the UNPOPULIST

2005-05-07T19:00:00.000-05:00

As of this post, the UNPOPULIST has taken up residence on TYPEPAD.

2004-11-07T14:40:00.000-06:00

Will our Theocrats stop at nothing?

Technical Buschwa

2004-11-07T01:06:00.000-06:00

HTML problems in certain posts have been killing blogger lately, and according to reports my site has been timing out and even freezing browsers.

I'm working on it. Certain award-winning peices may disappear for a time. You'll live, I can only assume.

This will all culminate, momentarily, in the UNPOPULIST migrating to a better service. I will continue to post dutifully until then.

Technical advice (encouragement, gainsaying, etc) is of course warmly welcome.

Enjoy the Sunday.

UPDATE: Offending post summarily expurgated. New home warming toward grand opening.

Now It's All Coming Together

2004-11-06T01:52:00.000-06:00

The Left is finally reaching a consensus about who they'd rather fight than terrorists.

Christian extremists mostly talk amongst themselves, and it would help galvanize liberals to actually hear the way they talk more often.
Last night I wrote a post suggesting that there were some cultural conservatives we could reason with, and there were some we couldn't. This is an example of the latter. Our job isn't to compromise with these guys in any way, it's to persuade a majority of our fellow citizens to reject their brand of theocratic hatred. Publicizing their spittle flecked rantings is a good way to start.

Now, let me just...okay:

Nov. 2, 2004, is the Left's 9/11.

Fundamentalist Christian Leaders are bin Laden, Bush is the Taliban--"Theocrats" all.

And we, who on Nov. 2 bludgeoned the Nance and all the nances he is supposed to represent (23% of whom voted Bush, BTW) --WE are the Arab Street. That's why we're such idiots, see. Really, ours is a different stripe of terror, since we prosecute our mass-murders by way of due electoral process.

Sly, I know. It's sort of a straw-man for the twenty-first century.

Food for thought, though: It is really quite something what the Left can come up with when a Republican manages to keep blood-drinking fascists out of their hair for a healthy ammount of time.

And no matter how tempted any moonpie ever is to abandon the moon villiage, Drum and his ilk will be standing there ready, saying: "If you leave now, the (Bush) terrorists win."

2004-11-06T01:02:00.000-06:00

UPDATE

Related:

CHIN UP.

We're smarter than those motherfuckers.
We can learn more quickly than those motherfuckers.
We can be more ruthless than those motherfuckers.
We can be some six-million-dollar motherfuckers ourselves.

Chin up.
We're more American than those motherfuckers.
We're more responsible than those motherfuckers.
We're more compassionate than those motherfuckers.
Hell, our atheists are more Christian than their Bible-thumpin' motherfuckers.

There's an election in two years.
There's nothing we can't do.

Chin up.
Because it's on, motherfuckers.
It is on.

Really applicable to "motherfuckers" off all walks of life, I think. It's sort of like The Battle Hymn of the Republic, if your the type who likes to scrape your forearms with broken glass and paint out Battle Hymn of the Republic lyrics on the walls of your bedroom.

(thanks Treacher)

Name That Playboy

2004-11-05T21:07:00.000-06:00

"I think it is, by and large, a mistake for our party to sit around and ... whine about this and that or the other thing"
...
"If we let people believe that our party doesn't believe in faith and family, doesn't believe in work and freedom, that's our fault"...

...
"The Republicans had a clear message, a good messenger, great organization and great strategy," he said. "The Republicans did a better job of turning out those who were already registered who hadn't voted" as well as bringing out their base, he said.

...
"I hope that we'll be able to diminish the culture war, not by getting people to give up what they think is right and wrong, but by getting them to listen to one another and look at one another as people again, and not as cartoons."

...

If Bush can broker a peace agreement, as Clinton did in 2000, fighting for Palestinian statehood would no longer motivate Islamic fundamentalist terrorists worldwide, he said.
...
"They would have to think of a new excuse to murder people," he said.

Hint: If he said enough stuff of this quality all the time, I would go down on him.

Unfortunate he doesn't.

Ad Mortem

2004-11-05T19:38:00.000-06:00

The Tragical Historie of Kerry '04

Fun.

But it occurs to me that I cannot respond to this article without repeating myself. So see below.

What's Old Is New Again

2004-11-05T19:23:00.000-06:00

With the finality of the election percolating around opinion media right now, I am inspired to resurrect a very old award-winning article--the UNPOULIST's foruth ever post. Only now, post-mortem, can its transformative prescience be truly felt.

I give you:

John Kerry's Penis Head

I'll admit I've started thinking I might like John Kerry. Not like, but feel for, I think: like that moldering, never-was Oscar Wilde-type, who was smart, and capable of being funny, arguably, and was appreciated by intellectually unserious people, but was serious himself, never clearly tested his capabilities and so never confirmed their existence, whatever they were supposed to be for, remained rather morose and thoughtful indefinitely, never had a clue what he was really supposed to be doing with himself besides what HIS STATION MEANT, which of course he could never take seriously--that good-looking booksmart late-twenty something that no one pays attention to anymore, the unbloomed late-bloomer--that decade-ago carousing partner you just can't BRING YOURSELF to catch up with.

You know who I'm talking about. Hamlet, l'effete? Hamlet without the dumb play, the three brutal murders, the speeches. The Contemplator, superhero of precisely no superpowers. You know, the most tragic, least relevant person you can think of?

I'm starting to think, yeah, that's Kerry.

So Kerry looks at me and says, I just want a chance to finally figure out what I'm doing in public life. And I shake my head, because I just have to, and I say,

"Man,

I want nothing to do you."

Intellectual insecurity is understandable, in fact; it's perfectly natural or it's pandemic, one or the other, though it will be cured in none of our lifetimes. That insecurity, though, applied, is what we call inaction. And in that light John Kerry's abscence from John Kerry's career over the last quarter decade makes a lot of sense. So does John Kerry's abscence from any one John Kerry utterance.

The lude straddling--Kerry's gaggingly inept multipicity of postures--the burlesque is quite normal, I'm thinking, for somebody who has not gotten over the hump of deciding what to do when and if he grows up--isn't that is the most frequent and fundamental puzzlement of any well-off dandy?

So it's understandable. Indefinite puzzlement is understandable. What it's not is ELECTABLE. (What's the old saying? "John Kerry is Unelectable.") We all love Rodin, we all love "the Thinker," but we would swoon a little buyer's remorse, I'm guessing, if we elected the Thinker and when something large and beloved dissappeared from the face of the Earth we couldn't get the Thinker of his ass short a jackhammer. I think we miss Rodin a little if we don't recognize that all the thinker has done for the past 120 years is sit and stare. Is the sculptor not laughing at him just a little?

So I get John Kerry, I think, but I can't possibly accept that he's seriously asking me for the keys to the battleships. I know he just wants the gestalt, the snappy dialogue; he wants the sunsets.

John Kerry's penis head belongs to a very complicated woman, I'm told. I'm thinking it's affixed to something too complicated to be president.

I Have Arrived

2004-11-05T19:01:00.000-06:00

#1 on google for what word?

You guessed it.

UDPATE: All we are is dust in the wind.

AAaaaah!

2004-11-05T11:35:00.000-06:00

Okay, what I want is to stop talking about the elections for five minutes, but...JESUS CHRIST, did anynody catch this yesterday?

Shortly after Florida had been painted red for Mr. Bush, Fox News declared that Ohio--and, very likely, the presidency--was in Republican hands. Howard Wolfson, a [Kerry] strategist, burst into the "boiler room"...and said, "we have 30 seconds" to stop the other networks from following suit. The campaign's pollster, Mark Mellman, and the renowned organizer Michael Whouley quickly dialed ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC--and all but the last refrained from calling the race through the night.

They even got bonus oral sex treatment from Dan, who could shut the fuck up about it being the closest election in history (which it wasn't by half), and of course the magic provisional ballots waiting to pull it out for Kerry (which, of course, they couldn't).

(via the Corner)

And from Ratherbiased we get Rather turning on Dippity Dog #2 for daring to employ a calculator.

If %80 of the provisional ballots go Democrat, says Bradley, the democrats will make up only 140,000 votes, and that's still not enough.

"So what are you telling us?" Dan asks, daring Ed Bradley to "agree with Karl Rove."

"Based on these numbers," Ed says meekly, "after the provisional ballots have been counted, Bush will have won."

Dan, verbatim:

"We shall see."

Arafat and the Boys

2004-11-05T02:19:00.000-06:00

Reader/critic Patton points us here, a World Net round-up of the scant--though indeed scandalous--details of Yassar Arafat's "mysterious" illness.

Now I can't get naked Yassar off my mind. Thanks Patton.

Anyway, this is something that struck me since just before the election:

Bush and Sharon effectively have persuaded foreign leaders to disregard Arafat because of his direct involvement in terrorism and failure to make peace for his people. Many have agreed that a second Bush term would be the final nail in Arafat's political coffin.

No, that is not a deft metaphor of any kind, but what's actually happening is.

Bush's reelection represents and is the death of so much geriatric tyranny: Arafat, Castro, CARTER--history is punctuating their real and figurative longed-for demises with America's assured embrace of a different kind of leader. An American kind. Not only have we reembraced George Bush this November, I think we've reaffirmed our affinity for Ronald Reagan as well, the embodied refutation of all three of the old men dying this month.

It really is just such good news.

Some Lefty Grace

2004-11-04T22:08:00.000-06:00

This statement I like:

It was not a landslide, or a re-alignment, or even a seismic shock. But it was decisive, and it is impossible to read President Bush’s re-election with larger Republican majorities in both houses of Congress as anything other than the clearest confirmation yet that this is a center-right country - divided yes, but with an undisputed majority united behind his leadership.

Is it a trend? Probably not, I guess.

All anybody all television can talk about is that "morality" emphasis among Bush voters. Hardly a herring worth deboning. Maybe later.

ALSO: If anybody can tell me where I found this quote, I would love to know. The article is from the Times, obviously, but I saw it excerpted somewhere, the window got closed at some point, and I haven't had enough sleep to decide whether leaving it up is blog-ethical.

Here's hoping.

2004-11-04T21:43:00.000-06:00

Jeez, Osama has spent a lot of time in that cave.

RUN!!

2004-11-04T18:53:00.000-06:00

Blair notes a good omen:
Mr Moore has publicly called for Hillary Clinton to enter the 2008 presidential race, and is now expected to turn his attentions to supporting her.
MIKEY LOVE LITTLE WOMAN....

MIKEY PET...

MIKEY PET...

SQUISH, SQUISH, SQUISH, SQUISH...

Re: An Instant Classic

2004-11-04T14:06:00.000-06:00

Now that the election's over, I insist you go back and watch this again.

It's getting me all emotional today.

Arafat Is Dead

2004-11-04T13:27:00.000-06:00

Probably.

Hopefully.

UPDATE: Had anybody gotten wind of the Arafat AIDS rumor? Frum mentioned it last week and I'd forgotten about it.

Kos to Burn Self in Street, Stamp and Sing Over Own Flaming Self, Decorate Bridge With Self, 'Screw' Self

2004-11-04T02:40:00.000-06:00

Though Democratic sanity continues to simmer:

No, Kos, you ignorant tool. The problem isn't the message machine; it's that the core activists in the Democratic Party have managed to walk away from the values that most people in this country hold, and persist in looking at the electorate as if it's the one with the problems. The majority of people in this country don't want gays put in camps, they don't want a theocracy, they don't believe in 'shoot first, talk later'. And as long as you believe they do, you'll lose, and you'll take my party with you.

Fake story here. Real story here.

(Thanks Treacher)

Gotterdammerung

2004-11-03T23:51:00.000-06:00

You know, yeah, the Democrat's fuddlement is amusing, it's reassuring, it's just. But eventually I'm gonna stop laughing about it, because eventually--as soon as possible, in fact--the Democratic Party needs to figure out how to start contributing to, you know, Republican Democracy.

Check out the atrophy (ripped from Aaron's Rantblog):

Washington - 140,000 DOWN TO 120,000. 14% less blue.
California - 1.3M DOWN TO 1M. MUCH less blue. 300,000 votes less blue.
Hawaii - 68,000 DOWN TO 37,000. MUCH less blue. HALF as blue.
Michigan - 220,000 DOWN TO 165,000. LESS blue, about 25%
Delaware - 43,000 DOWN TO 27,000. 37% less blue.
Maryland - 330,000 DOWN TO 280,000. Less blue. 15% less blue.
Pennsylvania - 200,000 DOWN TO 122,000. 39% less blue.
New Jersey - 500,000 DOWN TO 212,000. MUCH less blue. 288,000 votes less blue. 58% less blue.
New York - 1.7M DOWN TO 1.2M. MUCH less blue. Half a million votes less blue. 29% less blue.
Connecticutt - 255,000 DOWN TO 160,000. MUCH less blue. 37% less blue.
Rhode Island - 119,000 DOWN TO 86,000. Less blue. 28% less blue.

The Democrats gained big in Minnesota, Vermont, and the People's Republic of Oregon. ZERO Republican strongholds. Above, of course, you see major Bush swells all over both coasts.

Now, how much of this simply reflects the deep sympatico half the country seems to have with Bush, and how much reflects the spectrum of unelectable modifiers embodied by Senator Kerry? Well...I guess probably a big helping of both.

That's not the point. The point is this is who the Democrats nominated in a time of war. The point is this Democratic Party lacked the vision and almost completely the resources to make a better choice--for us and for its own fortunes.

One question posed by the Republican sweep yesterday is how long will it take for a moderate contingent within the Democratic Party to organize itself, and begin dismantling it's virulent one?

I say 8 years minimum. And I'm not rejoicing for that number, I think it sucks.

I Had a Harper's Subscription

2004-11-03T23:36:00.000-06:00

Then they found out my parents were married:

Should one candidate win, those who opposed the Iraq war might hope to find refuge in France, where a very select few are allowed to “assimilate” each year. Assimilation is reserved for persons of non-French descent who are able to prove that they are more French than American, having mastered the language as well as the philosophy of the French way of life. Each case is determined on its own merit, and decisions are made by the Ministère de l’Emploi, du Travail, et de la Cohésion Social. When your name is published in the Journal Officiel de la République Français, you are officially a citizen, and may thereafter heckle the United States with authentic Gallic zeal.

Mm, yes, hilarious.

It's "A reader’s guide to expatriating on November 3."

Harper's does provide a valuable service, I think, putting in a very small space everything you hate about the rich, educated, and supposedly well-meaning.

From goat-reactionary Politburo

2004-11-03T23:04:00.000-06:00

A Good Point About Exit Polling:

The networks used the exit polls more carefully than previously; the biggest impact was to hold some red states as too-close-to-call for an extra hour. Next time, they will be even more cautious. In other words, they will rely more and more on the accumulated raw vote. Sounds good to me. Also, the liberal commentators at the networks used the flawed exit poll data to put a pro-Kerry spin on the early numbers. Big deal. Would anything stop them? They would simply find something else to use. And now that the tool is so discredited, they'll have to more creative next time around anyway.

Similarly, before this election, I was really having trouble with all those prophecies of an arduous monthlong vote-disputing nightmare. Wait, I quizzled, this isn't just gonna be the most hotly contested election "in history" (which it wasn't) it's going to be the most closely monitored.

And, look Ma, no recount.

More of Kerry's Thing With Freud

2004-11-03T22:49:00.000-06:00

Kerry's Fonzyish "Can you believe 'dis?" post-failure message arrived today. It incuded this bit of oddness:

"Earlier today I spoke to President Bush, and offered him and Laura our congratulations on their victory."

Is this protocol, or does Kerry have husband-wife issues? Is he envisioning Bush in the inverse situation, going, "Earlier today I conceded victory to Senator Kerry and the estate of Senator Heinz" ? Or am I being an ass?

Your call.

This Year's Hot Chistmas Buy

2004-11-03T22:34:00.000-06:00

A collectable, of all things.

Going fast...

(thanks Instapundit)

Kos Breaks it Down

2004-11-03T19:45:00.000-06:00

Chastened by 48 hours of extreme drama and passion, Zuniga issues humble verdict:

Now we come at last to the heart of darkness. Now we know, from their own words, that the Bush Regime is a cult -- a cult whose god is Power, whose adherents believe that they alone control reality, that indeed they create the world anew with each act of their iron will. And the goal of this will -- undergirded by the cult's supreme virtues of war, fury and blind faith -- is likewise openly declared: "Empire"...

For Bush, as for Mao, "discernible reality" has no meaning: Political, cultural, economic, scientific truth -- even the fundamental processes of nature, even human nature itself -- must give way to the faith-statements of ideology, ruthlessly applied by unbending zealots.

This isn't politics as usual -- not even an extreme version of it, not McCarthyism revisited, Reaganism times two, or Nixon in a Stetson hat.

There's never been anything like it in American life before: a messianic cult backed by vast corporate power, a massive cadre of religious zealots, a highly disciplined party, an overwhelming media machine and the mammoth force of history's most powerful government -- all led by men who "create new realities" out of lies, blood, theft and torment.

Their "empire" -- their Death-Cult, their power-mania -- is an old madness rising again.

Jeez, I thought he'd just say something about togetherness.

UPDATE: Actual story--somewhat more mind-wrenching than the above--here.

Christ Almighty

2004-11-03T19:10:00.000-06:00

There's a bunch of stuff I'd like to be linking and discussing right now, but blogger is on fucking life support. Everything is taking for ever. Alot of requests are timing out.

What's the deal?

La Muerte de Zogby

2004-11-03T16:00:00.000-06:00

That Zogby is some closer, he is:

Arizona
Zogby had it +6% for Bush
Final +11% for Bush

Arkansas
Zogby had it +3% for Bush
Final +9% for Bush

Colorado
Zogby had it too close to call
Final +7% for Bush

Florida
Zogby had it +.1% for Kerry and trending Kerry
Final +5% for Bush

Iowa
Zogby had it +5% for Kerry
Final still TBD

Michigan
Zogby had it +6% for Kerry
Final Result +3% for Kerry

Minnesota
Zogby had it +6% for Kerry
Final Result +3% for Kerry

Missouri
Zogby had it +3% for Bush
Final Result +8% for Bush

Nevada
Zogby had it too close to call
Final +3% for Bush

New Hampshire
Zogby had it +5% for Kerry
Final Result +1% for Kerry

New Mexico
Zogby had it +3% for Kerry
Final - still TBD

North Carolina
Zogby had it +3% for Bush
Final +13% for Bush

Oregon
Zogby had it +10% for Kerry
Final Result +5% for Kerry

Ohio
Zogby had it +2% for Bush but trending Kerry
Final TBD

Pennsylvania
Zogby had it trending Kerry
Final Result +3% for Kerry

Tennessee
Zogby had it +4% for Bush
Final +14% for Bush

Virginia
Zogby had it slight edge for Bush
Final +8% for Bush

Washington
Zogby had it +10% for Kerry
Final Result +7% for Kerry

West Virginia
Zogby had it +4% for Bush
Final +14% for Bush

Wisconsin
Zogby had it +6% for Kerry
Final Result +1% for Kerry

This crap took at least a year off Kerry's life. Ridiculous.

Also: Make sure you scroll all the way down to Zogby's shameless "statement."

Apparently it was a "trend" without a "result" that had them so confused.

Sounds confusing.

Morning in America, etc

2004-11-03T14:23:00.000-06:00

The Corner has victory speech highlights. I tuned in a minute late , just caught the extended waving portion. Bush didn't get his 8 hours last night, and you can tell. That is so funny. And more than a little, as the wife always says, "cute."

Congratulations to the President of course. And congratulations to the United States for getting its shit together on an important night.

Now let's go flatten the Sunni Triangle. And get me a Mullah on the phone.

Hats Off

2004-11-03T13:20:00.000-06:00

For the graciousness of his concession, Kerry gets a heavy ammount of credit. No slavering Joe Lockhart last night, either. He was civil, and humble, even before Ohio was certain. Somehow, last night, the fever lifted--and if the finality of the election has somehow restored Joseph Lockhart to decency, that bodes well.

Good for him and good for Kerry and good for us, as if it needs saying, that they steered away from coup.

Were they ever serious about it? Just how crazy did they go in this fight?

Later I hope to have a response from ring-master Terry McAuliffe. I don't want to call sanity to soon.

Kerry to File Suit Against Exit Polls of America

2004-11-03T02:12:00.000-06:00

For pain and suffering. And nothing else.

Bush is the President

2004-11-03T01:50:00.000-06:00

But not by enough yet.

Must nab New Mexico and Wisconsin. Hawaii and Minnesota are lost.

52-48 popular win is good.

Let's put it away.

Done

2004-11-02T22:55:00.000-06:00

Done.

All Part of Rove's Moore/Kitty Kelly Plan

2004-11-02T22:09:00.000-06:00

From Steyn's real-time coverage (no permalink available):

Getting some e-mail to the effect that those "exit polls" predicting 59-41 for Kerry in NH, etc, were a cunning Karl Rove move to sucker the Dems into standing down their legal teams.

Pursuant to this:

Mulling it over, I'm coming to the conclusion that those afternoon "exit polls" reported by Wonkette, a specialist in penis jokes, and Drudge, who should know better, and even some of the later ones look like intentional deception. I'm told the reason the networks didn't call Virginia and the Carolinas is because the exit polls showed Kerry winning them - which is ridiculous but did its job of demoralizing some Republicans. The GOP should know by now that, for their candidates, it's real numbers that count. The "exit polls" is just some artfully layed Dem-media-pollster spin.

Nice to have Steyn with more than his little toe in the blogosphere this evening.

Might as well drop him a line and tell him so.

Vote or Thong

2004-11-02T21:07:00.000-06:00

Malkin with incredible unhippness: "Looks like Diddy will be eating bling-bling pie tonight." Cute, though. The title of the post is funnier.

But this is what you want.

NOTE: So far, nobody's reading the UNPOPULIST tonight. Believe me I understand that better than anybody.

So what I'm doing is spectating. Mostly watching Fox's 2, count 'em, election night broadcasts.

I will return to share in right-leaning triumphalism when the time comes.

Think big. Drink up.

Big Chests

2004-11-02T18:30:00.000-06:00

Florida, Ohio, West Virginia, Uzbekistan, Lesser/Greater Antilles?

ALL BUSH.

Hmm.

(via Ace-o-Spades)

Moore Makes Final Push to Isolate Moderates

2004-11-02T18:12:00.000-06:00

'Lil Mikey's Message For the President:

I know it’s gotta be rough for you right now. Hey, we’ve all been there. “You’re fired” are two horrible words when put together in that order. Bin Laden surfacing this weekend to remind the American people of your total and complete failure to capture him was a cruel trick or treat. But there he was. 3,000 people were killed and he’s laughing in your face. Why did you stop our Special Forces from going after him? Why did you forget about bin Laden on the DAY AFTER 9/11 and tell your terrorism czar to concentrate on Iraq instead?

There he was, OBL, all tan and rested and on videotape (hey, did you get the feeling that he had a bootleg of my movie? Are there DVD players in those caves in Afghanistan?)

...Sure, I know what your pollsters told you, that the film had convinced some people to vote you out. I just want you to know that that was not my original intent. Funny things happen at the movies. Hope you get to see a few at the multiplex in Waco. It’s a great way to relax.

If Michael Moore isn't a Rove plant, then he is dispositive evidence of The Hand Of God.

And God's thing about irony...

(via Beldar)

UNPOPULIST: Late Breaking Trivia

2004-11-02T17:39:00.000-06:00

Via commentor Dylan, over on at Tim Blair:

Bush Takes Guam IN LANDSLIDE:

PRESIDENTIAL RACE
• George W. Bush 17,264
• John Kerry 9,540
• Ralph Nader 153
• Campagna Badnarik 53

The UNPOPULIST's crack wire analysis makes that BUSH 64% KERRY 35%

Guam is the freakin' ballgame, baby.

Six Degrees of GOP Insider

2004-11-02T17:04:00.000-06:00

From a Crush Kerry contact, re: stop panicking.

“Too close to call everywhere it matters,” he told me. “But one thing is certain. The Democrats’ hype regarding voter turnout was a double-edged sword. It infuriated our people and Republicans are voting in huge numbers.”

UPDATE:

Hewitt: "Exit polls are to election nights what food poisoning are to great restaurants."

More good stuff there.

Question: If the initial horrifying numbers were in large part Kerry numbers, just how much was that poison-pill tactic directed specifically at blogs.

And how fucking hard did we swallow?

UPDATE: BTW, Mark Steyn has showed up on the Corner a few times, each time to castigate the exit poll bunnies.

The Gip

2004-11-02T17:01:00.000-06:00

Fucking Awesome.

Definitely worth a viewing.

Thanks Crush Kerry. Go here for large version.

Way to Go TEAM

2004-11-02T16:48:00.000-06:00

Guest blogger at Rottweiler helpfully suggests Kerry be lynched.

Deft.

(thanks Commissar)

2nd District

2004-11-02T16:40:00.000-06:00

Is Bush gonna shave one off in Maine?

Crap, that's gonna ruin my prediction.

UPDATE:

More exit poll fun:

A guy at my office works the phones for the Kerry Northwest campaign (Washington, Oregon, etc.).

Their people are freaking out over exit polls indicating Kerry tied or losing in Oregon.

Plenty of pressure for everyone.

GAZILLIONS DISENFRANCHISED

2004-11-02T16:27:00.000-06:00

Or: "Exit Polls Prejudiced Against Voters of All Races."

Copious early voting. Outrageuos abstentee counts.

2 pm: Tension at "Bearable Stage"

2004-11-02T13:55:00.000-06:00

The Corner has all kinds of panicking conservatives, right now, along with some trembly optimists.

Exit poll craziness nicely summarized by these numbers.

Hugh plays therapist to all: and praises the Daschle freakout.

Wizbang has your updates, including a developing fraud possibility in Phillie. Hopefully not major.

May be time to get the paper bag out.

Update: Live blogging from goat-reactionary Commisar.

And a bit of perspective from Jeff:

[Lief] Garrett: “In 1984, instead of voting, C. Thomas Howell, Emilio Estevez, and I spent the afternoon shrooming and licking Hershey’s syrup smiley faces off the thighs of some underage chicks we’d picked up at a Whitesnake concert.
“And for what it’s worth, not much good has happened since then.”

Update: Well, if they're happy, I'm happy.

Also: Some more pure class from Colonel Candlestick this morning, in case you missed.

"When I turned my boat in Vietnam into an ambush," he said, "I didn't see George Bush or Dick Cheney at my side."

Think about this: if Kerry is our president tomorrow he has a whole other problem. How do you lead if your campaign was explicitly a "referendum" on the other guy and nothing else?

UPDATE: Scary numbers probably bad?

UPDATE: Scary numbers probably bad.

UPDATE: Malkin and LGF back up. And they really need the f-ing traffic, so...

2004-11-02T02:52:00.000-06:00

Here's why. (Mostly the picture.)

A Bit of Steyn Before Bed

2004-11-02T01:10:00.000-06:00

Read it and hold your breath:

Well, it's the big day, when Campaign 2004 moves from its electoral round into the litigation round.

God bless us every one, tomorrow.

See you then.

Jesus I'm Inconsistent

2004-11-02T01:03:00.000-06:00

Sorry about the meltdown today. Will be up and running in some capacity for the election.

In lieu of the UNPOPULIST 2004 Election Challenge, I will be sending 25 cents to whoever can tell what number and Spice Girl I'm thinking of.

the UNPOPULIST 2004 Electoral Challenge

2004-11-01T10:23:00.000-06:00

On permanent hiatus for re-tooling.

2004-10-31T22:42:00.000-06:00

45 - 35 !?

!!

??

Who's Winning How Much

2004-10-31T19:41:00.000-06:00

-link-

Can anyone, anyone at all, tell me how these numbers seem to trending as they get closer and closer to 2 Nov?

(UPDATE: The CNN/GALLUP/USA Today numbers sprung up since I posed this question.)

Anyone think this is a tie?

Cause I'm open to that.

UPDATE: Is he winning by three, or what?

UPDATE: Is it...three?

Incomplete Sunday News

2004-10-31T14:49:00.000-06:00

Missing minutes in Bin Laden video apparently tell a slightly different tale. He's frustrated. He's making pointed threats. And he takes Bush's pursuit of him personally. Good. (thanks Volokh, via Ace)

ZERO movement on this story right now.

At the Corner, Jim Robbins wonders if it's a new tape at all.

Little Chris Heniz calls Bush a "cokehead," and refuses to back off. Then takes up Buchanan's rhetorical light touch, blasting the "Israel lobby," for maintaining a the Holy Land as a kind of "51st state."

Reminded how well this slur is going to play in Miami-Dade, Chris detonates himself in a crowded square.

For now, this story is under MSM boycott as well. (Thanks Ace again)

Too bad, because American Arabs and Jews carry just the hugest torch for the Anti-Zionist Party. (thanks Protein)

Subtle elements within the Kerry campaigning are polling on bin Laden's appearance:

I'm going to read you a paraphrasement about the release of Bin Laden's videotape, please tell me what comes closer to your view: One, it makes me think that George W. Bush took his eye of the ball in Afghanistan and diverted his resources to Iraq; Two, it underscores the importance of George Bush's approach to terrorism.

By ten points, 46-36 percent, voters responding to the survey agreed with the first statement , rather than the second. "

Similar to previous Democratic R&D on "the dialogic of murder-suicide.

(see Drudge)

Troubling news, as early voting in Florida seems to over-represent the illiterate:

"Everybody says if you vote early you've got more chance."

"The other time I vote, my vote maybe goes in the garbage," said Derosier, who lives in Miami. "Now, I'm satisfied."

(Drudge again)

The Associated Press, perennial Angloid meddlers without a functioning republic of their own to sabatoge, continue to reprint the "missing weapons"chestnut.

Just as the UNPOPULIST, who does his reporting while consuming Pop Tarts, helped put the story to bed nearly a week ago.

Too bad about that Internet, gov'erner.

Patton notes Iraqis rising from the dead en masse.

I knew he had special powers.

Kerry grinning like a buy-here-pay-here auto salesman, and "tossing the hogskin" like the balletic nance he is, here.

Me yipping like a school girl about fresh polling here, and, to a lesser extent, here.

Love note to the ages below.

UPDATE:

Enough of that big font-little font crap.

Powerline has the Kerry team criticizing Bush as Major League Baseball owner. That by way of trying to insulate themselves from Curt Schilling's Bush endorsement.

Are they kidding? Have they ever been kidding before?

No, they're A joke, that's different.

(via Marcland)

UPDATE: Oh, and just in case you thought all blogs were so much sensationalist folly, try sticking this up your psyche for a few minutes. You'll be screaming for political trivia and bad satire in no time.

Top Ten Signs You Will Never Reach the Coveted 11th Tier of Blogosphere Influence

2004-10-31T03:57:00.000-06:00

10. You add somebody to the blogroll, and they are immediately shut down and imprisoned under the "Superflous Article" of the Patriot Act.

9. You venture a technical question you think sounds reasonable and the blogger-recipient promptly turns Mennonite.

8. You promote your blog on Live-Sex-Forum and in the Amish Weekly, Wagons Ho.

7. You email Glenn a cute post, he sends back a subpoena.

6. You pimp your blog on college radio and accredidation gets pulled. And the cheerleading squad burns to the ground.

5. You go on Ace-o-Spades' tax-return as a dependent/deductible charity case/casualty and theft loss.

4. You send a cute post to your dad, he files for divorce.

3. 60% percent of your material is cut-and-pasted from somewhere else. 40% of your mail is hatemail.

2. Your schtick keeps giving out in favor of endtime prophecies and Gilmore Girls wrap-arounds. At which point traffic quadruples.

And the number 1 Sign That You Will Never Gain the Coveted 11th Tier of Blogosphere Influence:

You're happy where you're at.

Thanks for hanging out.

WTF: Why does the last one always have to be the Kodak still?

Mercy

2004-10-31T03:11:00.000-06:00

-link-

(Via Insty)

Look at the whole thing.

Seriously, is anyone really still not convinced? I don't buy it.

Ready for His Close-up As Always

2004-10-31T01:01:00.000-06:00

Michele Malkin notes Michael Moore's plan to have "1,200 professional and nonprofessional cameramen, filmmakers and videographers...bring their cameras to polling places in Ohio and Florida to prevent 'intimidation."'

A sort of Stalinist Counter-Intimidation squad, a Commisariat "for peace."

Fortunately "professional" and "non-proefessional," in this case, means "unemployed," and "unemployable." Not half of these tubs-o-guts are going to show.

In even better news, it isn't going to be close.

Good News, Good News, Good News

2004-10-30T23:51:00.000-05:00

From Mason Dixon. (via the Corner)

Points of Sizzle:

Kerry's favorables are upside down in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri (yay!), Nevada, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. (In Pennsylvania it's close, but, in Pennsylvania, it needs to not be close.)

And in Ohio apparrently 41% of registered voters have no opinion of Kerry at all.

Wow.

Bush's favorables are right-side-up in every Battlegroud.

As to the horserace, Bush is pushing the margin of error in Florida and Iowa, and he's above it in Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada, and West Virginia.

Outside Oregon, nowhere does Kerry lead by more than 2 points.

Except in crazy Oregon, for that matter, Bush is right-side-up on Job Approval as well.

My God the American people have fucking balls.

And that's what I've been on about: over the next 3 days I expect America to sack up.

And if that happens...

...I just don't expect a contest.

UPDATE: BTW, just try and put lipstick on GW.

Oops, They Ruined the Suspense

2004-10-30T23:24:00.000-05:00

Kerry, I'm sure, is thankful.

Labor Department staff, analyzing statistics from private economists, report in an internal memo that President Bush is likely to do "much better" in Tuesday's election than the polls are predicting...

The Labor Department report, obtained by The Associated Press, includes an analysis of economic models that suggest Bush will beat Democrat John Kerry. Titled "In Focus: Predicting the Election Outcome," the memo says, "Nearly every single model has him winning."

"Some show the margin of victory being smaller than the models' inherent margin of error, while others report the lead as substantial. And this is without the consideration of a third-party candidate..."

The Bush administration blamed midlevel employees for preparing inappropriate government material.

That vigilante accounting, it'll getcha' in hot water, it will.

Meanwhile: Kerry admits missappropriating campaign resources for stick and hobo-sack.

(via Drudge)

Technical Issues

2004-10-30T23:02:00.000-05:00

And no technical abilities.

Just a moment.

2004-10-30T15:51:00.000-05:00

Eh, who cares what the stupid Iraqis think.

As far as Iraqi elites are concerned, President Bush brought democracy to a land that knew only dictatorship. From Sen. Kerry, however, they hear no commitment to build a liberal state or, for that matter, any state. What they hear instead is a presidential aspirant who complains about "opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in the United States of America," even as his campaign aides dismiss Iraq's prime minister as an American "puppet."
Not surprisingly, surveys by the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies find that, whereas Mr. Bush garners the most support in the Kurdish north and from Iraq's well-educated urban elites, Mr. Kerry draws his strongest support from what the Center's Sadoun al-Dulame calls Iraq's "hottest places"--hotbeds of resistance to the U.S. A poll taken earlier this month in Baghdad, for example, finds that while President Bush would win a higher tally in New Baghdad's Christian precincts, Sen. Kerry carries Sadr City hands down.

Good golly the Bad Guys like Senator Kerry a lot. Maybe that's what "global legitimacy" means.

Wait, that's exactly what "global legitimacy" means.

UPDATE: To clarify, the "Iraqi Center for Research and Stragic Studies" is that group who was giving us those post-Saddam happiness ratings a few months ago.

And, in case you passed over it, the slice of survey numbers being examined above reflect the feelings of so-called "liberal," or "elite" Iraqis: the literate ones who like freedom--that's all. The original article is addressed to them specifically, not to goat-cart Iraqis; or for that matter Saddam's cousins; or their goat live-ins.

That's kind of the point.

UPDATE: In a true shocker, l'Agence France-Presse focusses on "indifferent" Iraqis, and pines for halcyon days of Saddamite "security."

That's it, we're giving them the Nazis back.

Oh, wait...

UPDATE: Via RightThoughts, a real Iraqi to make the point much better than I can.

Then consider your real friends and allies, those who have stood with you and shed blood with you, and are willing to die for the common cause, whom do they want? Do you have any doubt about their preference?
....
Give the enemy the slap in the face and the great disappointment he deserves. You are the leaders; and all the lovers of freedom and enlightenment everywhere will take heart and charge with you with redoubled zeal, as they see your courage and defiance at the helm.

Go for it America, your friends are holding their breath and waiting, in anticipation, and yes, with anxiousness, and so are your enemies.

Almost makes me wish I were important enough for Oliver Willis to stop by and accuse the speaker of being an agent of the Rove-Goebbels.

One day.

ON THAT NOTE: Fresh comic genius above.

Saturday Reads

2004-10-30T13:41:00.000-05:00

-Brooks has a very good one up:

Here was this monster who killed 3,000 of our fellows showing up on our TV screens, trying to insert himself into our election, trying to lecture us on who is lying and who is telling the truth. Here was this villain traipsing through his own propaganda spiel with copycat Michael Moore rhetoric about George Bush in the schoolroom, and Jeb Bush and the 2000 Florida election.

Here was this deranged killer spreading absurd theories about the American monarchy and threatening to murder more of us unless we do what he says.

One felt all the old emotions. Who does he think he is, and who does he think we are?

And there's more to it. Bush's statesmanship, Kerry's crassness, and so on.

(via Hewitt)

-Kristol notes something Steyn first called my attention to: Kerry's lack of discipline.

Ann Coutler's has a new column up I excerpted earlier: "40 Excuses and a Mule." It's funny and incisive, and not too crazy for those of you who tend to think of Ann as "too crazy."

-Jonah has some fun with Nuancer here.

Viz:

Sometimes he speaks in a unique Kerry grammar one could call the future-past perfect. When asked if we were right to invade Iraq, he has responded that it depends on what happens in the future...

But my favorite response was when he was asked if we'd have gone to war with Iraq if he'd been president, and he shot back confidently, "You bet we might have."

-Here's a rather more technical peice by Michael Barone about the possiblity of an electoral tie: in which case the new House selects a president and the new Senate seperately selects a VP (!!). He doesn't see it, at this point.

-And, finally, George Will points out the many ways we've won, even if we lose this Tuesday.

Why is this country so resistant to distributional neuroses?

Americans are aspirational, not envious.

Also, as far as the Bin Laden video's reception goes, I think we will see that American's are aspirational rather than survivalist.

Good sabbath.

AAAAAaaaaaahh!

2004-10-30T13:34:00.000-05:00

Say, Unkie Walter, how'd you like Osama's latest speech?

There is almost, in the fact that he dressed well, that he looked well, he was clean shaven, nearly clean shaven as those folks get. It seemed almost, to me, that he wanted to enter into negotiations, that he was really up -- he wants to move into a leadership role in international affairs instead of the role of a brigand.

Wait, is it too late to change my question? Um, could you drop dead already, Uncle Walter?

And he spoke calmly about this thing. The threat was there, no question about it. He's delivering a warning to us, no question about that. And certainly, I don't think there's any reason to feel that we can take him to our bosom just because this speech at all. He's perfectly capable of blowing us up.

Setting aside his geriatricity and all-consuming billiousness (the same that makes Rather such a firebrand), what the old man is fumbling around here trying not to say is that he thinks Bin Laden is a statesman.

Afganistan isn't Vietnam, mind you, but neither was Vietnam until Walter Cronkite took his microphone and his camera crew and went VC.

But wait, cause later that same meltdown:

I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing. The advantage to the Republican side is to get rid of, as a principal subject of the campaigns right now, get rid of the whole problem of the al Qaqaa explosive dump.

Where's his walker, Larry? Get him outta there!!

I believe that we're undoubtedly not going to know the results of this election. I don't want to knock you off the air on Monday night or anything, or Tuesday night. But I suspect that we're not going to know who the next president is, whether it is Bush or the new man, until very probably sometime in the early spring. There's so much controversy that they're planting, deliberately planting at the polls, that there's almost certainly to be a suit going back to the Supreme Court eventually, going through the other courts slowly first.

'Preciate it Walter. Now back to you dropping dead...

(thanks Insty)

UPDATE: Tim unearths the offending collaboration.

Keeping Kerry "In the Hunt," etc

2004-10-30T07:09:00.000-05:00

Ace has the latest ABC numbers, and apparently if the election falls "Within the Margin," Peter Jennings has been deputized to declare martial law and begin organizing a junta.

On the other hand, up-for-grab votes have swung hugely to the Bush-leaning side:

Movables in today's results favor Bush by 52-33 percent, a change from 46-36 percent in Kerry's favor as of Sunday. It's a small group — eight percent of likely voters, down from 14 percent when tracking began — but in a close race, an important one.

And just when I was going back through to flesh out some methodology issues I had, I come across this incredible paragraph:

The race has been quite stable among voters who say they've definitely made up their minds (essentially an even split between Bush and Kerry). There's been more change among movable voters — those who haven't made a definite choice.

A pair of ontological statements addressed to the ages: the decision of people who've "made up their minds" is a bit more "stable," WHEREAS there tends to be more fluctuating among people whose vote is in flux.

Shocking, I know.

My question is, how many of these "movables" are new likelies? I'll admit having faith--for me the Bush Break is not if but when. It's not an irrational faith, though. I'm just waiting for the numbers to match what I intuit about the actual electoral landscape, still sight-unseen right now. I suspect, for one, that Americans know better than to vote their way into another vexatious near-tie. I guess, plainly speaking, I expect Americans on Tuesday not to do something stupid.

Are previously unpolled segments breaking right now? When Bush and Kerry's position among movables (remember, that's people whose votes are "movable") simply swaps, as above, I have to wonder if the terrain is moving under the pollster's feet; numbers that draw more attention to their own incongruity and provenance, than corroborate other variable facts bespeak methodology, right? So you have to re-frame the poll yourself: for instance, I insist the above isn't about "movables" changing their minds and trending to Bush, it's about old movables becoming immovable, and all the new movables rallying to the president.

I haven't seen a poll that reflects the trend that I expect explicitly; and it may be that the rally I envision only takes shape Monday, in the form of momentum, and Tuesday in the form of people voting to preserve and extend the republic.

That poll I'll buy.

UPDATE: More good poll stuff on Ace:

Let them coccoon.

The coccoon gets ripped open on Tuesday.

Wow

2004-10-30T01:41:00.000-05:00

Sad.

Got somebody that doesn't know well enough to back the Terror War?

Show them this. And maybe remind them of that Jihadi bus driver we caught in Minneapolis.

And, if you have time, insist they beg forgiveness from God and country.

(via Hugh)

Truth Time #2

2004-10-30T01:18:00.000-05:00

Let's be honest: this blog has long supported idiot-genius rapper Eminem.

-sigh-

"Bush is definitely not my homie," Eminem said in an interview to be published in Rolling Stone magazine's Nov. 5 edition, parts of which were posted Thursday on the magazine's website. "But I'm still undecided. Kerry has been known to say some things that's caught my attention, made a few statements I've liked but I don't know."

"Whatever my decision, I would like to see Bush out of office."

Now, that statement is so assinine (the first 6 words especially) that we could hope Em was fooling, that one of his hilarious alter-egos (hopefully the hoe-strangler) was simply taking point.

Unfortunately, Em has a new video along the same lines, viewable here. And, suffice it to say, the caucazoid left is rock-fucking-hard about it.

Well, I guess the UNPOPULIST's response is: Eminem is crazy. Eminem really is three or four different people. Eminem is quite something as a humorist and a Dr. Seuss-type, but people talented as Em can be safely expected to peform psychological acrobatics that sane people should just probably not pay much attention to.

And that is the UNPOPULIST's held position, I guess: Marshall who?

Here's hoping he changes one of his minds.

E-Mail

2004-10-29T23:43:00.000-05:00

Just spent all night trolling my links, looking for something I could smartypants about, and then I read this.
I know I'm not supposed to hate anyone and I don't hate John Kerry, but I can hate and I do hate what he did and what he’s doing...The saddest part is that when a person lies to the extent that he has, that person has has either lost their grip on reality or he knows every lie that he’s ever told... The barrage of lying, deceiving, and the abuse of power tire me at this point. I have to surrender to the hearts of the American people and to the Sovereignty of God because it’s beyond my capacity to take it all in. I’ve already sent my absentee ballot back to ---- and made plans to get together with ---- on election night (we're ordering in pizza). The DNC’s October surprise will backfire on them, Bush will win Ohio and that will be that (I hope and pray).It's from my dad. And all the smartypantsing any of us is doing, trying to fill the silence between now and Tuesday, I gotta admit we probably have the same plan my Dad does when it comes to rocking the actual vote: order pizza, try to trust the American people, pray.

Kinda puts being a washout smartypants in perspective; there are worse things than eating pizza with my dad.

Comic Relief

2004-10-29T18:35:00.000-05:00

Sweet, sweet relief:

It's absolutely impossible and irresponsible to suggest that if I were president, he wouldn't necessarily be gone. He might be gone.

(Hilarity as found)

September 12th, 2001, it would have seemed "absolutely irresponsible" to think Al Qa'eda would be pulling for the Democratic candidate for president, too--and here we are.

UPDATE:

Oh, and about those early voters, the Spot has some outrageously optimistic scuttlebutt:

Among early and absentee votes cast already, Bush has huge lead in FL, bigger than his advantage in Florida in 2000...

In New Mexico, Bush is only few thousand behind in early/absentee ballots in Bernalillo county, a heavy Democrat county.

In Florida, the campaign expects Bush to end up with an estimated 100,000 vote advantage among early and absentee voters...

There is little expectation that [Nevada] will be all that competitive. Bush is competitive in Clark County (which includes Las Vegas). Right now Kerry leads 44 percent Bush 41 percent [there, but] Kerry needed over 50 percent out of Clark county to win NV. But Bush [is] within a few thousands votes [in this] heavy Dem county.

Finally, a big point of enthusiasm for the GOP is their deep bench of Bush surrogates who can garner big crowds and lots of media attention. The President is in New Hampshire and Ohio today, vith Ah-nuld. Cheney is going to Hawaii. Tommy Franks is in Florida, as is John McCain and former President Bush. Rudy Giuliani is in Iowa, Mitt Romney is in Michigan, and former President Bush will also be in Pennsylvania later.

Yes, adults are running the Bush effort. It really shouldn't be that close.

(Also: I have really warm feelings for Jim Geraghty, as all of us do in some way. Should I feel bad correcting his sytax?)

Bin Laden-Moore Alliance Bearing Fruit

2004-10-29T17:53:00.000-05:00

In case you hadn't heard, Michael Moore's production company just released new video of 9/10 Democrat Osama Bin Laden criticizing Dick Cheney's "pet goat," George Walker Bush.

And Reuters thinks Osama's super-hunky:

Bin Laden appeared to be sitting or standing at a table against a neutral brown background. He wore a round, white head covering and white tunic under a light brown cloak.
Reading from a sheet of paper, his voice was strong and he appeared in fair health, his full beard a mixture of white and dark gray. At times he gestured at the camera with his right index finger to emphasize points.

Truly a cosmetic defeat for the Bush-Goat's "daisy cutters." No doubt a pre-statement video of Osama smothing his turban for twenty minutes is soon to emerge.

Truly, the world leaders have spoken.

ALSO: Dig Al Jazeera's Democracy primer, with Kerry propaganda woven in subtly:

As the final campaign kicks in, we can see more Republican advertising trying to negatively portray Kerry's voting record in the Senate, while Democratic adverts are hammering Bush's deceptions to the American people and his decision to divert the war efforts from al-Qaida to Iraq.

The latest damaging reports from the CIA, chief US weapon inspector in Iraq and the criticism of Paul Bremer regarding the size of troops on the ground, will undoubtedly reinforce Kerry's position and provide him with needed ammunition to attack Bush...

There are many signs of voters shifting towards the Democratic side but the question remains, will it be enough to guarantee a Kerry victory?

That is a noggin-scratcher, Saajid.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the story of '04: just how many thugs, muderers and psychotics will openly oppose the president. Abroad and at home. The list would seem to be growing.

Kerry in the Hizzle Like "Ooooh, Sucka!"

2004-10-29T01:44:00.000-05:00

Whatever the kids say.

(Via, Ann, Kerry Spot, Real Clear, etc)

John and Teresa Kerry attended services at a black church in downtown Fort Lauderdale, while former Vice President Al Gore hit black churches in Jacksonville and rallied Tallahassee voters to vote early.
Former President Bill Clinton, hugely popular with African-Americans and on the mend from heart surgery, is to campaign for Kerry in Miami tonight and in West Palm Beach on Tuesday.
In African-American communities across Florida, the 2000 election - and talk of disenfranchised black voters - is proving to be a mighty rallying cry...
At Abyssinia Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Senior Pastor Tom Diamond introduced Gore as "president-elect" and reminded his 500 congregants in the pews of the spoiled votes in Duval County four years ago.
"The Republican Party threw out 27,000 of our votes," Diamond said. "It's as if they were spitting on the graves of our ancestors, by taking away the rights we have fought for and died for."
Anything but strong turnout and overwhelming African-American support for Kerry could doom his chances. In 2000, record black turnout in Florida helped turn Florida into a virtual tie that took Republicans by surprise. This year, the mobilization effort is far greater, with a major focus on getting people to vote early.
But for all the anecdotal evidence of heavy African-American turnout, there are hints that Kerry might not be doing as strongly as he needs to be. At a John Edwards rally in St. Petersburg on Saturday, white people held "African-Americans for Kerry-Edwards" placards.
A St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald poll released Sunday showed Bush more than doubling his support from black voters since 2000, with 19 percent support. That estimate is imprecise because the pollsters surveyed fewer than 100 likely black voters in Florida, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign says its internal polling never shows Bush in double digits. But it mirrors a national poll released last week showing 18 percent of African-Americans backing Bush.

Patton reads John Kerry his mail:

And finally, the obvious resurfaced in my mind: What's been the standard claim of the left for years? That the right wants to hold down the common man, to its own benefit. But what do those on the right propose? Conditions for universal upward mobility, that's what. No, not guaranteed upward mobility, any more than guaranteed happiness, just the free pursuit thereof.

And the Left? Conditions for universal stasis - those who've "got theirs" get to keep it, and let the plebes eat cake, safe in their belief that if everyone gets the same amount of the same shitty cake, they'll be sated, and won't seek to rise to the level of the Soroses and the rest of the Bourgeois Left. Who buys into this tripe? Aside from the tripe-slingers themselves, those who have no faith in their own ability to achieve better, and are thus willing to accept the crappy equalization of outcomes offered by the thieving socialists on the far left of the Democratic party.

After Patton made this statement, I think we decided that the slingers do not, in fact, eat their own tripe. Maybe Soros isn't a cynical billionaire, but John Kerry certainly is.

I think there are assumptions that go into being heired and super-rich (I have maybe one close friend who would count as "Brahmin") that are literally not from this century. The calculus of aristrocracy, where it has no meaningful application in the modern day, is nonetheless pristine, sealed behind glass where it has sat, evolving only unto itself and its practitioners, since the fucking Middle Ages.

Ann (resiliant after assault by pastry):

Here's the deal on politics and race in America: Republicans don't need black voters, but they want them. Democrats don't want black voters, but they need them. Blacks have been the Democrats' most loyal voters, typically giving the party upward of 90 percent of their vote. But Democrats ignore blacks.

The Democrats' inspired 11th-hour message to black voters is: Here are your crumbs, your scraps, your measly handouts. Too bad you're so childish, incompetent and dependent, huh? Now run along and cast your vote for the guy with the "D" next to his name and we'll see you in four years, 'K? Buh-bye, now.

John Kerry probably didn't do alot of soul-searching before the legendary rape he undertook on his comrades' honor; he did what he was "born to," that phrase the most bizarre Medieval anachronism you need. "Become a Senator," that is what John Kerry does. The wives, the comrades, the positions, the demographics, these don't have to be suffered over: my path is is before me. Concerns askance--like humor and dignity--will prove impractical.

I tend to think the raison for Kerry's career is something modern democratic man would see as rather a pathology.

Per Steyn:

In the end he's running for President because he feels he ought to be President. That's his message to George W Bush: "The Senator needs you to move."

And it doesn't matter what billionaire stops by to hallelujah in the inter-city, the "rallying cry" is the same: "Please perfrom the electoral function I expect so I can be done with you."

"The oppressed" must just really like being oppressed.

UPDATE: Pseudo-journal Salon manages to miss the point entirely. Nice object-lesson.

Peter Jennings Beheads Twin Puppies in Bin Laden's Name

2004-10-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

Or something. I'm way behind on the story of the evening.

Found these:

The original Drudge story.

Malkin has Ugly American links.

Ace gawks at the half-assed ABC segment:

"Oddly enough, ABCNews didn't seem to mind if the tape could be used as anti-Bush propaganda. But they sure did want to avoid letting it be used as anti-Kerry propaganda."

Fox has the video up. (thanks Ramesh)

So, just catching up here, but wouldn't ABC look a little foolish running Al Qa'eda's endorsement of Senator Kerry just a few days before their own?

The Well-Off Philistine

2004-10-28T20:56:00.000-05:00

Via Powerline, Arafat spinning the cheese:

Over the course of fifteen meetings, I became better acquainted with Arafat and grew increasingly concerned with his leadership style. Arafat and top PA officials did not respect the rule of law; many were corrupt. Arafat believed neither in separation of powers nor in checks and balances. His animosity toward accountability thwarted efforts to establish a responsible leadership. By 1996, Palestinians in the PA were saying they had traded one occupation for two, the one by Israel and the one by Arafat and his cronies.

Rather than use donor funds for their intended purposes, Arafat regularly diverted money to his own accounts. It is amazing that some U.S. officials still see the Palestinian Authority as a partner even after U.S. congressional records revealed authenticated PLO papers signed by Arafat in which he instructed his staff to divert donors' money to projects benefiting himself, his family, and his associates.

No wonder Saddam wanted to skip the middle man.

How did Arafat's inner circle benefit? In 1994, he instructed the Palestinian Authority official in charge of finances, Muhammad Nashashibi, to fund secretly—to the tune of $50,000 per month—a Jerusalem publicity center for Raymonda Tawil, Arafat's mother-in-law, and Ibrahim Qar'in, an associate of Arafat's family. He also ordered the investment in the computer companies of ‘Ali and Mazzan Sha'ath, sons of Nabil Sha'ath, the PA's key negotiator in talks with Israel. Amin Haddad, Arafat's designated governor of the Palestine Monetary Authority, established several import-export companies acting as the front man for Arafat. The Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction financed these activities. Thus, an organization meant to channel funds from donor countries like France and Germany became a mechanism by which to enrich Arafat.

He'll be in hell momentarily, folks, nothing to worry about.

Bush Back Up on ESPN 4

2004-10-28T01:10:00.000-05:00

This is what you get for following the election only between WNBA scores and potato chip handfuls.

Is it a little suspicious that they've taken down the daily numbers going back like a month that used to be on the front page? Like maybe they don't want you to see what a random-deadlock-generator they run?

Also:

Rasmmussen to release bonus poll with shocking result: "Keith Olberman 'a journalist.'"

UPDATE: I think what everyone really likes about polling information is how well it reflects the feelings of unemployable gout sufferers.

Two consecutive Election Day debacles have shaken public confidence in exit polls, once viewed as the crown jewel of political surveys.

Cell phones, Caller ID and increasingly elaborate call screening technologies make it harder than ever to reach a random sample of Americans. Prompted by the popularity of do-not-call lists, a few state legislatures are considering laws that would lump pollsters in with telemarketers and bar them from calling people at home.

Costs are soaring as cooperation rates remain at or near record lows. In some surveys, less than one in five calls produces a completed interview -- raising doubts whether such polls accurately reflect the views of the public or merely report the opinions of stay-at-home Americans who are too bored, too infirm or too lonely to hang up.

As genius belletriste Michael Moore saith, "The polls are like diarrhea...all over the map."

Magnifique.

(Link via Instapunditless)

UPDATE: Steyn weights in on the polling mishigoss.

As if to demonstrate the meaninglessness of their game, last week the pollsters at Harris released their latest findings in two versions. Using the model of likely voters that proved accurate in 2000, Bush led Kerry by 51 to 43. However, if you discard that model and use some new model factoring in a lot of folks who didn’t bother to vote in 2000, Bush leads Kerry only by 48 to 46. Which is accurate? The first? The second? Neither? Harris can’t say. Is there a third model that shows Kerry leading by 73 to 26? Doubtful. If there was, some pollster would surely have come up with it by now. Maybe some other model entirely is the one to use, but it seems unlikely any one will devise it before next Tuesday.

He's promising to leave the oundit industry, again, if Bush doesn't win. I think he feels pretty safe.

Steyn also takes the opportunity to skewer the "marigin of lawyer" presented by the Democratic front, and Larry O'Donnells "measured display of quiet confidence in Senator Kerry’s campaign."

It's a nice meaty peice, with lots of tasty stuff. Go read it, and "bet on reality."

In All Seriousness: THIS IS AS IMPORTANT AS THE ELECTION

2004-10-27T23:55:00.000-05:00

Fortunately, this was inevitable:

I’m not crying because it’s a tragedy. I’m crying because I won’t personally get to see him die.

Right on.

Congratulations Israelis and all allies of the Israelis--and life-valuing people worldwide who don't know they are allies of the Israelis.

Not to get into a whole God thing, but: I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, and make your name great: And so you shall be a blessing, And I will bless those who bless you.

I gotta go with God on this one.

I Fucking Love This Guy

2004-10-27T23:44:00.000-05:00

(video link)

Am I crazy? I think this is funny. I think it's human and cool (not that John Kerry is inhuman and uncool). I think it's normal, besides being a decade and a fucking world war ago.

And fuck any fucking rat-fuck swinger-communist who drums up a fucking tear about it.

Fuck them right up their appendix.

Update: Here's the "story."

Don't read it unless you just have to. There are no "supporting details," that's not a Salon thing.

(UPDATE) And here's the Texans for Truth, those loveable "Bush = AWOL" dick rods:

It's amazing what you can capture when your camera is turned on. This video shows what George Bush thinks of democracy. He was cuaght (sic) on video while governor of Texas.

And here's them sounding like a military junta:

On November 2nd please join the army of volunteers at Video Vote Vigil who will keep an eye on our democracy. Volunteer there to submit video of disturbances outside polling locations.

PLEASE NOTE: We are not asking people to videotape INSIDE polling locations. We want volunteers to monitor the intimidation where it happens -- on the streets outside the polling locations.

Yeah, I heard Kerry may break 13% in certain Texas districts. He has these ninnies to thank.

UPDATE: Mysteriously little movement on "I-got-somethin-for-ya Gate" as of now. Still worth excercising my f-word skills.

For latest election stuff, click around.

UN-SULLIED

2004-10-27T16:15:00.000-05:00

Let me admit, that I never read The Nance's all important Kerry-endorsement. I think The Nance is unreadable, and not particularly worth taking issue with. But this excerpt (from Lileks' excerpt) is HI-LARIOUS:

The convention was a remarkable event in that it pivoted the Democratic Party toward an uncomplicated embrace of the war on terror. Kerry has said again and again that he will not hesitate to defend this country and go on the offensive against Al Qaeda. I see no reason whatsoever why he shouldn't.

To be honest the whole thing is hilarious, but for root-and-branch guffaws you have to see James' reaction, it's worth not co-opting.

I just remember thinking to myself, up on my non-partisan cloud, untrammeled by wedge-issues:

"Gosh, this Democratic Convention is a 'remarkable event.' What an 'uncomplicated' stance people like Andrew Sullivan have."

Quite a fukcing howler.

Lileks:

And let us shed a tear for those who believed it was necessary after 9/11 to knock off Saddam and establish a beachhead in the region ‘twixt Iran and Syria, but later ran away shrieking like freshly skinned rabbits because it had somehow, by some odd turn of events, turned into a partisan affair. What scared them off? Who knows? Just happened, I guess. Somewhere between the brutal Afghan winter, the interminable quagmire of the operational pause en route to Baghdad – all 72 hours of it - and the devastating supposition that the turkey Bush presented on Thanksgiving may not have been the actual fowl consumed by the troops, we realized that the war was all failure and lies and failed lies about lying failures, and we can’t do anything and the Plan was wrong and Mission Accomplished, yeah right. Oh, and We Support the Troops.

Go read the rest.

UPDATE:

Ace and Ace readers poke fun at the Nance's theory of eloquence: equivication.

2004-10-27T13:03:00.000-05:00

I know: now that you've seen the cover art I barely have to sell it at all.

But listen, owning this EP WILL MAKE YOU COOL. These guys are friends of mine, and (listen to the samples) people are gonna eat this shit up: when the full-length's out it's gonna be on.

And everybody will be saying, "Who heard of these "people" first? I would be happy to sleep with whatever boy or girl that may have been." And there you'll be, slim EP in sweaty hand.

Also, you'll need a band shirt to complete the I-knew-them-when-they-were-indy cred.

I'm serious, it will make you cooler. Be honest with yourself: you need the help.

Wednesday Reading

2004-10-27T11:40:00.001-05:00

I'm going to be busy today, maybe all day, but this sure goes down smooth: Bush & Kerry, JUXTAPOSED.

Had you noticed this?

"Last week's Wall Street Journal poll showed 57% of voters thought Mr. Bush believed in things and "stood up for his beliefs"; only 19% said the same of Mr. Kerry."

Fucking sheesh.

Also, make sure and do a bit of scrolling before you leave here. Tons of updates have gone in the last couple days, and I would hate for all the people who are in love with to have to endure missing one precious word. If you are in love with me, it's okay, I can empathize.

Oh, yeah: And here's that surge you were bugging me about.

Dead heets in fucking Detroit Rock City, and 8th burrough New Jersey? You've gotta be joking. This week is all about LET'S ROLL.

ALSO: Keep checking in with Tim, too, he's on a tear lately.

Latest Gate

2004-10-26T21:26:00.000-05:00

Started hearing about this yesterday. Bull Ca Ca Gate may be subsumed by a new gate: WinterSoldierGate, or what have you gate.

Here's the story.

Two newly discovered documents captured in 1971 show that the Vietnamese communists guided the American antiwar movement via meetings between the communist delegations to the Paris Peace talks and American antiwar activists. John Kerry and the VVAW were working toward the exact goals set forth in the communist directives.

Here's Lipscomb's article.

It was in April that he gave his testimony to the Senate, in which he accused American GIs of having committed war crimes and belittled the idea that there was a communist threat to America. Mr. Kerry had already had, in June of 1970, a meeting in Paris with enemy diplomats, ostensibly, he has indicated, to get a sense of how American prisoners held in Hanoi might be freed. Two historians believe Mr. Kerry made a second trip to Paris in the summer of 1971 and held further talks with the North Vietnamese. The Kerry campaign has denied this.

FBI surveillance and Mr. Kerry's own statements have established his two visits to Paris to meet with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations to the Paris Peace Talks as taking place in June of 1970 and August of 1971.

An FBI surveillance report dated November 11, 1971, has also established that Mr. Kerry and Al Hubbard, the executive director of the VVAW who had brought Mr. Kerry into the organization, planned to return to meet with them again in Paris on November 15, 1971.

A November 24, 1971, FBI surveillance report disclosed that Mr. Hubbard had also had meetings on his own with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations in Paris. It noted that he had reported at a national meeting of the VVAW in Kansas City that the Communist Party of the United States had paid his expenses for the most recent one.

Keep an eye.

UPDATE:

Where it stands:

Stephen Green doesn't buy it. Yet. But he's pretty freakin' earnest.

Malkin has links. (Interesting...) She seems pretty earnest herself.

Inthebullpin seems to be taking point on this one, and as Wizbang points out, Chad's got an in.

Here's an interesting read via Junkyardblog, who's following it as well.

Note: I know what you're saying. "Where is that award-winning wrap-around coverage I've grown accustomed to?" Well, this isn't quite the same kind of story. This is one where you peek in here and there and if a sense of wrongdoing takes shape that's cool, and if a sense of "who cares about these tin-hatted jackoffs" takes hold that's fine too. But if I say "Here are ALL the dots, see how they ALL connect," I just sound crazy.

And I don't need any help.

I will say that if you want to follow this story, any and possibly most of the links at the right may be helpful. My guys are fucking sharp, and I have very little of sizzle to discuss without them.

(sigh)

Sometimes I miss when it was all just ferrets and space mutants.

Que sera.

ALSO: What I'm really looking forward to is the perennial commentor to this post who looks long and hard at the evidence, and decides I haven't satisfied his curiosity as to why Bush hasn't supplied Bin Laden on a salver yet, and why so many people are insisting Saddam Hussein orchestrated 9/11. Or why so many people die in a fucking war, and why the war can't get through during fucking commercial.

Or why his girl hasn't called, and why she won't give him the go-ahead. Or why he got trapped in the bathroom at that one house-party and there was no TP left--and his mother raised him a certain way, so he ended up having to fashion a bidet out of picture tack and an Aquafresh dispenser...

Well, we just can't wait. Cause we've got the fuckin answer, jack.

2004-10-26T16:55:00.000-05:00

(thanks Left Coast)

Update: Why is this a such a bad photoshop?

Well, other more obvious answers aside, because it requires clarification.

"The Gaza Strip is full of violence and bad things, therefore it is Hell, ha ha..." That is very lame, and by coincidence not what I was getting at.

The article the picture links to is about how Sharon just got Knesset support for pulling out of Gaza, and the first thing that occured to me is what a wonderful place it's going to be to live, work, and recreate. First the joke was there was already a Euro-Disney going in, possibly female circumcision-themed, ha ha...

Yeah, you get it.

But just so long as you understand what you're not laughing at.

EXACTLY: Lileks (in passing) calls it "Arafat’s Instant Sea-Monkey Paradise (just add statehood!)"

Kerry: Raving Warhawk

2004-10-26T13:18:00.000-05:00

(Via Ace)

INDC finds this quote from October '02, pesumably after Kerry "met/did not meet" with the security council, and found out "how serious they were."

But the administration missed an opportunity 2 years ago and particularly a year ago after September 11. They regrettably, and even clumsily, complicated their own case. The events of September 11 created new understanding of the terrorist threat and the degree to which every nation is vulnerable. That understanding enabled the administration to form a broad and impressive coalition against terrorism. Had the administration tried then to capitalize on this unity of spirit to build a coalition to disarm Iraq, we would not be here in the pressing days before an election, late in this year, debating this now. The administration's decision to engage on this issue now, rather than a year ago or earlier, and the manner in which it has engaged, has politicized and complicated the national debate and raised questions about the credibility of their case.

(Emphases found)

For Kerry's pretend Security Council colloquy, see here.

With pleasure I repeat myself:

If the WA Times 'expose' shocks you that much, you're just not aware how much John Kerry already disagrees with himelf.

The same goes for the above.

UPDATE:

Recycler interlays some of the key footage. Riveting.

What a Normal, Normal, Normal, Normal Guy

2004-10-26T01:16:00.000-05:00

You may have heard about this already; it's too hilarious not to post.

Sunday:

Inside, the minister asked worshippers to clap "if the Lord has done anything wonderful in your life this week", to which Mr Kerry applauded.

"I had a special reason to clap," Mr Kerry explained. "The Red Sox won 10-9."

Mr Kerry’s spokesman, David Wade, said the senator got the score wrong because 10-9 was the last update he got during his late-night flight to Florida.

The problem is, the score never was 10-9. The Sox won on a two-run homer, meaning they went from nine runs to 11...

Confusion struck again within hours of his team’s second game.

Landing in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the Democratic candidate bounded off the plane wearing his Red Sox cap to exclaim:

"Seven-one Red Sox!"

The Red Sox were winning 6-1 at the time. They went on to win 6-2.

Such easy grace.

Remember, J: 'No matter how hard the loss, defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.'

O'Donnell Unfairly Apologized For

2004-10-25T23:18:00.000-05:00

Apparently MSNBC is trying to disown Larry O'Donnell.

Good.

Recycler doesn't have the video up yet, but keep chekcing.

Weapons Loss Uproar Imploded: CBS' Typical Involvement Praised

2004-10-25T23:14:00.000-05:00

Here, here, and here it's breaking. Er, it's broken:

NBC News: Miklaszewski: “April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon...” (NBC’s “Nightly News,” 10/25/04)

They weren't there to find, yeah tha't much less scandalous...

UPDATE: NYT still running with bunk story. Related Kerry invective still being quoted.

Hey, Big Media guys:

THE DOOR IS AJAR.

UPDATE:

Kerry on the record:

“George W. Bush, who talks tough ... and brags about making America safer, has once again failed to deliver,” Kerry told supporters in Dover, N.H. “After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this president failed to guard those stockpiles.”

"Swift" as always.

Patton bristles:

First, anyone who thinks to analyze the relationship of the supposed loss to some action on the President's part will find that analysis ignored by the New York Times. The underlying tsumani of absurdity behind the breathless charge missed them the first time around; it's unlikely to dampen them on further review by a competent replay official.

Second, and perhaps more important: Should Jim Miklaszewski's report on NBC Nightly News, Oct 25, 2004, get any play at all in the Times or the other rags who repeated it with neither the most basic legwork nor anything more than a third grader's critical thinking skills, such play will likely be placed somewhere amidst the classified ads for lost gerbils.

Yeah, they love admitting mistakes.

Tonight is about the Media looking stupid. Does anybody still think they're worth 5% ?

ALSO:

Hugh Hewitt 7 hours ago:

The idea that a disappeared store of munitions in Iraq could somehow help Kerry in this last week is one of the more remarkable miscalculations of recent political history, but one that inevitably flowed from the left's attachment to Kerry. They really believe Kerry would make a better Commander-in-Chief than George W. Bush. Because they believe in Kerry's vision of an American-French entente and a pervasive "global testing" of American foreign policy initiatives, and in Kyoto and the ICC, , they assume that a majority of Americans can be made to believe it. They seem not to care at all that if the one thing all pollsters agree on is that the president has a commanding lead on the question of who is better equipped to lead the war on terror. In this arrogance is their own demise. They are still lecturing the American people on what they should believe about the war on terrorism.

Kerry&Co. have been trying to run up the middle for 3 quarters and 12 minutes, and they have negative yards rushing. So what do they do? Run up the middle. Among the worst campaigns in American political history.

The MSM is not just an accessory to the Kerry Campaign, it is a built-in disfunctionality.

J'ACCUSE!! : Over at Polipundit, Lori Byrd smells evil.

Fuckin' Hell: I just heard CNN, and CNN Headline puditting on the OLD STORY.

They must have dial-up.

IT JUST WON'T STOP GETTING BETTER: Protein has Joe "Iraqi Orphans" Lockhart blaming...team Bush??

"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame. Instead of distorting John Kerry’s words, the Bush campaign is now falsely and deliberately twisting the reports of journalists. It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."

Yeah, the fleecing of Jim Miklaszewski, that's what it is.

But this is just damage control. Kerry had been boasting about this for 24 hours plus.

From Patton again, the punchline:

This article was reported in cooperation with the CBS News program "60 Minutes.'' "60 Minutes" first obtained information on the missing explosives. The New York Times article was reported and written by Times reporters in Baghdad, Europe and Washington.

(emphasis found)

UPDATE: The fated Kerry hail-marry. From Wizbang, who questions the sourcing.

VIA A WIZ COMMENTOR: Will we be reading this tomorrow?

Kevin is on it.

SADLY: Lockhart's above statement may deserve some context ("update 2").

Shit.

UPDATE:

From Drudge, who didn't seem in any rush to break this wide opoen yesterday.

He's killing them softly, you see:

News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode...

(link updated)

Via Drudge as well.

The CNN non-retraction:

The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist, after a television news crew embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of Iraq reported that the material could not be found when American troops arrived.
They should pray for their fucking souls.

"John Kerry's attacks today were baseless," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said. "He said American troops did not secure the explosives, when the explosives were already missing."
Schmidt also said that Kerry "neglects to mention the 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that are either destroyed or in the process of being destroyed" in Iraq.

That is the perfectly reasonable statement to which Lockhart's above tightly-worded freakout was addressed.

UPDATE: Here's an email to Cliff May at the Corner (via Powerline), "Government source" blames a U.N. beuracrat with a beef for this "fraud."

And this confirms that the IAEA was at fault for the munitions' dissappearance.

UPDATE:

IAEA Tries To Manipulate American Election; NYTimes Complicit

Charlie Brooker is a Waste of Good Panties

2004-10-25T22:25:00.000-05:00

(Original post here.)

Steyn reams the tea and crumpet set of the Goon-Left, as always, ties to a broad and devastating theme.

Excerpted at length:

But, with the armchair insurgents of the Euro-Left, it's always got to be someone else who straps on the old Semtex belt and waddles off to do the deed. For your average Leftie columnist, the vicarious frisson is more than delicious enough. Anything else would interfere with dinner plans...

Brooker's ironic assassination target, being famously moronic, is deluded enough to
believe that, when one takes a position on something, one is expected to act on it. But in the "entire civilised world" that's no longer necessary: "Sneer globally, act fitfully" is the watchword. Because Belgium opposes the Iraq war, its foreign minister makes a few anti-Bush cracks and various lesser figures attempt to indict Rumsfeld and co for war crimes - but they know nothing's going to come of that; it's an empty gesture...

Whoever's president, the September 10 international system can't be put back together. The Cold War required deterrence, which is about as suited to a passivist European culture as can be devised, and even then there were plenty of wobbly moments. But this new war requires action, resolve, ongoing participation - and most of America's "allies" just can't be fagged. The Spanish vote was a vote for passivity, a call for inaction, and a quiet life no doubt with many "ironic jokes" about the absurd Americans. The "civilised world" sees itself like Continental skating judges at the Olympics, watching the Yanks career all over the ice and then handing out a succession of cranky 4.7s. The decadence of passivity does not express itself solely in "ironic jokes."

...

But, if this is the best the "civilised world" can do - maudlin sentimentality and ironic jests - then it's in big trouble. Both modes are a pose and a detachment from reality. Brooker and the Guardian seem to be protesting no, don't worry, we were just talking the talk, there's nothing we're prepared to walk the walk for. That's the problem.

The Surge

2004-10-25T13:49:00.000-05:00

The "Be a Bush Volunteer" link at Bush-Cheney '04 is crashed.

That sucks. But it's also goddamn exciting.

Can you feel the wave?

To Clarify: This may be crackerz, it may be routine maintenance, it may be a blown fuse--I have no idea.

What I am almost sure of, however, is that likelies are breaking right now, and they're breaking Bush. Americans have rarely been unable to recognize the future.

Okay: It's back up. Go and sign up for a few hours at a call center, glad-handing at the mall, car-pooling the elderly, whatever you can do.

We all know you weren't gonna get any "play" or anything this weekend; you were gonna sit on your ass blogging and sucking down Hostess products. You might as well do something that will make you feel good instead.

Journalism: the Drinking Game

2004-10-25T13:44:00.000-05:00

Tim is on a roll today.

So Mean

2004-10-25T13:38:00.000-05:00

So sweet.

"My opponent has the wrong strategy, for the wrong country, at the wrong time."

Home run.

UPDATE: Awesome typo fixed.

Kristol, Holbrooke, Ba'al

2004-10-25T13:10:00.000-05:00

(Via Insty, sans Instapundit at the moment)

The UNPOPULIST's favorite Peter Pan character, Bill Kristol saddles up with the Gristler and rides that anti-Zionist frog:

Pro-Israel Kerry supporters protested vigorously. Kerry is pro-Israel, they said. Krauthammer is making a hypothetical argument, drawing a speculative inference. Kerry will be as supportive of Israel's security as Bush has been.

Unfortunately, they forgot to tell the man who is perhaps Kerry's top foreign policy adviser and surrogate, Richard Holbrooke. Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor Friday night, Holbrooke warned of a possible "Iran-type clerical dictatorship" in Iraq: This would be "very dangerous for Israel, the U.S. and the world." Then Holbrooke segued into an account of how Kerry would improve the situation in the Middle East: "He [Kerry] has said already he would start intense talks with the allies . . . and he would reach out to the moderate Arab states. He'd put more pressure on Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia above all."

Now, to niggle with Totten, Glenn's stand-in here, I point out that Holbrooke says "Saudia Arabia above all." In it's precded by a comma here, but in transcript a colon, a dash, or even a period could have just as easily been injected--I didn't hear Holbrooke say this. But on the page, "above all" does not seem to apply to all three countries. At least not equally.

That said, the other two countries are vicous, fascist, hate-machining oil-cysts. And it's certainly worth noting that prospective Secretary of State Holbrooke wants to reach out to the fucking Philistines.

Too bad about Samson, ay Dick?

Also: For footage of Peter Pan slapping mental-patient CiCi Estrich around a bit, go here.

Z'buh?

2004-10-25T11:44:00.001-05:00

Laugh riot Scott Rasmussen puts Kerry up two points today.

What a cruel sense of humor that Scott has.

[ed. note: Rasmussen Reports has always been at war with Eurasia.]

Bwah!

2004-10-24T22:57:00.000-05:00

(Via Blair)

Crazy Jim Treacher makes a good crazy person's case for removing the President.

Note as he is immediately upstaged/out-classed in comments by Rich from Sandesk.

Funny guys.

2004-10-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

VOILA

Initial verdict?

Not a huge deal, more like a simple reminder of Kerry perfidy.

I mean, the guy's running as a war-hero, 200 hundred plus war heroes stand up and accuse him of bombast, dereliction, and collusion, and the race is still close? It's not like undecideds need more evidence.

But maybe they do need one last push.

UPDATE: IDNC links the offending video.

OKAY, but forget the WA Times investigation, the offending statement during the debates directly contradicts what we heard Kerry tell Chris Matthews before the war.

In paraphrase

Matthews: "Is it possible to resolve this without going to war, simply by relying on sanctions, inspections, etc?"

Kerry: "Maybe, Chris, but long term Saddam would see it as a victory, and he would remain dangerous."

Which I always thought was a great fucking answer.

If the WA Times 'expose' shocks you that much, you're just not aware how much John Kerry already disagrees with himelf.

Searching for Hardball footage now...

GOT IT:

"Outside chance, Chis. 'Could it be done?' the answer is 'yes,' but he [Hussein] would only view himself as buying time and playing a game, in my judgement. Do we have to go through that process, the answer is yes: we're precisely doing that, and I think that's what Colin Powell did today...

"September 11th, I mean that's changed the dynamic of this country, and I think people's perceptions of what people are willing to do..."

"Kerry Iraq Documentary, pt1"

Mind you, that was February of 2002, still five or six months from when Kerry would travel to New York and "find out find out how serious [the Security Council] were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable."

Did they seem "serious" to any normal person?

Okay, so John Kerry's gullible.

You already knew that too.

As [Kerry] made clear on Thursday, Saddam was a growing threat so he had to be disarmed so Kerry voted for war in order to authorize Bush to go to the U.N. but Bush failed to pass ''the global test'' so we shouldn't have disarmed Saddam because he wasn't a threat so the war was a mistake so Kerry will bring the troops home by persuading France and Germany to send their troops instead because he's so much better at building alliances so he'll have no trouble talking France and Germany into sending their boys to be the last men to die for Bush's mistake.

Drumroll...

2004-10-24T22:03:00.000-05:00

Is this Drudge's setup?

Kerry Ridicules Bush on Terrorism Remark

We await the punchline.

UPDATE: Heard about this recently as well. Marshall was on about it, I think:

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

Note "that machines [and] tools that can be used for either nuclear or non-nuclear purposes have also been looted."

If that sounds bad for the prez, I think Saddam the Harmless probably suffers a bit too.

Is something coming together?

KOS may have some of it:

[Kerry:] So I sat with the French and British, Germans, with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein.

KOS mentions this only by way of bludgeoning hobbyists like myself, so, glad to link him, he's obviously quite sane.

UPDATE

2004-10-24T18:05:00.001-05:00

"WHO DESIGNED THIS BALLOT??"

Update:

Jeff responds, "And yet a good portion of Dem voters in Ohio would still be likely to screw up the ballot -- then claim their civil rights had been violated."

Ha.

UPDATE: Authoritative explanation.

The More We Get Together...

2004-10-24T14:10:00.000-05:00

In Good News Not Written Yet news, something helpful may be coming Monday morning.

Developing, obviously....

(Thanks Ace)

UPDATE: Goldstein's got it:
Bush says bin Laden likely dead; A stunned John Kerry replies: "Oh, fuck. Really?"
Wait, no.

But Protein is all over the scuttlebutt. More links than any man should be expected to sift.

IDNC: "It's something that the Kerry campaign will be forced to address regarding a previous criticism of Bush's foreign policy. That's all." Then, in comments, Bill refuses repeatedly to to give up specifics.

Inthebullpin thinks it has to do with the details of those records Kerry hasn't been willing to release. Probable.

Others saying it may have to do with the fact that Kerry talked up Kyoto during the debate, but voted against it in the Senate.

If that's the story, it's not a bombshell by half.

This, on this other hand...

John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, is being given money by an Albanian terrorist organization known as the Kosovo Liberation Army.

I think this may be it.

Elsewhere.

John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, is being given money by an Albanian terrorist organization known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UCK in Albanian).

The KLA is currently smuggling weapons into Kosovo as part of a plot to attack American and other UN peacekeepers, should the UN Security Counsel refuse their demand for Kosovo's secession from Serbia and Montenegro.

In order to fully understand the significance of John Kerry's involvement with the KLA it is first necessary to understand what sort of an organization the KLA is. The KLA is a terrorist organization with ties to Osama bin Laden and the Iranian government. The KLA's main objective is to break Kosovo, which has been an integral part of Serbia for centuries, away from Serbia.

That's cut from Slobodan-milosevic.org, so we continue to speculate, but it is at least the most viable blog-scuttle I've seen.

ALSO: Clearly we're all morons.

I suspect even worse, though. I suspect this is a nonstory precisely timed to be as disruptful as possible to the Kerry campaign, and it has been "leaked" (read:broadcast) to the angry legions of Bush bloggers so they can foment as much hysteria as possible. I don't know who is worse. The cynics who are playing these morons, or the morons who allow themselves to be played.

Is there a Teutonic word for pretended shameful joy?

ALSO: It isn't up on Druge yet, or even Wiz, for that matter. Is there actual information at the middle of all this kerfuffle?

UPDATE: Redstate (who I wasn't able to get through to for some weird Mozilla reason earlier), and who is supposed to have actually seen the thing, says, "Call it another chapter in the story of John Kerry making stuff up." But Redstate's being pretty damn coy as well.

Is this the UNPOPULIST "We'll see" moment?

We'll see.

OKAY: Here's the Times site. Check in as necessary.

UPDATE: The Freepers know fuck-all. Seems like a few may actually have the information, but they don't want it to break in the Brownshirt Speakeasy.

Ace knows something, but has decided to sit on it like everybody else. Whatever he thinks.

Geraghty's got nothing. He probably knows already, too. And we can all probably wait.

Fuck all that noise, though: how bout a cheap photoshop?

ALSO: More running updates here, as it breaks.

2004-10-24T13:52:00.000-05:00

Congratulations President Karzai.

I anticipate days and days of boozeless partying, with blessings given in slightly more forward tones, and even a little more bowing than usual.

It's a good news week, people. Get ready for it.

Also

2004-10-24T02:26:00.000-05:00

Tooling around Rathergate a minute, I found this email response from CBS affiliate 55KRC:

Just to give you an update. Unfortunately, due to a contract with CBS, we are not able to cancel the news casts.

We did, to be fair and balanced, add FOX News casts at the bottom of each hour.

Also, since the scandal broke, we have also been boycotting the Dan Rather 5PM radio news feed and just replaying the 4PM radio anchors feed.

Made me a little misty.

Hugh the Happy, etc

2004-10-24T01:46:00.000-05:00

So I'm sitting here thinking, Jesus Christ the blogosphere is depressed today. The stress is getting to us, we're breaking apart. Who'd a thought trying to pour over grim-to-fair news on a fairly slow news day would get so existential?

And then: Oh, yeah. I bet Hewitt's got some kind words.

As of this this moment I've read about the first sentence and I'm not dissappointed...

But there's more.

Only the inability of pollsters to get a lock on a post 9/11 electorate has kept Kerry's hopes alive, but his rhetoric today --that Bush is running on "fear"-- is an admission that the terrorism issue dominates all others and that on it, Kerry has wholly failed to persuade even close to a majority of Americans that he can be trusted to abandon "global tests" and "law enforcement" models for a vigorous prosecution of the GWOT, no matter where it leads.

Sure, that sounds right. Kerry's trying to nullify Bush's positives somehow, tells us about internal polling a little.

Bush meanwhile barnstorms Florida in what seems to me to be a very shrewd move to force the networks to call Florida for him very early on election night by running up the sort of margin that will make them look bad if they sit on it. When Florida turns red on 11/2, the election will be over, and voters across the country will know it. The same effect can be had with a call for Bush of Pennsylvania or Ohio or any of the big four up north --Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin or Michigan. Zogby seems to know what is happening and is tweaking his model towards a bigger Bush margin every day.

Okay, good, what about Bush's internals, right. Is W being shrewd, or is Hugh just a decent political fantasist?

Hugh makes me feel good. So do Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibiotors, and those are for crazy people.

Am I crazy? How far off is Hewitt?

Here's the deal: I buy the Bush surge. I think the Kerry re-materialization is temporary, and Kerry will dematerialize in short order: not by many points, maybe, but by plenty.

As per the Apologist, I'll allow for a late-hour bombshell intended to de-rail the President (the purported anal sex tape from Abu Ghraib would do, for a guess). Thing is, I think John Kerry is out of time. And so is the press.

Dan the Man was supposed to be the September lead in. Um...that didn't work out.

Shit may fly (Wednesday or Thursday, for maximum weekend buzz), but how's any of it going to stick? We've been watching this President sweat and endure under two-years of spectacular pressure (Anybody wonder why he kept repeating "hard," "difficult," "trying," etc?), and a cycle-and-a-half worth of drummed up controversy just isn't gonna match it psychologically.

Somebody must have realized this after Brother Blather went down. Is that maybe when the "pre-emptive" vexatious litigation strategy took point?

I hate to call that bit of inference brilliant, but it's hard not to do.

What do you think?

2004-10-23T21:05:00.000-05:00

To Guardian Reader's Editor, Ian Mayes

Mr. Mayes,

As an American, the citizen of an ally nation, as an English speaker, I am appalled and duly enraged with the fevered and fatuous implication in your pages that assassins are now "needed" to rid the world of an American President. George W. Bush may be a world leader with whom any number of your pundits are exasperated. However, with strident and ridiculous and intolerable statements like Mr. Brooker's, it has become a question, sir, of what sort of seriousness you and your publication will ever hope to project--it is not a question of one disputed article or statement, but of your peridical itself, its role and infulence. Whether Ohioans' stiff response to the ill-fated, ill-considered Clark County Operation was the occasion for this hatefully overwrought 'attempt at comedy'--as seems to make up Mr. Brooker's unapologetic attempt at self-aquittal--you may now expect a stiffer response than ever. Whether or not mature Americans will ever look outside their borders for elctoral admonishment, expect the shattering patriotic anguish, for which names like Boothe and Oswald are referents, to invoke in America the same resolve that evicted you from our shores in the first place.

Of course it's personal. Just as it would be impossible that you, with a beloved nation of your own, could fail to grasp it.

All Best, as your publication's self-alienation continues apace, and items of disgust like Mr. Brooker's continue to slip editorial muster.

I just like to pile on, I guess.

ALSO: I just realized this is the first letter to an editor I've ever actually sent. Please nit-pick as the spirit moves you, I need the guidance. (Patton?)

UPDATE

The Guardian response, via Powerline:

Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind.

That's what we were failing to recognize: Brooker's original column was effing hilarious. I stand corrected.

UPDATE:

Of the Guardian retraction A_SDF concludes:

"We've always been at war with Eastasia."

Guardian Search for "New Low" Continues Apace

2004-10-23T20:23:00.000-05:00

OMIF'NGOD:

Throughout the debate, John Kerry, for his part, looks and sounds a bit like a haunted tree. But at least he's not a lying, sniggering, drink-driving, selfish, reckless, ignorant, dangerous, backward, drooling, twitching, blinking, mouse-faced little cheat. And besides, in a fight between a tree and a bush, I know who I'd favour.

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

Proud day for the the mother tongue. I for one am fucking speechless.

(Via Drudge)

UPDATE: Via Blair, the Ablution has contact info for this limey rat-fuck.

UPDATE: Here's my submission. Second-guess as neccessary.

Chris Hitchens Extends Solace to Other Crazy People

2004-10-23T19:44:00.000-05:00

Disraeli despondent:

I can't wait to see President Kerry discover which corporation, aside from Halliburton, should after all have got the contract to reconstruct Iraq's oil industry. I look forward to seeing him eat his Jesse Helms-like words, about the false antithesis between spending money abroad and "at home" (as if this war, sponsored from abroad, hadn't broken out "at home"). I take pleasure in advance in the discovery that he will have to make, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a more dangerous and better-organized foe than Osama bin Laden, and that Zarqawi's existence is a product of jihadism plus Saddamism, and not of any error of tact on America's part. I notice that, given the ambivalent evidence about Saddam's weaponry, Kerry had the fortitude and common sense to make the presumption of guilt rather than innocence. I assume that he has already discerned the difference between criticizing the absence of postwar planning and criticizing the presence of an anti-Saddam plan to begin with. I look forward, in other words, to the assumption of his responsibility...

What slightly disturbs me about most liberals is their hypertense refusal to admit the corollary. "Anybody But Bush"--and this from those who decry simple-mindedness--is now the only glue binding the radical left to the Democratic Party right. The amazing thing is the literalness with which the mantra is chanted. Anybody? Including Muqtada al-Sadr? The chilling answer is, quite often, yes. This is nihilism. Actually, it's nihilism at best. If it isn't treason to the country--let us by all means not go there--it is certainly treason to the principles of the left.

Hitchens doesn't want Kerry to win, and he makes no effort to predict an outcome; he is "slightly" pro-Bush. With the intractable daintiness and neurosis of all limeys, however, he still suspects the president of stupidity, and the administration of criminal incompetence. Per usual, though, he speaks persuasively from the perspective of a reforming mental patient, a post-9/11 Britischer.

Weekend Watching

2004-10-22T20:51:00.000-05:00

Stolen Honor has been made avaiable at no charge by the publisher.

Here's the Media Player file.

WATCH IT AND BUG SOMEBODY ELSE TO WATCH IT.

There should, if there is any fairness, be a huge buzz on this by Monday.

John Kerry is a snob, a fraud, and villain. Nothing suggests he's grown out of this.

(via Right-Thoughts)

2004-10-22T18:36:00.000-05:00

God: Hey, Terry.

Terry: Whoop-whoop-zzweep-Boing!

God: Yeah, that's good.

Terry: Op-op-op-op...

God: Hey, food for thought: a guy in the bus was reading your article today, and he couldn't place your name, so I told him you were what people used to think of generously as the 5th funniest Python.

He didn't get it, so I said, "Well now we think of him as the fattest, most amorphous Python." That he undestood.

Terry: ickie-ickie-chufff--Huh?

God: Yeah, Terry, this? This isn't your high watermark. This isn't anybody's high watermark. This isn't Death Valley's high watermark.

Terry: Hmm. I played there last week--

God: I caught the set, Terry.

Terry: Ah. You watch the shows.

God: When I'm insomniac.

Terry: I see. I didn't think you existed.

God: Well, you pulled that off classily.

Terry: Hmm. Yes. How did you like the Guardian peice?

God: Pure class, I thought.

Terry: You're a sarcastic God.

God: All things to all men, Terry. (dissipating) I know they made you memorize this stuff.

Terry: Mm, yes they did.

So.

Hm. What do I do now?

... God?

God: (whispered) ...F'tang...

Also: Do you think George Bush deeply offends the girlish Brits? Or does he just scare the shit out of them?

A Bad Ten Days for Nay-Sayers Begins

2004-10-22T17:35:00.000-05:00

Count em down.

Leftist Buffoons Target Coulter With Cream Pies: Kerry to Absorb Splatter

2004-10-22T17:17:00.000-05:00

For my money, the word "unbelievable" is losing its utility.

The Tucson men, both 24, were arrested last night after throwing custard cream pies at author Ann Coulter during her speech at the University of Arizona. Portions of the pies connected with the conservative commentator's face and shoulder, according to this police report, which quotes Smith saying that he and Wolff were "throwing the pies at her ideas not at her."

Well, if they had been quoted saying something not laughable the story wouldn't really hang together, would it.

(via Protein)

Ann has a new column up, BTW. ("This may be the first time in American history that the decisional calculus for many voters will be: Do I really want to throw my hat in with these crazy people?")

Anticipate a cream pie response forthwith.

Wheee!

2004-10-22T13:49:00.000-05:00

The UNPOPULIST'S 20 Favorite Things About Jeff Goldstein, Innuendo-ish Names of Political Figures, Games of Chance, Island Chains, Non-Stick Materials & Imaginary Theme Parks

20. John Thune

19. Micronesia

18. Silicon

17. Disorganized Schizophrenia (Goldstein)

16. Land-o-Intestinal Malformation

15. Strip Russian Roulette

14. Strip Yatzee

13. Jeff Bingamen (D-NM)

12. Good photoshops/Bad Attitude (Goldstein)

11. Land-o-Soiled Pornography

10. Identity Modulation (Goldstein)

9. The Aleutians

8. Kamchatka

7. Ingrown World

6. Wax Paper

5. Odd comfortability with medical matters (Goldstein)

4. Corn Starch

3. Olive Oil

2. The Galapagos

1. Losing well

We appreciate it, Jeff.