

You Have The Conn #1 (The Family Reunion) - Twoff:

Despite John Kerry's resemblance to his beloved "Lurch", "Thing" came to the inescapable conclusion that Kerry would in fact take away the Addams family's tax cuts.

You Have The Conn #2 (Give Him The Sedagive!) - skatz51:

The angry villagers finally surround the Frankenstein monster.

You Have The Conn #3 (Who's Your Dummy, Redux) - Eric Akawie:

The life-size ventriloquist's dummy was a huge hit at the AARP convention.

Report to Sick Bay (Ben Dover Memorial Award) - Laurence Simon:

Just ask yourself where the man's other fist is, and you'll understand Kerry's expression.

The Elder Award for the best reference of a bad 1980's video - Doug "ZaMoose" Stewart:

"Rooooxxaaannnne! Youuuu donn't have to puuut on de red light!"

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners! Remember, here at CQ, everyone's a winner -- just some of us have higher winning percentages than others. Comments on this post will remain open, as usual, in order for the winners to gloat, the others to disparage David and Margaret's intellect and/or my parentage, and for any other entries submitted just for the sheer enjoyment of amazing your friends and confounding your enemies. Don't forget to visit Our House (er, their house?), either!

Send me a photograph or an e-mail with a link to a great picture you think should be the subject of our next Caption Contest, and let me know if you'd like to be the guest judge!

So Much For The Truce!

The cease-fire that Spain bought with Islamists with their capitulation after the Madrid bombings appears to have been an illusion, as predicted. Spain announced that it captured seven terrorists plotting to bonb their High Court, according to Reuters:

Police arrested seven suspected Islamic militants in raids across Spain on Monday to foil a planned bomb attack on the High Court, judicial sources said. The arrests came seven months after train bombs killed 191 people in Madrid.

The seven suspects, including four Algerians and one Moroccan, were arrested in the southern region of Andalusia, the Mediterranean city of Valencia and Madrid.

Further arrests could be made in the coming hours as part of the operation against a radical and violent Muslim network, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Perhaps the Spanish electorate will understand now that appeasing terrorists only leads to more terrorism, a lesson that Europeans learned the hard way 60 years ago. The Islamic lunatics don't want to be left alone, as many Europeans assume; they want to take over all of the old ummah, which includes most of Spain, especially Andalusia. The political success of the Madrid attacks has emboldened the fanatics to press their advantage, and the so-called "cease fire" announced by Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of Spain's withdrawal from Iraq only exists while tactically important for the next attack.

Maybe this will wake the Spaniards to the dangers of withdrawal and appeasement. I suspect the Socialists will be spinning this as a major victory on their behalf, which it is -- tactically speaking. Strategically, however, the Socialists have committed a huge error in backing down from the terrorists and fleeing Iraq, where establishing a functioning democracy would have a positive effect on stemming radicalism and terrorism.

For American voters, the same choices have been given to us in this election. Let's not allow ourselves to be fooled that leaving the Middle East would result in a safer America or a safer world.

Tommy Franks Fires Back

I wondered how long it would take Tommy Franks to respond to repeated accusations from John Kerry that American military commanders allowed Osama bin Laden to escape from their grasp at Tora Bora by "outsourcing" the war on terror, an egregiously false accusation which the SSCI report shows to be a lie. Today, Franks fires back at Kerry from the pages of the New York Times in a scathing essay that underscores Kerry's cluelessness on military matters:

First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp.

Second, we did not "outsource" military action. We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora, a mountainous, geographically difficult region on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is where Afghan mujahedeen holed up for years, keeping alive their resistance to the Soviet Union. Killing and capturing Taliban and Qaeda fighters was best done by the Afghan fighters who already knew the caves and tunnels.

Third, the Afghans weren't left to do the job alone. Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes. Pakistani troops also provided significant help - as many as 100,000 sealed the border and rounded up hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Quite frankly (no pun intended), I've never understood the "outsourcing" criticism except in the context of cuteness on Kerry's behalf, a glib and superficial way to dig both at Bush's war and domestic policies. On one hand, Kerry chides Bush for not having a big enough coalition and for having too many Americans as a percentage of fighting troops in the war. On the other hand, in an area where American troops clearly would have been at a disadvantage against an entrenched foe in an unknown and difficult terrain with excellent defensive features, he scolds Bush for not going it alone. John Kerry as commander-in-chief would only send American troops into action under conditions where they would almost certainly fail, if this is any indication.

Franks succinctly points out that Bush has approached this war strategically as well as tactically, and upbraids Kerry for not knowing the difference:

Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts.

Again, this is a key difference between the two men, and the fact that terrorist cells exist in 60 nations has demonstrated this difference before. In an impromptu press conference a couple of weeks ago, John Kerry referred to this as a reason why we shouldn't have gone to war in Iraq. "Will we attack all 60 countries?" Kerry asked derisively. Kerry's sarcastic and flippant comment shows that Kerry would have allowed the US to be paralyzed at the scope of the strategic war on Islamist terror, and would have followed the Clinton strategy of making tough speeches followed by little if any action.

It's that strategy of waiting for attacks to occur and then siccing the FBI on them to try to find the one cell responsible before taking any action that emboldened the terrorists to continually escalate their attacks on the US, culminating in 9/11. That difference is the key between Bush and Kerry, which Franks uses as his summary:

Today we are asking our servicemen and women to do more, in more places, than we have in decades. They deserve honest, consistent, no-spin leadership that respects them, their families and their sacrifices. The war against terrorism is the right war at the right time for the right reasons. And Iraq is one of the places that war must be fought and won. George W. Bush has his eye on that ball and Senator John Kerry does not.

Franks has it right; John Kerry either is incapable of recognizing the strategic implications of the war or refuses to acknowledge them. Either way, we cannot afford a Kerry presidency while we remain under attack by terrorists supported by states waging a proxy war against the West. The first qualification for the Presidency in this era should be the recognition of that fact. Kerry fails.

Now The WaPo Uses Mary Cheney For Its Own Purposes

Despite its own reporting on the debacle of John Kerry's debate reference to Mary Cheney, the Washington Post apparently missed the entire point of the outrage. In an essay for tomorrow's edition, Hank Steuver uses Dick Cheney's daughter to push his own political agenda:

Mary Cheney: Somewhere out there she exists, the actual Mary Cheney, child of the nondisclosed location, the one who's the luh-luh-lesbian. She's become this eternal and complicated mystery for people who are gay, and without ever really knowing her or hearing from her, they've spent four years writing poems, articles and protest songs about her. They've implored her with open letters in forums she may or may not ever read. They've waved signs with her name, started Web sites and put her on a milk carton as though she were a missing child. Oh, Mary Cheney, speak to us.

Then, after last week's final presidential debate, the subject of Mary went surprisingly national, and she became her very own polling question: Is it okay to drag Mary into this, as the Kerry-Edwards ticket has done?

In the Oct. 14 Washington Post tracking poll, 64 percent of likely voters said no, it was "inappropriate," and you get the feeling that something like this makes most Americans feel kinda ooky. People don't like to say the word lesbian, especially some mothers and fathers of lesbians. The word summons up some outdated, maternal plea -- Couldn't you wear a skirt just this once? Your father is running for office.

Steuver writes an arrogant and incredibly tacky essay which does exactly what John Kerry did -- presume to speak for Mary Cheney. More specifically, he uses Mary Cheney as a strawwoman onto which he projects his own agenda, without ever taking into account that Mary Cheney may not agree with his characterization of her, her family, or her wardrobe aesthetic.

Politicians have to be prepared for such self-important critiques coming from people who consider themselves to be part of the intelligentsia, but Mary Cheney isn't a politician, and she's not running for office. Steuver treats Cheney as an object for his own amusement, writing "lesbian" over and over again in order to show how hip he is (and by comparison, how square he presumes the Cheneys to be). He pretends to care about Mary, but the only impact she has on Steuver is the one he presumes that her family can't get over -- her sexuality.

Steuver inadvertently demonstrates the same cluelessness that Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards showed in the debate and its aftermath. Without having had the benefit of actually meeting and speaking with Mary Cheney about her sexuality, they pontificated about what she thinks and feels. Elizabeth Edwards never spoke with Lynne Cheney to even attempt to understand her feelings about her daughter but didn't let that stop her from condemning her as being ashamed of her daughter. Just like so many on the left, they presume they know better than family members about their relationships and issues.

If Steuver had set out to write a parody of John Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards, he couldn't have done a better job. Unfortunately, Steuver means every word he writes.

Guantanamo Spanish For Revolving Door?

Thanks to our so-called friends and allies, the US military has been playing a bit of catch-and-release with the terrorists originally captured in Afghanistan. International pressure and domestic legal action have caused the Bush administration to be cautious about indefinite detention -- perhaps a bit too cautious, CNN now reports:

t least seven former prisoners of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been involved in terrorist acts, despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to renounce violence, according to the Pentagon.

At least two are believed to have died in fighting in Afghanistan, and a third was recaptured during a raid of a suspected training camp in Afghanistan, Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman, said last week. Others are at large. ...

The small number returning to the fight demonstrates the delicate balance the United States must strike between minimizing the appearance of holding people unjustly and keeping those who are legitimate long-term threats, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

That is a ridiculous statement, but one that the Pentagon has been forced into making by pusillanimous allies and an arrogant judiciary that has attempted to usurp the role of the executive in wartime. The idea that we should release terrorists captured on the battlefield bearing arms against us hearkens to the law-enforcement strategies that have been thoroughly discredited in the war on terror.

We should give no consideration beyond that required by the Geneva Convention, which only applies to those prisoners in uniform, representing a recognized government. The only issue that should require review at Guantanamo is whether the detainee was captured on the battlefield. If so, then if he wore the uniform or insignia of a recognized government, he should be treated as a POW. If not, he should be shot as a spy.

Attempting to apply Miranda warnings, attorneys, and hearings to determine the legitimate status of each individual detainee in a war situation is insane. Trusting that Islamist lunatics will put aside their murderous motivations because they signed an agreement to stop is exponentially more insane. When one of these people come to the US and stage an attack that kills thousands, we'll be able to thank the world community and the bleeding-heart liberals for valuing the lives of bloodthirsty terrorists more than the thousands of civilians they target.

Democrats, NAACP Get Crack Squad Out For Voter-Registration Efforts

In a story that will redefine the term "crack troops", a volunteer for Democrats and the NAACP tried to pay registration-gatherers in illegal drugs:

Defiance Deputies along with Toledo Police Department detectives conducted a search warrant of a residence on Woodland in Toledo, believed to be the home of the woman who hired Staton to solicit voter registration. Officers confiscated drug paraphernalia along with voter registration forms from the home. The occupant of the home, Georgianne Pitts, age 41, advised law enforcement, along with Ohio B.C.I.&I., that she had been recruited by Thaddeus J. Jackson, II, of Cleveland, to obtain voter registrations. Pitts admitted to paying Staton crack cocaine for the registrations in lieu of money.

A business card provided by Pitts indicated that Jackson is the Assistant NVF Ohio Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund.

Predictably, instead of going out and getting valid registrations, the addict instead filled a hundred or so applications out himself. It seems that Democrats and the NAACP in Ohio want to stage their own version of Rock The Vote, one that MTV probably won't approve.

Put this in with Democrats' affiliation with Americans Coming Together, which hired sex offenders and other felons to go door-to-door to get registrations, and you have the makings of a very desperate, and extraordinarily stupid, effort to swing this election. Will the Ohio Democratic Party and the local NAACP terminate anyone associated with this project, or will they make the same kinds of excuses we heard when the news broke on ACT's hiring practices? Ohioans should take careful note of these methods and choose their representatives accordingly.

More Questions About Mainstream Broadsheets' Integrity?

The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into fraudulent reporting of circulation numbers at newspapers owned by publicly-traded companies, the Washington Times reported last week:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has started an investigation into newspaper circulation reporting after several publications acknowledged exaggerating their sales.

In the past two months, the commission has requested circulation documents from at least six major publishers, including The Washington Post Co., Gannett Co. Inc. and the New York Times Co., according to a report the New York Times published yesterday. ...

The investigation was triggered by a series of circulation scandals that has left the $55 billion-a-year newspaper industry stained. Since June, four newspapers have admitted to reporting faulty sales figures to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, an independent agency that audits circulation data for newspapers and magazines.

The Chicago Sun-Times disclosed that it inflated circulation by as much as 10 percent over six years. Its parent, Hollinger International Inc., plans to pay advertisers as much as $27 million to compensate for overpriced advertising based on the false numbers. The Tribune Co. admitted that the circulation of two of its New York-area newspapers — Newsday and Hoy, a Spanish-language publication — was exaggerated during the 12-month period that ended in September 2003. Newsday's daily circulation was inflated by as much as 100,000, according to an internal investigation by Tribune, which plans to set as much as $95 million aside to compensate advertisers who were overcharged. Belo Corp. said its Dallas Morning News had overstated its circulation figures for the six months that ended in September 2003. It has said it will set aside $23 million to compensate its overcharged advertisers.

After a series of newspapers admitted inflating their circulation numbers -- used to determine ad rates, which translate into revenue -- an SEC investigation was not only inevitable but desirable for anyone investing in these corporations. Oddly enough, these same newspapers who covered the Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom stock-manipulation cases remain strangely quiet about this round of corruption. I missed this article entirely until a CQ reader wishing to remain anonymous pointed it out to me.

Bear in mind that these same editorial boards, who routinely castigate the Bush administration for its coziness with Ken Lay before the Enron collapse, hold their newspapers out as paragons of integrity and openness. Why don't they cover their own problems on their front pages? Haven't their shareholders lost value as a result of circulation fraud? Not only will the corporations have to return the money they fleeced, but their projected revenues will drop as the ad rates will have to be readjusted. That means the value of each share will continue to decline and that the projections under which they were purchased were falsified, apparently deliberately.

Bear this in mind while you read the endorsements their editors publish for electoral offices up and down the ticket.

Early Voting In Florida Results In Early Griping

Florida introduced early voting in this election in order to ensure that as many voters as possible have a chance to participate. Predictably, the first fruits of that effort have been to generate early complaints about the ballots:

With memories of 2000 and the state's bitter fight over ballots still fresh, Floridians began casting votes Monday and within an hour problems cropped up.

In Palm Beach County, the center of the madness during the recount four years ago, a Democratic state legislator said she wasn't given a complete absentee ballot when she asked to opt for paper instead of the electronic touch-screen machines. And in Orange County, the touch-screen system briefly crashed, paralyzing voting in Orlando and its immediate suburbs. ...

State Rep. Shelley Vana was not so happy. She said the paper absentee ballot she was given at a Palm Beach County site was missing one of its two pages, including the proposed amendments to the state constitution. She said election workers were indifferent when she pointed out the oversight.

"There was absolutely no concern on the part of the folks at the Supervisor of Elections Office that this page was missing. This is not a good start. If there are incomplete ballots out there, I can't imagine I would be the only one getting it," she said.

The Supervisor of Elections for this term is Theresa LePore, who gave the county and the world the infamous "butterfly ballot," and who lost her bid for re-election this year as a result. (Her term expires in January.) LePore could not be reached for comment, but it should be noted that LePore, like 23 of 24 elections supervisors in contested counties from 2000, is a Democrat, not a Republican; if Vana wants to complain about disenfranchisement, let's make sure we know who's responsible for it.

My question is why we allow early in-person voting for the Presidential race. Election Day is fixed by the US Constitution, and it seems to me that the attempt by Florida and a handful of other states to dilute that should be challenged. Part of exercising the franchise is having the commitment to do so, and if that particular day doesn't work out, then filing an absentee ballot is a reasonable alternative. Opening and closing precincts in the two weeks prior to Election Day sounds like a recipe for bigger problems and more litigation after November 2nd.

Captain's Quarters Endorses George Bush For President

This may be as much of a surprise as John Kerry winning endorsements from mainstream newspapers, but Captain's Quarters is endorsing George Bush for President. (Do you think this will make headlines around the blogosphere? Neither do I.)

With two weeks left to go before the election, however, I think it's important to get past the normally reactive posture that blogs have and to communicate clearly why I think Bush should be re-elected, as well as why I think Kerry should be turned away. I covered some of this material earlier, and in greater detail, but it bears repeating now.

George Bush is the first president in a generation to truly understand the nature of terrorism and the effort it will take to defeat it. In this election, he's the only candidate who strategizes to win, rather than reduce it to so-called "nuisance" levels. He had the vision to understand that terrorists on their own do not present the gravest threat to our national security, but that the threat springs from the nexus between terrorists and states that harbor, sponsor, and arm them as proxies to wage asymmetrical war against the West. He has approached this threat strategically instead of tactically, as well as militarily instead of legalistically. Bush has gathered allies where possible, but unlike previous administrations, did not allow the US to be hamstrung by recalcitrant -- and corrupted -- international organizations benefitting from the status quo.

That's it. I'm a national-security voter this time around. Even if I agreed with Kerry on the majority of domestic issues, which I do not, I would vote for the man who has the right plan to keep my family and country as safe as possible. The forward strategy for attacking Islamist aggression and the nexus of state sponsorship of terrorism must prevail.

Why not John Kerry? Mainly, John Kerry has been all over the map on terror. He swears that he will hunt down and kill terrorists, but then complains when we invade the places where they hide. Kerry's only consistency on fighting terror is inconsistency. He spent twenty years in the Senate building a record which indicates that he shrinks at using force to ensure our national security. He complains about the difference between the 30-nation coalition we have now and the 34-nation coalition we had for the first Gulf War, but fails to mention that he opposed that war as well.

If Kerry had been in charge, Saddam would not only still be running Iraq, he would be running Kuwait as well.

But beyond that, Kerry has built a political record that shows no indication of firm, steady, and reliable leadership. Despite twenty years in the Senate, he has managed to pass only six bills that he initiated. Six bills in 20 years! Kerry argued on the wrong side of the nuclear-freeze movement, the contras, the military expansion that broke the back of the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War, and taxes, taxes, taxes. Kerry, in short, managed to be wrong on almost every issue he faced.

And as this election campaign has shown, Kerry will say and do anything to pander to the electorate. He indulges in cheap shots, like the "most lying, corrupt" remarks to his supporters when he thought he wasn't being recorded. He wallowed in the Bush-AWOL story for months, along with his DNC Chairman, Terry McAuliffe, and then squealed when his own military record came under scrutiny. Kerry has personally spread the urban legend of a million disenferanchised African-American voters, while his wife spread rumors that Bush had Osama bin Laden hidden away until just before the election.

Kerry cannot be trusted with executive power, especially in a time of war. America needs leaders who lead, not politicians who wet their finger and then bend with the wind. And with as many threats arrayed against us as we have, we need a president who will think our our security before his own polling numbers or the approbation of foreign leaders who actively work against us. Bush has demonstrated his willingness and ability to rise to these occasions, while Kerry has based his entire campaign on appeasement.

My endorsement: re-elect the man who will not wait for our enemies to attack or our friends to approve our plans to protect ourselves.

NOTE: Hugh Hewitt will have more posts along these lines at his on-line symposium. Be sure to check in there.

Californians Go Crazy Over Mentally Ill

Californians have put a new ballot initiative in front of voters this November asking for a new tax "on the rich" to fund increased spending on the mentally ill. Datelined out of San Francisco, which should surprise no one in California, the proponents of this new tax want to continue expanding the Golden State's welfare system:

As pressures increase on California's mental health system, its workers and advocates say they are forced to do more with a supply of money that seems to shrink each year.

"The number of people who need services is growing. The cost of the services is growing. The revenue source is not growing," said Patricia Ryan, executive director of the California Mental Health Directors Association.

Note that the AP reports that the money "seems" to shrink every year. That's an important qualification for a ballot initiative. Had the money actually shrunk, the AP and the CMHDA would have provided reams of supporting material making that case. As it stands, I would guess that the lack of such an argument means that their funding has either remained constant -- which would be remarkable, given California's deep budget problems -- or has increased at a rate they find insufficient.

What solution do they propose? Chasing more productive Californians into Nevada:

A possible solution? A measure on the November ballot that would dramatically bolster the flagging system by pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars and asking the wealthy to pick up the tab.

If passed, Proposition 63 would mandate that anyone with a net income of more than $1 million be taxed an additional one percent on every dollar earned beyond the first million.

The Legislative Analyst's Office estimates the measure would raise $275 million in 2004-05, swelling to $750 million the next year and $800 million thereafter. A newly created commission would oversee the distribution of the funds to counties that submit spending plans.

In other words, this is a two-fer; the statists in California get hundreds of millions of dollars and a brand-spankin' new bureaucracy to eat them up. Not only does this sound like the kind of thinking that got California into its present budget woes, but it also hints at a patronage system on the horizon, where cronyism and political correctness determine funding. The patronage part has already shown its face, as proponents of the initiative have raised $2.3 million, against a mere $5,000 in opposition.

Forgetting the arguments that tax-opponents will surely raise, such as the repelling effect this new measure will have on keeping liquid capital in-state, let's take a look at the kind of situations that the ballot proponents say will be helped by the new tax. Consider the case of Carrie McGinniss, who supposedly faces ejection from her halfway house due to budget constraints:

For Progress Foundation, which gets about 30 percent of its money from the city and county, additional money would mean it could provide more residential housing, where patients like Carrie McGinniss, 55, can get a chance to recuperate and rebuild while still maintaining their independence.

McGinniss, who is bipolar, is one of an estimated 2 million in the state who suffer from some form of mental illness. She used to be one of an estimated 55,000 homeless who are also mentally ill, but she has lived at a Progress Foundation house for the last eight years.

Get a chance to rebuild and recuperate? She's been there for eight years. How much longer before she is rebuilt and fully recuperated? Progress Foundation and the AP want you to think that these programs are helping hands for those who have temporary needs, but what they deliver is another cradle-to-grave welfare program, under a different name. Instead of working through the legislature to get funds for their pet projects, they instead rely on class warfare and come up with another "soak the rich" scheme that only ensures that more capital moves out of California, when they sorely need the investments to maintain the economy.

If Californians keep passing new taxes like this regardless of the motivation, they will find themselves in another recession and budget disaster of their own making. A Yes vote on 63 will only confirm that the patients are truly running the asylum.

More Evidence Of The Obvious

The Washington Post reports that investigators into the Madrid bombings this year have uncovered new evidence that the Islamic terrorists that attacked the Spanish transportation system specifically intended to warp the election three days later:

Seven months after bombs exploded aboard morning commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people, the precise motives of the attackers remain unclear. But new evidence, including wiretap transcripts, has lent support to a theory that the strike was carefully timed to take place three days before a national election in hopes of influencing Spanish voters to reject a government that sent troops to Iraq. ...

Newly disclosed wiretaps of an alleged organizer of the bombings expressing glee that "the dog Aznar" had been put out of office have prompted some analysts here to conclude that the perpetrators sought to try to bring about specific reactions through the attacks.

Obviously, it's good to be precise and to verify theories as exhaustively as possible. But is it really news to hear that the Islamists wanted to change the course of the Spanish election in order to force them out of Iraq? Apparently it is with the victors of the election, who want to rewrite history so that their Socialist movement can be seen as a glorious deliverer, rather than the accidental recipient of a craven response to an attack:

The current Socialist government has insisted the attacks were not intended to change the outcome of the election and has accused opponents of using such inferences to question its victory. "There is no evidence to indicate the intention of the terrorists was really to change the Spanish government," said a Socialist Party spokesman, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "You can't go looking for motives behind terrorist activity. Terrorists always act when and how they can. Spaniards went to the polls on March 14 and voted in an adult, free way and decided to vote against the PP government" and for the Socialist government, he said.

In the end, as Keith Richburg notes, it matters little about motivation, only results. After seeing the electoral shift in Spain, Osama bin Laden moved immediately to offer a cease-fire to anyone who would follow Spain's path to capitulation and urged his followers to duplicate the Madrid strategy with all of America's allies. Spanish capitulation led to the bombing of the Australian embassy in Indonesia, but appeared to invigorate the Aussies instead of cowing them. In the next couple of weeks, it may lead to another attack in the US itself.

Will we capitulate like the Spaniards? That answer, unfortunately, is nowhere near as obvious.

WaPo: Kerry Misleading Seniors On Social Security

Howard Kurtz, the media watchdog at the Washington Post, notes that John Kerry's new campaign ad and push at the stump to paint George Bush as a one-man wrecking crew for Social Security intentionally misleads voters on two separate tracks. After giving a transcript of the new television ad by the Kerry/Edwards campaign, Kurtz notes that the supposed "quotes" used by Kerry have never been attributed to Bush through any reliable sourcing:

"I’m going to come out strong after my swearing in," Bush said, "with . . . privatizing of Social Security." ...

The "admission" by the president comes not from a public statement but from a New York Times Magazine article yesterday in which the president is quoted as making the privatization comment to a "confidential" Republican luncheon. No source for the comment is cited ...

Interesting timing, no? The New York Times magazine runs an article on some super-secret Republican luncheon, where an intrepid Times source manages to carry out this one quote while avoiding capture. Never mind that the Times publishes unsourced quotes from presidential candidates as news. How did the Kerry campaign get the quote so quickly into a campaign commercial?

Gee ... you don't suppose the New York Times' news staff is coordinating with the Kerry campaign, do you? Nah, couldn't be. Major news organizations never coordinate with partisan election campaigns -- do they?

The Kerry campaign ad also misleads on the amount that benefits would be cut, as Bush has yet to endorse any one plan for Social Security reform. The CBO estimated the cost of the plan developed by Bush's study commission as $2 trillion over 10 years and would cut benefits by 30-45%, but Bush has not yet adopted the plan, in whole or in part. In fact, privatizing parts of Social Security might alleviate both issues, if done properly, as more of the return on the investment is kept by the worker than the government.

Bush has spoken about privatization before, but also spoken about his conviction that privatization would apply to younger workers; those who have already paid into the plan would not have benefits cut. Kerry talks about maintaining Social Security as is, the one plan that would guarantee its insolvency in the near future. Social Security is essentially a Ponzi scheme that only stays afloat if the birth rate exceeds the death rate on a continuing basis, bringing new workers into the plan to pay for current retirees. But with Baby Boomers set to retire in droves over the next few years, that balance will collapse, and the financial basis for Social Security along with it.

Something, obviously, has to be done to correct the situation. But while Bush has floated some general proposals, Kerry has done nothing about it at all, despite being in the Senate for twenty years while the basis for Social Security rapidly and predictably eroded. Now all he does is attack those who recognize the need for change. As Howard Kurtz puts it, accusing the GOP of stealing Social Security from the elderly is "the oldest page in the Democratic playbook". Al Gore tried it in 2000. Older voters should ask themselves why Kerry and his Democratic colleagues did nothing to resolve the issue since then, and take their measure of concern from the answer.

Guardian's Clark County Project Gets Reactions

Earlier this week, I wrote about the efforts of the Manchester Guardian to influence our election by starting a letter-writing campaign from Brits to American voters in Clark County, Ohio. Apparently, their project attracted quite a bit of attention, even getting my blog noticed in a follow-up article. Now the Guardian has started receiving feedback from Americans of all political stripes regarding their intention to corrupt our electoral process, and a lot of it ain't pretty.

Most of the e-mail they've received opposing their project has been rather obscene, or at least those e-mails they chose to share with their readers:

Wading River, NY: Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ...

KEEP YOUR F****N' LIMEY HANDS OFF OUR ELECTION. HEY, SHITHEADS, REMEMBER THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR? REMEMBER THE WAR OF 1812? WE DIDN'T WANT YOU, OR YOUR POLITICS HERE, THAT'S WHY WE KICKED YOUR ASSES OUT. FOR THE 47% OF YOU WHO DON'T WANT PRESIDENT BUSH, I SAY THIS ... TOUGH SHIT! ...

Harlan, KY: THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS HAVE SPENT TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS PROTECTING THE PEOPLES OF THE EU, AND WHAT DO WE GET IN RETURN. BETRAYAL, BETRAYAL, BETRAYAL. I HAVE BEEN TO YOUR COUNTRY, THE COUNTRY OF MY ANCESTORS, AND I KNOW WHY THEY LEFT. MAY YOU HAVE TO HAVE A TOOTH CAPPED. I UNDERSTAND IT TAKES AT LEAST 18 MONTHS FOR YOUR GREAT MEDICAL SERVICES TO GET AROUND TO YOU.

A lot of Americans have a problem with British dental hygiene, apparently. Only a couple of Bush-supporting missives demonstrate any intelligence whatsoever, allowing the Guardian to perpetuate the stereotype of the classless American conservative. However, a couple snuck through, including this civics lesson that they Guardian should learn:

DC: If China shuts its borders to US imports, you better believe American companies, shareholders and workers are affected. Should US citizens therefore have a direct say in Chinese policies? No - Americans should demand that their own elected leaders address the issues with their Chinese counterparts. The British have a similar voice in US policies - through your own elected representatives who have any number of diplomatic, economic and military tools at their disposal. You vote for your leaders and we'll vote for ours. Your problem is with your leaders, not ours.

Disappointingly, most of the American left cheered this attempt by foreigners to meddle in an American election -- inadvertently promoting the stereotype of the American left as globalist socialists who want to undermine US sovereignty. Even those who objected on the left did so on practical grounds rather than out of any sense of moral outrage:

Right on! Just wanted to say thanks from California for your effort and concern. This IS a very important election ... There are so many people here in the States that care about the impact America has on the rest of the world. I am personally saddened for the loss of all innocent lives. The best statement Americans can make to the rest of the world is to not elect Bush for president. Thank you so much for getting involved in our world. ...

I enjoy reading your paper and agree with your politics, but this is really too much.Your plan, if carried out, will hurt the Bush opposition TERRIBLY. We cannot afford to have this associated with John Kerry or anyone else. It will be; the press is going in for a kill, days before the election. ...

OhioWhile I empathise with your plight, this attempt to influence voters by sending letters from foreigners will have a negative effect on your ultimate goal. You will cause people to empathise with the president, not the other way around. People will read these letters and say, "John Le who? Never heard of him, but who is he to tell me who to vote for?"

On the other hand, someone obviously has a better sense of revenge than I do, because I wish I had suggested something similar to this:

In your plea to get your non-American readers to write to voters in Clark County, Iowa, you are correct that events in the US have had, and will have, effects on world events. For example, we have pulled your chestnuts out of the fire in two world wars that were occasioned by European diplomacy. Maybe you'd like a vote in which American president will oversee the next rescue. The next time you have elections in Great Britain, I shall endeavour to send names of your citizens to people in France, Iraq, India, the United Arab Emirates, Botswana, Pakistan, China and Argentina so that they may attempt to influence your election. It's only fair that everybody in the world should have a say in the selection of the prime minister.

Or perhaps this should be the last word:

Mind your own flipping business.

Explaining Why We Fight To Our Children, Part III

This is Part III in a continuing series by my friend "Mike", a Navy SEAL who spent most of the last couple of years in Iraq as both an active-duty participant and a private contractor. "Mike" explains the war in Iraq to his young sons, and has graciously allowed me to share his letters with you.

IRAQ PICTURE LETTER TO MY SON
PART 3. WHY WE INVADED IRAQ & WHY WE ARE STILL HERE

In Part 2 we learned about how Saddam Hussein was an evil and crazy ruler of the Iraqi people and that he had bad intentions for the world and especially Israel. However, Israel is quite capable of defending itself. We also learned how cruel he was to his own people. However that doesn’t explain why President Bush sent us into Iraq when he did.

One reason is because we believed that Saddam Hussein helped the terrorists who attacked our country on 9/11. Saddam is now saying that he had nothing to do with it. Well if Saddam Hussein didn’t directly help the terrorists he shouldn’t have been so arrogant as to have paintings like these made after it happened. Several paintings of Saddam celebrating the attack on America have been found in his Presidential Palaces.

But the main reason we had to free Iraq is so that we could go in and find and destroy the massive weapons he was building up so that he or other terrorists could not use them against us or other countries.

Do you know how much a ton is? That’s right, 2,000 lbs. Well everyone knew that Saddam Hussein had many tons of special weapons that are illegal and kill people in most horrible ways. He actually used some of these awful weapons against some of the people in his own country that he didn’t like. He is saying that he got rid of the really horrible weapons years ago, but what we don’t know yet is where they all went.

What we do know is that his country has more ammunition than almost any country in the world. Every year he kept buying more and more ammunition mainly from Russia and France and China. Helping to find and destroy ‘Captured Enemy Ammunition’ (CEA) is the mission that Daddy has been serving in Iraq.

But what do we mean by ammunition?

When we talk about ‘ammunition’ we aren’t just talking about bullets for guns that you can carry. We are talking about almost anything that explodes, including bombs, missiles, rockets, mortars, tank rounds, artillery rounds (big guns), and land mines.

When Daddy first came to Iraq it was estimated that there was more than 2 million tons of ammunition stored in hundreds of storage places called ‘caches’. We may not have that much ammunition in our own country.

Most of this ammunition could not even be used by the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein and most has no use to the new military of Free Iraq. Saddam’s corrupt government sold or gave lots of it away to terrorists. Today terrorists try to steal the ammunition, so they can use it to kill innocent people.

Some of it is used to make bombs that they plant in places where there are a lot of people. Other ammunition, like this rocket, is ready to launch right out of the container. These kinds of rockets are launched on our bases and convoys by bad people every day.

So Daddy’s team goes to where the ammunition is and we keep it safe until big trucks come. Then we go out to the desert far away from people and stack the ammo close together, we ‘prime’ it with special explosives ... and then we blow it up.

The explosions you see were what we call planned “detonations.” Some of our planned detonations destroyed more than 100 tons of Captured Enemy Ammunition (CEA) in one shot! They all happened at different remote places in Iraq called Forward Operating Bases or FOBs. Daddy has worked out of FOBs near cities from as far south as Al Basrah and as far north as Tikrit and as far west as Fallujah and others in between.

The CEA (Captured Enemy Ammunition) project will take many more months or even years to finish. It is an example of only one important project that will help the people of Iraq and all of the nations of the Free World to stay safe. None of the information you just learned is a secret. It very sad that the people who report the news choose to report on things that go bad in Iraq, instead of these projects that are so necessary and are going so well.

Movie Review: Therese

The First Mate and I went out to church this afternoon and followed Mass with a screening of the new movie Thérese, the biopic of the Catholic saint nicknamed "The Little Flower". The FM had looked forward to the movie opening in our area as Thérese is the saint which she admires the most -- an unassuming young girl whose saintliness expressed itself in the many small acts of faith she did.

I'd like to say lots of nice things about this film, whose heart definitely is in the right place. The filmmakers treat their subject quite respectfully -- in fact, too much so, to the extent that the film fails to work. Thérese lost her mother when she was very little, and as a result wound up being doted upon by her entire family. She became a bit spoiled, as youngest children often are, and a bit willful. At 12, she experienced an epiphany when her father forgot to put candies in her slippers for Christmas morning and she had a right crying fit. She became filled with the Holy Spirit, and from that moment dedicated her life to helping others.

Unfortunately, the film chose to paint Thérese as a saint almost from birth, making the epiphanic moment completely ineffective. Lindsay Younce also plays Thérese from grade school onward, confusing the ages when she goes through her life-changing moments, and also confusing why she acts so immature at moments when you'd expect her to be a bit more sophisticated, for lack of a better word. When she finds out that Father Christmas is really her father (from the comment that she's too old for the charade), I nodded my head vigorously, not knowing she was supposed to be 12.

Also distracting were a number of technical issues with the film, which obviously was made on a shoestring budget. Much of the print we watched was grainy and occasionally out of focus. The camerawork was notably poor; in several scenes, the tops of heads were cut off. In low-budget films, especially those produced by religious organizations, the audience doesn't need art from the cinematography, but it shouldn't be so poor as to distract ... and this was.

On a more positive note, the acting was pretty good. Younce was very convincing as Thérese, especially later on during her time as a Carmelite novice and nun. Leonardo Defilippis turns in a marvelous and understated performance as her father, and Linda Hayden is very effective as her oldest sister who became a second mother to Thérese. The rest of the cast aren't quite as effective but at least do not distract from the story itself.

** SPOILERS! **

The end of the movie, as Thérese dies at a young age (at which age, the movie never makes clear, but it's 24), really touches the heart, and makes the entire experience worthwhile -- as long as you know it won't be a professional and skilled product. In fact, in some ways, it carries more impact for its earnest, amateurish production. I wish it had been done just a bit better and included a few more people with skill; it could have been a classic. The public clearly hungers for well-made films that focus on faith and sacrifice, as the showing we saw at 1:20 on a Sunday afternoon was almost sold out. Maybe that may convince other filmmakers to put more effort into truly uplifting material like the story of Thérese of Lisieux.

Kerry Finds Priests Who Don't Read The Catechism

In an article intended on highlighting John Kerry's attempts to present himself as an average, ordinary guy, the Associated Press inadvertently shows how Kerry's rank manages to get him preferential treatment by some in the Church whose teachings he defies. After talking about how Kerry presented himself as a humble member of the proletariat by donning brown corduroys and a mustard-yellow jacket, Mary Dalrymple reports that a Catholic priest used Mass to endorse Kerry's run for the presidency:

Some Catholic Democratic officials arranged a private mass for the Massachusetts senator in Chillicothe, Ohio. Kerry called it a way to "stop the hurly-burly, get away from the wildness" and "have this moment of tranquility."

Father Lawrence Hummer, nevertheless, gave the moment an election-year flavor by criticizing church officials who condemn Catholic politicians who speak out for abortion rights, calling on them to use patient persistence and bring them into the fold.

"It is the task of the church to convince and to encourage through all patience, by word and example, those who do not agree, not to ostracize them or treat them like lepers," Hummer said.

"There are many people who think that the destruction of Iraqi life is as direct an assault on the sacred as is the taking of unborn life. There are many people who regard the death penalty as an admission of the smallness of our nature rather than evidence of our greatness."

"God bless you. Win, will you?" Hummer told Kerry after mass ended.

Besides the blatant electioneering that is completely inappropriate for a celebration of Mass, Hummer acts as if he's never read the Catechism. It is the Church's place to remind Catholics that the Catechism applies to all members, and to also enforce the sanctity of the Eucharist. Catholic officials have never told Kerry that he was ostracized, that he couldn't walk into a Catholic Church; the bishops told him that while he existed in a state of mortal sin, he could not receive the Eucharist. There is a huge difference between the two, and if Father Hummer doesn't understand it, perhaps he should return his correspondence-school ordination.

The Catholic Church has always defined abortion as a mortal sin on par with murder, since the earliest days of the church. While I oppose the death penalty on similar ground as abortion, the Church does not teach that the death penalty is a mortal sin, nor does the Catechism teach absolutely against it. Nor does the Catechism forbid all war; in fact, St. Augustine first developed the concepts of "just war" in the fifth century. One can argue (endlessly) whether the Iraq War met the conditions laid out in the Catechism, but any priest with a sense of what his own Church teaches cannot equate abortion with either the death penalty or war.

Hummer's moral relativity, meanwhile, is ridiculous. Of course many people think the destruction of Iraqi life is as much an issue as that of the unborn. That was one of the primary reasons for the world to put an end to Saddam's reign of terror, where thousands of Iraqis died every month from his genocidal policies and outright starvation, while he stuffed billions of dollars into his own pockets. Just this week, more mass graves filled with women and children -- some still clutching their toys as they were brutally murdered -- were discovered. This report did not come from Fox News; it came from Al-Jazeera, which has made no secret of its opposition to Anglo-American action in Iraq. Removing Saddam and his Ba'athist crime family has eliminated the genocide and has given the Iraqis an opportunity to create a stable, representative government.

How many sacred Iraqi lives has that saved? And how many sacred Iraqi lives would Saddam still be killing, through starvation, torture, and genocide had we not finally acted to remove him?

Father Hummer, instead of taking this as an opportunity to teach a wayward Catholic and return him to the path of his faith, instead chose the moment to pander to his sins in order to further his own political goals. That may suit Father Hummer just fine, but it ill serves both his congregation and even John Kerry, who needs to either follow the faith he professes or find another that matches his beliefs.

If the mission of the Catholic Church is to save souls according to its doctrine and tradition, then John Kerry was ill served yesterday. Instead of giving him the loving but firm rebuke he needs, the parish gave him a Hummer instead.

Words Have Meaning And Impact

In a reminder of Rush Limbaugh's famous rejoinder that words have meaning, the BBC reports that UN commanders on the ground blame John Kerry's stump speech professing support for Haitian strongman Jean-Bertrand Aristide for the continuing violence from Aristide supporters:

The commander of the UN peacekeepers in Haiti has linked a recent upsurge in violence there to comments made by the US presidential candidate, John Kerry.

Earlier this year Mr Kerry said that as president he would have sent American troops to protect Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was ousted from power in February. ...

Eight months ago the Bush administration withdrew all support for Mr Aristide and made it clear he should leave Haiti. John Kerry called that "short-sighted" and said he would have sent troops to protect Mr Aristide, who was an elected leader.

Now General Heleno, says those comments have offered hope to Aristide's supporters that should Mr Kerry win the US election in November the former Haitian president might be restored to power.

Aristide made his reputation as a reformer during the Baby Doc regime in Haiti, when the former priest spoke out openly against the thugocracy that Duvalier imposed after the death of his equally-oppressive father. Aristide was carried to power after the ejection of Baby Doc but shortly afterwards was exiled by an Army coup. He did not return until four years later, and was a changed man, according to the BBC:

When he returned to take up his presidency in 1994, under the protection of the US, many of those who knew him say he was a different man.

"I don't pretend to know him well enough to understand the change, but I think Aristide was always in a certain sense, an absolutist, in a certain sense, arrogant," says Robert White, a former US ambassador to El Salvador, who later worked as an adviser to the deposed Haitian leader during his years in exile in the US.

Ms Fuller says: "When Aristide came back, he seemed to be more and more focused on staying in power and in particular getting 100% control over things in Haiti."

In fact, after Aristide returned to power, his administration began to look more and more like that of those he once opposed: authoritarian, absolute, with his inner circle enriching themselves while Haiti's poor descended deeper into the worst economy in the hemisphere. In 2000, while Democrats squealed indignantly about rigged elections in Florida simply because some people there could not follow ballot instructions, Aristide delivered a Saddam-like election to Haiti, rigging the results to get 92% of the vote. He used armed thugs to intimidate his political opponents.

This is the "elected" leader Kerry supported in March of this year.

Thanks to Kerry and no small boost from the Congressional Black Caucus, Aristide's corrupt band of thugs have taken heart from our election and hope that Kerry will re-impose the Aristide regime on Haitians, even in defiance of the UN. His foolish, reckless, and ideological rants on Haiti has cost lives, over 50 in the last two weeks alone. The UN to which Kerry so quickly defers even scolds him for his lack of insight before opening his mouth. In short, Kerry is a disaster in his professed specialty of diplomacy, as he has proved over and over again in his campaign, insulting allies and obsequiously pursuing diplomatic rivals.

As a candidate, he already has cost lives. Think of the damage he will do as President.