Is this just the beginning? The billionaire says, if Bush wins, I'm outa here:

Soros told a crowd at the National Press Club he no longer was certain of a Kerry victory, and that if Bush wins, he plans to go away to "some kind of monastery to reflect on what is wrong with us."

A progressive says progressives may stagger backwards for a generation.

The doyenne of the dementia-afflicted says every bad thing you ever feared will then occur. Presumably this would include the departure of Helen Thomas from public life.

No word yet from the Hollywood stars, but I'm thinking we may not hear any such promises this year because so many of them had their feet held to the fire in 2000 and not a damn one of them left the country as previously agreed.

Personally, I think such talk is very premature, although it indicates some of Kerry's "backers" (har har har!) are getting antsy. I see just as much reason for the president's supporters to be nervous, and we are.

But I can promise that if John Kerry wins, I ain't goin' nowhere: I'm staying in town, I'm continuing to read all the same newspapers and watch all the same shows, I will still be a Dallas Cowboys fan, I shall continue writing right here in the forum on any issue I feel like writing about and most everyone will continue not reading what I have to say, I will not shave my beard or have some personal consultant tell me what "my colors" are, I will long for the day when my e-mails say "Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld" like all the cool peoples' do, I'll still be angry at the French, and I will almost certainly continue to drink red wine. Yep, it'll be business as usual around these parts, and you can take that to the bank.

Posted by joe at 10:13 | Permalink

The question of whether the bin Laden tape was leaked as Bush's 'October surprise' is bound to come up over the next two days, as the effect sinks in and a consensus emerges that the ultimate impact will be a bonus for the president on November 2.

I doubt it, just as I doubt the notion already suggested (sorry, I don't remember where) that it's diabolical reverse psychology by the Islamists: Criticize Bush so the silly Americans RE-ELECT Bush, and then we will have them exactly where we want them.

Sorry, bin Laden wasn't too smart about what we'd do after 9-11, and I read this message as proof that he thinks (wrongly) Americans will react like he believes Europeans (wrongly - mostly) would react. Earlier in the year al Qaida offered a truce to European countries that would withdraw support for the U.S.; I think yesterday's message reflected the same essential offer. But it won't work: Americans on the whole will be more likely to vote for George W. Bush if they have OBL in mind, and more than a few will pick up on the impressive similarity of bin Laden's basic arguments to those of Michael Moore.

That's bad news for John Kerry. And it's bad news for Osama bin Laden. You misread America, Osama-meister, but we read you pretty clearly: You want an American president who is determined to arrest you and manage you, rather than one who is trying to kill you.

We are, alas, not the nation you saw in 'Fahrenheit 9-11,' but the one you ought to go see in 'Team America'.

Mike Barnicle and Larry Kudlow on MSNBC tonight made similar points about the effect this tape will have: Voters going into the booth Nov. 2 are likely to make their decision on not more than a couple issues. Tomorrow's breathless front page news will ensure that al Qaida will be at the top of that list. The MSM will run with it - they can't avoid it - and I think there won't be time for them to recover and change the subject before Tuesday.

These October 28-29 polls which will be in tomorrow's news? Fuhgedaboudit! Throw them out the window. The next polls will all be weekend surveys, generally regarded as less reliable. The only opinion monitor that will mean anything will be revealed around 9:00 pm Tuesday evening, and it's probably going to give George Soros heartburn.

Posted by joe at 03:45 | Permalink

Thanks goodness we now have clarity on at least one burning issue: Who do the terrorists want to win the U.S. presidential election? The statement (here and here) couldn't have been delivered more clearly if it had been spoken by Michael Moore himself:

You American people, my speech to you is the best way to avoid another conflict about the war and its reasons and results. I am telling you security is an important pillar of human life. And free people don't let go of their security contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. He should tell us why we didn't hit Sweden for instance. Its known that those who hate freedom don't have dignified souls.like the 19 who were blessed. But we fought you because we are free people, we don't sleep on our oppression. We want to regain the freedom of our Muslim nation as you spill our security, we spill your security...

I am so surprised by you. Although we are in the fourth year after the events of sept 11, Bush is still practicing distortion and misleading on you, and obscuring the main reasons and therefore the reasons are still existing to repeat what happened before...

We didn't find difficulty dealing with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regims in our countries. Whish half of them are ruled by military and the other half by sons of kings and presidents and our experience with them is long. Both parties are arrogant and stubborn and the greediness and taking money without right and that similarity appeared during the visits of Bush to the region while people from our side were impressed by the US and hoped that these visits would influence our countries. Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military...

We never thought that the high commander of the U.S. armies would leave 50,000 of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting.

[This] was more important than paying attention to airplanes hitting the towers, which gave us three times the time to execute the operation, thank God.

It recalls this related Campaign 2004 message:

No, my fellow countrymen you are guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. You are as guilty as Bush and Cheney. You're as guilty as Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and Powell...

This will backfire just as the taunt that America was a 'paper tiger' backfired.

Posted by joe at 06:16 | Permalink

Bill Gertz breaks the story, again, on what really happened in Iraq. This is the October surprise that was not supposed to be revealed before the election. CBS and New York Times, read it and weep:

U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained satellite photographs of truck convoys that were at several weapons sites in Iraq in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched, defense officials said yesterday.

The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."

The official said the convoys are believed to include shipments of sensitive armaments, including equipment used in making plastic explosives and nuclear weapons.

This is a big story. President Bush needs to break this story to the country. If he does, he wins the election.

Posted by joe at 01:41 | Permalink

The first reason is that civilization hangs in the balance, stated with usual eloquence by Mark Steyn:

Were America to elect John Kerry president, it would be seen around the world as a repudiation not just of Bush and of Iraq but of the broader war. It would be a declaration by the people of American unexceptionalism � that they are a slightly butcher Belgium; they would be signing on to the wisdom of conventional transnationalism.

The second reason is that the Democrats are crooks, which will be stated with typical inelegance by me:

In my town of Reston, Virginia, the bastards have a comprehensive program to disallow all Bush-Cheney signs. I know this because I'm working on the local campaign with the Republican sign guy. He's put up over 70 signs and they have all but one or two disappeared.

Here's how the sh*theads are doing it: They have people riding around in cars with cell phones, calling in the locations of all new signs. Then someone else will rush in to remove the sign. These aren't 'kids' or typical scruffy 'activists,' they're professional-looking adults.

They could be your neighbor; they could be your kid's teacher; they could be the scumbag who's keying your car. This IS today's Democratic Party.

The sign guy has caught them and tried to get the police after them but they can't get there in time.

Meanwhile, there are literally hundreds of Kerry-Edwards signs around town. You know why? BECAUSE REPUBLICANS ARE NOT RAT BASTARD THIEVES. But of course, you probably already knew that.

The sign guy put some kind of nasty oil on the more recent signs, so hopefully if nothing else some Democrat's upholstry got ruined. But here it is a few days before election day and there are no Bush signs in town.

There's nothing you can do about a concerted effort by a group of *ssholes to trumpet their *ssholiness.

The one, single thing you CAN do to put these guys back in the hole they crawled out of is re-elect George W. Bush. Therefore, this is what must be done.

UPDATE: I don't need to be convinced of the Democratic Party's essential perfidy, but in case you do, this is from Ace:

But the real news was Fund's report of a conversation he had with a Democratic consultant, whose name, he said, we'd all know. He didn't say the guy's name, but he said he had spoken to him in the green room during the taping of a recent show.

Fund asked what he thought of the election, and this man said, "Off the record, I think Kerry just might lose." But he then continued (paraphrased): "That doesn't mean it's over, though. Democrats will protest and fight so strongly that Bush won't have a win even if he wins. We will obstruct so much that this country will be ungovernable by Christmas."

That's liberalism for you. Be afraid, be very afraid, and think what it would be like if they actually win. If there was ever a year to vote party-line Republican, this is it.

Posted by joe at 05:07 | Permalink

And I can get busy applying it in short order.

Drinking red wine could protect against lung cancer, but white wine may increase the risk.

Posted by John Climacus at 04:38 | Permalink

Here it is, thanks to Bill for the reference.

Following up on the previous post, the question is: How much slack do you want to cut the bad guys? In this case, you're going to need to cut a bunch.

We're at war, and this is the enemy.

To not recognize the enemy is to have your head in the sand, or someplace worse.

Posted by joe at 02:35 | Permalink

President Bush has the bully pulpit. He'd better keep using it, or he'll surely lose it.

We've noted over and over and over and over and over again that the WMD question is far from settled.

Now comes news, in the midst of the outright silliness of Democratic charges about the supposed weapons cache ignored by the Bush administration, that the Russians may have played a role:

But in a further development, John Shaw, a deputy under-secretary of defence, suggested that 'Russian units' had transported the explosives out of the country.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Shaw said: 'For nearly nine months my office has been aware of an elaborate scheme set up by Saddam Hussein to finance and disguise his weapons purchases through his international suppliers, principally the Russians and French. That network included. . . employing various Russian units on the eve of hostilities to orchestrate the collection of munitions and assure their transport out of Iraq via Syria.'

President Bush has, thank goodness, begun to tell his story:

'A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as commander-in-chief. Unfortunately that is part of a pattern of a candidate who will say anything to get elected...'

Bush accused the Massachusetts senator of making "wild charges" about the missing explosives and about the failed search to find Osama bin Laden...'

Now he needs to talk about the Ruskies.

Posted by joe at 01:02 | Permalink

In Team America, we see the results of wrongheaded foreign policy in which the liberals give the bad guys the benefit of the doubt. Bottom line: Cutting the bad guys slack is stupid.

When life imitates art, we see the same results:

More than 200 terrorist suspects held in the U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been released from custody after signing pledges renouncing violence and promising not to bear arms against U.S. forces or its allies.

Not surprisingly, U.S. military officials now concede that at least 10 of those released are believed to have broken their promises and resumed terrorist activity.

Perhaps foremost among the released prisoners is Abdullah Mehsud, 28, who after 25 months in custody at Guantanamo has used his new freedom to mastermind the kidnapping on October 9 of two Chinese involved in the building of Pakistan's Gomal Zam Dam project. One of the Chinese hostages was killed during a Pakistani rescue attempt this week. The kidnapping was Mehsud's response to ground, helicopter and artillery offensives that failed to force the tribes to hand over al-Qaeda fugitives.

Another three prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay custody are believed to have been killed after also resuming terrorist activities. One released detainee killed a judge leaving an Afghanistan mosque.

There has been pressure on the U.S. military to prevent holding prisoners 'longer than is necessary' from the so-called Center for Constitutional Rights, whose president Michael Ratner deems U.S. military tribunals that try suspected terrorists to be 'kangaroo courts,' lacking credibility in the Muslim world. Other 'human rights' groups also have criticized the U.S. Defense Department for holding prisoners at the naval base, some for more than two years while only a few have been charged. Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry months ago joined in the criticism of the Bush administration's handling of prisoners, claiming, 'They dismiss the Geneva Convention starting in Afghanistan and Guantanamo.'

This is a lesson for any young folks who happen to be visiting: The real world is pretty cut and dried. When you capture a bad guy, you pretty much don't want to transition to trusting him just because you've had him in custody for awhile. You want to keep treating him like the bad guy you know he is.

And when you are faced with ostensibly reputable interest groups who expend time and money in order to give the bad guys the benefit of the doubt, you want to treat those appeasing bastards like the dangerous morons you know they are.

When it comes to terrorists, we need less lawyers and more explosions. The Islamists are not out to argue with us. They are determined to either kill us or convert us:

As a Salafist, who rejects all modern interpretations of Islam, he would seek to convert the world to the faith as it was in the days of the prophet Muhammad, 14 centuries ago. Zarqawi's dream is to establish a worldwide medieval caliphate, governed by Islamic fundamentalist law, or Shariah.

'Worldwide' - you got that? They will not stop until they are dead or we are Muslims, whichever comes first. How much slack do you want to cut them? How much credibility are you willing to grant the ACLU?

Posted by joe at 12:32 | Permalink

This was going to be a totally different post but what do you know, it's 2 down in the bottom of the 9th and Boston is up 3-0...

Ground out to the pitcher...

It's over.

I barely remember the first steps on the moon in 1969, but I'll remember this.

Posted by joe at 11:42 | Permalink

We have a new article over at the main site on Mssr. Kerry's intentions for the young folks. Kids, watch out for these Democrats, and for goodness sakes do not vote for them!

Read the whole story of John Kerry's 'National Service' Plan for College Students.

Posted by joe at 07:49 | Permalink

A great interview with Ann in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

By the way, this is Ann:

Q: How can you tell John Kerry is a liberal?

A: The Botox, fake tans and latex skiing outfit.

Q: Is Teresa Heinz Kerry a strong woman?

A: Yes, if by "strong" you mean "crazy."

Q: Is there anything Bush could say, promise or do that would cost him your support?

A: "I agree with John Kerry."

Q: Is there anything you'd like to say to voters of the great swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio?

A: Quit the dithering and vote for Bush. How many lousy free meals do you need to accept from this guy Frank Luntz?

Read it all.

College students, get to know this woman. She is the future of American radicalism.

Posted by joe at 03:43 | Permalink

Boy has this been a bang-up year for death. Personal stories are this and this.

Anyway, sorry for another morose post - if this bringdown is not your cup of tea please scroll down to the next irreverant or irrelevant post which may be more your style.

Before getting my own personal stuff, I want to point out Kate's poignant statement on a personal case that strikes me as constructive:

So, while I appreciate any sentiments you may wish to share, I'd really prefer you take those few moments to sit down and tell a young person that a very good woman left the world tonight, years before she should have, because she made the choice as a teenager to pick up a cigarette.

Some of the funerals I've attended recently could spur an observation like that one. Watch what you do, and don't shirk the doctor visits, because once you hit 40 there are all kinds of reminders of mortality ready to bite you.

It's odd, but I got to the age of 33 without having experienced the death of anyone close to me. Then, in short order, I lost my grandmother, father, and numerous friends and relatives. It all reached a crescendo in the past year with a slew of funerals.

The most recent was this weekend with my brother in law. He was in his early 40s. As a child he had a cleft palate and went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for treatment which entailed a large dose of radiation. It turns out the Johns Hopkins method from the early 1960s was flawed. A bunch of these people came down with cancer 40 years later.

My brother in law got a nasty squamous cell skin cancer in the sinuses. In the spring of 2003 he had breathing problems for weeks and when he went to the doctor they gave him decongestants. By June the problem had not been fixed and an MRI revealed tumors and the extremely bad form of cancer. They operated to devastating effect to try and remove it, but couldn't. It was untreatable with chemo or, apparently, radiation. He held on until last Monday.

In the interim, he was overtaken by a tumor which was disfiguring and especially tragic because he and my sister had seven boys between ages 11 and 20 who had to watch their father decrease for over a year.

The funeral was brutal. Mainly, it was difficult because there was no lesson from the tragedy, except that Johns Hopkins in the early 1960s could have done things differently. But what does that give you to explain to a kid?

It sends you to the Book of Job, is what it does.

That feeling of immortality we have, we late-baby-boomers, is an illusion. We are in the crosshairs of the Grim Reaper, despite how we'd like to think we have a good long run guaranteed to us.

Although my thinking about personal financial decisions - how much to spend on a house or recreation - has been largely conditioned by concerns about setting us up for retirement, I'm thinking I don't want to wait for some of the rewards of life.

Maybe it's time to buy a bigger house. Even if I don't suffer an untimely death, I'll probably appreciate the extra space a hell of a lot more at 43 than I will at 63.

Posted by joe at 03:10 | Permalink

If you're not reading MonkeyWatch, brother, you are missing the whole story.

Just imagine the potential of primate power that has yet to be harnessed:

It takes two to three weeks for the monkeys to become adept at climbing trees, picking the coconuts and throwing them to the ground for humans to collect.

Armies of monkeys would not only be effective in the sense they're unmanned; they'd also be scary as hell. What are we waiting for?

Posted by joe at 01:50 | Permalink

David Zucker, creator of "Airplane!", "Naked Gun" and "Ruthless People", has directed what is being called the funniest political ad in a relatively unfunny political-ad-season. Club For Growth will be funding the airtime for the new ad in battleground states. Zucker fits the mold of numerous former Democrats who have switched teams in recent years:

"I was really a liberal Democrat until 9/11," said Zucker, referring to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on US targets. "There is no question in my mind that President Bush is doing a great job fighting the war on terror.

"We can't trust Kerry to do that. I wanted to do something, but since no one was asking me to make policy speeches I made this ad..."

The ad can be viewed at the Club For Growth Web site and, presumably, on television in Ohio and Florida for the next 6 days.

UPDATE: Now, if you want to watch a REALLY effective political ad - one which likely will never make it to the airwaves but could become a major Internet item this week, go watch How Would They Vote?

Very, very freaky stuff.

Posted by joe at 12:39 | Permalink

I just saw the movie Team America and I hope every voter under the age of 25 goes to watch it before Nov. 2.

The White House should be sending out free passes. Though it does not mention him by name, the movie all but screams "John Kerry is a moron."

Spread the word!

Yes, I know the intelligentsia have proclaimed it a fistful of barbs for both the left and the right: This is pure bullsh*t (pardon the language, but I just saw Team America).

The funny thing is, those liberals who judge the film a slap to conservatives are only revealing their myopic ignorance. They're worldview is so twisted they miss the point entirely.

Let's take a little walk down Bozo Lane (after you've seen the movie, if you haven't already, you will appreciate these even more).

This, from one of the best and brightest:

[A] would-be equal-opportunity offender, Team America: World Police sets out to skewer both hemispheres of the American brain.

Here's another:

...equal opportunity offenders is one of the movie's great strengths: They ridicule both Michael Moore and the U.S. government.

And another:

to mock the Iraq war and Hollywood blow-up epics like "Con Air" and "Armageddon."

And another:

The old phrase "equal opportunity offender" applies generously to this movie...

And again:

True to South Park fashion, it pulls no punches, lampooning the left and right spectrums of U.S. politics...

USA Today manages to skew who's being skewered:

But others might laugh more when they see the inept American team attempt to catch terrorists but succeed only in blowing up the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. Presumably the team's botched plan to save France and nab the terrorists is a commentary on U.S. action in Iraq.

(The Team America crew actually DID kill the terrorists in France. More on the Louvre later).

Here, Slate gets a bit closer to the truth:

The puppets of Team America skewer the right. If only they'd stopped there.

The title alone rocks: It tells you that the movie is a stink bomb lobbed at American arrogance and overweening militarism. That'll piss off the right!

They actually hate liberals as much if not more than their right-wing counterparts.

"If not more"? This is the understatement of the month.

The entire point of the plot is that the liberals are WRONG in every respect and the "World Police" are proven right. There is no gray area about who is being excoriated in this movie.

Charles Taylor gets it:

...resorts to lame anti-left jokes that could have been written by Ann Coulter.

But smart guy Sean Penn gets it best of all:

It's all well to joke about me or whomever you choose. Not so well, to encourage irresponsibility that will ultimately lead to the disembowelment, mutilation, exploitation, and death of innocent people throughout the world. The vote matters to them. No one's ignorance, indcluding a couple of hip cross-dressers, is an excuse.

All best, and a sincere fuck you,

Sean Penn

Penn should be angry. He and the rest of the Hollywood activists, along with Hans Blix and a few others whom John Kerry would proudly count on as foreign policy supporters, are the punching bags in this film. Their head-in-the-sand, appease-our-enemies approach to foreign policy evokes only one of the parties seeking the White House, and it ain't the Republicans.

You can see how some of the misguided might discern "equal opportunity" axe-grinding: Team America's key calling card is to kill the bad guys, find the WMDs, and obliterate a few local cultural landmarks in the process. That's the "skewering" of the right. It's funny and lampoonish, and in some cases actually sort of satisfying.

Watching the Louvre and Eiffel Tower crumble while the characters detour into a conversation about their relationship seems a proper use of perspective.

But ultimately, everything Team America sets out to do reveals a worldview that is 100% accurate. Everything their opponents on the left do reveals a total misunderstanding of reality. Does that ring a bell?

How the film's creators feel about the opposing sides might be deduced from the fact that every single one of the left's standard-bearers dies very, very badly.

I am not even going to attempt to sell you on Trey Parker's soundtrack, except to say it is worth more than the price of admission. The animation is fantastic, the dialogue hysterical, the philosophy of international affairs incisive (and outrageously obscene), but the songs are sheer brilliance.

Stay through the credits for the last number. It is priceless.

Posted by joe at 06:35 | Permalink

Hey - Oh! I'm out of the echo chamber. My TV options here are different and I'll take this opportunity to comment on that.

Here at the motel, I don't get Fox News or HBO. Which right there requires an adjustment. But it does bring me back to the plane of the regular folks, I think.

To wit: MSNBC and CNN are thin gruel. Chris Matthews is not as much of a dumbass as I originally thought; but he is a goober, don't kid yourself. It's his guests, though, who will drive you friggin' nuts. Old media talking heads are the news equivalent of professional soccer: Who gives a rat's ass what they do or say?

When they're all you've got to watch, though, you eventually learn to condition yourself to a healthy serving of BS along with everything else. You watch the news more critically and cynically as, I suppose, you should. Bozos incoming. When you watch the mainstream, you got to have your thinking cap on.

Posted by joe at 05:36 | Permalink

From MEMRI:

We ask Allah to turn this Ramadan into a month of glory, victory, and might, to hoist high in [this month] the banner of religion, to strengthen Islam and the Muslims, to humiliate polytheism and polytheists, to wave the banner of monotheism, to firmly plant the banner of Jihad, and to smite the perverts and the obstinate�

---

In [the month of] Ramadan a great conquest was made, [both] of lands and of hearts � [I mean] the conquest of Mecca � in whose wake people adopted the religion of Allah, whether by choice or by coercion, and the [Arab] tribes adopted Islam � and this is what the Glorious and Exalted One said: 'You will see the people adopting Allah's religion in droves.' [Koran 110:2]...

The Prophet Muhammad - in a prophetic tradition related on the authority of Abu Hurayra, [explaining] God's words, 'You are the best community ever raised for mankind' [ Koran 3:110] - said: 'That means you are the best people for mankind [because] you lead them, with chains on their necks, so that they accept Islam.' This tradition is related by Al-Bukhari. Ahmad [Ibn Hanbal] relates a tradition, with a proper line of transmitters, on the authority of Anas, that the Messenger of Allah said to someone: 'Embrace Islam!' The man answered: 'I find myself reluctant.' So [the Prophet] said: 'Even if you are reluctant.'

It's not about the Palestinians, and it's not about oil. It's about changing the way we live:

To them it looks like an ancient force of nature and, therefore, an inevitability - hence their cynicism. Mostly provincial people with horizons limited by consumption and by wealth, these heralds of the West adopt cynicism as shorthand for cosmopolitanism. They erroneously believe that feigned sarcasm lends them an air of ruggedness and rich experience and the virile aroma of decadent erudition. Yet all it does is make them obnoxious and even more repellent to the residents than they already were.

Ever the preachers, the West - both Europeans and Americans - uphold themselves as role models of virtue to be emulated, as points of reference, almost inhuman or superhuman in their taming of the vices, avarice up front.

Yet the chaos and corruption in their own homes is broadcast live, day in and day out, into the cubicles inhabited by the very people they seek to so transform. And they conspire and collaborate in all manner of venality and crime and scam and rigged elections in all the countries they put the gospel to.

In trying to put an end to history, they seem to have provoked another round of it - more vicious, more enduring, more traumatic than before. That the West is paying the price for its mistakes I have no doubt. For isn't it a part and parcel of its teachings that everything has a price and that there is always a time of reckoning?

Maybe it's just time for a summit, or some treaties, to hash out and negotiate all these cultural misunderstandings.

Posted by joe at 03:49 | Permalink

Good news:

The United States military says it has captured a top member of the Islamic militant group led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

It says the man and five other rebels were caught during a pre-dawn raid in the city of Fallujah...

Citing intelligence sources, the military claimed that Zarqawi followers had started to move out of central Fallujah to the outlying areas due to the relentless barrage of air strikes in recent weeks.

Down with the shameful bozos. Shut them up.

Posted by joe at 03:08 | Permalink

Thank goodness, the Creator of Worlds is back online. He is, alas, not so all-powerful.

But when confronted by a skilled humorist who can Photoshop yo' ass till you squeal, I suppose we do need to prostrate ourselves before such a higher being.

Posted by joe at 02:48 | Permalink

Either we need to cut Soros some slack on account of his intellectual honesty, or we need to explore the nuances of political bedfellows.

But, in any case, maybe we can expect Soros to reexamine his priorities:

George Soros denounced filmmaker Michael Moore for using unethical and misleading tactics following a speaking engagement in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on October 19...

In response to a question from Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Peter DeCoursey about fellow Bush-critic Moore, Soros criticized the filmmaker for resorting to inaccuracies "to mislead the American people." Soros emphatically stated, "I am not a fan of Michael Moore."

Inaccuracies? Well it's a relief to know these guys are not nutjobs after all.

Posted by joe at 02:28 | Permalink

Not from me, obviously, as I'm a divider not a uniter. But let the voices of peace have their say:

The Best Way to End the Huge Partisan Divide is a Bloody Civil War

Posted by joe at 02:13 | Permalink

I'd like to position this as opposition research, but really it's just laziness in an excuse to post. I read DailyKos for recreation, just as I read Washington Monthly (which is really not a bad magazine), The Nation (sometimes) and visit Democratic Underground (when I'm drunk).

It is important to know the other side's guys, not so much to know what they're up to, but to know how they think. There are plenty of intelligent, decent progressives who just don't have the right information. They go nutso just as we do, and they, like us, have self-doubt.

If we're going to converse with them - a crazy dream, I'll admit - we need to know where they're coming from.

Herewith, a sampling of consciousness from today's Kos:

Human shielding = label of traitor

Hunger strike = nobody gives a sh*t

Join others in public marches.

Work a few extra hours and donate to a worthy cause or two.

Go to a morgue, grab some corpses & body parts (or skeletal remains), and dump it all on Karl Rove's lawn. (extra points for spraying blood on a mailbox or the Rove family vehicles)

Wipe your fecal filth on a sheet of paper, and mail it to a Senator that voted for the war. Just don't lick the envelope. If they DNA trace the filth to you, just hand them a list of all the public places you sometimes take a crap at.

Remember, you can never go wrong with dead fish. Infiltrate U.S. gov't offices of war promoters with enough dead fish, and people will listen. Probably not for long, but you'll accomplish alot more than a human shield or hunger striker.

Or, get a couple pickpockets together, and plant things on war promoters. Instead of taking stuff from pockets, put embarrassing stuff in:

Pornography, marijuana, phone numbers for hookers, internet addresses for bondage and gay sex sites, pictures of their best friends' wives, used womens' panties (their wives will just love finding those), tablets of Viagra taped to modeling pictures of young girls, tablets of Viagra taped to pictures of their wives' best friends (with times/dates written on the back), small copies of the Koran, crossed-off lists of people who recently died mysteriously and/or violently, pages from the Anarchist Cookbook, vials of innocuous liquid with labels torn-off (best if matched with unwrapped hypodermic), fake plane tickets for Iran/North Korea/Saudi Arabia, a bloody knife, ok, wow, I need to stop.

For maximum effect, get such things into their pockets just before they go thru security checkpoints. :)

You get the picture. Human shielding or hunger striking aren't going to accomplish anything unless it's in massively large groups. There are many forms of resistance, and many legal ways to bring attention to the actions of war promoters and ways to make their reputations suffer with very little risk to yourself.

This one dips into religion:

Ann Coulter is speaking in Tucson tonight (the repub's demanded 'equal time' from the UofA for bringing in Michael Moore). Saw four cars in a row with pro-Bush stickers and then I had to stop looking lest I got too upset/sad. Then it started raining. And it got really cold. (Like cold cold. Not just 'you're in Tucson and you're wusses' cold) And I saw the cold, miserable (in spirit and in body, methinks) masses waiting to get into the talk, most without umbrellas and most without coats. And I got some sort of glee out of witnessing their misery. It was like God was looking down on them and just telling them to fuck off.

It was good.

This one goes a little further:

From the article that Jones wrote: Don'tcha know that a recent Gallup poll shows that 42% of Americans identify themselves as 'born again'?

If that's accurate, that's a truly frightening statistic. Almost half of Americans are fundamentalist Christians who interpret the Bible literally? Good grief....

---

I've heard that 42% figure quoted a few times. It would explain why the worst president in US history still has a rock-solid base of over 40% support. And aren't new "mega-churches" springing up all the time? Although I fully expect Kerry to win on Nov. 2nd, if the evangelical virus keeps spreading it's going to be more and more difficult for the "reality-based community" to hold back the fundamentalist tide in subsequent elections. Whatever happened to the Enlightenment in the US?

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I tend to agree with Toffler's idea of future shock; that our society has advanced so quickly, there's a large group of people that are reaching out to fundamentalist religions as a sort of reactionary stabalizing force. In the United States where our education system is less than exemplary, those reactionary tendencies are probably increased simply because ignorance breeds fear and distrust. To grapple with rapid social and technological change, people are reaching out for anything that they feel will give their lives meaning and purpose; they see salvation in some invisible, omnicient father-figure and a strict interpretation of "the truth" (be it the Bible or the Koran) rather than where it truly lies: within themselves...

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But surely the most rapid social and technological change in recent years has occurred in the blue/reality-based states, ie. the big cities. Or are they still suffering "future shock" from the 1960s/Civil Rights era? Televangelism must also have a lot to answer for in terms of how organized/politicized/angry they have become.

Whatever the explanation, if the fundamentalists keep on expanding and growing ever more extreme and vitriolic, how long can it be before someone on one side or the other suggests splitting the country in two?

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The problem with fundamentalism, be it Christian, Muslim or whatever, is that by its nature it asserts that it and it alone expresses the fundamental truth of our existance and relationship to a deity. There is no wiggle room in a fundamentalist religion. There are no grey areas. You believe, or you do not. You are "saved" or you are not. There is no reason, no rational agument to challenge the belief system of a fundamentalist because fundamentalism decries all reason and asserts faith above all else. In many people, it promotes this false sense of assurity where they know what they are doing is right because they believe that their god has told them it is so, and therefore it must be.

And this one is a little more revealing on the topic of the day:

I just heard a rehash of a America vs. The Terrorist line Bushco has been serving since 9/11 and just heard it again tonight on Paula Zaun and it has been eating my brain since and I just need to get a handle of what are real thinking/ feeling Americans' attitude about this.

It is this whole neo-con propaganda campaign about terrorists hating democracy and our way of life.

I mean, I know this works well with White closet racists and the uneducated hillbillies who need someone to interpret the meaning of life to them, but does mainstream America really believe we were attacked on 9/11 because the Arabs/ Muslims/ Terrorists really hate us because women can vote or go to the mall without a chaperone?

What about the effects of the WTO and the World Bank on third world countries. Or, what about 60 years of repression of the Palestinians. Or Western imperialism in the Middle East.

Any conservative with an informed opinion on the topic could take the above paragraphs and in 15 seconds use the material given to hit the ball out of the park. The case is: You've got it exactly backward, my friend.

At least there's a place to begin a conversation.

Posted by joe at 01:56 | Permalink

How many of us graduated from National Lampoon and Firesign Theatre into the rough-and-tumble world of late 20th-century humor under the stewardship of Mr. Funny Majordomo, Dave Barry? All of us, I think.

Well, all things must pass. Dave is taking a time out for the first time ever.

Dave Barry, The Herald's humor columnist for the past 20 years, said Tuesday that he will take an indefinite leave of absence from the newspaper. He may return in a year.

Herald editors wish Barry were making it up...

Barry intends to stay in South Florida with his wife, Herald sports writer Michelle Kaufman, and their 4-year-old daughter, Sophie, and will continue to write humor and children's books. He also plans to finish filming on the screen adaptation of his book, Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys, which stars John Cleese as a British expert on 'guydom' and Barry as himself.

Sundays won't be the same. Adios, Mr. Language Person. May the road rise up to meet you, but not in a threatening manner.

Posted by joe at 01:07 | Permalink

I've never live blogged anything, mainly because at my formal "home" I can't easily sit at a computer connected to the Internet in my living room where the TV is. But here at my hiatus from home, I've got a high speed connection at the kitchen breakfast bar and the TV can be turned to face me.

Therefore I find myself with both a blog interface and the baseball game. Peter Gammons last night said this may be the most anticipated game of all time, so here goes.

10:47 pm - Like all Americans, I am rooting for the Yankees to lose. In the top of the seventh, it looks like the Sox are in good shape. Boston leads, 8 -1.

Note: Johnny Damon sure picked a good day to break out of the slump.

10:49 - Pedro is apparently going to come in next inning. Mueller and Cabrera are on 2nd and 1st with one out.

10:50 - Damon is up again, and Joe Torre has gone to the mound to take Louiza out. COMMERCIAL BREAK.

10:53 - Heredia pitching for NY to Damon. Crucial double play. Time for "God Bless America" by Ronan (Ronin?) Tynan. This guy is a franchise. The crowd goes wild. COMMERCIAL BREAK.

11:00 - Pedro on the mound, immediately gives up a double to Matsui. Glad I'm not a Red Sox fan.

11:03 - Double given up to Bernie Williams. Pedro sure is exciting. 8 - 2 Sox.

11:05 - Single by Lofton. 8 - 3 Sox. Danger, Will Robinson. Lofton on first, one out.

11:07 - "Who's your daddy"? Sorry, I'm not clued in on that one. Olerud up. Careful here, Olerud is good.

11:08 - Lofton steals second. Crowd goes wild.

11:09 - Olerud strikes out on a 95-mph fastball. Good. 2 down. Cairo (non-Egyptian-looking) up.

11:12 - Cairo flies out, end of inning. COMMERCIAL BREAK.

11:13 - Viagra commercial glorifies sex as "racy." How desperate as a gender we must be.

11:14 - I want to see Team America.

11:15 - Top of the 8th. Holy crap, Bellhorn homers to lead off. 9 - 3 Sox. The Red Sox offense must remember last year. They are taking no chances and came to play.

11:18 - Ortiz flies out and Jeter catches ball with his back to home plate. Histrionic.

11:20 - Yankee dugout is glum. Good. Varitek flies out. 9 - 3 Sox.

11:24 - "Yankees are on the verge of a colossal (spell check? we don't need no stinkin' spell check!) collapse." Timlin pitching for Boston in bottom of the 8th. Jeter thrown out at first after starting with 3-0 count.

11:28 - Mike Bloomberg looks glum too. I'm conflicted, but not enough to obsess about. A-Rod just struck out. Yay, Timlin! Two down.

11:30 - Sheffield is too spazzy. And now he's out too. Let's go to the 9th. COMMERCIAL BREAK.

11:32 - "I can see for miles" is a light bulb commercial. I'm waiting for Springsteen to be set to Alpo ads. "The dogs on main street howl, cause they understand..."

11:35 - Top of the 9th. Damon says about last year "You can never forget." Damn right. First Sox batter singles (who? sorry, I looked away). Mientkeivich (spell check? etc...) singles. Men on 1st and 2nd, nobody out. Mueller sac fly, Sox on 1st and 3rd, one out. Cabrera up. Damon on deck.

11:42 - Cabrera sac fly, Trot Nixon scores from 3rd. 10 - 3 Sox. Joe Torre goes to mound to bring in Mariano Rivera to face Johnny Damon. Big whoop. COMMERCIAL BREAK.

11:46 - Some moron Yankee fan threw Damon's pop foul ball from the upper deck down onto the field at Damon. Not too cool. Damon strikes out. COMMERCIAL BREAK.

11:50 - Bottom of the 9th. 10 -3 Sox. Yankees up. Timlin pitching. Matsui singles to right.

11:52 - In desperate straits, Yankees don't even bother to wear rally caps. Is that class, or is that ennui? Another baseball thrown onto filed. Could this get ugly?

11:54 - Timlin goes to 3-2 on Bernie Williams, nobody out, man on first. Williams grounds into fielder's choice. Man on 1st, one out.

11:55 - Posada pops out to second. Oh my, this could be big. 2 down in the bottom of the 9th.

11:56 - Kenny Lofton up against Timlin in historic at bat. Timlin goes to 2-0.

11:57 - 3-0. Now Timlin has walked Lofton. Boston manager Terry Francona goes to the mound with Olerud coming up. Embry coming up to pitch for Boston. COMMERCIAL BREAK.

11:58 - AFLAC commercial: Yogi Berra, despite a career based on a parody of himself, has now become a parody of himself. You shoulda' quit while you were ahead Yogi, then you wouldn't have kept on going.

12:01 - Ground ball, Pokey Reese makes the put out from second. THE BOSTON RED SOX HAVE WON THE PENNANT. What a comeback. "The biggest in baseball postseason history." First team to come back from a 3-0 deficit. The crowd goes wild.

12:05 - Damon says "Never count us out." That reflects what I consider the height of sports achievement as a team. Nice work, guys, and thanks for three very exciting nights of baseball.

12:16 - Joe Torre is a class act. "We weren't trying to keep the Red Sox from going to the World Series, we were trying to go to the World Series, and we just didn't get it done."

Is the Curse of the Bambino lifted? I hope so; I think "curses" are so bogus.

Posted by joe at 10:58 | Permalink

...because the barriers to entry are just too damn high. The market is dominated (make sure sound is on) and I can only imagine any newcomers would end up with a foot on their neck, and bleating "I am a little girl. I am a little girl!"

Nah, I don't need that. I'm still chafing from the humiliation of the time I tried to re-enact a Buckley-Muggeridge interview at a party and accidentally fell asleep. No more public attempts at wit from me.

Posted by joe at 10:36 | Permalink

This is from MEMRI but it also holds a lesson for us:

Lebanese Progressive Intellectual: 'The Calamities of Contemporary Arab Culture are Largely Due to the Egyptian Media and Intellectual Community'

The Egyptian media and the Egyptian intellectual community are both largely responsible for promoting the political and military dictatorship represented by the regime of [Gamal ] Abd-Al Nasser and subsequent regimes. Both promoted the deification of 'the leader,' 'the hero,' 'the commander,' 'the [historic] necessity,' 'the gate-keeper' who can never do wrong...

The Egyptian media and the Egyptian intellectual community are largely the primary causes of the plight of the Palestinians, through their emotional, irrational, unrealistic, bewailing, populistic, and sloganistic positions toward the Palestinian Intifadas, from which the Palestinians have gained nothing but losses...

The Egyptian media and the Egyptian intellectual community are among the primary causes of the alarming proliferation of the gnats, mosquitoes, and viruses of terrorism, which has placed the Arabs at the basest level and on the lowest rung of progress, civilization, and human treatment of various issues...

Have you heard the views of the Egyptian intellectuals about what happened in the catastrophe of September 11, 2001? The most prominent of them, [Muhammad Hassanein] Haykal, the one who taught them witchcraft, [3] said that this was the work of the Serbs. Fahmi Huweidi, their learned jurist, said that this was the work of the Mossad...

It's a fascinating piece with much more than what's excerpted above.

As Berger and Luckmann said, reality is in a sense socially constructed. The sky may not actually be purple, but with enough clever advertising, academic analysis, network news discussion and celebrity endorsement it could be made to seem so.

None of us can possibly know the objective truth about every issue, if for no other reasons than because we are limited by time and space and we cannot see into the hearts of others, and therefore some information must be accepted on faith. The sheer reach of modern communications technology - making messages so much more ubiquitous than, say, the pamphlets and tracts of the Middle Ages ever did - means the data we must accept on faith is also being broadcast to and accepted on faith by a massive number of other people.

What can we say about our own media and intellectual community? Well, you don't have to be an Arab to be woefully misinformed: Even here in America, when someone in a position of influence is selling a load of crap, a whole bunch of folks end up with a pocketful. Even otherwise smart people can get taken in, if the message is slick enough, even though objectively the message is nothing more than hokum.

Thus we have the odd phenomenon of "progressive" ideology which somehow bends its humanistic values depending on whether the humans in question serve the proper political purposes of the Left. Progressives are not all idiots by a long shot, but they can be myopic to the point of self-contradiction.

One would think there would be extensive praise from the Left for the huge human rights advance that has been accomplished for the vast majority of Iraqis. But there is not.

One might guess that liberals would be fiercely in favor of any action to oppose fundamentalist Islamic cultural practices:

In June 2002, the police say, members of a high-status tribe sexually abused one of Mukhtaran's brothers and then covered up their crime by falsely accusing him of having an affair with a high-status woman. The village's tribal council determined that the suitable punishment for the supposed affair was for high-status men to rape one of the boy's sisters, so the council sentenced Mukhtaran to be gang-raped.

But, alas, liberal support for women's rights makes a generous exception for women in Muslim societies. It would seem logical that progressives in the West would be the foremost champions of progressives fighting for change within Islam, but it's not about logic.

Progressives are among the most strident critics of any suggestion of improvement in the lives of the Afghan people and, really, the entire war against the Islamic fascists. Even though the goals of these activities and accomplishments so far would appear to harmonize with progressive values, those on the Left paint the entire picture as an unmitigated disaster and only highlight the military failures. Why is this?

A big portion of the crap-pile is the notion that ultimately the 'War on Terror' is tilting at windmills - a mythical battle.

As Kathleen Parker observes most astutely, those who believe the lies see the world in a completely different way:

The nation is essentially divided into two cinematic camps: (1) those who believe that America�s story was best told in Michael Moore�s 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' and (2) those who think Peter Jackson pretty much captured the essence of current events in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, based on J.R.R. Tolkien�s literary masterpiece of the same name.

In Moore/Kerry metro-blue-state world, Bush is a moron and the War on Terror, especially the war in Iraq, is a tall tale told by an idiot. In Tolkien/Bush retro-red-state world, we are in a global struggle against Mordor�s Orcs (radical Islam�s terrorists) to save Western civilization.

The entire discussion of why the Left seems so willing to whitewash Islamic radicalism often centers on the subject of anti-Americanism in both camps. There may be some truth to this. But I think another reason consists of the lying ideologies afflicting both. This should not be interpreted as suggesting any kind of moral equivalence between American progressives and al Qaeda, but rather of the power of false ideology and how it can make smart, decent Americans believe silly things.

Posted by joe at 08:15 | Permalink

From e-mail. Military sense of humor is alive and well - check out the black patch and below:

Posted by joe at 06:24 | Permalink

I'm hoping this is one of those scare stories that turns out to be false but calculated to make you spew coffee out of your nose, slam the cup on the table and scream "Outrage!" From Internet Haganah:

DAMASCUS, Syria -- The head of a visiting U.S. Presbyterian Church delegation called on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories and said Monday that his church is studying the possibility of withholding investments to increase pressure on Israel....

The 24-member delegation traveled to Lebanon on Sunday and met with the south Lebanon commander of Hezbollah, a group Washington calls terrorist but Lebanon sees as a legitimate resistance movement against Israeli occupation of Arab lands.

As a budding Presbyterian, this offends me not because I believe Israel holds a special place in biblical prophecy. I don't. It does not offend me because I expect more from the mainline Presbyterian leadership. I don't, and the church I am affiliated with broke with the Presbyterian mainline years ago.

It offends me for the simple reason that these ostensibly "religious" ambassadors are meeting with TERRORISTS. This seems to be a quintessential example of the thoroughgoing moral blindness and hypocrisy of the modern Left. Even the spiritual leaders are morally corrupt - yet they don't even realize it and they go about their sordid business under the rubric of human rights.

No wonder they're in trouble.

Posted by joe at 09:35 | Permalink

I'm going to stipulate that henceforth everything I write will be worthless to the vast majority of visitors to this site. But to those who are living with cats, perhaps - just perhaps - there will be a lesson in all of this. And so I continue unabashedly.

To recap: I became aware about two months ago that I could not breathe through my nose. Also, I was annoyed, and the annoyance manifested itself as an itching sensation on all exposed skin as well as within the breathing apparatus. Much sneezing ensued. On top of all that, I was generally pissed off all the time, especially when the three cats who shared my small living quarters exfoliated in my general direction.

I went to an allergist doctor, who determined I was uniquely allergic to cats, so much so that the advice I was given was, "Damn you, man, get rid of the cats!" In addition, I learned that the cat allergies had been causing mild depression for many years, resulting in the crankiness which is the raison de etre of this blog you are now reading.

Being as how the women I live with, who own said cats, view said cats as integral members of the family, I could not easily press for their removal. Indeed, even suggesting their removal evoked piteous cries of anguish.

This left me with the choice of riding out the physical afflictions to myself, or leaving my household in a state of wailing grief. I chose to tell the womenfolk, "You can keep your cats, and I will seek medical treatment so as to use my nose again."

Well, the meds worked nosewise, but opening up my breathing passages totally exacerbated the allergy situation. Instead of feeling blocked sinuses, I now felt a burning, polluted sensation every time I breathed. The entire house smelled toxic. My lungs and throat burned, and eventually I developed an overwhelming weakness in the neck and throat muscles.

When I woke up this past Saturday unable to move my head, I was compelled for reasons of survival to move myself out of the house to an "extended stay" motel operation. And here I sit: finally able to breathe again, and spending money on accomodations. This is not money wisely spent, by a long shot. It's money down a rathole, really. But after two days I can breathe again without the assistance of the hideous, mind-infesting meds that were given me to allow me to exist among the cats.

The visit to the doctor today was enlightening: My head and neck problems are not the result of infection, but appear to be the result of extended muscular stress. Apparently, I was unconsciously tweaking with every breath, and the cumulative effect was to strain the muscles in my neck to the point that they could no longer do their job.

The doctor's order was 1) you cannot live with cats, and 2) you need to relax those muscles. He gave me pain killers and muscle relaxers. It worked, and I can turn my head again.

So now I'm sitting in a motel, breathing nicely, able to rotate the head at about a 90 degree angle in either direction, and wondering how I will ever be able to move back into my house which is a cesspool of dander and fur.

There is no clean resolution to this situation. All I can say is, if you sneeze when a cat invades your personal space, then by all means do not bring cats into your home. The repercussions are just too great.

Posted by John Climacus at 12:57 | Permalink

Oh jeez, I'm not even going to sully this by quoting from it. Just go read it and do not do so with liquids in your mouth. A tiny hint:

"Then there is the new Bush advertisement," Hume said.

On screen was the face of Donald Rumsfeld, his face covered in shadows. "I know where you live," Rumsfeld growled before the screen faded to black.

"What's interesting about this ad," Hume stated, "is that the Bush campaign doesn't have to pay for it since it's labeled a public service ad. Is that appropriate?"

Enjoy. Thank goodness for the others who provide such fulfilling entertainment, so I don't have to.

Posted by joe at 12:46 | Permalink

After a week of increasing discomfort to the point of apparent incoherance evidenced in the last post, I woke up yesterday morning unable to move my head more than a few degrees in any direction, and the feeling things were getting worse with every breath. No more agonizing: I moved out.

I also left behind ALL the medications - man, screw that noise. That stuff was brutally disorienting.

Yes, obviously I will be seeing the doctor tomorrow. I think it's some type of infection or inflammation. But I know he's going to ask about the circumstances leading up to it, and I would have to explain I've diagnosed as extremely allergic and that I also live surrounded by the allergens. I suspect he'd demand I do something about that. I didn't move out to anticipate the doctor, though: I did it to stay alive. Cat allergies are serious sh*t.

The owners of the allergens, back at the ranch, can decide what the next, long-term, step is, whether that be a bigger house, removal of cats, or something more severe.

I woke up today in the new digs still bothered by the neck problems, but able to breathe a deep breath for the first time in weeks. It's a little difficult to orient myself in front of the keyboard so this is all for now.

Posted by John Climacus at 03:47 | Permalink

Tough situation. Only you, my treasured surfer, are privy to it. Before you boogie in favor of those competent few who have so much more going on, I submit the following for your consideration.

There appears to be a bona fide medical problem related to the cat situation.

Let me describe what's up. It's a deep irritation that spreads from the back of the neck to the front, from the rear part of the skull to the throat, from the top of the collarbone to the tips of the ears. Is it an infection? I do not know. But it is not easy to deal with.

I don't care about the complaints; I just want t0 do a good job for the people in my neigherhood:

I just want to survive in the midst of cats.

Posted by John Climacus at 02:17 | Permalink

The previous post left off the stunning statement late Wed. night by Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill that the Cheneys' daughter was "fair game" - confirming once again that fatigue is an excellent truth serum.

For the Democrats this election, everything will be fair game. I met with some political folks last night and the voter fraud and 25,000 lawyers were a major topic of conversation. Progressives are pretty ruthless anyway, as we