DEBATE THOUGHTS--POST YOURS:

The first thing to keep in mind about the debates is that even the most memorable ones didn't change elections--they are recalled because they crystallized what people thought of the candidates. Whoever leads on Labor Day consistently goes on to win the election, irrespective of the debates.

Second, in every open two-party election (those races without an incumbent) in modern memory the candidate perceived as less intelligent has won. So there is no percentage in being pronounced the technical winner of the debates, a de facto smarty-pants.

Third, people have been wondering why George Bush was content to play defense tonight. It's important to remember that this forced a Senator Kerry who many people still don't know and many of those who do know don't like to be the aggressor, a position from which it is difficult to seem like a nice guy at the same time. The President made effective use of a little bit of exasperation, even annoyance, in deflecting attacks, almost a physical version of: "There you go again." If you're well versed in John Kerry's career it probably looked like a pretty good night for him. If you don't know much about him or are put off by the little you do know, this kind of performance wouldn't make you like him.

Fourth, if part of John Kerry's task tonight was to seem more likable, and that was not achieved, he also had to reassure his own party that he isn't a complete disaster--and there he certainly succeeded, probably winning the debate in technical debating terms--and to try and clarify his muddled message. On that last he did not do himself much good, but it's hard to see how he could have. His message tonight was: "The war was a mistake because Saddam wasn't a threat but I voted for it because Saddam was a threat and though I disapprove of the war now, I'll prosecute it just as vigorously as the President who believes in it wholeheartedly." That just isn't a coherent position but it's one that he's trapped in after voting for the war.

Last, on a series of issues he came across as soft in exactly the ways that Republicans have been portraying him. The idea that our policies should pass a global test, that al Qaeda will attack us because of Iraq so we shouldn't have gone, that we should grant Kim Jong-il the bilateral talks he's seeking, that we should give Iran nuclear material and that we shouldn't develop the nuclear capacity to bust bunkers, even though Iran and North Korea are developing nukes, are all the kind of liberal pabulum that the GOP has been forcing back down Democrats throats for a quarter century now.

FINAL SCORE: a draw--Kerry on debating points, Bush on political

MORE:
Close debate may not sway the undecided: While both candidates hammered home familiar points in a closely contested debate, undecided voters may need to look to future encounters for defining moments. (FRANK DAVIES, 10/01/04, Miami Herald)

If the first debate of the 2004 presidential campaign accomplished one sure thing, it was to dispel hopes from either camp for a clear victory.

Rarely during its 90 minutes did the event produce sparks or memorable lines, although there was plenty of friction between the two. On the plus side, clear differences emerged, which may have been a service to voters just tuning in to this campaign.

On the other side, however, the format enabled both candidates to relentlessly repeat some of their most-tested attack lines from stump speeches. As a result, the body language may have been more revealing than the verbal language. President Bush ranged from disgusted to folksy, from calm to nearly hyper. Sen. John Kerry -- often accused of being wordy and wooden -- came through as forceful, direct and able to keep his sentences short and punchy.

In the end, given that television is such a visceral medium, viewers are likely to end up where they began, leaving it to future encounters to produce the seismic change the candidates are looking for.

Both candidates proved expert at remaining relentlessly on message, hammering home the points each needed to prevent defeat, if not gain victory. [...]

Conventional wisdom holds that if there is no clear winner in a debate, that tends to favor the incumbent. But it also raises the stakes for the next debate Oct. 8 with a very different format -- a town hall forum with voters' questions on domestic issues.

''This was a tough debate to call,'' said Kathleen Kendall, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland who has watched every encounter since Kennedy-Nixon in 1960.

''Kerry hit at Bush's credibility, which was effective, but Bush never wavered from his themes,'' Kendall said. She predicted that the debate will help each candidate energize his base, but may not make sharp inroads on undecided voters.

If one key test of leadership separates the two, it is whether Bush's resolute confidence leads to stubbornness, and whether Kerry is too flexible, even opportunistic, in his positions.

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BREAK OUT THE CHEEZ-WAFFLES & YOOHOO:

Bush's Net strategy for debate spin (Frank Barnako, 9/30/2004, CBS.MW)

The Bush campaign has set up a network of Web sites to carry instant analysis of tonight's debate.

The "Debate Feed" will provide the GOP spin in real time to as many as 5,000 conservative Web outlets, according to Wired News. "Our rapid response effort is based on the premise that no attack or no misstatement will go unchallenged," Michael Turk, director of the Internet campaign, told the Web site. A "war room" is outfitted with 15 computers and two TVs, monitored by two dozen staffers, ready to send out a Republican response or comment, Wired added.

The Kerry campaign is not so well organized. It has e-mailed supporters who work with local newspapers and media, telling them the Kerry campaign will provide a response after the debate, Wired reported.

In case you were wondering what that is to the left of this page.

We'll also keep this post at the top of the page all night so folks can comment on the debate.

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THE RANSOM OF SLIMANE:

Muslim freed by US issues terror threats (Julian Isherwood, 01/10/2004, Daily Telegraph)

Danish authorities said yesterday they might have to return a recently-released Guantanamo Bay prisoner to US custody after he said cabinet ministers were fair targets and vowed to travel to fight Russian forces in Chechnya.

"I'm going to Chechnya to fight for the Muslims," Slimane Hadj Abderahmane said in a television interview.

Earlier, Mr Abderahmane said the Danish prime minister and defence minister were targets.

"Denmark is the only country that hasn't realised that a country's leaders are legitimate targets of war in a war situation.

"If you're not prepared to accept those consequences, then don't go to war," said Mr Abderahmane, who added that he planned to go underground and would not appear in public again.

Lene Espersen, the justice minister, ordered a police investigation, particularly into whether Mr Abderahmane's plans to travel to Chechnya breached release agreements with the United States which would require his detention or return to American custody.

"I urge the government to pack him off back to the Americans," said Pia Kjaersgaard, the leader of the Danish People's Party, the minority government's coalition partner.

Hey, you wanted him back.

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RUNNING THE TABLE IN THE SOUTH:

WRAL Poll: Race For U.S. Senate Almost Dead Heat (WRAL, September 30, 2004)

U.S. Senate candidates Erskine Bowles and Richard Burr are in a full court press. Two months ago, a WRAL News poll gave Bowles a commanding 10 point lead. After the latest poll, new numbers show only one point separates the two candidates with 11 percent undecided. [...]

More than 600 likely voters were interviewed for the latest poll before and after Monday's debate.

This one's over too.

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ELEVENTY-FIRST, I'D SAY

TV exchange leaves Kerry in the mire: '11th position' on war (Sheldon Alberts, CanWest News Service, 9/30/04)

On the eve of a high-stakes presidential debate tonight that could help sink or save his quest for the White House, John Kerry opened himself to new accusations of inconsistency as he struggled to explain his position on the Iraq war. . . .

Republicans, who have hammered Kerry daily with charges that he is a flip-flopper, said it was the Massachusetts senator's "eleventh position" on the war. . . .

Despite escalating violence in Iraq and admissions by high-ranking administration officials that the situation is getting worse, most analysts say the pressure in tonight's debate is squarely on Mr. Kerry's shoulders.

"The debates are absolutely critical for Kerry," said Larry Sabato, director of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia. "Without the debates, I can't imagine Kerry winning. All Bush has to do is break even."

The stakes are higher for Mr. Kerry because "he has done a very poor job of running the campaign," said Timothy Lenz, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University.

So, is the New York Times now officially the newspaper least in touch with American politics?

MORE: As an example, picked almost at random, of the distance between America and the Times, I submit the following:

"I ♥ Huckabees" is a comedy of dialectics, in which opposing dualities slug it out like wounded lovers, but it's nothing if not deeply sincere. Mr. Russell and his co-writer, Jeff Baena, are clearly furious about the state of things (you name it) but, like Jon Stewart, they slide in the knife with a smile. The film's Trojan horse strategy reaches its apotheosis in Tommy, a figure of both comedy and unexpected pathos. After turning to the existentialist detectives following Sept. 11, the firefighter peers through the keyhole opened by the catastrophe and discovers a world of sorrows (child labor, melting icecaps, the works), becoming a man who truly knows too much. Knowledge may be power, but as the history of the post-1968 left in this country suggests, it can also be an excuse for factionalism, impotence, despair.

On a Stroll in Angstville With Dots Disconnected: A review of "I ♥ Huckabees", Directed by David O. Russell (Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 9/30/04).

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BASE?:

Kerry losing ground as talk turns to Iraq: Shift in focus from economy distances some Mich. voters (Chris Christoff, Detroit Free Press, 9/30/04)

With President George W. Bush gaining ground with women, Michigan and its 17 electoral votes are now up for grabs, a Free Press poll shows.

The slippage in Sen. John Kerry's advantage with that group occurred as his campaign changed its focus from the economy to criticism of the Iraq war in the last 10 days. . . .

The Free Press poll of 830 Michigan voters shows the race in a statistical tie, similar to two other polls released this week. Kerry leads, 48 percent to 46 percent, among registered voters; Bush leads, 50 percent to 48 percent, among likely voters with the election just five weeks away. [Emphasis added] . . .

While the new poll shows the economy is still the No. 1 issue for Michigan voters, it's the war in Iraq that divides them most, though more now support it. . . .

Allen Cichanski of Ann Arbor spoke of the presidential race with the zeal of the recently converted.

"I've never voted for anyone other than a Democrat since JFK, but I'm going to vote for my first Republican president," said Cichanski, 65, a retired geology professor who said he did some soul-searching to switch party allegiance. "I think the Democrats couldn't have picked a more horrible candidate than John Kerry. I think he's a fraud, particularly with the whole business of terrorists and Iraq.

"He scares the hell out of me. I don't think he wants to win." . . .

The whole point of becoming Dean Lite was to secure the base and avoid a blowout. Of course, that was the whole point of focusing on the economy early. The point of focusing on Vietnam was to show that Kerry was a fighter and to insulate him from criticism on the war. The point of this whole campaign? JFK was born to be president.

Nevertheless, I just know that John Kerry, an intellectual who deigns to be my senator only due to his noble character and concern for those of us less fortunate than himself, is going to mop the floor with the President. George Bush, though undoubtedly a great man who has led us through a perilous time, is an idiot. In this debate, Kerry will put the President away for sure.

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PLEASE DON'T HURT THE HEADSMEN:

Plan Would Let U.S. Deport Suspects to Nations That Might Torture Them (Dana Priest and Charles Babington, September 30, 2004, Washington Post)

The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership's intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago.

The provision, part of the massive bill introduced Friday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would apply to non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having links to terrorist organizations but have not been tried on or convicted of any charges. Democrats tried to strike the provision in a daylong House Judiciary Committee meeting, but it survived on a party-line vote.

The provision, human rights advocates said, contradicts pledges President Bush made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this spring that the United States would stand behind the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Hastert spokesman John Feehery said the Justice Department "really wants and supports" the provision.

Let us indulge our natural cynicism for a moment and propose that the GOP's inclusion of this provision and willingness to kick up the controversy indicates exactly what we all suspected: Abu Ghraib was simply not a negative with the American public.

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BETTER DEAD THAN RED:

DESPAIRING FOR DARFUR (Eric Reeves, 9/30/04, In These Times)

While there is growing attention to ongoing genocide in Darfur, this has not translated into either a meaningful international response or an accurate rendering of the scale and evident course of the catastrophe. [...]

Current humanitarian requirements for Darfur dictate that the international community provide 40,000 metric tons per month of food and critical non-food items such as medicine, shelter and water purification supplies. However, there isn't half the transport and logistical capacity to meet this monthly need, which is likely to grow for the foreseeable future. (Further, breaks are predicted in the food "pipeline" – a shortfall in food supplies can be predicted on the basis of present resources and projected need.) Rich nations such as France, Italy, Japan, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have shamelessly failed to substantially support to the aid effort.

With a woefully inadequate AU force, a meaningless U.N. resolution, and much bombast from various nations trying to substitute unctuous talk for concrete action, the future of Darfur is bleak. As the catastrophe accelerates, the international community has yet to make a meaningful response and the news media has yet to comprehensively render the genocidal realities. Our failure could not be greater.

Noticeable here is the dog that's not barking--the complete absence of any mention of the Administration. This is, of course, a result of the fact that the Administration is leading the struggle the author calls for, a struggle which the Left has been shamefully quiet about rather than join with George Bush and justify the idea of humanitarian intervention. So they wait for France and the UN and the rest of the unreliables while people die in Darfur. There's an important lesson here, but it's being taught at too high a price.

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THE SEE COMES IN AND REALIST ISLAND BECOMES EVEN MORE ISOLATED:

The Vatican Deploys its Divisions in Iraq – Under the Banner of NATO: An interview with Cardinal Sodano and an editorial in "Avvenire" invoke greater military support for Allawi's government and for the emerging Iraqi democracy, through a heavy deployment of troops from the Atlantic Alliance (Sandro Magister, 9/30/04, Chiesa)

The pope and the leaders of the Roman Church did not say it themselves, but they conveyed an unmistakable message. They are strongly in favor of a massive NATO commitment in Iraq, to support the government of Iyad Allawi and to guarantee free elections.

Speaking on their behalf, on the front page of its Sunday, September 26 edition, was the newspaper "Avvenire," which is headed by the Italian bishops' conference and by the organization's president, the pope's cardinal vicar, Camillo Ruini.

In an editorial by the newspaper's leading expert on international policy, Vittorio E. Parsi, a professor at the Catholic University of Milan, "Avvenire" reminded Europe and the West of its "duty" to assure free elections in Iraq, by reinforcing their military presence in the country through "the only body with the necessary resources: NATO."

An editorial so strongly exhortatory, printed on a Sunday on the front page of the bishops' newspaper, cannot be the result of chance. It is born from a decision made at the highest levels of the Church.

That such a decision was brewing could be guessed from a growing number of indications during the days immediately beforehand.

The first indication came on September 20. Cardinal Ruini spoke to the permanent council of the Italian bishops' conference, and repeated the duty of the Christian West to "oppose organized terror with the greatest energy and determination, without giving the slightest impression of considering their blackmail and their impositions," and at the same time, to transform into "our principal allies" the elements of the Muslim world that desire liberty and democracy.

Ruini is known to have been one of the protagonists of the apparent turnaround in Vatican policy on Iraq, in the fall of 2003: from the condemnation and rejection of war to determined support for the presence of western "peacekeeping" troops in the country.

The second indication came on Tuesday, September 21. An appeal was made in the newspaper "Il Foglio" for the Italian government to become a promoter within NATO and the European Union of a massive deployment of the troops of the Atlantic Alliance, "for the time necessary to secure the right of the Iraqis to vote and to select for the first time their parliament, their constitution, and their government."

The appeal was signed by Marta Dassù, the director of the magazine of the Aspen Institute in Italy; Giuliano Ferrara, the director of "Il Foglio"; Piero Ostellino, the former director of "Corriere della Sera," the leading Italian daily; and Vittorio E. Parsi, for "Avvenire." This last name is the most intriguing. Observers of Vatican affairs wondered to what extent, in taking this step, he was reflecting the orientation of pontifical diplomacy.

And the third indication gives an initial response to the question. On Wednesday, September 22, the New York correspondent of the newspaper "La Stampa," Paolo Mastrolilli, published an interview with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

Sodano was in New York at the time for an international conference on world hunger, as a guest of the Vatican observer at the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore. In the interview, he expressed admiration for the United States and biting criticism of an excessively anti-American and secularist Europe, and also against the "wearing down" of the UN.

He was silent on the theory of preventive war. But he asked that the UN Charter recognize the right to intervene militarily in countries that trample upon human rights.

The opposition of the Vatican and the U.N. to the humanitarian intervention in Iraq damaged the moral credibility of both, but they seem to have recognized that now.

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ASCENT TO THE PAST

Modern evil demands medieval response (John O’Sullivan, Chicago Sun-Times, September 28th, 2004)

Hostage-taking has been a staple tactic of Mideast terrorists since the airline hijackings of the early 1970s. The IRA employed it on both sides of the Irish border. In Latin America kidnapping was started by Marxist terrorists in the 1970s, but since then it has become a profitable commercial business. A hostage is taken every hour in Latin America. The hostage is often a son or daughter of the rich. And the victims are often brutally tortured either to encourage the payment of a ransom or as punishment if it is not paid on time.

Yet 40 years ago hostage-taking seemed a concept from the distant past -- something like slavery and piracy that Victorian imperialists had stopped in their old-fashioned self-righteous way. Like hostage-taking, however, piracy and slavery are making a comeback. Piracy flourishes in parts of southeast Asia, slavery in parts of Africa such as Sudan, and hostage-taking in the Middle East and Latin America.

In general they advance where terrorism has blazed the way by revealing the impotence of law and government when they are not backed by the self-confident application of lawful force. The post-modern world lacks self-confidence and shrinks from using force. It places its trust in treaties and conventions that it enforces only against those who agree in advance to be bound by them. Thus, in the week that its citizens were pleading for their lives in Iraq, the European Union was mainly concerned to prevent Turkey from making adultery a criminal offense -- a droll illustration of "European values."

This high-minded timidity permeates modern culture at high and low levels. For instance, a recent thriller about hostage-taking, "Man on Fire," directed by Tony Scott and based on a novel by A.J. Quinnell, received harsh critical reviews precisely because it seemed to approve of revenge and vigilantism. [...]

But as Bacon pointed out: "Revenge is a kind of wild justice." It will inevitably -- and arguably rightly -- become the resort of decent people when law and government fail to deliver justice. Post-modern governments fail in just that way. Humanitarian bodies such as Amnesty International are even worse: They practice a sort of unilateral civil libertarianism that holds governments to account for the smallest infraction of civil liberty but treats terrorism as a natural disaster. Transnational bodies like the U.N. and the EU are worse -- they seek to take the weapons of war and capital punishment from us in our struggles against terrorism, slavery, piracy and hostage-taking and to force us to rely instead on their own paper resolutions and elevated principles.

All these responses -- from the critical reactions to "Man on Fire" to the E.U.'s prohibition of capital punishment -- are overcivilized. That sounds almost like a compliment, as if it meant more civilized. In fact, to be overcivilized is to be less civilized because genuine civilization includes a robust willingness to enforce its order and truths on anarchy, violence, murder and superstition.

“Pale Ebeneezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Raging Bull, who killed him, thought it right.” (Hilaire Belloc)

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UH-OH...:

POLITICS: DEBATE PANEL NIXES KERRY CAMPAIGN REQUEST (kfmb.com, 09-30-2004)

Democratic candidate John Kerry's campaign demanded Thursday that the lights signaling when a speaker's time has expired during debates with President Bush be removed from the lecterns because they are distracting, but the commission hosting the debates refused.

An angry exchange between representatives of the Kerry campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates took place just hours before the candidates were to meet at the University of Miami for the first of three debates, The Associated Press learned. Kerry's team threatened to remove the lights when they visit the debate site with Kerry later in the day.

"We'll bring a screwdriver," said a Kerry aide familiar with what several people called an angry exchange. The commission did not return a call seeking comment.

...sounds like the staff of thousands can't get Cicero to shorten his answers.

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NO, I SAID ADD SOME OOMPH, NOT SOME OOMPA!:

Kerry under spotlight as his campaign glows to code orange (Caroline Overington, October 1, 2004, Sydney Morning Herald)

There is not a woman alive who will not sympathise with the Democrat John Kerry for doing what he did this week.

Who among us has not done the same thing? That is, made a stupid, stupid decision regarding our appearance right before a very important event.

Senator Kerry, who is trying to win the race for the White House, hit the bottle.

The fake tan bottle. Or perhaps the sun bed, nobody is sure. But whatever, the day before the first TV debate with President George Bush, Kerry turned orange.

Not a little bit orange. His face is like a Halloween pumpkin. Or, as the New York Post put it, Kerry - who is from icy Boston - suddenly has a tan "even George Hamilton would envy".

Everybody has noticed, of course. Talkback callers in the US jumped on the airwaves to have a good chuckle.

The comedian Jay Leno said that Kerry's face was, like a city faced with terrorism, on orange alert. Matt Drudge, who runs the Drudge Report website, wondered whether Kerry had been campaigning too much "in the rust belt".

The tan was so obvious that the Kerry camp - which wants to get back to debating the big issues, like war - was forced to explain it. It said Kerry got the tan by basking in the sun at a football match.

Yeah, the tanning dangers at Lambert Field are notorious...

Knowing that they could turn the Senator into a laughingstock demonstrates, yet again, how smart George Bush and Karl Rove are about politics.

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SENATOR JOAD:

Koreans Seek Regime Change: At a two-day conference, 2,000 pastors call for an end to public executions, concentration camps and starvation under North Korea's Kim Jong Il. (K. Connie Kang, September 29, 2004, LA Times)

With tearful prayers and thunderous singing of "The Battle Hymn of Republic" in Korean, 2,000 Korean pastors from throughout the United States and Canada met in Los Angeles this week to urge an end to the repressive regime of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.

Pastors, human rights advocates and defectors from North Korea also prayed for passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. The U.S. Senate late Tuesday passed a slightly amended version of the legislation, approved by the House in July. The measure would compel the United States to, among other things, broaden talks over North Korea's nuclear program to include discussions of human rights abuses. The bill will now return to the House for a final vote. [...]

Though many Korean churches and pastors have worked individually to improve conditions in North Korea by sending food, money and medicine, this was the first widely coordinated effort on the part of Korean Christians in the United States and Canada to focus on the goal, said the Rev. Hee-Min Park, pastor emeritus of Young Nak Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, one of the largest Korean churches in the country.

In the keynote speech, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) called North Koreans "the most helpless people in the world today … trapped in the most brutal system of government the world has ever seen."

No leader in the world is more reliably to be found on the side of the right and the good than Sam Brownback.

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MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE PIUS AGAIN:

Sacred mysteries: Pope who defied liberal forces (Christopher Howse, 25/09/2004, Daily Telegraph)

At dawn on Sept 20, 1870, as the guns of enemy Italians opened up on the walls of Rome, Pope Pius IX invited the diplomatic corps to attend his early morning Mass. Afterwards they were given chocolate and ices as the Pontiff surrendered his army, if not his jurisdiction.

Pope Pius IX is famous for condemning as an error the proposition that: "The Roman Pontiff may and ought to reconcile himself to, and agree with progress, liberalism and modern civilisation."

Looking at the television schedules, one is tempted to say "hear, hear" but television, if he'd known about it, was not the sort of technology of modern civilisation he had in mind. While he still had control of the Papal States, railways were built, telegraphs linked the towns and factories were constructed. Pius IX's enemies were not things but systems of ideas. [...]

Socialism and Communism, which he had condemned as early as 1846, were in his eyes the sponsors of an idolatry that replaced God with human self-sufficiency. This lay behind his two great acts: the declaration of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 - 150 years ago this December - and of Papal Infallibility in 1870. Both are much misunderstood.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception stated that Mary the Mother of Jesus was without sin from the first moment of her existence.

The day after its promulgation, Pius made a speech in which he stressed the terrible effects of Original Sin, from which Mary was exempt, and the need mankind had for God to reveal himself. This he contrasted to the false claims of rationalism, which saw no need for humanity to be healed.

As for Papal Infallibility, its terms were so restricted that it hardly meant more than that the Church itself was preserved from solemnly teaching erroneous doctrine.

For Pius IX, defining Infallibility meant combatting the third and most dangerous kind of liberalism that threatened the Church he had in his care.

The first had been the political liberalism, secularist republicanism rather than laissez-faire economics, whose armies prevailed. The second was the moral liberalism, sex and drugs, that remains with us.

The third was the emptying of Christian belief of its content. If, as Dr Edward Norman has argued in his latest books, the Catholic Church has retained a mechanism to preserve doctrinal integrity, it is thanks to Pius IX and his successors.

Opponents of progressivism always look bad in their own day but prescient and heroic in retrospect.

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CHRISTIAN-BAITING:

Think Again: God-phobic Jews (Jonathan Rosenblum, Sep. 23, 2004, THE JERUSALEM POST)

American Jews live in terror of religious Christians - the kind who tell their elected representatives that America will be judged by its treatment of Israel. (Well-heeled Presbyterians, who have, like most Jews, reduced religion to "good deeds," such as boycotting Israel, trouble them far less.) Every litany of the evils of George W. Bush includes his religiosity.

An August 12 op-ed by Eli Valley of the Steinhardt Foundation's Jewish Life Network perfectly captured American Jewry's anti-Christian phobia and general disdain for religion. The most frightening thing about President Bush, wrote Valley, is that he "has made no secret of his spiritual devotion."

Fundamentalist Christians hope for the conversion of all Jews and thus the end of Jewish religion, warns Valley, and that should make every Jew shudder. Even if the charge were true, it should cause no shudders: Given the phenomenal success of American Jews in ending the Jewish religion through intermarriage and assimilation, there is little left for Christian fundamentalists to do.

It makes no sense, alleges Valley, to fight Islamic fundamentalism with Christian fundamentalism. That would be true, however, only if Christian suicide bombers were seeking to spread the rule of Christendom around the globe. (Two weeks ago, Al Gore used the same clumsy "fundamentalist" brush to link radical Islamists, Orthodox Jews, and George W. Bush.)

Valley further claims that devout Christians, like Bush, are incapable of fact-based reasoning, and implies that their "longing for Apocalypse" leads them to make war. No doubt he believes that. His secular faith thereby spares him the trouble of having to engage the premises of Bush's foreign policy, of which Norman Podhoretz, not generally known as either a Christian fundamentalist or a seeker of Apocalypse, offers a spirited 38-page defense in the current edition of Commentary. Podhoretz cites numerous facts, and makes many rational-sounding arguments: he does not quote Scripture.

American Jews have become positively God-phobic. Pity hapless Cameron Kerry, who promoted his brother to a gathering of Orthodox Jews on the grounds that he would never appoint an attorney-general who begins his work day with prayer. No doubt that line was a surefire winner with secular Jewish groups. How was Kerry, a Reform convert, to know that Orthodox Jews begin and end their day in the same way?

For fear of aiding and abetting religion, major Jewish organizations, including the Reform movement, consistently adopt the most extreme positions on separation of state and religion.

Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush (Frank Rich, 10/03/04, NY Times)

Of the many cultural grenades being tossed that day, though, the one must-see is "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," a DVD that is being specifically marketed in "head to head" partisan opposition to "Fahrenheit 9/11." This documentary first surfaced at the Republican convention in New York, where it was previewed in tandem with an invitation-only, no-press-allowed "Family, Faith and Freedom Rally," a Ralph Reed-Sam Brownback jamboree thrown by the Bush campaign for Christian conservatives. Though you can buy the DVD for $14.95, its makers told the right-wing news service WorldNetDaily.com that they plan to distribute 300,000 copies to America's churches. And no wonder. This movie aspires to be "The Passion of the Bush," and it succeeds.

More than any other campaign artifact, it clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president's vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message. It transforms the president that the Democrats deride as a "fortunate son" of privilege into a prodigal son with the "moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet." Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from "a throat full of Texas dust"), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it's a parable anticipating the future president's miraculous ability to comfort us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox machine in 1988; it's an effort to imbue our born-again savior with retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn't subtle: they were separated at birth. [...]

"Will George W. Bush be allowed to finish the battle against the forces of evil that threaten our very existence?" Such is the portentous question posed at the film's conclusion by its narrator, the religious broadcaster Janet Parshall, beloved by some for her ecumenical generosity in inviting Jews for Jesus onto her radio show during the High Holidays. Anyone who stands in the way of Mr. Bush completing his godly battle, of course, is a heretic. Facts on the ground in Iraq don't matter. Rational arguments mustered in presidential debates don't matter. Logic of any kind is a nonstarter. The president - who after 9/11 called the war on terrorism a "crusade," until protests forced the White House to backpedal - is divine. He may not hear "voices" instructing him on policy, testifies Stephen Mansfield, the author of one of the movie's source texts, "The Faith of George W. Bush," but he does act on "promptings" from God. "I think we went into Iraq not so much because there were weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Mansfield has explained elsewhere, "but because Bush had concluded that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer" in the battle "between good and evil." So why didn't we go into those other countries in the axis of evil, North Korea or Iran? Never mind. To ask such questions is to be against God and "with the terrorists."

The propagandists of "Faith in the White House" argue, as others have, that the president's invocation of religion in the public sphere, from his citation of Jesus as his favorite "political philosopher" to his incessant invocation of the Almighty in talking about how everything is coming up roses in Iraq, is consistent with the civic spirituality practiced by his antecedents, from the founding fathers to Bill Clinton. It's not. Past presidents have rarely, if ever, claimed such godlike infallibility. Mr. Bush never admits to making a mistake; even his premature "Mission Accomplished" victory lap wasn't in error, as he recently told Bill O'Reilly. After all, if you believe "God wants me to be president" - a quote attributed to Mr. Bush by the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention - it's a given that you are incapable of making mistakes. Those who say you have are by definition committing blasphemy. A God-appointed leader even has the power to rewrite His texts. Jim Wallis, the liberal evangelical author, has pointed out Mr. Bush's habit of rejiggering specific scriptural citations so that, say, the light shining into the darkness is no longer God's light but America's and, by inference, the president's own.

It's not just Mr. Bush's self-deification that separates him from the likes of Lincoln, however; it's his chosen fashion of Christianity. The president didn't revive the word "crusade" idly in the fall of 2001. His view of faith as a Manichaean scheme of blacks and whites to be acted out in a perpetual war against evil is synergistic with the violent poetics of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and Mel Gibson's cinematic bloodfest. The majority of Christian Americans may not agree with this apocalyptic worldview, but there's a big market for it. A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as "the base." [...]

The re-election juggernaut has not only rounded up the membership rosters of churches en masse but quietly mounted official Web sites like kerrywrongforcatholics.com as well. (Evangelicals and Mormons have their own Web variants on this same theme, but not the Jews, who are apparently getting in Kerry just what they deserve.)

What's interesting about Mr. Rich's column is not its, typical for him, hysterical claim that evangelical Christianity is de facto anti-Semitism, but that the Times apparently finds his ravings important enough to be released several days early, as if he might affect our perceptions of the debate tonight or something.

MORE:
-REVIEW: of George W. Bush: Faith in the White House (Mark Moring, 08/24/04, Christianity Today)

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SMART MONEY SAYS A DEAN-LIKE SCREAM IS ONLY A WEEK OR TWO AWAY:

Kerry's myth making (Robert Novak, September 30, 2004, Townhall)

John Kerry in a press conference last week repeated his accusation that Gen. Eric Shinseki was "forced out" as U.S. Army chief of staff because he wanted more troops for Iraq. The trouble is that the Democratic presidential nominee was spreading an urban myth. The bigger trouble is that it was no isolated incident.

Sen. Kerry last week also said the Bush administration may push reinstatement of the military draft, when in fact that idea comes only from anti-war Democrats. At the same time, he said retired Gen. Tommy Franks complained that Iraq was draining troops from Afghanistan, when the truth is he never did. Over a week earlier, Kerry blamed Bush for higher Medicare premiums when in fact they are mandated by law (one that Kerry voted for).

Exaggeration is a familiar political staple, but presidential candidates usually are held to a higher standard. Kerry's recent descent into myth making may reflect the campaign's anxiety in the final weeks. The immediate questions are whether he will engage in misstatements during Thursday's first presidential debate, and whether he will be challenged if he does.

Wasn't this inevitable? After all, Senator Kerry has channeled every other disastrous Democratic candidate of the past 36 years, he had to get to Gore sooner or later.

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PAGING BISHOP USSHER, YOUR APOLOGY IS READY (via Robert Schwartz):

Human populations are tightly interwoven: Family tree shows our common ancestor lived just 3,500 years ago. (Michael Hopkin, 29 September 2004, Nature)

The most recent common ancestor of all humanity lived just a few thousand years ago, according to a computer model of our family tree. Researchers have calculated that the mystery person, from whom everyone alive today is directly descended, probably lived around 1,500 BC in eastern Asia.

Douglas Rohde of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and his colleagues devised the computer program to simulate the migration and breeding of humans across the world. By estimating how different groups intermingle, the researchers built up a picture of how tightly the world's ancestral lines are linked.

The figure of 1,500 BC might sound surprisingly recent. But think how wide your own family tree would be if you extended it back that far. Lurking somewhere in your many hundreds of ancestors at that date is likely to be somebody who crops up in the corresponding family tree for anyone alive in 2004.

In fact, if it were not for the fact that oceans helped to keep populations apart, the human race would have mingled even more freely, the researchers argue. "The most recent common ancestor for a randomly mating population would have lived in the very recent past," they write in this week's Nature.

Presumably science will eventually figure out something that wasn't known by our ancestors millennia ago, but don't hold your breath. All the really big "breakthroughs" eventually end up back where we started--from the Big Bang, to Creation, to Geocentrism.

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I RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE WITH THE HONORABLE GENTLEWOMAN

House votes to end D.C. gun ban: Bill's supporters cite 2nd Amendment rights; city officials fear rise in crime (Jim Abrams, AP, Chicago Tribune, 9/30/04)

The House voted Wednesday to end a 28-year ban on handgun ownership in the nation's capital, brushing aside pleas from city officials concerned about a surge in violence and more heavily armed criminals.

"The District of Columbia handgun ban has failed. It has failed miserably," said Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), sponsor of the bill that passed 250-171.

It is unlikely the Senate will take up the measure this year. . . .

"This is absolutely crazy," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), whose husband was killed and son wounded in 1993 by a gunman on a Long Island Rail Road train.

We may be stupid, but we're not crazy. This, on the other hand, is brilliant.

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LIKE GEORGE HAMILTON DOING A PUMICE STONE INFOMERCIAL:

Why Bush Looks Good to Women (Margaret Carlson, September 30, 2004, LA Times)

Freud, on his deathbed, asked, "What do women want?" The improbable answer, it now seems, may be George W. Bush.

According to pollsters, the gender gap that usually helps Democrats is shrinking. The reason may be as simple as Bush himself: Post-9/11 pollsters say women prefer certitude and clarity to nuance and verbosity, staying alive to after-school programs. Democrats wail at the loss of their usual edge with women, at the irony of the National Guard slacker beating the Silver Star warrior on the issue of strength. But bluster and repetition have apparently prevailed, especially when John Kerry has said both so much and so little. Hard to read, Kerry has let Bush and his evil genius, Karl Rove — the architect of his political life — fill in the blanks.

I don't buy Bush's strength, but in a campaign it doesn't matter what is real and what is fake; it's what will fly. Tonight, Kerry has a chance to press his case with women, notoriously late deciders with a long attention span and good impulse control. Though errant female voters are gettable for Kerry, it won't be easy. There are some troublesome biographical points. Marrying one woman vastly wealthier than you are looks like good fortune in matters of the heart. Marrying a second one looks like a calculated career move. Kerry's hooded eyes make him look like a brooder, but not the strong, silent type. At a totally superficial level, that orange tan is troublesome. Across the political spectrum, women do not trust a primper.

As any good cabana boy knows, all women want the same thing: a good foot rub. Unfortunately for the Senator, there isn't time to get to every female pair of feet in America by November 2nd.

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NOT A SHORTSTOP:

Colombia's president cites progress: The president of Colombia touted progress at a Miami trade fair that brought together potential American investors and Colombian ventures. (MICHAEL A.W. OTTEY, 9/30/04, Miami Herald)

Midway through his term in office, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Vélez says that his country still has some pressing internal challenges but that it has made great strides, particularly with the economy.

During remarks to reporters at a trade forum Wednesday in Miami, Uribe proudly cited an 18.6 percent increase in exports as a hallmark of Colombia's growth.

The trade conference, titled Proexport Colombia, brought together more than 600 Colombian business ventures and 250 potential American investors at the Hotel InterContinental.

Maurício Gómez, trade commissioner for the Colombian Government Trade Bureau, called the fair important for both countries' economies. A similar one was held in Cartagena, Colombia, earlier in the year. Gómez noted that such companies as JCPenney, Gap, Sysco, Kmart, Old Navy and Be, Bath & Beyond had expressed interest.

''There are many expectations from both countries, as they are targeting to exceed the amount of business from the last event,'' Gómez said in a statement.

Last year, the United States, Colombia's largest trading partner, took in 44 percent of the South American nation's exports and sent 38 percent of its goods there.

The United States is also Colombia's largest foreign investor, providing an estimated $5.7 billion in direct investment, according to the Colombian Government Trade Bureau in Washington.

Colombia exports coffee, cut flowers, oil and petroleum products, bananas and other goods. It imports from the United States electronics, machinery and such agricultural goods as wheat and corn.

But Colombia is also the conduit for most of the illicit drugs that reach the United States. According to the State Department, 75 percent of the world's cocaine production and 90 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States comes from there.

Even on that front, Uribe said, there have been reductions. With the crackdown -- with help from the United States -- even kidnappings have been reduced, he said.

There's still a long way to go but President Uribe, an unsung hero, is forging a success in both the war on drugs and the war on terror at one of the key points where they meet.

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TO MARKET, TO MARKET...:

Aeroflot ... we have take-off (CHRIS STEPHEN, 9/30/04, The Scotsman)

FOR years it was a symbol of the cold, grey face Russia showed to the outside world, with cramped planes, a terrible safety record and frowning stewardesses.

But now the Russian airline Aeroflot insists it has changed its spots - with a little help from a British PR firm.

In a makeover of ambitious proportions, the airline has spruced up its planes, service and reliability, and insists the old service-with-a-scowl is a thing of the past.

The task was not an easy one. Until now, Aeroflot has had a well-deserved reputation as a Communist-era theme park with clunky planes that nobody trusted to stay in the air.

It is often said that an airline’s personality reflects its country - think Lufthansa’s lumbering German efficiency or Alitalia’s maddening Italian chaos.

Aeroflot’s fate is to track Russia’s many changes. Bright and hopeful at its formation in 1923, its stagnation began soon afterwards and gave the airline the reputation it has struggled to shake off. [...]

With the nation’s economy, if not its politics, now on an even keel, tough new managers have joined the airline.

They have slashed dozens of unprofitable routes, kept open from the days of the Soviet Union to former satellite countries.

Passenger numbers are up, the airline is now in the black and it harbours hopes of luring foreigners deep into the largest country in the world. This summer, Aeroflot squeezed into the top ten index of the world’s most profitable airlines, and Air France has begun talks about forming an alliance.

By contrast, many western airlines are mired in debt and a few teeter on bankruptcy.

Mr Duffy is impressed. "I fly Aeroflot 25 to 30 times a year and I have noticed a huge difference," he said.

It was always amusing that folk who wouldn't fly Aeroflot at gunpoint were convinced the Soviets military machine was functional.

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WE MIGHT EVEN WIN THIS ONE (via Michael Herdegen):

History Can Offer Bush Hope ... (Max Boot, September 23, 2004, LA Times)

Lest we be too hard on Bush, it's useful to recall the travails of the nation's two most successful commanders in chief, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

Lincoln is remembered, of course, for winning the Civil War and freeing the slaves. We tend to forget that along the way he lost more battles than any other president: First and Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga…. The list of federal defeats was long and dispiriting. So was the list of federal victories (e.g., Antietam, Gettysburg) that could have been exploited to shorten the conflict, but weren't.

As the Union's fortunes fell, opponents tarred Lincoln with invective that might make even Michael Moore blush. Harper's magazine called him a "despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus." As late as the summer of 1864, Lincoln appeared likely to lose his bid for reelection. Only the fall of Atlanta on Sept. 2 saved his presidency.

Most of the Union's failures were because of inept generalship, but it was Lincoln who chose the generals, including many political appointees with scant military experience. He ultimately won the war only by backing Ulysses Grant's brutal attritional tactics that have often been criticized as sheer butchery.

Roosevelt had more than his share of mistakes too, the most notorious being his failure to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor, even though U.S. code breakers had given him better intelligence than Bush had before Sept. 11. FDR also did not do enough to prepare the armed forces for war, and then pushed them into early offensives at Guadalcanal and North Africa that took a heavy toll on inexperienced troops. At Kasserine Pass, Tunisia, in 1943, the U.S. Army was mauled by veteran German units, losing more than 6,000 soldiers.

The Allies went on to win the war but still suffered many snafus, such as Operation Market Garden, a failed airborne assault on Holland in September 1944, and the Battle of the Bulge three months later, when a massive German onslaught in the Ardennes caught U.S. troops napping.

Though FDR bore only indirect responsibility for most of these screw-ups, he was more directly culpable for other bad calls, such as the decision to detain 120,000 Japanese Americans without any proof of their disloyalty. Like Lincoln, who jailed suspected Southern sympathizers without trial, Roosevelt was guilty of civil liberties restrictions that were light-years beyond the Patriot Act. And, like Bush, Roosevelt didn't do enough to prepare for the postwar period. His failure to occupy more of Eastern Europe before the Red Army arrived consigned millions to tyranny; his failure to plan for the future of Korea and Vietnam after the Japanese left helped lead to two wars that killed 100,000 Americans.

None of this is meant in any way to denigrate the inspired leadership of two great presidents. Both Lincoln and Roosevelt were brilliant wartime leaders precisely because they were able to overcome adversity and inspire the country toward ultimate victory with their unflagging will to win. That's what Bush is trying to do today.

Considering that the post-Civil War period resulted in blacks living in virtual servitude and true apartheid and that the post-WWII period ended with all of Eastern Europe, including half of supposedly liberated Germany, and much of Asia under Communism it's impossible to imagine that President Bush will fail as badly as did his predecessors.

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ELECTION IN A BOX:

How Would a Computer Pick the Prez? (Nelson Hernandez, Sr., 09/29/2004, Tech Central Station)

TCS contributor Douglas Kern's recent article ("President Elect - 2004") regarding the success of Commodore 64-era political game President Elect 1988 in predicting elections prompted a search by TCS staff for the designer/programmer of that game, Nelson Hernandez, Sr. We tracked him down. In this article, the man who banged out the original BASIC source code in 1981 on his Apple II+ computer explains who he thinks will win -- and why.

-- The editors

My comments on Doug Kern's experimentation with my game must be general; a detailed critique of his methodology would be an impenetrably esoteric discussion for most readers. But the main point I would like to make is that the game indeed projected the 1988 election with uncanny success well in advance, but it cannot be applied to the 2004 election.

In real life as well as in President Elect 1988, each presidential election takes place within a certain contextual background wherein the electorate subjectively evaluates the relative success or failure of the incumbent party, which is then politically rewarded or punished. In every election cycle the voting population arrives at a collective answer to candidate Reagan's famous 1980 debate question, "are you better off today than you were four years ago" well before the election takes place. PE 1988 knew the actual situation in 1984 with perfect hindsight and could quantify the incumbent party's relative success or failure in 1988 based on hypothetical economic/situational inputs using a fairly simple mathematical formula I created to compare the current overall "state of the union" to what it was in the previous election.

However using PE 1988 to project 2004 is problematic because the economic and national security/foreign situation inputs Kern was plugging for 2004 were being compared to the state of the union in 1984 instead of the one which prevailed in 2000. This mismatch alone renders his experiment moot.

Mr. Hernandez then sort of runs the experiment himself--interesting...

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DONNIE MOORE WAS A GOOD CLOSER TOO:

Waiting for Kerry's Big Finish to Start (Tina Brown, September 30, 2004, Washington Post)

On the eve of the debates people are so on edge in New York that every gathering has become like a visit to the dentist. In this town of Democrats, Karl Rove's real or imagined brilliance has got people dangerously psyched out. Someone in a group always produces some new vulnerability of Kerry's to drill down on, some fresh tactical error to palpitate about.

An expectation reversal has been going on that's strange to find among a candidate's own supporters. Even without the goring Bush has given him all summer, Kerry has lowered opinions of his campaigning skills so far that he now has to make a comeback tonight just to keep his own side happy. With George Stephanopoulos on ABC last Sunday, the usually fierce congressman and former Clinton switchblade Rahm Emanuel looked so distracted and unhappy defending Kerry's war positions against Republican mouth Stuart Stevens that I half expected him to excuse himself in the middle of the show and catch a flight back to Chicago.

With all the mythology about Kerry's gift of coming from behind, New Yorkers are watching and hoping like fundamentalists awaiting the rapture. "What will it be like?" they ask one another. A mysterious subtle transformation of will that suffuses Kerry with winner's luck? A defining moment when he soothes his wounded honor with a shaft of killing wit that at last unmasks Bush? If so, could it please happen in prime time tonight? (Maybe, just in case, Kerry should wear cowboy boots to reduce the president still further to the size of Dr. Ruth.)

Among the big-donor crowd, the good-closer cliche has worn out its welcome. They have had it with reading in the New York Times that the past two months of flubs were part of some weird subliminal strategy. Who does Kerry think he is? Bob Dylan? Enough already with the near-death experiences. Mr. Closer, give us closure.

On the bright side, Mr. Kerry has lowered expectations so far in advance of tonight's first debate that the only way he can really mess up is to be himself.

Meanwhile, it's easy enough to close as well as he did in '96. Bump Edwards and take his vp slot. Put Bill Clinton in the presidential slot. After you win have Clinton step down--to avoid the constitutional problem--and take back the top slot.

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OOMPA LOOMPA ON A TIGHTROPE:

Old Democrat pick-up lines aren't working on women (Collin Levey, 9/30/04, The Seattle Times

If the Democrats are looking for a good campaign manual for the first presidential debate, they might consider Emily Post. The women's vote isn't behaving the way it's "supposed to." Maybe the problem's with the theory.

After weeks of watching President Bush's post-convention lead widen, John Kerry got his latest hint of rejection from the damsels Democrats have taken for granted for the past few elections: Across the country, the ballyhooed gender gap has narrowed and, in some places, disappeared.

So ladies are now set to get what you might call a thoroughly modern courtship from the Democrats — quick and dirty. "Sen. Romeo" from North Carolina has been dispatched to lunch with women's groups and, well, no one imagines Kerry acquired that sunny glow for the fellas. Minivan moms, start your engines.

Kerry has been going "Live with Regis and Kelly" and heading to a Redbook luncheon (cookie recipe forthcoming?). And Democrats like former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry have predicted that Kerry will aim for some nice soft tones in tonight's debate, since women don't like to see bullies like Al Gore wandering and huffing about.

Not to say it can't be done, but it takes a pretty deft hand to attack your opponent's record relentlessly and appear to be a nice guy.

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THE CW'S ROAD TO GOLGOTHA:

The Enthusiasm Gap: Also: The (Other) Great Divides; Poll Vault: A Hurricane Preparedness Tip (Richard Morin and Christopher Muste, September 30, 2004, Washington Post)

Forget the gender gap. The chasm that yawns the widest this election year is the Enthusiasm Gap.

Nearly two in three likely voters who support President Bush -- 65 percent -- said they were "very enthusiastic" about their candidate while 42 percent of Sen. John F. Kerry's supporters express similarly high levels of enthusiasm for their choice, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

That's a 23-point difference in relative excitement. Although the polling record is incomplete for earlier elections, the available data suggest that the enthusiasm gap in the 2000 presidential campaign was negligible, at best.

In an election in which turnout is key, keeping the faithful energized is one of the most critical challenges facing Kerry as he approaches the first presidential debate tonight. Not only must he convince the small number of persuadable voters who currently support Bush to switch their vote, but he also must re-energize his own supporters to ensure that they turn out on Election Day.

While the enthusiasm gap is apparent across most key voting blocks, nowhere is it more striking than in the way that political conservatives, moderates and liberals view their respective choices.

Bush's conservative base is broadly enthusiastic about the president while political liberals are noticeably cooler to Kerry.

And so, after years of stories about Bush's base problems, we get the: "nevermind."

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THE FROG WHO TURNED INTO A PRINCE:

Kerry's Shaky Take on the War: He's missing the big picture. (Max Boot, September 30, 2004, LA Times)

Now that he's decided to close the campaign as Howard-Dean-with-a-Silver-Star, John Kerry is claiming that the war he voted to authorize in Iraq is a "profound diversion" from the things that really matter — Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, even an alleged lack of firehouses in the United States. The implication is that if only we hadn't gotten involved in Iraq, the rest of the world would be in much better shape. This is a highly debatable proposition, and it is an area where President Bush should try to pin down his slippery adversary.

Part of what Kerry says is sheer demagoguery. He castigates Bush for spending $200 billion (actually $130 billion, but who's counting?) in Iraq and not spending it at home for schools, healthcare, firefighters and no doubt free treats for good little girls and boys. Yet in the next breath, Kerry attacks Bush for being profligate, period. Which is it? Is Bush spending too much or too little? It's hard to believe Kerry is serious in any case; this is merely pandering to leftist isolationism.

Kerry is on firmer ground when he suggests that Bush has allowed "the urgent nuclear dangers in North Korea and Iran … to mount on his presidential watch." True, and if one advocated a get-tough policy with Pyongyang and Tehran, the fact that 130,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq might be an impediment. (Or they might help boost the pressure on next-door Iran.) But Kerry doesn't advocate such a policy. He wants to sign a generous deal that would pay these rogue states not to produce nukes. Appeasement hardly requires military muscle.

What of Kerry's claim that Bush was so focused on Iraq that he let Al Qaeda run wild? Actually, two-thirds of Al Qaeda's senior leadership has been caught or killed. And the U.S. is getting more cooperation in fighting terrorism now than it did before 9/11, even from states that aren't fans of the Iraq war. Look at the big roundups of Al Qaeda suspects recently in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. As French Arabist Gilles Kepel argues in a new book, the jihadists are losing their war to gain control of the Muslim world.

What could be more delightful than the reliance of the War Party on a Frenchman?

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ANOTHER HOPEFUL SIGN IN RUSSIA:

Church's Clout Ascends in Russia: A political player again, and independent for the first time, the institution seeks its proper role. An art exhibit prosecution illustrates its muscle. (Kim Murphy, September 30, 2004, LA TImes)

When the well-known Sakharov Museum broached the subject of religion in an art exhibit, no one was surprised that an outcry followed.

After all, one work featured an icon into which viewers could insert their heads. Another superimposed Christ on a Coca-Cola logo with the words, "This is My Blood."

Followers of a local priest vandalized the exhibit with spray paint. The Russian parliament voted to condemn the display and urged the authorities to "take necessary measures." President Vladimir V. Putin's spiritual advisor, Father Tikhon Shevkunov, called the artists "disease-carrying bacteria" against whom "society is using antigens."

Ultimately, the power of the state was brought to bear against a museum that has stood as a symbol of challenge to Soviet-era repression and religious persecution. Sakharov Museum director Yuri Samodurov is scheduled today to go on trial in a Moscow courtroom, accused with two other exhibit organizers of "inciting ethnic or religious hatred."

The case has attracted only a smattering of controversy in Russia, where an attack on the Orthodox Church is seen by many as a body blow to the Russian polity.

Stripped of its assets and persecuted for 70 years under atheist Soviet rule, the church of the Russian czars has once again become a key political player in Russia — one of the few civil institutions able to claim a following across the nation's far-flung landscape.

In a survey this year, 71% of Russians identified themselves as Orthodox, and more than half said they considered their religion important or very important. The church sponsors its own magazine, its own radio station and until recently had its own program on state television.

It indirectly controls at least 40 deputies in the parliament, who this week successfully carried a bill that will guarantee the church the free use of tens of millions of dollars worth of state property on which church buildings stand.

Perhaps most important, the church has a believer in Putin, though his motives have been questioned. Unlike his predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, who was considered a poseur every time he clutched a candle and headed toward an altar for the TV cameras, Putin has his own Orthodox priest to whom he confesses.

If Putin is serious about strengthening countervailing institutions like the Church then his authoritarianism can be the basis for Russian revival.

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PLEASE DO IRAN, PLEASE DO IRAN, PLEASE DO IRAN...:

Syria 'to seal' border with Iraq (BBC, 9/29/04)

The US says Syria has agreed to tighten its border with Iraq to prevent militants from crossing the border. [...]

The US seems to have achieved its aim of moving on from political promises to specific practical measures Syria has agreed to take, the BBC's State Department correspondent Jill McGivering reports.

This follows directly from an apparent breakthrough last week at a meeting between Mr Powell and the Syrian foreign minister, our correspondent says.

Washington may feel it has some real leverage at the moment on Damascus, which currently appears particularly isolated, with new UN pressure over its presence in Lebanon, analysts say.

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THE "ALLIES":

Italy debates the cost of freeing hostages: Some fear consequences of alleged ransom payment. (Sophie Arie, 9/30/04, CS Monitor)

Euphoria still lingers in the air after the triumphant homecoming of two Italian aid workers held hostage in Iraq. But concern intensified Wednesday that by saving the "two Simonas," Italy may have inspired a whole new phase of kidnapping in Iraq, sending a message to criminal gangs that western hostages are worth millions of dollars.

Amid reports that at least $1 million was paid for the release of Simona Pari and Simona Parretta after 21 days of agonizing negotiations with their captors, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said only that the government made "a very difficult choice."

But Gustavo Selva, chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, confirmed that the two women were saved by cash. "The lives of the girls was the most important thing," Mr. Selva said in an interview with France's RTL radio.

"In principle, we shouldn't give in to blackmail but this time we had to, although it's a dangerous path to take because, obviously, it could encourage others to take hostages, either for political reasons or for criminal reasons," he said.

The Europeans are so craven you can sometimes almost understand why al Qaeda thinks it could win. Imagine how bewildered they'll be though when George Bush easily wins a mandate to keep whupping up on them.

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A MIGHTY WINDTALKER CRACKS THE CODE:

Words matter: How Bush speaks in religious code (Bruce Lincoln , September 12, 2004, Boston Globe)

George W. Bush believes God has called him to be president. You won't hear him say so openly, of course, but he regularly conveys this to a core constituency -- the religious right. [...]

Twelve times Bush used the phrase "I believe," many more than any other. Sometimes it meant only "I hold this opinion," and sometimes it marked a profession of faith. But repetition hammered home the crucial point: Bush is a man who believes.

Two of these beliefs were meant to justify his wars as holy. The first -- "I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century" -- prompts a question: Called by whom? The second helps answer that query: "I believe freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman." And, a bit later: "Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom."

In the course of his speech, the president thus suggested he is a pious man, called to lead a righteous nation. Like the nation itself, he is committed to a sacred cause and is guided in all things by his Christian faith. His sole concern in Iraq -- so he insists -- is to spread freedom, and in doing this he serves the Almighty. If you heard that and can accept it, it must be terribly reassuring.

Rather less comforting is the realization that Bush is selling his dubious war to the base he has skillfully courted for years, which he knows to be credulous, fiercely patriotic, and enormously loyal.

What do you expect? Senator Kerry already has the cynical, unpatriotic, disloyal vote wrapped up.

---

THE TRIFECTA:

Bush gains ground in Fla.; Kerry leads in Ohio (USA Today, 9/29/04)

Likely Voters

FL Sep 24-27 OH Sep 25-28 PA Sep 25-28

Kerry/Edwards (D) 43 47 46

Bush/Cheney (R) 52 49 49

Ahead in PA and FL isn't even competitive.

MORE:
With Bush Advancing, Missouri May Be a Battleground All but Conquered (R. W. APPLE Jr., Sept. 29, 2004, NY Times)

Is Missouri a swing state that has already swung? So it seems to many people here on the eve of the first presidential debate.

John Kerry has not visited the state in nearly three weeks and may not be back, local Democrats say, until the second debate, scheduled for Oct. 8 at Washington University in St. Louis. This is no accident of scheduling.

Its 11 electoral votes are certainly a prize worth winning, and Missouri was listed as a battleground state by both parties as the campaign began. It has symbolic significance as well. In every presidential election over the last century, with the single exception of 1956, Missouri has gone with the winner, usually by a margin closely approximating the national figure.

-Bush's lead stronger, poll says: Kerry behind by 10 points in state, according to Harris (ALAN J. BORSUK, Sep. 29, 2004, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Evidence that President Bush has moved into a notable lead over Sen. John Kerry in the important Wisconsin presidential contest increased Wednesday with the release of a fresh poll.

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a local think tank, released a poll it commissioned by Harris Interactive, a major national polling organization, that found the Republican incumbent with a 10 percentage point lead over his Democratic challenger, 50% to 40%, with Ralph Nader - whose presence on the actual Wisconsin ballot remains uncertain - with 6%. The poll was conducted between Sept. 22 and Sunday.

The poll results were in line with others released recently that showed Bush with a lead in Wisconsin, including a Badger Poll done in cooperation with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from Sept. 15 to 21 that had Bush up by 14 points and an ABC News poll from Sept. 16 to 19 that had Bush up by 10 points.

Double digits is trouble for Russ Feingold.

---

HIS DAD WOULD HAVE TOO:

Why I will vote for John Kerry for President (JOHN EISENHOWER, 9/29/04, Manchester Union Leader)

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry. [...]

The Republican Party I used to know placed heavy emphasis on fiscal responsibility, which included balancing the budget whenever the state of the economy allowed it to do so.

Today's Republican Party is indeed not one that emphasizes green eyeshade budgeting. Rather it is devoted to the extension of liberty at home and abroad.

President Eisenhower inherited two great challenges to freedom when he ended the Democrats twenty year hammerlock on the presidency: the statist accretions of the New Deal and the massive Communist empire. He did nothing about either of them, choosing peaceful accommodation with both. In effect he pushed the final reckonings onto succeeding generations at a terrible cost in lives, money, and damage to our own society. His administration was merely the deceptive eye of the storm.

---

YOU'D THINK THE SECOND WAR WOULD HAVE GIVEN THEM A HINT:

Cheney changed his view on Iraq: He said in '92 Saddam not worth U.S. casualties (CHARLES POPE, September 29, 2004, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER)

In an assessment that differs sharply with his view today, Dick Cheney more than a decade ago defended the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War, telling a Seattle audience that capturing Saddam wouldn't be worth additional U.S. casualties or the risk of getting "bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."

Cheney, who was secretary of defense at the time, made the observations answering audience questions after a speech to the Discovery Institute in August 1992, nearly 18 months after U.S. forces routed the Iraqi army and liberated Kuwait.

President George H.W. Bush was criticized for pulling out before U.S. forces could storm Baghdad, allowing Saddam to remain in power and eventually setting the stage for the invasion of Iraq ordered by his son, President George W. Bush, in March 2003.

The comments Cheney made more than a decade ago in a little-publicized appearance have acquired new relevance as he and Bush run for a second term. A central theme of their campaign has been their unflinching, unchanging approach toward Iraq and the shifting positions offered by Democratic nominee John Kerry.

They're just figuring out now that Dick Cheney thinks he made a mistake leaving Saddam in power in '91?

---

IT'S NOT JUST HIS OWN WIFE EMASCULATING HIM:

Lynne Cheney Jokes About Kerry's Tan (AP, Sep 29, 2004)

Something about Sen. John Kerry's darker appearance has caught Lynne Cheney's eye.

During a campaign stop with her husband, a group of volunteers moved into the crowd with microphones for the question-and-answer period. Vice President Dick Cheney told supporters to look for the people with dark orange shirts.

When Cheney paused as if searching for the words to describe the shade of orange, Lynne Cheney said, "How about John Kerry's suntan?"

The remark drew a big laugh from the crowd and the vice president.

---

SWEET SOLID SMASH:

Louisville Slugger: The lumber that still powers our national pastime. (SCOTT OLDHAM, September 1999, Popular Mechanics)

This year, H&B will make 1.4 million wood Louisville Slugger bats for professional and amateur use (and over 1 million aluminum bats). That's 70 to 80 percent of the retail market. Each wood bat is made from white ash grown on 5000 acres of company-owned forest in Pennsylvania and New York. Why ash? Because it has just the proper amount of tensile strength and resiliency. And the weight of ash is also favorable. Hickory and maple have been tried over the years but they've proven too dense.

So how is a wood Louisville Slugger bat made? Pretty much the same as it was 115 years ago. First a tree, usually between 40 and 60 years old, is chosen and cut. Although Major League Baseball rules state that bat size is limited to 42 in. in length and 2 3/4 in. in diameter, nobody uses a bat that long. So the tree is cut into 40-in.-long sections that are then cut into several cylinder-shaped 3-in.-dia. billets. The billets are dried in kilns for six to eight weeks before they are shipped to one of the company's three wood bat factories–to the Louisville site where all the adult-size and professional bats are turned, or to Ellicottville, N.Y., or Troy, Pa., where the company makes its wood youth and softball bats.

At the factory, a billet is placed in one of three types of lathes–a tracer lathe (all professional bats), a backnife lathe (adult bats) or an automatic lathe (all youth and softball bats)–where it is cut down to the bat shape. In the case of the tracer lathe, a flat metal guide, or pattern, in the shape of the bat being made, is placed in the lathe. The cutting tool follows the shape of the pattern as it cuts the wood.

Major league players all have their own bat shape and weight preferences, so each player's bat is different. And most players use several different bats over the course of their careers–or even during the season. Each bat model is assigned a model number. For instance, Babe Ruth's bats, model No. R43, varied over the years from 35 to 36 in. in length and 36 to 47 ounces. The very heavy 47-ouncer was for spring training only. Lou Gehrig's bat, 34 in. long and a fairly heavy 39 ounces, was model No. G69. By contrast, today Tony Gwynn uses a featherweight 33-in., 30 1/2-ounce bat, model No. B276C (the C means it is cupped at the end). Each model number is kept on file forever.

Hand-turning bats without a pattern guide, once the only method used, is too time-consuming, expensive and imprecise. But guys like Danny Luckett still hand-turn occasionally to demonstrate the technique to tour groups visiting the Louisville plant.

Once a bat has taken shape, the bat maker sands down the nub on the bat's thin end with 80-grit sandpaper. Then it is passed on to the brander to burn in the Louisville Slugger logo. Next, the entire bat is sanded and then finished if the bat has been ordered with a natural or flame-burned finish.

Some players want a flashier look and order special finishes. Harry "The Hat" Walker, 1947 batting champion with the St. Louis Cardinals, liked two-tone bats. The treatment is now called "The Walker Finish." The black 34-incher used by New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter goes to the sander first, then to the hand dip line for the coloring and finally to the foil brander where it receives gold lettering. If a bat is ordered with a cupped barrel end, which lightens it, the cupping becomes the final touch.

Jeter, who has used Louisville Sluggers exclusively during his still-young career, sees no reason to try other bats. "I just don't care to switch to another brand," says the 25-year-old phenom. Jeter's teammate, power hitter Tino Martinez, also uses Louisville Sluggers. "I tried other bats," says Martinez between batting practice swings at Yankee Stadium. "But I haven't been able to find the balance I look for in a bat from any other company."

And finding that balance, finding a bat that feels good, is vital. According to Mickey Mantle, the most powerful switch-hitter of all time, "The first step to hitting is to find the right bat." A thought echoed by Ted Williams, a lifetime .344 hitter, when he said, "I'd have been a .290 hitter without Louisville Slugger." During his career from 1939 to 1960, Williams, a man many consider the greatest pure hitter in history, was a frequent visitor to the Louisville Slugger plant, where he hand-picked the timber for his bats.

But even with the perfect stick, hitting is far from easy. "Hitting a baseball is the single most difficult thing to do in sport," says Williams. "It's the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed just three times out of 10 and be considered a great performer."

It's those few times you succeed, however. You read the pitch perfectly, hit that ball right on the sweet spot, and hear that wonderful, crisp crack. That's as perfect a moment as life can offer. George Herman Ruth said, "There's nothing that feels so sweet as a good solid smash."

Some years ago they found a stash of Ruth bats and brought one to an All-Star game so guys could take a few hacks. It was so much heavier than what they use nowadays that they couldn't even swing it.

---

TREAT LANGLEY LIKE FALLUJAH:

The CIA's Insurgency: The agency's political disinformation campaign. (Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2004)

Congratulations to Porter Goss for being confirmed last week as the new Director of Central Intelligence. We hope he appreciates that he now has two insurgencies to defeat: the one that the CIA is struggling to help put down in Iraq, and the other inside Langley against the Bush Administration.

We wish we were exaggerating. It's become obvious over the past couple of years that large swaths of the CIA oppose U.S. anti-terror policy, especially toward Iraq. But rather than keep this dispute in-house, the dissenters have taken their objections to the public, albeit usually through calculated and anonymous leaks that are always spun to make the agency look good and the Bush Administration look bad.

Their latest improvised explosive political device blew up yesterday on the front page of the New York Times, in a story proclaiming that the agency had warned back in January 2003 of a possible insurgency in Iraq. This highly selective leak (more on that below) was conveniently timed for two days before the first Presidential debate.

This follows Joe Wilson, whose CIA-employee wife nominated the anti-Bush partisan to assess intelligence on Iraq. Then there's the book by "Anonymous," a current CIA employee who has been appearing everywhere to trash U.S. policy, with the approval of agency higher-ups. And now we have one Paul R. Pillar, who has broken his own cover as the author of a classified National Intelligence Estimate this summer outlining pessimistic possibilities for the future of Iraq.

That document was also leaked to the New York Times earlier this month, and on Monday columnist Robert Novak reported that it had been prepared at the direction of Mr. Pillar, the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia.

One sphere in which it does seem fair to question the Administration's competence and its commitment to Reforming the Middle East is its failure to anticipate the counterinsurgencies from CIA and State and to put them down ruthlessly.

---

THE LATEST OUTRAGE INFLICTED ON THE BOOMERS

'Sandwich generation' stresses likely to grow (Oliver Moore, Globe and Mail, September 28th, 2004)

The stress of caring for both parents and children is taking its toll on the so-called “sandwich generation,” according to a report from Statistics Canada released Tuesday.

It is already a substantial group and it is likely to grow, the authors warn.

These 'sandwiched' workers were considerably more likely to feel generally stressed. About 70 per cent of them reported stress, about 15 per cent more than workers with neither child-care nor elder-care responsibilities.

It is not a small group, according to the report, which is based on the 2002 General Social Survey. Compiling the data on Canadians between 45 to 64, who had at least one unmarried child under 25 living in the home, researchers found that a bit less than 30 per cent were also caring for a senior. [...]

Although the overwhelming majority of felt satisfied with life in general (95 per cent), they admitted the sacrifices that caring for an elderly person can entail.

They may feel satisfied with life now, but once we psychologists and activists get through with them, they’ll be as bitterly unhappy as they should be!

---

POTEMKIN SCIENCE

Illarionov Says Kyoto Will Be Ratified (Greg Walters, Moscow Times, September 29th, 2004)

Andrei Illarionov, the country's fiercest opponent of the Kyoto Protocol, said Tuesday that Russia will ratify the international treaty to limit greenhouse gases even though he believes the move will destroy its chances of doubling GDP by 2010.

Illarionov, President Vladimir Putin's top economic adviser, said Russian officials do not believe in the treaty's scientific or economic merits but will ratify it anyway in a political gesture toward the European Union.

The EU has long been pressing Russia to move forward on Kyoto, which needs Russia's ratification to come into force.

Asked Tuesday whether Russia will ratify the Kyoto Protocol, Illarionov said simply, "I think so."

The move would be a purely political calculation for Russia, he said. But he declined to say what Russia might receive in return.

"It's not back-scratching," he said by telephone. "It's a gesture toward the European Union. Nothing more."

Illarionov said senior officials believe the treaty will not help the environment or boost the economy, contrary to claims by its supporters. He declined to comment on Putin's personal views.

"Nobody among Russian officials believes the protocol is good for Russia," Illarionov said. "Nobody sees any sense in the economic nature of this document. Nobody sees any scientific relevance in this document. Nobody sees any advantages for Russia in this document. It is just purely politics."

Isn't it reassuring to know that international law is based upon the best science available and a common altruistic resolve to make the world a better place?

---

SHE'LL BE CAMPAIGNING IN GUAM THIS NOVEMBER:

Heinz Kerry still outspoken — but off center stage (Martin Kasindorf, 9/28/04, USA TODAY)

Famed for independent-mindedness, Teresa Heinz Kerry is taking a new tack during the final countdown to Election Day. She's subordinating herself to her husband's campaign strategists — but only in where she goes, not in her outspoken ways. [...]

"Teresa has disappeared, by and large," says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a public policy analyst at the University of Southern California. That's the way Kerry's aides prefer it because she is prone to controversial outbursts, Jeffe says. "Every time they let her out, she says something that they don't like."

So they've disappeared their candidates for vice president and first lady, now if they just had sense enough to hide John Kerry himself they might avoid a blowout.

---

SHI'ITES AREN'T AS GULLIBLE AS DEMOCRATS:

Iranian Citizens Trash Fahrenheit 9/11 (Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, September 29, 2004, FrontPageMagazine.com)

A few weeks ago, Mamoun Fandy, a media analyst, syndicated columnist and former professor of Arab Studies at Georgetown University, was interviewed on the subject of Michael Moore. Fandy stated that Iraqis who were familiar with the film found Moore’s portrayal of them to be exceedingly racist; he went on to say that Moore’s callousness to the plight of the Iraqi people and to the unbelievable human rights devastation in Iraq was outrageous.

And that was only the verdict of the Iraqis.

I have also been asked to express the judgment of a number of Iranians who saw the film in Iran. They sent e-mails, faxes and even phoned me to ask me to report their reviews.

First, other than David Lynch’s film, ‘The Straight Story’, Iranians have not really been exposed to any western films in their cinemas. The Mullahs’ film board forbids the display of women’s uncovered hair and all the other “corruption” Western filmmakers spread. For Iranians, therefore, viewing Michael Moore’s film was a tremendously novel experience.

After 25 years of living in a virtual concentration camp, Iranians have become exceedingly socio-politically savvy. Moore’s anti-American propaganda did not attract anywhere near as many viewers as the Mullahs had hoped for. Tehran’s despots had hoped the film would challenge the Iranian people’s favourable notion of President Bush and promote John Kerry.

But Iranians are too smart.

How can you follow a great film like Straight Story with this garbage?

---

WHY NOT JUST GIVE THEM OURS:

U.S. to build 8 subs in deal with Taiwan (Sharon Behn, 9/29/04, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The United States plans to build eight diesel-electric submarines for Taiwan as part of an $18 billion arms package, a decision likely to irritate China, which has opposed the sale of weapons to Taipei.

Taiwan's new representative to the United States, David Tawei Lee, said yesterday that the submarines would be built "probably in Mississippi, in [former Senate Majority Leader] Trent Lott's state."

Oh, that's why...

Meanwhile, wasn't it just months ago that the reflexive Right was claiming that the Bush Administration was selling out Taiwan to appease China?

---

WHAT LIBERAL BIAS? (via AWW):

Economy Grows at Weakest Rate in a Year (Martin Crutsinger, 9/29/04, AP)

The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.3 percent in the spring, the government reported Wednesday. That was significantly better than a previous estimate but still the weakest showing in more than a year.

The Commerce Department said the April-to-June increase in the gross domestic product -- the country's total output of goods and services -- was revised upward by 0.5 percentage point from its estimate just a month ago that the economy expanded at a 2.8 percent pace in the second quarter.

A hilariously biased headline given that such a growth level, never mind its historical significance and that it's better than expected, is considered a good news quarter in Ray Fair's Presidential Vote Equation.

---

KERRY EDWARDS WHO?:

Dems in Senate get no help from sharing ticket with Kerry (AP, 9/29/04)

Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle hugged President Bush from one end of South Dakota to the other this summer. In his own campaign commercials.

The brief embrace might seem an odd claim on re-election for the man Republicans depict as obstructionist-in-chief for the president's congressional agenda. But Daschle is one of several candidates with a common political problem as Democrats nurse fragile hopes of gaining Senate control this fall.

From the South to South Dakota and Alaska, they are running in areas where Bush is popular — and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry not so much.

"The congressman is running his own race out here. ... He's not bringing any national people in," said Kristofer Eisenla, spokesman for Democratic Rep. Brad Carson in Oklahoma, where Bush won 60% of the vote in 2000.

"The presidential race is largely separate" from Inez Tenenbaum's campaign in South Carolina, said Adam Kovacevich, a spokesman for the Democratic candidate in another state Kerry has written off.

Of the eight states with the most competitive Senate races, Kerry is seriously contesting only Florida and Colorado, effectively conceding North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Alaska.

The irony of Mr. Kerry being such a drag on the lower portion of the ticket is, of course, that he's only still a Senator today because Bill Clinton carried him over the line in '96. And the real danger for Democrats is that he could prove such a drag--think Jimmy Carter in '80--that seats that seem safe today will be lost on November 2nd--a prime candidate for this effect would be Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas.

---

THE USEFUL IDIOT IN TENNIS SHOES:

'Osama Mama' Murray Fumes at GOP Rival's Use of Label (NewsMax, 9/29/04)

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has ``a different view of Osama bin Laden,'' her campaign rival charged Wednesday in an attack ad that uses a picture of the al-Qaida leader and the senator's words to challenge her credentials in the war on terror.

"She did not praise Osama bin Laden and we should stop playing politics with the war on terror and get on with winning it,'' countered Alex Glass, a spokeswoman for Murray. [...]

The ad shows Murray telling an audience in 2002 that bin Laden had been at work in unnamed countries ``for decades building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities. And the people are extremely grateful,'' she says.

"He's made their lives better. We have not done that,'' she adds.

It's a low point in any public officials career when they're reduced to demanding that their opponent stop quoting them accurately.

---

THINK OF IT AS A RECRUITING DRIVE:

Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse (Timothy J. Dailey, Ph. D., 9/29/04, Family Research Council)

Scandals involving the sexual abuse of under-age boys by homosexual priests have rocked the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time, defenders of homosexuality argue that youth organizations such as the Boy Scouts should be forced to include homosexuals among their adult leaders. Similarly, the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a homosexual activist organization that targets schools, has spearheaded the formation of "Gay-Straight Alliances" among students. GLSEN encourages homosexual teachers--even in the youngest grades--to be open about their sexuality, as a way of providing role models to "gay" students. In addition, laws or policies banning employment discrimination based on "sexual orientation" usually make no exception for those who work with children or youth.

Many parents have become concerned that children may be molested, encouraged to become sexually active, or even "recruited" into adopting a homosexual identity and lifestyle. Gay activists dismiss such concerns--in part, by strenuously insisting that there is no connection between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of children.

However, despite efforts by homosexual activists to distance the gay lifestyle from pedophilia, there remains a disturbing connection between the two. This is because, by definition, male homosexuals are sexually attracted to other males. While many homosexuals may not seek young sexual partners, the evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners. In this paper we will consider the following evidence linking homosexuality to pedophilia:

· Pedophiles are invariably males: Almost all sex crimes against children are committed by men.

· Significant numbers of victims are males: Up to one-third of all sex crimes against children are committed against boys (as opposed to girls).

· The 10 percent fallacy: Studies indicate that, contrary to the inaccurate but widely accepted claims of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, homosexuals comprise between 1 to 3 percent of the population.

· Homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses: Individuals from the 1 to 3 percent of the population that is sexually attracted to the same sex are committing up to one-third of the sex crimes against children.

· Some homosexual activists defend the historic connection between homosexuality and pedophilia: Such activists consider the defense of "boy-lovers" to be a legitimate gay rights issue.

· Pedophile themes abound in homosexual literary culture: Gay fiction as well as serious academic treatises promote "intergenerational intimacy."

Homosexual apologists admit that some homosexuals sexually molest children, but they deny that homosexuals are more likely to commit such offenses. After all, they argue, the majority of child molestation cases are heterosexual in nature. While this is correct in terms of absolute numbers, this argument ignores the fact that homosexuals comprise only a very small percentage of the population.

The evidence indicates that homosexual men molest boys at rates grossly disproportionate to the rates at which heterosexual men molest girls.

What's especially troublesome is the willingness of even presumably well-intentioned folk to ignore this for their own political reasons--for example, the way opponents of Catholicism insist its paedophilia scandals are inherent to the Church rather than a function of the unwise recruitment of gay priests; or the way libertarians lionized Pim Fortuyn.

---

GETTING WITH THE IMPERIAL PROGRAM:

UN Human Rights Chief Seeks Greater International Presence in Darfur (Lisa Schlein, 28 Sep 2004, VOA News)

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, is calling for a big increase in the number of United Nations peacekeepers, human rights monitors and aid agencies to ensure security in Darfur. Ms. Arbour, who has just returned from a five-day visit to Darfur, says the international community must redouble its efforts to protect the citizens of Darfur.

The U.N.'s top human rights official, Louise Arbour, says there is a great sense of insecurity and fear among the internally displaced people she met in Darfur camps. She describes conditions in the camps as miserable. While people told her they would like to go back home to a more normal life, she says they are too afraid to return to the villages they fled. She says they do not trust the government of Sudan to protect them.

Ms. Arbour says the people believe the government is in collusion with their attackers, the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed.

"They claim that when they attempt to leave the narrow perimeters of the camps, they are invariably attacked and their efforts to report these attacks to the authorities lead nowhere and that is prevalent in virtually all the camps we attended…." she said. "At this point, I think the core crisis is one of safety and security."

But Ms. Arbour also notes much progress has been made in getting food and other assistance to the approximately 1.5 million displaced people in Darfur. She says security now is the greatest crisis and it must be addressed with great urgency and seriousness.

If the U.N. isn't careful this kind of humanitarian intervention at U.S. behest could start to redeem it in our eyes.

---

JUST WIN, BABY:

Yemen Court Sentences USS Cole Bombers to Death (Ursula Lindsey, 29 Sep 2004, VOA News)

A court in Yemen has sentenced two al-Qaida members to death for the 2000 bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole. The attack killed 17 U.S. sailors. This is the first time anyone has been sentenced to death in Yemen for an act of terrorism.

Jamal al-Badawi and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were sentenced to death Wednesday, as the masterminds of the attack in which a small boat loaded with explosives rammed into the American destroyer in the Gulf of Aden.

Mr. al-Nashiri is currently being held in the United States and was tried in absentia. Four other militants were also found guilty of belonging to al Qaida and carrying out the attack on the USS Cole, and received jail sentences of five to 10 years.

Khaled Al Mahdi is a correspondent for the Arab News newspaper in Sanaa and has been following the trial since it started in early July. He notes that this is the first time a Yemeni court has punished terrorism with the death sentence.

"It's the first convictions in this country in which terrorists were sentenced to death," he said. "Of course this country had long tolerated Muslim extremists, but after the September attacks in the United States in 2001, Yemen has allied itself closely with the United States in the war on terrorism and started a widescale campaign against suspected al- Qaida sympathizers."

Let's all pray that this long winning streak that John Kerry thinks al Qeada has been on doesn't end anytime soon.

---

AN ADVISOR TOO FAR? (via Tom Morin):

Jackson Joins Kerry Campaign As Adviser (AP, Sep 29, 2004)

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson joined the campaign of Sen. John Kerry on Wednesday as a poll showed support for the presidential candidate slipping among black Americans, a critical Democratic constituency.

Demonstrates a lack of respect for Hymietown, no?

---

THE GREAT SOCIETY SLEEPS WITH THE FISHES:

Remembrance of Contracts Past: Newt Gingrich and other Republicans look back at the Contract with America on its tenth anniversary. (David Skinner, 09/28/2004, Weekly Standard)

YESTERDAY, September 27, marked the ten-year anniversary of the historic signing of the Contract with America on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. And this fall marks the tenth anniversary of the subsequent (some would say consequent) election of a Republican majority in Congress. So far the celebrations have been pretty low-key, an unjust and probably unintended comment on the magnitude of the event. No matter. The Republican takeover with the midterm elections of November 1994 has become for conservatives a station of the cross in the progress of rightward ideas--on par with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan in impact, a spiritual kin to the 1964 Barry Goldwater moment.

Furthermore, the Contract with America remains one of the most popular things Republicans ever did.

Still one forgets the breadth of strategist Newt Gingrich's campaign to win a majority. On a panel at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday morning with political consultant Joseph Gaylord, Rep. Jennifer Dunne of Washington, journalist Michael Barone, and former majority leader Dick Armey, the former House speaker emphasized that all but a couple of Republican candidates signed the Contract with America. The election yielded an additional nine millions votes for Republicans over 1992 and a pickup of 54 seats in the House of Representatives. [...]

Why the Contract with America worked so well was much discussed. Despite the image of the class of '94 as rabble-rousing radicals, all ten agenda items on the Contract enjoyed over 70 percent support of the American public, which was in fact required for their inclusion. The other criterion was that an item had to have been blocked from a floor vote by the Democrats. The contract's populist character was underlined by its marketing, including a national ad-buy in TV Guide, which set a record for "the most expensive political ad," Gingrich noted. Also, the language of the contract had to be positive and non-political. We were "consciously editing against the New York Times," said Gingrich.

To understand the decline of the Democratic party you need know no more than that the GOP could put together ten items that Democrats wouldn't even allow a vote on that polled at 70%-30% in the country. Today Democrats can only stop such ideas by filibustering in the Senate and perhaps not even that for long.

---

ONE LAST SCORE FOR THE GIPPER (via Robert Schwartz):

Study: Emission of smog ingredients from trees is increasing rapidly: Changes in forestry and agriculture affecting ozone pollution (Steven Schultz, 28-Sep-2004, Princeton University)

While clean-air laws have reduced the level of man-made VOCs (volatile organic compounds), the tree-produced varieties have increased dramatically in some parts of the country, the study found. The increase stems from intensified tree farming and other land use changes that have altered the mix of trees in the landscape, said Drew Purves, the lead author of the study that included scientists from four universities.

"There are seemingly natural but ultimately anthropogenic (human-caused) processes in the landscape that have had larger effects on VOC emissions than the deliberate legislated decreases," said Purves.

Although scientists knew that trees contribute substantial amounts of VOCs to the atmosphere, the rate of increase in recent decades was previously unrecognized. "If we don't understand what's going on with biogenic (plant-produced) VOCs, we are not going to be able to weigh different air-quality strategies properly," said Purves. "It's a big enough part of the puzzle that it really needs to go in there with the rest."

The study may help explain why ozone levels have not improved in some parts of the country as much as was anticipated with the enactment of clean-air laws, Purves said. Environmental technologies such as catalytic converters and hoses that collect fumes at gas pumps have substantially reduced human-produced VOCs. However, in some parts of the country -- particularly the area extending from Alabama up through the Tennessee Valley and Virginia -- these improvements may have been outweighed by increased VOC emissions from forests, mainly because of tree growth in abandoned farmland and increases in plantation forestry. [...]

Noting President Ronald Reagan's notorious 1980 reference to trees causing pollution (Reagan said: "Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation."), the authors conclude: "The results reported here call for a wider recognition that an understanding of recent, current and anticipated changes in biogenic VOC emissions is necessary to guide future air-quality policy decisions; they do not provide any evidence that responsibility for air pollution can or should be shifted from humans to trees."

Somewhere he smiles.

---

THE HAUNTED HIGH SCHOOL:

High School Politics 101 (David Corn, 9/29/04, TomPaine.com)

I am haunted by a conversation I had the night of the Super Tuesday primary contest. John Kerry had just sealed the deal; he would be the Democrats’ presidential nominee. And I was speaking with one of his most senior advisers. The general election, this consultant told me, would turn on how “mature” the media and the electorate would be.

I now know what he meant, and I want to scream, “Grow up.” [...]

What’s discouraging is that Bush and his lieutenants have been so successful in framing much of the election in juvenile terms. And the mainstream media has hardly been able to act as hallway monitor, let alone a school principal. In my darker moments, I’ve often said that human interaction doesn’t evolve all that much past high school. In this campaign, the Bush clique is doing all it can to prove this theory correct. But it is the rest of the kids—I mean, the voters—who will determine if the politics of derision, big lying, fear mongering, simplicity and immaturity will work.

It's a month from Halloween and the Left is already haunted by their failure against George Bush? By November the offices of the Nation, the Times and the DNC are likely to look like Heaven's Gate headquarters after an unexpected return of Hale-Bopp.

---

DO THINGS EVOLVE BACK TO THEIR ORIGINAL FORM?:

Record shows Bush shifting on Iraq war: President's rationale for the invasion continues to evolve (Marc Sandalow, September 29, 2004, SF Chronicle)

President Bush portrays his position on Iraq as steady and unwavering as he represents Sen. John Kerry's stance as ambiguous and vacillating.

"Mixed signals are the wrong signals,'' Bush said last week during a campaign stop in Bangor, Maine. "I will continue to lead with clarity, and when I say something, I'll mean what I say.''

Yet, heading into the first presidential debate Thursday, which will focus on foreign affairs, there is much in the public record to suggest that Bush's words on Iraq have evolved -- or, in the parlance his campaign often uses to describe Kerry, flip-flopped.

An examination of more than 150 of Bush's speeches, radio addresses and responses to reporters' questions reveal a steady progression of language, mostly to reflect changing circumstances such as the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction, the lack of ties between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and the growing violence of Iraqi insurgents.

A war that was waged principally to overthrow a dictator who possessed "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised'' has evolved into a mission to rid Iraq of its "weapons-making capabilities'' and to offer democracy and freedom to its 25 million residents.

Regime change for regime change sake had actually been U.S. policy since the Clinton Administration, SENATE ESTABLISHING A PROGRAM SUPPORT A TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ (Congressional Record, October 7, 1998)

Mr. McCAIN: I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of H.R. 4655, which is at the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER: The clerk will report. The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (H.R. 4665) to establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq.

The PRESIDING OFFICER: Is there objection to the immediate consideration of the bill, There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill. [...]

Mr. KERREY: Mr. President, I rise to urge the passage of HR. 4655, the Iraq Liberation Act. Thanks to strong leadership in both Houses of Congress and thanks to the commitment of the Administration toward the goals we all share--for Iraq and the region, this legislation is moving quickly. This is the point to state what this legislation is not, and what it is, from my understanding, and why I support it so strongly,

First, this bill is not, in my view, an instrument to direct U.S. funds and supplies to any particular Iraqi revolutionary movement. There are Iraqi movements now in existence which could qualify for designation in accordance with this bill. Other Iraqis not now associated with each other could also band together and qualify for designation. It is for Iraqis, not Americans to organize themselves to put Saddam Hussein out of power, just as it will be for Iraqis to choose their leaders in a democratic Iraq. This bill will help the Administration encourage and
support Iraqis to make their revolution.

Second, this bill is not a device to involve the U.S. military in operations in or near Iraq. The Iraqi revolution is for Iraqis, not Americans, to make. The bill provides the Administration a portent new tool to help Iraqis toward this goal, and at the same time advance America's interest in a peaceful and secure Middle East.

This bill, when passed and signed into law, is a clear commitment to a U.S. policy replacing the Saddam Hussein regime and replacing it with a transition to democracy. This bill is a statement that America refuses to coexist with a regime which has used chemical weapons on its own citizens and on neighboring countries, which has invaded its neighbors twice without provocation, which has still not accounted for its atrocities committed in Kuwait, which has fired ballistic missiles into the cities of three of its neighbors, which is attempting to develop nuclear and biological weapons, and which has brutalized and terrorized its own citizens for thirty years. I don't see how any democratic country could accept the existence of such a regime, but this bill says America will not. I will be an even prouder American when the refusal, and commitment to materially help the Iraqi resistance, are U.S. policy.

But when George W. Bush made the most important and explicit case for war--before the U.N.--he grounded it in simple legal justification, including Saddam's failure to perform regime change himself, as required by the U.N. resolutions that got him a truce in 1991, President's Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly (New York, New York, 9/12/02) :

Twelve years ago, Iraq invaded Kuwait without provocation. And the regime's forces were poised to continue their march to seize other countries and their resources. Had Saddam Hussein been appeased instead of stopped, he would have endangered the peace and stability of the world. Yet this aggression was stopped -- by the might of coalition forces and the will of the United Nations.

To suspend hostilities, to spare himself, Iraq's dictator accepted a series of commitments. The terms were clear, to him and to all. And he agreed to prove he is complying with every one of those obligations.

He has proven instead only his contempt for the United Nations, and for all his pledges. By breaking every pledge -- by his deceptions, and by his cruelties -- Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself.

In 1991, Security Council Resolution 688 demanded that the Iraqi regime cease at once the repression of its own people, including the systematic repression of minorities -- which the Council said, threatened international peace and security in the region. This demand goes ignored.

Last year, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights found that Iraq continues to commit extremely grave violations of human rights, and that the regime's repression is all pervasive. Tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution, and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation, and rape. Wives are tortured in front of their husbands, children in the presence of their parents -- and all of these horrors concealed from the world by the apparatus of a totalitarian state.

In his excellent new book looking at the relationship between Tony Blair and America generally but George W. Bush specifically, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, James Naughtie argues dispositively that for George Bush this was enough to justify the war, and even for Tony Blair it came close, but that the later justifications of WMD and ties to terror were added in order that Mr. Blair might sell the war to his reluctant party and nation and to try and overcome Security Council opposition. It is these tangential arguments in support of the war that have had a rough go since Baghdad fell, but the main justification--the liberation of Iraq--is unsullied and it's hardly surprising that the President returns to it again and again.

---

AN ALGERIAN WITH AN AX AND BOX-CUTTERS?

Norwegian pilots land plane after axe attack by passenger (AFP, 9/29/04)

A seemingly unstable passenger attacked two pilots aboard a Norwegian passenger plane with an axe but the aircraft was later able to land, amid concerns over lax security on the country's local flights and at regional airports. [...]

Shortly after the plane finally landed in Bodoe, police arrested the man, discovering a box-cutter in his pocket. Military sniffer dogs were then sent in to search the plane.

"He is from Algeria. He was born in 1970. This is an asylum-seeker who has been turned down ... As far as we can tell he is psychologically unstable," Vangen said, adding that the attacker had not spoken since his arrest and that he would soon undergo a medical examination.

Police first suspected that the man had used a security hatchet already onboard the plane in the attack, but by Wednesday afternoon it was clear that he had smuggled an axe onto the plane with him.

"At first we thought that it was the hatchet onboard but we are no longer of this opinion because that hatchet is still in its place in the cockpit," Vangen said.

According to Nils Rognli, who heads up the Narvik airport for the Norwegian civil aviation authority Avinor, it would not have been difficult for the attacker to smuggle an axe onto the plane.

"It would be very simple since we don't have any security control here in Narvik," he told AFP.

We have "the good, old fashioned system as it was in the past where you just get on the plane", he added, pointing out that he has the equipment needed for security screening, but that it has not yet been installed.

Free societies will justifiablt never make the kinds of changes that would be required to make things like flying safe, but you don't have to have exactly imposed a police state to avoid the series of mistakes here.

---

C-A-N-A-D-A:

Canada's Prophets of Pessimism (Is It the Weather?) (CLIFFORD KRAUSS, 9/29/04, NY Times)

As one of Canada's pre-eminent historians, David Bercuson of the University of Calgary is not your average couch potato. But with beer in hand and feet up on the sofa, he watched the Olympics on television last month to cheer on the world champion hurdler Perdita Félicien to win a gold medal for Canada.

When Ms. Félicien inexplicably stumbled into the very first hurdle like a rank amateur, Mr. Bercuson dashed straight to his computer. He knocked out a screed declaring that her sad performance, and that of the entire Canadian Olympic team, was just another symptom of "the national malaise'' that is making Canada a second-rate, uncompetitive nation.

"It's not the individual performers whose shortcomings are on display for all the world to see,'' he wrote in an op-ed article for The Calgary Herald. "It is the very spirit of the nation and the sickness that now has hold of it that is at fault.''

His acidic commentary is characteristic of the view of a growing number of historians, foreign policy thinkers and columnists from some of the nation's top newspapers. Many see themselves as part of an informal school that has no name or single mentor, but all are writing the same assessment: Canada is in decline, or at the very least, has fallen short of their aspirations.

For these thinkers, Canada is adrift at home and wilting as a player on the world stage. It is dogged by not only uninspired leaders but also by a lack of national purpose, stunted imagination and befuddled priorities even as its economy prospers.

"I'm in almost total despair,'' Michael Bliss, a University of Toronto historian, said in an interview. "You have a country, but what is it for and what is it doing?''

In fairness to Canada, the idea of decline suggests that it once had a certain stature, a proposition that seems dubious.

---

AND PEOPLE WONDER WHY HE GETS ON SO WELL WITH W:

Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton (9/28/04)

Someone showed me an article recently about how: "Tony Blair has marginalised the Tories."

I thought it's a change to read something nice.

Then I realised it was a criticism.

Like, after years in which people thought the Labour Party was unfit to govern, now they think the Tories are.

And I should be really sorry about it. [...]

For the wealthy few, every one of those challenges of the future can be overcome.

The third term mission is to overcome them for the many.

Changing Britain for better.

For good.

Not a society where all succeed equally - that is utopia; but an opportunity society where all have an equal chance to succeed; that could and should be 21st century Britain under a Labour Government.

Where nothing in your background, whether you're black or white, a man or a woman, able-bodied or disabled, stands in the way of what your merit and hard work can achieve.

Where hard working families who play by the rules are not going to see their opportunities blighted by those that don't.

And where if any of our citizens, no matter how poor, is in sickness or need, they get the best care available without any regard to their wealth.

Power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few.

Not our hands. But theirs.

Fairness in the future will not be built on the state, structures, services and government of times gone by.

Their values remain.

But the reality of life has changed.

The relationship between state and citizen has changed.

People have grown up. They want to make their own life choices.

Their expectations, their ambitions, their hopes are all different and higher.

The 20th Century traditional welfare state that did so much for so many has to be re-shaped as the opportunity society capable of liberation and advance, every bit as substantial as the past but fitting the contours of the future.

And this will be a progressive future as long as we remember that the reason for our struggle against injustice has always been to liberate the individual.

The argument is not between those who do and those who do not love freedom.

It is between the Conservatives who believe freedom requires only that government stand back while the fittest and most privileged prosper.

And we who understand, that freedom for the individual, for every individual, whatever their starting point in life, is best achieved through a just society and a strong community.

In an opportunity society, as opposed to the old welfare state, government does not dictate; it empowers.

It makes the individual - patient, parent, law-abiding citizen, job-seeker - the driver of the system, not the state.

It sets free the huge talent of our public servants and social entrepreneurs whose ability is often thwarted by outdated rules and government bureaucracy.

It changes how government works, to open up the means of delivery to every resource, public, private and voluntary, that can deliver opportunity based on need not wealth.

Sometimes I hear people describe "choice" as a Tory word.

It reminds me of when I first used to knock on doors as a canvasser and was told if they owned their own home they were Tories.

Choice a Tory word?

Tell that to 50 per cent of heart patients who have exercised it to get swifter operations and help bring cardiac deaths down 16,000 since we came to power.

Or to the parents who have made the new City Academy Schools so popular in areas of the greatest social disadvantage.

Or the people I met in Teesside a couple of weeks ago who have transformed their neighbourhood, yes with government money but most of all, by making their decisions, their choices about how it was spent and how their community was run.

Choice is not a Tory word.

Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.

The right to demand the best and refuse the worst and do so not by virtue of your wealth but your equal status as a citizen, that's precisely what the modern Labour Party should stand for.

So here are ten things a future Labour third term can do for Britain's hard-working families.

1 - Widen the circle of opportunity by low mortgage rates, rising living standards and more jobs in every region of the UK; special help for first time homebuyers and in a week where the Tories are advocating an inheritance tax cut which gives £2 billion to the richest five per cent of estates, Labour's priority will be tax relief for the millions of hard-working families, not tax cuts for the wealthy few.

2 - A society where we put the same commitment to quality vocational skills as we do academic education, with new vocational courses at school, every adult given skills free of charge up to level two and further support for level three, and 300,000 Modern Apprenticeships at the workplace.

3 - Every parent with the choice of a good specialist school, 200 new City Academies all in areas of deprivation, but with no return to selection at 11; new powers for heads to tackle disruptive pupils; all secondary schools part of the Building Schools for the Future programme, and as each wave of schools is rebuilt, modern sports facilities in every one, with a guaranteed number of hours of sport per week.

And let's work to bring the Olympics to London in 2012 and have a sporting legacy not just for the capital but for the whole country.

4 - All patients able to choose their hospital, to book the time and date for treatment.

Maximum waiting times down from 18 months to 18 weeks.

100 new hospital schemes, 2,700 GP premises improved and modernised already with more to come, life expectancy up, cardiac and cancer deaths down.

The NHS safe in the patient's hands.

5 - Life made easier for families.

More choice for mums at home and at work.

Universal, affordable and flexible childcare for the parents of all three-14 year-olds who want it from 8am in the morning to six at night and a Sure Start Children's Centre in every community of Britain.

6 - Security and dignity for everyone in retirement.

Year by year we will work to increase the numbers who can move off benefit and into work, whether from Job Seekers Allowance, Incapacity Benefit or any other benefit, and with the money saved, design a pension system that has the basic state pension at its core; gives special help to the poorest and provides incentives to save for hard-working families whatever their wealth or income.

7 - Our country and its people prospering in the knowledge economy.

Increasing by £1 billion the investment in science, boosting support to small businesses and ending the digital divide by bringing broadband technology to every home in Britain that wants it by 2008.

8 - On the back of the success of the ASB legislation and record numbers of police, we will take a new approach to the whole of law and order.

By the end of the next Parliament, all communities with their own dedicated policing team ; and the local community as well as the police have a say how it is policed.

There will be a radical extension of compulsory drug testing for offenders; a doubling of investment in drug treatment; summary powers to deal with drug dealers and with the violence from binge-drinking; and those believed to be part of organised crime will have their assets confiscated, their bank accounts opened up and if they intimidate juries, face trial without a jury.

9 - We will introduce identity cards and electronic registration of all who cross our borders.

We have cut radically the numbers of failed asylum seekers.

By the end of 2005, and for the first time in Britain, we will remove more each month than apply and so restore faith in a system that we know has been abused.

But we will welcome lawful migrants to this country; we will praise, not apologise, for our multi-cultural society and we will never play politics with the issue of race.

10 - A fair deal for all at work.

An opportunity society is one in which we stop ignoring the lives of the millions of hard working low paid families who do the jobs that we all rely on.

The jobs that get overlooked, the workers who we too often see right through, walk straight past, take for granted.

The office cleaners who do the early morning shift, clearing away the mess before the office is filled.

The security guards staying vigilant through the night.

The dinner ladies, who cook meals for hundreds of kids in the school canteen five days a week.

The hospital porters who often do as much for patient care as the nurse.

For them, we offer not just the respect they deserve, but the guarantee of a decent income, a rising minimum wage, equal pay between men and women, four weeks paid holidays from now on, plus bank holidays.

There they are: ten pointers to what a third term Labour Government would do for Britain's hard-working families.

Don't tell me that's not worth fighting for.

A stronger, fairer, more prosperous nation.

And now we have to go out and win the trust of the people to do it.

An Opportunity Society for the Third Way folks, to parallel the Ownership Society here. And a messianic foreign policy

There was talk before this conference that I wanted to put aside discussion of Iraq.

That was never my intention.

I want to deal with it head on.

The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong.

I acknowledge that and accept it.

I simply point out, such evidence was agreed by the whole international community, not least because Saddam had used such weapons against his own people and neighbouring countries.

And the problem is, I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam.

The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power.

But at the heart of this, is a belief that the basic judgment I have made since September 11th, including on Iraq, is wrong, that by our actions we have made matters worse not better.

I know this issue has divided the country.

I entirely understand why many disagree.

I know, too, that as people see me struggling with it, they think he's stopped caring about us; or worse he's just pandering to George Bush and what's more in a cause that's irrelevant to us.

It's been hard for you.

Like the delegate who told me: "I've defended you so well to everyone I've almost convinced myself."

Do I know I'm right?

Judgements aren't the same as facts.

Instinct is not science.

I'm like any other human being, as fallible and as capable of being wrong.

I only know what I believe.

There are two views of what is happening in the world today.

One view is that there are isolated individuals, extremists, engaged in essentially isolated acts of terrorism.

That what is happening is not qualitatively different from the terrorism we have always lived with.

If you believe this, we carry on the same path as before 11th September.

We try not to provoke them and hope in time they will wither.

The other view is that this is a wholly new phenomenon, worldwide global terrorism based on a perversion of the true, peaceful and honourable faith of Islam; that's its roots are not superficial but deep, in the madrassehs of Pakistan, in the extreme forms of Wahabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia, in the former training camps of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; in the cauldron of Chechnya; in parts of the politics of most countries of the Middle East and many in Asia; in the extremist minority that now in every European city preach hatred of the West and our way of life.

If you take this view, you believe September 11th changed the world; that Bali, Beslan, Madrid and scores of other atrocities that never make the news are part of the same threat and the only path to take is to confront this terrorism, remove it root and branch and at all costs stop them acquiring the weapons to kill on a massive scale because these terrorists would not hesitate to use them.

Likewise take the first view, then when you see the terror brought to Iraq you say: there, we told you; look what you have stirred up; now stop provoking them.

But if you take the second view, you don't believe the terrorists are in Iraq to liberate it.

They're not protesting about the rights of women - what, the same people who stopped Afghan girls going to school, made women wear the Burka and beat them in the streets of Kabul, who now assassinate women just for daring to register to vote in Afghanistan's first ever democratic ballot, though four million have done so?

They are not provoked by our actions; but by our existence.

They are in Iraq for the very reason we should be.

They have chosen this battleground because they know success for us in Iraq is not success for America or Britain or even Iraq itself but for the values and way of life that democracy represents.

They know that.

That's why they are there.

That is why we should be there and whatever disagreements we have had, should unite in our determination to stand by the Iraqi people until the job is done.

And, of course, at first the consequence is more fighting.

But Iraq was not a safe country before March 2003.

Few had heard of the Taliban before September 11th 2001.

Afghanistan was not a nation at peace.

So it's not that I care more about foreign affairs than the state of our economy, NHS, schools or crime.

It's simply that I believe democracy there means security here; and that if I don't care and act on this terrorist threat, then the day will come when all our good work on the issues that decide people's lives will be undone because the stability on which our economy, in an era of globalisation, depends, will vanish.

I never expected this to happen on that bright dawn of 1 May 1997.

I never anticipated spending time on working out how terrorists trained in a remote part of the Hindu Kush could end up present on British streets threatening our way of life.

And the irony for me is that I, as a progressive politician, know that despite the opposition of so much of progressive politics to what I've done, the only lasting way to defeat this terrorism is through progressive politics.

Salvation will not come solely from a gunship.

Military action will be futile unless we address the conditions in which this terrorism breeds and the causes it preys upon.

That is why it is worth staying the course to bring democracy Iraq and Afghanistan, because then people the world over will see that this is not and has never been some new war of religion; but the oldest struggle humankind knows, between liberty or oppression, tolerance or hate; between government by terror or by the rule of law.

Their differences are matters of the electorates they face and the cultures from which they arise, but their similarities are remarkable.

---

SIX FOOT FOUR IS DEEP ENOUGH, STOP DIGGING:

Maybe His Watch Was Set on Paris Time (georgewbush.com, 9/29/04)

Appearing on ABC's Good Morning America today, John Kerry offered yet another explanation for his trademark line "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it" (video clip here): it was late at night, and he was tired:

It was a very inarticulate way of saying something and I had one of those moments late in the evening when I was tired in the primaries and didn't say something clearly. But it reflects the truth of the position, which is, I thought, to have the wealthiest people in America share the burden of paying for that war. It was a protest. Sometimes you have to stand up and be counted.

Just one problem: Kerry made the statement at noon. See this Washington Post article from March:

"I actually did vote for his $87 billion, before I voted against it," he told a group of veterans at a noontime appearance at Marshall University.

This is John Kerry at the peak of his fighting powers, rested and prepared for his debate with George Bush.

---

JOHN KERRY'S VAUNTED ALLIES:

Europe's armies 'still in cold war' warns EU arms chief (Richard Carter, 29.09.2004, EU Observer)

European armies have not adapted to modern warfare and need better technology, the head of the EU's arms agency has warned.

In an interview with French daily Le Figaro, Nick Witney, head of the European Defence Agency agency created in June this year to strengthen the EU's military capabilities, said, "European armies are not adapted to the modern world, to its conflicts, to its new threats. On the whole, they are still in the cold war period".

Rather than focusing on tanks, European armies need more high-tech equipment, such as effective communication tools and analytical equipment, urged Mr Witney.

Closing the gap with the US in terms of arms technology is not about spending more, but spending more efficiently, he said.

Mr Witney also called for greater liberalisation of the European armaments market if EU firms are to compete with their US rivals.

Describing himself as "very much in favour" of market liberalisation, Mr Witney said, "defence markets are essentially national at the moment, with significant state aid in many countries. But no member state has the means to keep its industries alive like this".

Okay, so they concede they won't spend what they need to but do they really think they'll spend more efficiently as they get more institutionalized and bureaucratic?

---

FOLLOWED BY GLASS EYES:

After Dark, the Stuffed Animals Turn Creepy (ANDREW JACOBS, 9/29/04, NY Times)

At 5:30 p.m., the canned announcement, a pleasant but firm female voice, echoes off the East African elephants, filters through the rib cage of a fossilized stegosaurus and briefly drowns out the chanted recording of the Mbuti Pygmy tribesmen: "Your attention please. Your attention please. The museum is now closed. Any security officer can direct you to an exit."

The Japanese tourists in sensible shoes, the whining, overstimulated children, the earnest art students with sketch pads trickle past glassy-eyed grizzlies and the indignant gorilla thumping its chest. They linger for a final snapshot beneath barosaurus as a towering set of bronze doors seal off the Asian Hall behind them. "Sir, the museum is closed," keeps the dawdlers moving, and by 5:45, the American Museum of Natural History has been largely drained of the living.

Depending on your point of view, this 135-year-old stone fortress is an edifying temple to life on earth or an eerie mausoleum for millions of stuffed and pickled creatures. To generations of schoolchildren who shrieked beneath that giant dangling squid, it is the site of a field trip that launched a thousand nightmares. At night, with the comforting buzz of the city blocked out by thick granite walls and the hum of air-conditioning the only aural distraction, the museum and its frozen inhabitants play tricks on the skittish, the superstitious and those with overactive imaginations.

Even after five years sweeping and mopping the exhibition halls late at night, Frank Saunders is occasionally unnerved on his lonely janitorial rounds. "Sometimes you feel like the animals are watching you," he said, unaware of the gargantuan centipede lurking behind him. "When I'm up on the third floor, with the totem poles and the Indians, you think you see the veins pulsating and the tendons moving."

Where better to find superstition than a temple of science?

---

CIRCLE THE WAGONS AROUND HARVARD YARD:

Some Swing States Appear to Be Swinging to President (KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, 9/29/04, NY Times)

Days before the presidential debates begin, President Bush appears to be gaining in several swing states he lost in 2000.

Experts caution that the race is highly fluid, but Mr. Bush, for now at least, is surging ahead in several crucial states. Polls show Mr. Bush making headway in Iowa and Wisconsin, both of which he lost last time. He was also building leads in Ohio and West Virginia, states he won in 2000.

All four states have been hotly contested this year. And Senator John Kerry seems to have ceded Missouri to Mr. Bush.

The shocker in the last week was New Jersey, where three polls showed Mr. Bush pulling even with Mr. Kerry. The state, never on the battleground list, has voted Democratic since 1988 and comes with a sizable chunk of electoral votes, 15. Mr. Bush's strength there was a source of concern to Democrats.

If Democrats truly haven't figured out that they're going to have to fight a rearguard action just to hold a few core states--CA, IL, NY, MA, MD--and try to save some Senate seats--CA, OR, WA, AR, NV--then they're in even worse trouble than we all think they are. That they ever thought OH was a realistic battleground--with a Republican governor, two Republican senators, etc.--is not reassuring.

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IN THE SPIRIT OF DURANTY AND MATTHEWS:

TIMESMAN TIPPED OFF TERROR CHARITY: FEDS (CARL CAMPANILE, September 29, 2004, NY Times)

The Justice Department has charged that a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office — potentially endangering the lives of federal agents.

The stunning accusation was disclosed yesterday in legal papers related to a lawsuit the Times filed in Manhattan federal court.

The suit seeks to block subpoenas from the Justice Department for phone records of two of its Middle Eastern reporters — Philip Shenon and Judith Miller — as part of a probe to track down the leak.

The Times last night flatly denied the allegation.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago charged in court papers that Shenon blew the cover on the Dec. 14, 2001, raid of the Global Relief Foundation — the first charges of their kind under broad new investigatory powers given to the feds under the Patriot Act.

"It has been conclusively established that Global Relief Foundation learned of the search from reporter Philip Shenon of The New York Times," Fitzgerald said in an Aug. 7, 2002, letter to the Times' legal department.

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THAT OLD SMOOTIE:

Rethinking free trade (Robert Kuttner, September 29, 2004, Boston Globe)

WHEN PAUL Samuelson, the dean of American economists, begins questioning the benefits of free trade, it is a bit like the pope having doubts about the virgin birth. [...]

Samuelson stops short of spelling out remedies. However, his blowing open of this debate has done a profound service.

But what, then, should Americans do to defend their living standard in the face of the ability of India and China to make almost anything we make at a fraction of the wage?

First, we might insist that everyone plays by the rules, which China emphatically doesn't. China both subsidizes and protects.

Second, we might try to get them to raise their domestic wages in proportion to their rising productivity and thus produce for a more affluent domestic market (which also might buy more of our products).

On the home front, the government could invest more in the creation of high-wage service jobs that America needs and that can't be exported -- like better-paid preschool teachers and nursing home workers -- and to raise the wages of all low-paid workers through higher minimum wage laws and enforcement of the right to unionize. We could also invest in advanced technologies that create lots of good domestic jobs and export winners, like universal broadband cable and energy independence.

Mr. Samuelson's track record on questioning economic orthodoxy isn't exactly one to be proud of, as witness the 1989 beauty: "The Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and even thrive." But what's priceless here is that Mr. Kuttner's proposed response to a world in which pretty much any Third World village can produce the same quality manufactured goods at a fraction of the artificially elevated wages of a unionized workforce in the West is to boost our own wages to even less competitive levels.

MORE:
Where Did All the Jobs Go? Nowhere: In spite of the hoopla over outsourcing, it is not the great crisis that many believe it is. (DANIEL W. DREZNER, 9/29/04, NY Times)

The Government Accountability Office has issued its first review of the data, and one undeniable conclusion to be drawn from it is that outsourcing is not quite the job-destroying tsunami it's been made out to be. Of the 1.5 million jobs lost last year in "mass layoffs'' - that is, when 50 or more workers are let go at once - less than 1 percent were attributed to overseas relocation; that was a decline from the previous year. In 2002, only about 4 percent of the money directly invested by American companies overseas went to the developing countries that are most likely to account for outsourced jobs - and most of that money was concentrated in manufacturing.

The data did show that from 1997 to 2002, annual imports of business, technical and professional services increased by $16.3 billion. However, during that same half-decade, exports of those services increased by $20.5 billion a year. In 2002 alone, the United States ran a $27 billion trade surplus in business services, the sector in which jobs are most likely to be outsourced. The G.A.O. correctly stressed that it is impossible to compute exactly how many jobs are lost because of outsourcing, but unless its figures are off by several orders of magnitude, there's no crisis here.

Many companies moving jobs overseas have also received a bum rap. Lost in all the clamor about I.B.M.'s outsourcing plan was the company's simultaneous announcement that it would add 5,000 American jobs to its payroll. For the second quarter of this year, the company reported a 17 percent increase in earnings, allowing it to trim its outsourcing plan by a third and raise its overall hiring plans by 20 percent. The conclusion is obvious: I.B.M.'s outsourcing of some jobs helped it reduce costs, increase earnings and hire more American-based workers.

None of this is to dismiss the pain endured by those who lose their jobs to lower-paid workers abroad. But the magnitude of these job losses must be placed in the proper perspective. Technological innovation is responsible for a far greater number of lost jobs than outsourcing.

Aren't job protection schemes ultimately just attacks on technological innovation?

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WHAT NIMRODS:

Green Day looks smart with 'Idiot': The band of bratty punks produces a powerful, defiant rock opera (Renee Graham, September 29, 2004, Boston Globe)

When word began to leak out that Green Day was planning a politically charged rock opera for its latest album, American Idiot, reactions ranged from sarcastic guffaws to abject horror. This, after all, was the same band of punk brats who, a decade ago, cranked out mosh-pit ditties about soul-numbing laziness and dismissive hookers and whose crowning close-up moment was a mud-flinging free-for-all at Woodstock '94.

The notion of a Green Day rock opera smacked of unearned pretentiousness and utter desperation from a band that hadn't released an album since 2000's commercially anemic but underrated "Warning." It also reeked of encroaching adulthood from these boys-to-men who suddenly seemed determined to leave childish things -- and what remained of their fans -- behind.

Yet Green Day has always been more than its signature three-chord barrage, and its members -- lead singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool -- have often invested unexpected intelligence, even poetry, into their tales of slacker ennui.

Like the reflective acoustic ballad "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" in 1997, "American Idiot" still manages to be defiantly punk by following no regimen or conventions other than the band's own ethos. Through 13 songs, including two nine-minute mini-operas, "Jesus of Suburbia" and "Homecoming," it's the sprawling story of an America staggering from terrorism and war and plagued by paranoia and disillusionment. Its main characters, Jesus of Suburbia and St. Jimmy, representing the punch-drunk masses, are raised on "a steady diet of soda pop and Ritalin," as well as lies and hypocrisy.

Since its release last week, "American Idiot" has often been compared to the Who's landmark 1969 rock-opera, "Tommy," and while such assessments are a little too facile, there are parallels to be found between Green Day's Armstrong and Pete Townshend, the Who's legendary guitarist and primary songwriter.

Good to see one of the better bands of the 90s make it into the aughts, though they should grow up at some point.

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OBLIGATORY CONFEDERATE REFERENCE:

Why this May Be the Most Important Election Since 1860 (Martin Halpern, 9/27/04, History News Network)

[T]his is the most significant election since that of 1860. Then, as now, the very survival of a republican form of government is at stake.

We have to look back to James Buchanan, the fifteenth president of the United States, to find a president as reactionary as the current occupant of the White House. Serving on the eve of the greatest crisis in the country’s history, the Civil War, Buchanan sought to stop the noisy debate about slavery by making limits on the slaveholders’ power politically and constitutionally impossible. Bush, arriving in the White House at a time of growing criticism at home and abroad of corporate-dominated globalization, has attempted to tilt the government so far in the direction of the U.S. corporate elite that it will be unassailable in the future.

Buchanan, of course, was a Democrat, but, as students in U.S. history survey classes learn, the Republican party of our day has many similarities to the Democratic party of the pre-Civil War era. The Democratic party then fashioned itself as the “white man’s party” and chastised its opponents for appealing to blacks. The Republican party in recent years has opposed affirmative action and catered to white male racism and sexism. The pre-Civil War Democrats emphasized the ideal of limited government but did not shy away from restricting the civil liberties of those who opposed slavery. Bush’s Republicans likewise employ the rhetoric of limiting the size and intrusiveness of government while increasing spending on the military and simultaneously eroding basic civil liberties of those it deems suspect.

Both Bush and Buchanan rode into office with the electoral votes of all the Southern states. Newspaper readers today know how fond Bush is of his ranch; Buchanan was equally fond of his Pennsylvania estate known as Wheatland.

Each president is closely associated with one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history.

You can guess where he's headed: yes, stopping the random recounts in Florida was every bit as bad as Dred Scott...

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KERRY IN THE BALANCE:

How to Debate George Bush (AL GORE, 9/29/04, NY Times)

In the coming debates, Senator Kerry has an opportunity to show voters that today American troops and American taxpayers are shouldering a huge burden with no end in sight because Mr. Bush took us to war on false premises and with no plan to win the peace. Mr. Kerry has an opportunity to demonstrate the connection between job losses and Mr. Bush's colossal tax break for the wealthy. And he can remind voters that Mr. Bush has broken his pledge to expand access to health care.

Senator Kerry can also use these debates to speak directly to voters and lay out a hopeful vision for our future. If voters walk away from the debates with a better understanding of where our country is, how we got here and where each candidate will lead us if elected, then America will be the better for it. The debate tomorrow should not seek to discover which candidate would be more fun to have a beer with. As Jon Stewart of the "The Daily Show'' nicely put in 2000, "I want my president to be the designated driver.''

The debates aren't a time for rhetorical tricks. It's a time for an honest contest of ideas. Mr. Bush's unwillingness to admit any mistakes may score him style points. But it makes hiring him for four more years too dangerous a risk. Stubbornness is not strength; and Mr. Kerry must show voters that there is a distinction between the two.

Accidental insight from Mr. Gore who if John Kerry had any ideas or a record of achievement he was running on would presumably have mentioned them. It is the absence of either, and the mistaken assumption that just being Anybody But Bush would be sufficient, that leaves the Democrats with a candidate who has nothing to say that's not negative.

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THERE'S NO BUBBA TO CARRY HIM HOME THIS TIME:

A Fast Finisher's Reputation Now Faces the Ultimate Test (TODD S. PURDUM, 9/29/04, NY Times)

In 1996, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was struggling to keep his job in the face of a stiff challenge by his state's popular, aw-shucks Republican governor, William F. Weld, when midway through a series of televised debates, he began a confession that suddenly became a boast.

"I'm very well aware that when God made me, one of the debits he gave was sort of an overlevel of intensity, maybe an overlevel of earnestness," Mr. Kerry said that August in the fourth of eight debates. "I don't sort of wear every part of me on my sleeve as easily as some people do, and I know that. On the other hand, what I do know about myself is that when you have a fight, I'm a good person to be in a foxhole with, and I know that we're in a fight right now."

Eight years later, Mr. Kerry is in the fight of his political life, against President Bush, and he and his supporters are counting on the reputation he cemented in that 1996 campaign and again in the Democratic primaries this year as a candidate who runs best from behind, a political Seabiscuit who pulls ahead after from his anxiety-producing slow starts.

It's kind of sad that John Kerry's entire political reputation rests on an election where he could only get 52% of the vote while Bill Clinton was beating Bob Dole 61% - 28%.

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CAT SCRATCH FEVER:

Cat Stevens was guest of Canadian Hamas front (Stewart Bell, September 28, 2004, National Post)

Yusuf Islam, the British singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, was the guest of honour at a Toronto fundraising dinner hosted by an organization that has since been identified by the Canadian government as a "front" for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

In a videotape of the 1998 event obtained by the National Post, Mr. Islam describes Israel as a "so-called new society" created by a "so-called religion" and urges the audience to donate to the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services to "lessen the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Palestine and the Holy Land."

He should be on the no-fly list for his music.

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WHO'S AFRAID OF LAURIE DHUE?:

A different noise: US liberals have fought back against rightwing domination of the media since their 'goring' in 2000 (Markos Moulitsas, September 28, 2004, The Guardian)

It was the year 2000, and Democrats were running on a record of peace and prosperity stewarded by the capable, if morally imperfect, Bill Clinton. It was a race that should have been won by their candidate, Al Gore. In fact, it was won by Al Gore, but the Rightwing Noise Machine kept it close enough to be stolen by the Republicans and their allies at the supreme court.

What is the Rightwing Noise Machine? Conservatives in the United States have spent the last 30 years building a vast infrastructure designed to create ideas, distribute them, and sell them to the American public. It spans multiple think tanks and a well-oiled message machine that has a stranglehold on American discourse. From the Weekly Standard, Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street Journal, Drudge Report and Murdoch's Fox News, to (more recently) the mindless drones in the rightwing blogosphere, the right enjoys the ability to control entire news cycles, holding them hostage for entire elections.

Pity the poor Left, all they have is CBS, ABC, NBC, The NY Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times... Imagine the ruckus these guys would raise if one of the three broadcast networks decided it was sick of falling ratings and handed over the newsroom to conservatives instead of liberals for once?

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BEDROCK OF AGES:

An amendment to stop moral decay (Star Parker, September 28, 2004, Townhall)

Several weeks ago, black pastors from around the nation, under the sponsorship of my organization, CURE, gathered for a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to express support for President Bush's proposal for a constitutional marriage amendment. The amendment would define marriage as between a man and a woman.

The date and place for the event were selected to mark the 41st anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. The congregations of the pastors who participated in this event have a combined total of well over 40,000 members.

The gay marriage issue has struck a nerve in the black community and may well mark the beginning of a sea change in black voting behavior. Pastors who have voted Democratic all their lives have told me and others that this issue has lead them out of the Democratic Party.

A CBS/NY Times poll on the marriage amendment done last March shows blacks more aligned with Republicans than with Democrats. The poll showed 59 percent overall in favor of the marriage amendment. However, 77 percent of Republicans, 52 percent of Democrats, and 67 percent of African Americans were in favor.

These pastors are worked up over this issue because it touches fundamentally the core concerns they have for their communities. They know that the bedrock on which human lives and communities are constructed is made of spiritual and moral fiber. And they know that the profound social problems in their communities stem from the shattered state of that bedrock.

Dems attacked on some black radio stations (Liz Sidoti, September 28, 2004, AP)

One commercial claims Democrats support "abortion laws that are decimating our people," while another argues that Democrats "preach tolerance but practice discrimination."

Operating largely under the radar, Americas PAC, a little-known conservative group based in Overland Park, Kan., has been airing ads excoriating Democrats on black radio stations in five states this month. The spots have drawn the ire of Democrats who claim the commercials are designed to keep a crucial voting bloc for the party at home on Nov. 2.

Americas PAC says its ads -- on issues from taxes to school choice to the economy -- are designed to encourage blacks to go to the polls in support of President Bush and Republicans. The group denies that it's attempting to suppress the black vote to help Bush, as Democrats contend.

"That claim is attached to anything Republicans do in an attempt to mobilize blacks for Republicans," Richard Nadler, the head of the group, said Tuesday. "It's not true."

W's still not likely to even get 10% of the black vote, but given the potential magnitude of Democratic losses this Fall this is probably the last election where they can count on any of their constituencies voting for them in lock step--a coalition of the bought requires that you control the levers of government in order to pay them off.

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RETREAT AND CALL IT VICTORY:

Putin's Chechnya options narrow: On the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Chechnya, some say there are few alternatives to negotiations. (Scott Peterson, 9/29/04, CS Monitor)

Some argue that unofficial, secret meetings held in Europe in 2001 and 2002 created a foundation for peace that can be built upon today. Others say that the changing face of the conflict - one of deepening violence , corruption of federal forces enriching themselves through war, and the widening grip of Islamists - make a peace deal impossible.

"Ultimately it will require a decision at the top," says Frederick Starr, head of the Central Asia- Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who helped mediate those secret meetings in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. "The [Liechtenstein] provisions do not imply a loss of face for anybody. [President Vladimir] Putin could have come out looking like a peacemaker. He still could, tomorrow."

Mr. Putin has vowed not to negotiate with "child-killers" and earlier this month compared demands from Washington to engage Chechen leaders to inviting Osama bin Laden to the White House.

Putin has also lumped together moderate Chechen leaders and warlords, putting a $10 million bounty on both Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya's president elected in 1997 and militant Shamil Basayev, who claimed the Beslan attack.

The bounty is "absolutely counter-productive, as if [Putin] is systematically closing exit routes for himself, so that he has no one to deal with, except the head of the [Moscow-backed] puppet government," says Mr. Starr.

Mr. Maskhadov - who has often calls for talks - sought distance from Mr. Basayev Friday, vowing to punish the Chechen warlord in court. Russian officials allege the two worked in "close cooperation" over Beslan.

"All these [peace] discussions, blah, blah, blah, led to nothing," says Alexei Malashenko, a Caucasus expert at the Moscow Carnegie Center. "If there is a chance now, Putin should accept that Maskhadov is more moderate and the only guy to talk to. But they have completely gotten rid of this idea."

The brilliance of Ariel Sharon's security wall is that it has made him look like he's tough even as he's acceding to the Palestinian demand for a state. Mr. Putin needs to do something similar.

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HOW COULD IT BE GOING ANY BETTER?:

Are the Terrorists Failing? (David Ignatius, September 28, 2004, Washington Post)

Rather than waging a successful jihad against the West, the followers of Osama bin Laden have created chaos and destruction in the house of Islam. This internal crisis is known in Arabic as fitna: "It has an opposite and negative connotation from jihad," explains [distinguished French Arabist named Gilles] Kepel. "It signifies sedition, war in the heart of Islam, a centrifugal force that threatens the faithful with community fragmentation, disintegration and ruin." [...]

Rather than bringing Islamic regimes to power, the holy warriors are creating internal strife and discord. Their actions are killing far more Muslims than nonbelievers.

"The principal goal of terrorism -- to seize power in Muslim countries through mobilization of populations galvanized by jihad's sheer audacity -- has not been realized," Kepel writes. In fact, bin Laden's followers are losing ground: The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been toppled; the fence-sitting semi-Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia has taken sides more strongly with the West; Islamists in Sudan and Libya are in retreat; and the plight of the Palestinians has never been more dire. And Baghdad, the traditional seat of the Muslim caliphs, is under foreign occupation. Not what you would call a successful jihad.

Kepel argues that the insurgents' brutal tactics in Iraq -- the kidnappings and beheadings, and the car-bombing massacres of young Iraqi police recruits -- are increasingly alienating the Muslim masses. No sensible Muslim would want to live in Fallujah, which is now controlled by Taliban-style fanatics. Similarly, the Muslim masses can see that most of the dead from post-Sept. 11 al Qaeda bombings in Turkey and Morocco were fellow Muslims.

A perfect example of how the jihadists' efforts have backfired, argues Kepel, was last month's kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq. The kidnappers announced that they would release their hostages only if the French government reversed its new policy banning Muslim women from wearing headscarves in French public schools. "They imagined that they would mobilize Muslims with this demand, but French Muslims were aghast and denounced the kidnappers," Kepel explained to a Washington audience. He noted that French Muslims took to the streets to protest against the kidnappers and to proclaim their French citizenship.

And this understates the case; in addition to democratic Afghanistan, Westernizing Libya, a Sudan that's already given in to Christian insurgents under pressure from the U.S. and now faces intervention on behalf of black Muslims in the West, a free Kurdistan, a democratizing Shi'astan in a grateful Iraq, the Sa'uds reforming, etc., you've got:

Morocco: a king committed to political reform and a free trade arrangement with the U.S.--which follows the one with Jordan and precedes the one with Bahrain and negotiations with 8 other Muslim states.

Tunisia: pro-American and largely untroubled by fundamentalism

Algeria: indigenous Islamicists on their last legs

Egypt: even Hosni Mubarak is encouraging open talk of the reforms that will follow him, while at the same time helping Israel crush terror groups.

Djibouti: is an American anti-terror base

Somalia: actually becoming governable and aiding with peacekeeping in Africa.

Lebanon: the U.S. is forcing Syria out and siding with the Shi'a, as Hezbollah evolves into a normal political party.

Palestine: as the U.S. and Israel force statehood upon and unwilling PLO, the Third Intifada is an intrafada, with Palestinians fighting their own corrupt leaders for the future of the country.

Syria: Baby Assad can't appease the U. S. fast enough in his desperate attempt to avoid being the next Saddam.

Turkey: though it is a tragic mistake, the Turks are making major alterations to their legal system in order to join the EU.

Yemen and Eritrea: have both been very cooperative in the war on terror

Qatar: reformist emir and used as the American base for the Iraq war.

Kuwait: the Kuwaitis are firm allies and reform apace

Iran: already facing an existential challenge from its many pro-Western young people and from the empowerment of orthodox Shi'ism in Iraq its pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens to isolate the regime even from its European friends and has made regime change U.S. policy

Pakistan: General Musharraf is not only establishing the infrastructure for a return to democracy and waging an aggressive war on al Qaeda but is reaching a rapproachment with India aimed at defusing Kashmir.

Chechnya: extremist acts like Beslan have not only delegitamized one of Islam's best cases of grievance against a Western nation but have repulsed Muslims across the world

Malaysia: Secularists trounced Islamists in recent voting.

Indonesia: is just a run of the mill democracy

Bangladesh: ditto.

The Sunni Triangle in Iraq is the navel of the effort to Reform the Islamic world and critics of the President will pick at it until every last bit of lint has been extracted, unraveled, and examined, but in the meantime the rest of the body is thriving. In particular, by comparison to the expenditure in lives and money that were required to defeat the other isms--Nazism and Communism--this final battle in the Ending of History is going unimaginably well, quite rapid and almost bloodless.

MORE:
(via Tom Corcoran):
A Time for Choosing: Muslims face a moral challenge. (John F. Cullinan, 9/28/04, National Review)

The latest Islamist terror outrage — the September 3 mass murder of at least 350 students, teachers, and parents in a Russian primary school — prompted this remarkable acknowledgment of an undeniable reality: "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims."

These are the words of a prominent Saudi journalist and observant Muslim, Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of al Arabiya, the Dubai-based Arabic satellite news network that is al Jazeera's chief competitor. His bitter reflections — which deserve to be read in their entirety — are a rare and welcome departure from the Muslim world's usual pattern of post-atrocity responses: silence, denial, equivocation, or lies.

"The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim," he writes. "What a pathetic record. What an abominable 'achievement.' Does this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies, and our culture?"

"We cannot clear our names," Rashed admonishes fellow Muslims, "unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women." Rashed rightly places the unspeakable atrocity in Beslan squarely within the larger pattern of similar outrages perpetrated in the name of militant political Islam since 9/11. For it is the exact same ideology of jihad at work in the most recent mass murders in Indonesia, Israel, Iraq, and elsewhere that animated the Beslan child killers — who shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is most great) under the banner of the Islambouli Brigades (named for Anwar Sadat's assassin, not for some local Chechen martyr or grievance). [...]

Who exactly is responsible for this totalitarian ideology? Rashed rightly singles out clerical exponents of militant political Islam — the "Neo-Muslims." "Our terrorist sons," Rashed writes, are "the sour grapes of a deformed culture." Muslims as a whole, now reaping what their most prominent clerics have sown in the name of Islamism, must "confront the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to reinvent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death [e.g., as suicide bombers], while sending their own children to European and American schools and universities."

Let the confrontation over the "theology" of kidnapping and executing hostages begin.

-Indonesia at peace at the polls: An army of election observers and volunteers has played a decisive role in ensuring relatively clean legislative and presidential elections in Indonesia. It's clear that the country's democracy - at least of the electoral kind - is on a roll. (Phar Kim Beng, 9/29/04, Asia Times)
-Losing Faith in the Intifada: As uprising enters fifth year, some Palestinians call it a political and economic disaster. (Laura King, September 28, 2004, LA Times)

Among Palestinians from all walks of life, there is a quiet but growing sentiment that their intifada, or uprising — which broke out four years ago today — has largely failed as an armed struggle, and lost its character as a popular resistance movement.

Moreover, many Palestinians fear that what has been, in effect, their military defeat at the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has left them without leverage to extract political and territorial concessions that would help lay the groundwork for their hoped-for state.

The official Palestinian line is that the struggle continues. Veteran leader Yasser Arafat and old-line members of his Fatah faction insist that ordinary Palestinians are unbowed by the overwhelming degree of force that Israel has brought to bear in cities and towns all over the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which have been responsible for more than 100 suicide bombings over the past four years, also insist that they will continue to hit Israeli targets with all their strength.

But relentless Israeli strikes at the militant groups' leaders and field operatives, together with the partial construction of a security barrier meant to seal off the West Bank, are credited with reducing such attacks inside Israel by 80%.

For some time now, influential figures in Palestinian society — intellectuals, lawmakers, analysts, professionals and well-regarded local officials — have been asserting, almost matter-of-factly, that the violent confrontation with Israeli forces has reached a dead end and their people must look to the future.

"We have witnessed the destruction of Palestinian society — its civil institutions, its economy, its infrastructure," said Zuhair Manasra, the governor of Bethlehem. "The result has been a complete disaster for the Palestinians, at all levels. Now we must think how to rebuild."

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CAN HE AFFORD TO MAKE IT CLEAR HE'S GEORGE McGOVERN WITH HAIR? (via Robert Schwartz):

Bush Probes Kerry's Weakest Issue -- Clarity (Andrew Ferguson, Sept. 28 , 2004, Bloomberg)

It's become plain what the election is really about, the issue that underlies all others: clarity. Which candidate knows how to explain to voters what it is he wants to do?

This unexpected turn in what political hacks call the "issue landscape" is good news for Bush, bad news for Kerry. And it is certain to arise Thursday evening when the two rivals face each other in Florida for the first of three presidential debates.

Having lost his slim but solid summertime lead, Kerry now trails Bush in most polls. The latest CBS News poll contains one set of numbers that illustrates Kerry's clarity problem.

To the question, "Does George W. Bush say what he believes most of the time?" 55 percent said yes. Forty-two percent said he "says what people want to hear."

And Kerry? Only 30 percent said he says what he believes most of the time. A large majority -- 65 percent -- agreed he says only what people want to hear.

The Kerry camp has presumably been working assiduously to get the Senator to pare his answers down to bare bones, but then they run into another problem: he has no new ideas and the old ones he's defending were unpopular when Bill Clinton ran away from them twelve years ago.

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FAITH BASED NATIONAL SECURITY:

Sikh Group Finds Calling in Homeland Security (LESLIE WAYNE, 9/28/04, NY Times)

At the end of a dusty road, behind a barbed-wire fence, is the Sikh Dharma of New Mexico, a religious compound with a golden temple of worship, a collection of trailers used for business and a quiet group of people wandering the grounds wearing flowing white robes and turbans.

In the New Age culture here, the Sikh Dharma community, founded in the early 1970's, provides a place where admirers of Yogi Bhajan, a Sikh spiritual leader and yoga master, can live in harmony and follow their beliefs in vegetarianism, meditation and community service. Except for Yogi Bhajan, who was born in India and came to the United States in 1969, most members of the Sikh Dharma are American-born converts who moved here to pursue their way of life.

The compound is also home to Akal Security, wholly owned by the Sikh Dharma and one of the nation's fastest-growing security companies, benefiting from a surge in post-9/11 business. With 12,000 employees and over $1 billion in federal contracts, Akal specializes in protecting vital and sensitive government sites, from military installations to federal courts to airports and water supply systems.

Despite Akal's unusual lineage, Sikh Dharma members say they are following an ancient Sikh tradition of the warrior-saint - as well as showing deftness at the more modern skill of landing federal contracts. [...]

For all the group's unusual ways, government officials have few complaints about Akal. "Our people have done checks on them years ago and we have no issues with them," said John Kraus, a contracting officer for the Department of Justice. "Last I've checked, we've had freedom of religion."

One high-profile contract Akal recently garnered, beating 20 other companies, was for $250 million to provide security guards at five Army bases and three weapons depots. The Army has turned to the private sector to replace soldiers sent to Iraq.

Competition was based on ability, past performance and price, according to an Army official, who added that Akal's religious ties were not a factor, nor did Akal benefit as a religious group.

"We do not discriminate based on race, creed, religion or national origin," the official said. "It was never really a factor."

Because of that open approach, Akal has almost exclusively gone after government contracts.

"The federal government has created the fairest acquisition system in the world," Mr. Khalsa said. He added that with the company's low overhead - Mr. Khalsa, its top executive, earns a modest $90,000 - Akal is "very price-competitive" in the eyes of government agencies on tight budgets.

We could use some ghurkas too.

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TALL MEN WON'T BE VOTING FOR HIM EITHER:

It’s About Abortion, Stupid: And other moral issues. Why John Kerry has trouble making the moral argument (Melinda Henneberger, Sept. 24, 2004, Newsweek)

The Democrats are likely to lose the Catholic vote in November—and John Kerry could well lose the election as a result. It’s about abortion, stupid. And “choice,” make no mistake, is killing the Democratic Party.

A recent Zogby poll shows that in key battleground states including Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, Catholic voters are far more likely than the general public to vote for President George W. Bush over Kerry. In Minnesota, for instance, 60 percent of Catholics say they’ll go for Bush, versus 44 percent of all Minnesotans.

Zogby's Fritz Wenzel told the Catholic News Service he sees these numbers as a reflection of Catholic “concern about the legitimacy of the war in Iraq being overridden by ongoing discomfort with Kerry’s stand on abortion.”

It’s telling that the numbers only started to break that way in midsummer, after heavy news coverage of the debate over whether pro-choice Catholics (John Kerry, for instance. Oh, and John Kerry) were fit to receive communion.

Catholics overwhelmingly disagreed with the idea of turning anyone away from the communion rail. But the whole wafer watch, as one priest I know called it, did serve a purpose. The handful of bishops who raised the issue reminded voters that Kerry is “personally opposed” to abortion, whatever that means, but votes in favor of abortion rights. And that, of course, was the whole point.

Had to be the same geniuses who thought that being a vet would insulate the Senator from his anti-American national security record who thought that being a putative Catholic would get him the Catholic vote.

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HE IS WHO REAGAN WAS SUPPOSED TO BE:

Bush's latest tax cuts seal legacy: His annual 'relief' puts Bush in the pantheon of big tax cutters. (Gail Russell Chaddock, 9/29/04, CS Monitor)

As pure politics, the Bush tax cuts are a textbook study in how to muscle bills through Congress. "It's unprecedented, the amount of tax-cutting Bush has done: Four tax cuts, four years in a row," says Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute.

A key to the Bush success: Close coordination with business and conservative groups and allies on the Hill. In addition to controlling both the House and Senate, the Bush team and conservative activists rallied the business community around annual tax cuts, even in years when business tax breaks were not included. Some business groups opposed the 1981 Reagan tax cuts, because cuts for them were not included. It's a pattern that conservatives scrambled to avoid in the Bush years.

"The goal in the first year was pro-family tax cuts and rate reduction. Business said, 'There's nothing in it for us.' We said, 'Wait until next year... Don't ever think you have to push someone off the train to make place for yourself, because there is another coming down the track," says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. He organized a business working group, including major trade associations, to lobby for the Bush tax cuts.

If Republicans pick up two Senate seats, "We will be able to make the death tax cut permanent," he adds, referring to the elimination of estate taxes. Other conservative goals in a second Bush term include reducing the capital gains tax, ending "double taxation" of dividend income, and moving toward a flat tax. Another big priority in the second term: cutting government spending. "It's a huge issue for us."

The grand slam.

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A MAN OF ODD CIRCUMSTANCE:

A Personal Message from George Soros: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush (Prepared text of speech delivered at the National Press Club, Washington, DC, September 28, 2004)

I grew up in Hungary, lived through fascism and the Holocaust, and then had a foretaste of communism. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of government prevails. I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society. [...]

The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to finish -- if it has a finish. It is a war of choice, not necessity, in spite of what President Bush says. The arms inspections and sanctions were working. In response to American pressure, the United Nations had finally agreed on a strong stand. As long as the inspectors were on the ground, Saddam Hussein could not possibly pose a threat to our security. We could have declared victory but President Bush insisted on going to war.

We went to war on false pretences. The real reasons for going into Iraq have not been revealed to this day. The weapons of mass destruction could not be found, and the connection with al Qaeda could not be established. President Bush then claimed that we went to war to liberate the people of Iraq. All my experience in fostering democracy and open society has taught me that democracy cannot be imposed by military means. And, Iraq would be the last place I would chose for an experiment in introducing democracy - as the current chaos demonstrates.

Of course, Saddam was a tyrant, and of course Iraqis - and the rest of the world - can rejoice to be rid of him.

This is a spectacularly moronic essay. Exactly how does Mr. Soros think the Holocaust was halted and fascism disposed of if not by the resort to military means to impose democracy? And is there anything more despicable than someone who had to flee Nazism and communism and now casts himself as an advocate of "open society" proclaiming that the Iraqi people should have been left subject to a completely closed society?

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JOKING ABOUT THE NOMINEE'S PTSD?:

Teresa Heinz: Why John Kerry needs some of his wife's sauce. (Julia Turner, Dec. 11, 2003, Slate)

From the outset, Kerry's advisers kept a wary eye on Teresa Heinz. As the widow of Pennsylvania senator and ketchup heir John Heinz, who died in 1991 when his plane collided with a helicopter, she inherited around $500 million and responsibility for the billion-dollar Heinz family endowment. As she waded into state politics, she demonstrated a knack for the salty comments that make for riveting copy: She denounced Rick Santorum as "Forrest Gump with an attitude" when the conservative Republican ran for her more moderate first husband's seat. When she married Kerry in 1995, her association with the two ambitious senators—and speculation that the fortune of the first might bankroll the presidential ambitions of the second—made her even more intriguing than your average workaday heiress.

Journalists began sizing up Heinz when Kerry was still just "considering" a presidential run. In June 2002, the Washington Post's Mark Leibovich interviewed Heinz and Kerry and delivered a dishy take on their relationship, insinuating that Heinz was still very much in love with her first husband and prone to walking all over the second. Leibovich noted that Heinz still referred to John Heinz as "my husband" and that his photo hung alongside Kerry's in the hall. In conversation with Kerry, though, Heinz "snaps," "raises her voice," works up "a full head of rage," and "mimics Kerry having a Vietnam nightmare," just moments after he denies having any.

If Garry Trudeau were still doing Doonesbury he could revive that whole "manhood in trust" jibe that he never got to stick to George Bush Sr. and easily pin it on Cabana Boy.

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VOTE THE BUMS OUT:

The Insurgency Buster (DAVID BROOKS, 9/28/04, NY Times)

Conditions were horrible when Salvadorans went to the polls on March 28, 1982. The country was in the midst of a civil war that would take 75,000 lives. An insurgent army controlled about a third of the nation's territory. Just before election day, the insurgents stepped up their terror campaign. They attacked the National Palace, staged highway assaults that cut the nation in two and blew up schools that were to be polling places.

Yet voters came out in the hundreds of thousands. In some towns, they had to duck beneath sniper fire to get to the polls. In San Salvador, a bomb went off near a line of people waiting outside a polling station. The people scattered, then the line reformed. "This nation may be falling apart," one voter told The Christian Science Monitor, "but by voting we may help to hold it together."

Conditions were scarcely better in 1984, when Salvadorans got to vote again. Nearly a fifth of the municipalities were not able to participate in the elections because they were under guerrilla control. The insurgents mined the roads to cut off bus service to 40 percent of the country. Twenty bombs were planted around the town of San Miguel. Once again, people voted with the sound of howitzers in the background.

Yet these elections proved how resilient democracy is, how even in the most chaotic circumstances, meaningful elections can be held.

They produced a National Assembly, and a president, José Napoleón Duarte. They gave the decent majority a chance to display their own courage and dignity. War, tyranny and occupation sap dignity, but voting restores it.

The elections achieved something else: They undermined the insurgency. El Salvador wasn't transformed overnight. But with each succeeding election into the early 90's, the rebels on the left and the death squads on the right grew weaker, and finally peace was achieved, and the entire hemisphere felt the effects. [...]

As we saw in El Salvador and as Iraqi insurgents understand, elections suck the oxygen from a rebel army. They refute the claim that violence is the best way to change things. Moreover, they produce democratic leaders who are much better equipped to win an insurgency war.

Of course, Mr. Kerry opposed our efforts in El Salvador and Nicaragua as well.

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RUNAWAY AMERICAN DREAM:

Edwards to rally Jersey (MICHAEL SAUL, 9/28/04, NY DAILY NEWS)

Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards will campaign for the first time today in New Jersey, a clear sign that the campaign is worried about losing the historically Democratic state to President Bush.

"New Jersey is a critical battleground state. At this point, it's pretty close," conceded Juanita Scarlett, a spokeswoman for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. "We certainly want to shore up our support."

While just last month Kerry was leading Bush by as much as 10 points in New Jersey, a flurry of recent polls show the two are now statistically tied. The state has 15 electoral votes.

Get out while you're young, Mr. Edwards.

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I AM SHOCKED...SHOCKED

Flirting With Disaster (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, September, 27th, 2004)

What will it take to convince these people that this is not a year, or a time, to be dicking around? Americans are patrolling a front line in Afghanistan, where it would be impossible with 10 times the troop strength to protect all potential voters on Oct. 9 from Taliban/al-Qaida murder and sabotage. We are invited to believe that these hard-pressed soldiers of ours take time off to keep Osama Bin Laden in a secret cave, ready to uncork him when they get a call from Karl Rove? For shame.

Ever since The New Yorker published a near-obituary piece for the Kerry campaign, in the form of an autopsy for the Robert Shrum style, there has been a salad of articles prematurely analyzing "what went wrong." This must be nasty for Democratic activists to read, and I say "nasty" because I hear the way they respond to it. A few pin a vague hope on the so-called "debates"--which are actually joint press conferences allowing no direct exchange between the candidates--but most are much more cynical. Some really bad news from Iraq, or perhaps Afghanistan, and/or a sudden collapse or crisis in the stock market, and Kerry might yet "turn things around." You have heard it, all right, and perhaps even said it. But you may not have appreciated how depraved are its implications. If you calculate that only a disaster of some kind can save your candidate, then you are in danger of harboring a subliminal need for bad news. And it will show. What else explains the amazingly crude and philistine remarks of that campaign genius Joe Lockhart, commenting on the visit of the new Iraqi prime minister and calling him a "puppet"? Here is the only regional leader who is even trying to hold an election, and he is greeted with an ungenerous sneer.

The unfortunately necessary corollary of this--that bad news for the American cause in wartime would be good for Kerry--is that good news would be bad for him. Thus, in Mrs. Kerry's brainless and witless offhand yet pregnant remark, we hear the sick thud of the other shoe dropping. How can the Democrats possibly have gotten themselves into a position where they even suspect that a victory for the Zarqawi or Bin Laden forces would in some way be welcome to them? Or that the capture or killing of Bin Laden would not be something to celebrate with a whole heart?

Once again, Mr. Hitchens makes an artful, impassioned case that will resonate with many Americans. Yet it is hard to believe this old savvy trotskyite who argued that Mother Theresa was a contemptible fraud and Henry Kissinger a war criminal is as scandalized as he makes out. From Lenin onwards, the recognition that war, depression and other disasters are to be wished for and welcomed as useful in promoting political ends is introductory political re-education stuff for the cadres. Is Mr. Hitchens shocked by the fact that some people would ever think this way or by the realization that marxist analytical tools have become so mainstream they now roll blithely off the tongues of even the horsey set?

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DO YOU, JOHN KERRY, ACCEPT THIS REGIME? (via Fred Jacobsen):

SENATE ESTABLISHING A PROGRAM SUPPORT A TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ (Congressional Record, October 7, 1998)

Mr. McCAIN: I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of H.R. 4655, which is at the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER: The clerk will report. The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (H.R. 4665) to establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq.

The PRESIDING OFFICER: Is there objection to the immediate consideration of the bill, There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill. [...]

Mr. KERREY: Mr. President, I rise to urge the passage of HR. 4655, the Iraq Liberation Act. Thanks to strong leadership in both Houses of Congress and thanks to the commitment of the Administration toward the goals we all share--for Iraq and the region, this legislation is moving quickly. This is the point to state what this legislation is not, and what it is, from my understanding, and why I support it so strongly,

First, this bill is not, in my view, an instrument to direct U.S. funds and supplies to any particular Iraqi revolutionary movement. There are Iraqi movements now in existence which could qualify for designation in accordance with this bill. Other Iraqis not now associated with each other could also band together and qualify for designation. It is for Iraqis, not Americans to organize themselves to put Saddam Hussein out of power, just as it will be for Iraqis to choose their leaders in a democratic Iraq. This bill will help the Administration encourage and
support Iraqis to make their revolution.

Second, this bill is not a device to involve the U.S. military in operations in or near Iraq. The Iraqi revolution is for Iraqis, not Americans, to make. The bill provides the Administration a portent new tool to help Iraqis toward this goal, and at the same time advance America's interest in a peaceful and secure Middle East.

This bill, when passed and signed into law, is a clear commitment to a U.S. policy replacing the Saddam Hussein regime and replacing it with a transition to democracy. This bill is a statement that America refuses to coexist with a regime which has used chemical weapons on its own citizens and on neighboring countries, which has invaded its neighbors twice without provocation, which has still not accounted for its atrocities committed in Kuwait, which has fired ballistic missiles into the cities of three of its neighbors, which is attempting to develop
nuclear and biological weapons, and which has brutalized and terrorized its own citizens for thirty years. I don't see how any democratic country could accept the existence of such a regime, but this bill says America will not. I will be an even prouder American when the refusal, and commitment to materially help the Iraqi resistance, are U.S. policy.

Speech at New York University (John Kerry, 9/20/04)

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.

They nominated the wrong Kerr[e]y.

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DID YOU KNOW HE SERVED IN VIETNAM?

Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (A movie by George Butler, theatrical release 10/1/04)

Synopsis:

Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry is a feature length documentary about character and moral leadership during a time of national crisis. Loosely based on the best-selling book Tour of Duty by Douglas Brinkley, Going Upriver examines the story of John Kerry and the key events that made him a national figure and the man he is today. The film places particular emphasis on his bravery during the Vietnam War and his courageous opposition to the war upon his return.

The film traces Kerry’s early life as a young man who chooses to enlist in the Navy and to go to Vietnam. The film reveals intimate, first person accounts of Kerry’s war service through his own private letters, his eloquent journal, and the vivid memories of the men who served at his side. When Kerry came home disillusioned by the war, he and his fellow Vietnam Veterans challenged Congress and the Nixon administration. As Kerry became a nationally known anti-war activist, the Nixon White House plotted to discredit his leadership, but significantly could find “nothing on him,” as Colson reveals via Watergate tapes. Despite Nixon’s attempt to undermine John Kerry’s political career during his 1972 unsuccessful run for US Congress, Kerry persevered, eventually winning election to the Senate and receiving the Democratic nomination for president in 2004.

Every once in a while, I go cruise through Democratic Underground because, first, I'm just slightly sadistic and, second, I want to make sure that I'm not the one with blinders on. The other day, I noticed a thread with the heading "October Surprise", leading to a discussion of this movie. Apparently, John Kerry was a war hero in Vietnam and then came back home to courageously oppose the war. Once the American people learn that, well, Katie bar the door, it's a Kerry landslide.

Obviously, the last thing the Kerry campaign (as opposed to the candidate) wants or needs right now is more time being spent on Vietnam. And yet its friends (Butler is apparently a good friend of Kerry's) and allies won't shut up about it. Mickey Kaus has pointed to this type of mixed message as one of the benefits of McCain-Feingold: Rather than being beholden to contributers who allow him to craft his own message, Kerry is more likely to be annoyed at uncoordinated attacks that step on his message. The problem is that, if Kaus is right, this ought to be symmetrical. Bush should be having the same problem. But the Bush campaign is self-evidently in control of its message and is simply not engaging with hostile or friendly 527s. The difference is that John Kerry doesn't have a message; he has only a muddle.

The real lesson of this campaign is that McCain-Feingold is irrelevant: voters see a consistent message coming from the well-run campaign and confusion from the campaign that has lost its way. If McCain-Feingold is irrelevant, why are we limiting political speech?

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RARE ENOUGH TO PERCEIVE THE FUTURE, RARER STILL TO MAKE IT:

Losing Faith in the Intifada: As uprising enters fifth year, some Palestinians call it a political and economic disaster. (Laura King, September 28, 2004, LA Times)

When Abu Fahdi joined a Palestinian militant group and took up arms against Israel, he thought he was serving his people. Now he believes he did them only harm.

"We achieved nothing in all this time, and we lost so much," said the baby-faced 29-year-old, who, because of his status as a fugitive, insisted on being identified by a nickname meaning "father of Fahdi." "People hate us for that and wish we were dead."

The young militant, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, is not alone in such thinking. Among Palestinians from all walks of life, there is a quiet but growing sentiment that their intifada, or uprising — which broke out four years ago today — has largely failed as an armed struggle, and lost its character as a popular resistance movement.

Moreover, many Palestinians fear that what has been, in effect, their military defeat at the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has left them without leverage to extract political and territorial concessions that would help lay the groundwork for their hoped-for state.

The official Palestinian line is that the struggle continues. Veteran leader Yasser Arafat and old-line members of his Fatah faction insist that ordinary Palestinians are unbowed by the overwhelming degree of force that Israel has brought to bear in cities and towns all over the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which have been responsible for more than 100 suicide bombings over the past four years, also insist that they will continue to hit Israeli targets with all their strength.

But relentless Israeli strikes at the militant groups' leaders and field operatives, together with the partial construction of a security barrier meant to seal off the West Bank, are credited with reducing such attacks inside Israel by 80%.

For some time now, influential figures in Palestinian society — intellectuals, lawmakers, analysts, professionals and well-regarded local officials — have been asserting, almost matter-of-factly, that the violent confrontation with Israeli forces has reached a dead end and their people must look to the future.

"We have witnessed the destruction of Palestinian society — its civil institutions, its economy, its infrastructure," said Zuhair Manasra, the governor of Bethlehem. "The result has been a complete disaster for the Palestinians, at all levels. Now we must think how to rebuild."

Which makes the following speech resemble nothing so much as Reagan's Westminster address, President Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership (The Rose Garden, 6/24/02)

For too long, the citizens of the Middle East have lived in the midst of death and fear. The hatred of a few holds the hopes of many hostage. The forces of extremism and terror are attempting to kill progress and peace by killing the innocent. And this casts a dark shadow over an entire region. For the sake of all humanity, things must change in the Middle East.

It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. And the current situation offers no prospect that life will improve. Israeli citizens will continue to be victimized by terrorists, and so Israel will continue to defend herself.

In the situation the Palestinian people will grow more and more miserable. My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security. There is simply no way to achieve that peace until all parties fight terror. Yet, at this critical moment, if all parties will break with the past and set out on a new path, we can overcome the darkness with the light of hope. Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born.

I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence.

And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East.

In the work ahead, we all have responsibilities. The Palestinian people are gifted and capable, and I am confident they can achieve a new birth for their nation. A Palestinian state will never be created by terror -- it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempt to preserve the status quo. True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism.

Today, the elected Palestinian legislature has no authority, and power is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable few. A Palestinian state can only serve its citizens with a new constitution which separates the powers of government. The Palestinian parliament should have the full authority of a legislative body. Local officials and government ministers need authority of their own and the independence to govern effectively.

The United States, along with the European Union and Arab states, will work with Palestinian leaders to create a new constitutional framework, and a working democracy for the Palestinian people. And the United States, along with others in the international community will help the Palestinians organize and monitor fair, multi-party local elections by the end of the year, with national elections to follow.

Today, the Palestinian people live in economic stagnation, made worse by official corruption. A Palestinian state will require a vibrant economy, where honest enterprise is encouraged by honest government. The United States, the international donor community and the World Bank stand ready to work with Palestinians on a major project of economic reform and development. The United States, the EU, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund are willing to oversee reforms in Palestinian finances, encouraging transparency and independent auditing.

And the United States, along with our partners in the developed world, will increase our humanitarian assistance to relieve Palestinian suffering. Today, the Palestinian people lack effective courts of law and have no means to defend and vindicate their rights. A Palestinian state will require a system of reliable justice to punish those who prey on the innocent. The United States and members of the international community stand ready to work with Palestinian leaders to establish finance -- establish finance and monitor a truly independent judiciary.

Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure. This will require an externally supervised effort to rebuild and reform the Palestinian security services. The security system must have clear lines of authority and accountability and a unified chain of command.

America is pursuing this reform along with key regional states. The world is prepared to help, yet ultimately these steps toward statehood depend on the Palestinian people and their leaders. If they energetically take the path of reform, the rewards can come quickly. If Palestinians embrace democracy, confront corruption and firmly reject terror, they can count on American support for the creation of a provisional state of Palestine.

With a dedicated effort, this state could rise rapidly, as it comes to terms with Israel, Egypt and Jordan on practical issues, such as security. The final borders, the capital and other aspects of this state's sovereignty will be negotiated between the parties, as part of a final settlement. Arab states have offered their help in this process, and their help is needed.

I've said in the past that nations are either with us or against us in the war on terror. To be counted on the side of peace, nations must act. Every leader actually committed to peace will end incitement to violence in official media, and publicly denounce homicide bombings. Every nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel -- including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. Every nation actually committed to peace must block the shipment of Iranian supplies to these groups, and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq. And Syria must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organizations.

Leaders who want to be included in the peace process must show by their deeds an undivided support for peace. And as we move toward a peaceful solution, Arab states will be expected to build closer ties of diplomacy and commerce with Israel, leading to full normalization of relations between Israel and the entire Arab world.

Israel also has a large stake in the success of a democratic Palestine. Permanent occupation threatens Israel's identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for. So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state.

As we make progress towards security, Israel forces need to withdraw fully to positions they held prior to September 28, 2000. And consistent with the recommendations of the Mitchell Committee, Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop.

The Palestinian economy must be allowed to develop. As violence subsides, freedom of movement should be restored, permitting innocent Palestinians to resume work and normal life. Palestinian legislators and officials, humanitarian and international workers, must be allowed to go about the business of building a better future. And Israel should release frozen Palestinian revenues into honest, accountable hands.

I've asked Secretary Powell to work intensively with Middle Eastern and international leaders to realize the vision of a Palestinian state, focusing them on a comprehensive plan to support Palestinian reform and institution-building.

Ultimately, Israelis and Palestinians must address the core issues that divide them if there is to be a real peace, resolving all claims and ending the conflict between them. This means that the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will be ended through a settlement negotiated between the parties, based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, with Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognize borders.

We must also resolve questions concerning Jerusalem, the plight and future of Palestinian refugees, and a final peace between Israel and Lebanon, and Israel and a Syria that supports peace and fights terror.

All who are familiar with the history of the Middle East realize that there may be setbacks in this process. Trained and determined killers, as we have seen, want to stop it. Yet the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties with Israel remind us that with determined and responsible leadership progress can come quickly.

As new Palestinian institutions and new leaders emerge, demonstrating real performance on security and reform, I expect Israel to respond and work toward a final status agreement. With intensive effort by all, this agreement could be reached within three years from now. And I and my country will actively lead toward that goal.

I can understand the deep anger and anguish of the Israeli people. You've lived too long with fear and funerals, having to avoid markets and public transportation, and forced to put armed guards in kindergarten classrooms. The Palestinian Authority has rejected your offer at hand, and trafficked with terrorists. You have a right to a normal life; you have a right to security; and I deeply believe that you need a reformed, responsible Palestinian partner to achieve that security.

I can understand the deep anger and despair of the Palestinian people. For decades you've been treated as pawns in the Middle East conflict. Your interests have been held hostage to a comprehensive peace agreement that never seems to come, as your lives get worse year by year. You deserve democracy and the rule of law. You deserve an open society and a thriving economy. You deserve a life of hope for your children. An end to occupation and a peaceful democratic Palestinian state may seem distant, but America and our partners throughout the world stand ready to help, help you make them possible as soon as possible.

If liberty can blossom in the rocky soil of the West Bank and Gaza, it will inspire millions of men and women around the globe who are equally weary of poverty and oppression, equally entitled to the benefits of democratic government.

I have a hope for the people of Muslim countries. Your commitments to morality, and learning, and tolerance led to great historical achievements. And those values are alive in the Islamic world today. You have a rich culture, and you share the aspirations of men and women in every culture. Prosperity and freedom and dignity are not just American hopes, or Western hopes. They are universal, human hopes. And even in the violence and turmoil of the Middle East, America believes those hopes have the power to transform lives and nations.

This moment is both an opportunity and a test for all parties in the Middle East: an opportunity to lay the foundations for future peace; a test to show who is serious about peace and who is not. The choice here is stark and simple. The Bible says, "I have set before you life and death; therefore, choose life." The time has arrived for everyone in this conflict to choose peace, and hope, and life.

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TARGET 240:

House Odds (Charlie Cook, Sept. 28, 2004, National Journal)

In this polarized political environment, many insiders predict fewer ticket splitters, putting House incumbents who sit in the "wrong"
district in jeopardy. Think of Republicans in Connecticut or Democrats
in South Dakota.

This summer, House Democrats saw Kerry's lead in polls as an opportunity
to link blue-state GOP incumbents with an unpopular president.
Democratic challengers wanted to make races referenda on Bush, while
Republican incumbents in marginal districts focused on local issues. [...]

So where does this leave House Democrats going into the final month
before the election?

At this point, Democrats have just seven seats in serious jeopardy: five
Texas incumbents -- Reps. Martin Frost, Charles Stenholm, Max Sandlin,
Nick Lampson, and Chet Edwards -- and open seats in northern Kentucky's
4th District and southern Louisiana's 7th District. Even if Democrats
lose only four of those races, they will need to find 17 GOP-held seats
just to get to a bare majority. Republicans start with a one-seat
pick-up in Texas because Democrats are not competing for a newly created
district. [...]

Bottom line: The scenario today suggests that Republicans could gain or
lose as many as three seats. That would give Republicans a majority of
as many as 233 seats or as few as 227 seats.

So, if there's more straight party voting and few or no Blue States then what happens?

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A.B.B.'S FOR BUSH:

Anti-Bush Voters Seek Reasons to Back Kerry (Vanessa Williams, September 28, 2004, Washington Post)

Denise Mulle said she started out the election season more anti-Bush than pro-Kerry. But she read newspapers and Kerry campaign literature that helped her understand the Democratic presidential nominee's positions on the issues.

"It's not good enough to say that Bush is so horrible that I'd vote for Bozo before I'd vote for Bush -- even though that's what first brought me to the Kerry campaign," she said.

Mulle, 52, who runs a nursing home consulting business with her husband, Ken, said she wanted to do her part to help the Massachusetts senator, who she agrees has struggled to get his message out.

Using a list of undecided voters supplied by the Kerry campaign, Mulle sent out 100 invitations and called 80 other wavering voters to attend a reception at her home in this tony suburb of St. Louis on Sunday. About a half-dozen showed up.

As the guests sipped wine, the discussion was more a Bush-bashing session than a Kerry pep rally. "You've told us why we should not vote for President Bush," one woman said, "now tell us why we should vote for Kerry." Campaign workers rushed to answer the question, but it symbolized one of the biggest hurdles John F. Kerry faces.

This could be one of the epic achievements in the history of politics--an "anybody but fill-in-the-blank" candidate who is so unappealing that he can't capture the "anybody but fill-in-the-blank" voters. This is why it was a mistake for John Kerry to make any appearances after he secured the nomination. He was most attractive as a blank slate.

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THE LADDIE'S FOR TURNING:

Brown widens Labour divide (JAMES KIRKUP AND FRASER NELSON, 9/28/04, The Scotsman)

TONY Blair was last night urged by his allies to crush Gordon Brown’s leadership ambitions and signal a new era where challenges to his authority will no longer be tolerated.

The Prime Minister’s confidantes pressed him to use his conference speech today to make clear that the Treasury can no longer be an alternative political power base.

But 10 Downing Street was last night preparing to offer yet another peace deal to Mr Brown, with Mr Blair praising his accomplishments and focusing instead on explaining the Iraq conflict to delegates and the country.

In the first full day of the Labour Party conference in Brighton, Mr Brown delivered an impassioned and personal speech where he praised the "public sector ethos" and laid out a personal manifesto for the third term.

While it drew a standing ovation from delegates, it infuriated Mr Blair’s allies who said the Chancellor was sending an anti-privatisation message to his supporters and must be dealt with firmly today.

If Britain only had a mildly competent conservative party, this is the moment to steal the Third Way back from Labour and recast themselves as compassionate conservatives eager to help Tony Blair pass real reforms. It would break Labour in two.

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YOU DON'T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME:

On 'Mind,' Joss Stone soulfully stretches out (Renee Graham, September 28, 2004, Boston Globe)

It would be natural to talk about how much Joss Stone's voice has matured since her 2003 debut, "The Soul Sessions," except that this teenager has always had the seasoned, lived-in pipes of a singer decades older.

A 16-year-old blonde from rural England with a voice marinated in classic Stax soul might have seemed like a gimmick. And with "The Soul Sessions," primarily a collection of obscure R&B songs, such as Joe Simon's "The Chokin' Kind," some gently dismissed Stone as a vocalist with enough of an ear to mimic soulfulness, but without the emotional ability to plumb the rich truths within the songs.

Of course, such sniping completely missed a very vi- tal point -- regardless of age or upbringing, Stone has a smashing voice, resonant with passion, power, and sass. That's even more apparent with her new album, "Mind, Body & Soul," due in stores today. Freed from the dusty grooves of her debut's old soul records, Stone gets to show off more of her own, still-developing, musical personality, as well as display her deepening confidence and grace as a singer.Go to www.boston.com/ae/music to hear clips from "Mind, Body & Soul." Stone co-wrote most of this album's tracks, and reassembles many of her debut's R&B stalwarts, including her mentor, singer-songwriter Betty Wright, guitarist Willie "Little Beaver" Hale, organist Timmy Thomas, and pianist Benny Lattimore. On various tracks she also gets assistance from Nile Rodgers (guitar on "You Had Me,") and ?uestlove (drums on "Sleep Like a Child.") Stone is the sparkling centerpiece, and it's her voice that propels this album through its 14 tracks.

Dusty Springfield wasn't built in a day.

---

MAYBE AFTER I AND ALL MY FAMILY ARE DEAD

Iraq too unsafe for polls, says Abdullah (Dawn, September 28th, 2004)

Iraq is far too unsafe to hold elections as scheduled in January and extremists would do well in the poll if Baghdad tried to hold it, Jordan's King Abdullah said in an interview to be published on Tuesday.

Excluding troubled areas from the nation wide poll would only isolate Iraq's Sunnis and create deeper divisions in the country, he told the Paris daily Le Figaro, according to a text distributed in advance.

The United States and Iraq's interim government insist the vote should go ahead as scheduled despite the worsening security situation. But The New York Times quoted US Secretary of State Colin Powell as saying: "We've got a tough road ahead of us."

"It seems impossible to me to organize indisputable elections in the chaos we see today," said the king, who was due to meet French President Jacques Chirac in Paris on Tuesday.

But then hereditary absolute monarchs tend to set the bar high for safe elections.

---

FIRST THE VERDICT, THEN THE ACCUSED:

Reporters Put Under Scrutiny in C.I.A. Leak (ADAM LIPTAK, September 28, 2004, 9/28/04, NY Times)

Leak investigations are often halfhearted and one-sided enterprises. Suspected leakers are questioned, not always vigorously or under oath, and the source of the disclosure is seldom found. The journalists who could say for sure are almost never subpoenaed.

The Plame case is different. This is largely because, unlike most leaks, the disclosure of an undercover intelligence agent's identity is a felony. The disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity, moreover, may have been motivated by politics. And the investigation inside the government, in which the president, the vice president and many other officials have been questioned, seems to have been both exhaustive and inconclusive.

Mr. Liptak seems ton accept as a given that which, so far as we've seen, no one has established, that the disclosure in this case would be a felony, The Bush Administration Adopts a Worse-than-Nixonian Tactic: The Deadly Serious Crime Of Naming CIA Operatives (JOHN W. DEAN, Aug. 15, 2003, Find Law)

The Act primarily reaches insiders with classified intelligence, those privy to the identity of covert agents. It addresses two kinds of insiders.

First, there are those with direct access to the classified information about the "covert agents." who leak it. These insiders - including persons in the CIA - may serve up to ten years in jail for leaking this information.

Second, there are those who are authorized to have classified information and learn it, and then leak it. These insiders - including persons in, say, the White House or Defense Department - can be sentenced to up to five years in jail for such leaks.

The statute also has additional requirements before the leak of the identity of a "covert agent" is deemed criminal. But it appears they are all satisfied here.

First, the leak must be to a person "not authorized to receive classified information." Any journalist - including Novak and Time - plainly fits.

Second, the insider must know that the information being disclosed identifies a "covert agent." In this case, that's obvious, since Novak was told this fact.

Third, the insider must know that the U.S. government is "taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States." For persons with Top Secret security clearances, that's a no-brainer: They have been briefed, and have signed pledges of secrecy, and it is widely known by senior officials that the CIA goes to great effort to keep the names of its agents secret.

A final requirement relates to the "covert agent" herself. She must either be serving outside the United States, or have served outside the United States in the last five years. It seems very likely that Mrs. Wilson fulfills the latter condition - but the specific facts on this point have not yet been reported.

It's not clear from the reporting that's been done so far that any one of these conditions was met.

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WHY DO THE COSTS OF MEDICINES WE DON'T NEED KEEP GOING UP?:

Sleep study touts therapy over pills (Scott Allen, September 28, 2004, Boston Globe)

A handful of therapy sessions does more to help chronic insomniacs get to sleep than the top-selling sleeping pill, according to a new Harvard Medical School study, suggesting that doctors are relying too heavily on medications to treat Americans' increasingly restless nights.

A quarter of adults take sleeping pills at some point during the year, according to a National Sleep Foundation survey, reflecting the difficulty that more than half of Americans have sleeping at least a few nights a week. But the Harvard study found that among people who chronically struggle with insomnia, advice from a therapist is more likely to produce a normal night's rest than Ambien, the top-selling sleep aid, with sales of $1.5 billion for 2003.

"The first line of treatment should be cognitive behavior therapy, not drugs, and in 75 percent of patients, that is going to be more effective," said Gregg Jacobs of the Sleep Disorders Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, lead author of the study.

Jacobs said sleeping pills should be prescribed mainly for people whose insomnia is caused by an event or illness, such as jet lag from a long trip or the side effects of chemotherapy. Other insomniacs, he said, are staying awake in part because of bad sleep habits that a behavior therapist can best help to change.

Therapists' advice typically includes such basics as going to bed only when drowsy and getting up at the same time every day, even after a poor night's sleep. The objective is to get insomniacs to unlearn bad habits such as paying bills in bed, worrying instead of sleeping, and keeping themselves awake at night with coffee and strenuous exercise.

It's all about sleep hygiene.

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A FEW FLIPS AGO:

Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (October 31, 1998)

An Act

To establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Iraq Liberation Act of 1998'.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

The Congress makes the following findings:

(1) On September 22, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, starting an 8 year war in which Iraq employed chemical weapons against Iranian troops and ballistic missiles against Iranian cities.

(2) In February 1988, Iraq forcibly relocated Kurdish civilians from their home villages in the Anfal campaign, killing an estimated 50,000 to 180,000 Kurds.

(3) On March 16, 1988, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurdish civilian opponents in the town of Halabja, killing an estimated 5,000 Kurds and causing numerous birth defects that affect the town today.

(4) On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded and began a 7 month occupation of Kuwait, killing and committing numerous abuses against Kuwaiti civilians, and setting Kuwait's oil wells ablaze upon retreat.

(5) Hostilities in Operation Desert Storm ended on February 28, 1991, and Iraq subsequently accepted the ceasefire conditions specified in United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991) requiring Iraq, among other things, to disclose fully and permit the dismantlement of its weapons of mass destruction programs and submit to long-term monitoring and verification of such dismantlement.

(6) In April 1993, Iraq orchestrated a failed plot to assassinate former President George Bush during his April 14-16, 1993, visit to Kuwait.

(7) In October 1994, Iraq moved 80,000 troops to areas near the border with Kuwait, posing an imminent threat of a renewed invasion of or attack against Kuwait.

(8) On August 31, 1996, Iraq suppressed many of its opponents by helping one Kurdish faction capture Irbil, the seat of the Kurdish regional government.

(9) Since March 1996, Iraq has systematically sought to deny weapons inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) access to key facilities and documents, has on several occasions endangered the safe operation of UNSCOM helicopters transporting UNSCOM personnel in Iraq, and has persisted in a pattern of deception and concealment regarding the history of its weapons of mass destruction programs.

(10) On August 5, 1998, Iraq ceased all cooperation with UNSCOM, and subsequently threatened to end long-term monitoring activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency and UNSCOM.

(11) On August 14, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105-235, which declared that `the Government of Iraq is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations' and urged the President `to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations.'.

(12) On May 1, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105-174, which made $5,000,000 available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition for such activities as organization, training, communication and dissemination of information, developing and implementing agreements among opposition groups, compiling information to support the indictment of Iraqi officials for war crimes, and for related purposes.

SEC. 3. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS REGARDING UNITED STATES POLICY TOWARD IRAQ.

It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.

SEC. 4. ASSISTANCE TO SUPPORT A TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ.

(a) AUTHORITY TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE- The President may provide to the Iraqi democratic opposition organizations designated in accordance with section 5 the following assistance:

(1) BROADCASTING ASSISTANCE

(A) Grant assistance to such organizations for radio and television broadcasting by such organizations to Iraq.

(B) There is authorized to be appropriated to the United States Information Agency $2,000,000 for fiscal year 1999 to carry out this paragraph.

(2) MILITARY ASSISTANCE

(A) The President is authorized to direct the drawdown of defense articles from the stocks of the Department of Defense, defense services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training for such organizations.

(B) The aggregate value (as defined in section 644(m) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961) of assistance provided under this paragraph may not exceed $97,000,000.

(b) HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE- The Congress urges the President to use existing authorities under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to provide humanitarian assistance to individuals living in areas of Iraq controlled by organizations designated in accordance with section 5, with emphasis on addressing the needs of individuals who have fled to such areas from areas under the control of the Saddam Hussein regime.

(c) RESTRICTION ON ASSISTANCE- No assistance under this section shall be provided to any group within an organization designated in accordance with section 5 which group is, at the time the assistance is to be provided, engaged in military cooperation with the Saddam Hussein regime.

(d) NOTIFICATION REQUIREMENT- The President shall notify the congressional committees specified in section 634A of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 at least 15 days in advance of each obligation of assistance under this section in accordance with the procedures applicable to reprogramming notifications under section 634A.

(e) REIMBURSEMENT RELATING TO MILITARY ASSISTANCE-

(1) IN GENERAL- Defense articles, defense services, and military education and training provided under subsection (a)(2) shall be made available without reimbursement to the Department of Defense except to the extent that funds are appropriated pursuant to paragraph (2).

(2) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS- There are authorized to be appropriated to the President for each of the fiscal years 1998 and 1999 such sums as may be necessary to reimburse the applicable appropriation, fund, or account for the value (as defined in section 644(m) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961) of defense articles, defense services, or military education and training provided under subsection (a)(2).

(f) AVAILABILITY OF FUNDS

(1) Amounts authorized to be appropriated under this section are authorized to remain available until expended.

(2) Amounts authorized to be appropriated under this section are in addition to amounts otherwise available for the purposes described in this section.

(g) AUTHORITY TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE- Activities under this section (including activities of the nature described in subsection (b)) may be undertaken notwithstanding any other provision of law.

SEC. 5. DESIGNATION OF IRAQI DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION ORGANIZATION.

(a) INITIAL DESIGNATION- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall designate one or more Iraqi democratic opposition organizations that the President determines satisfy the criteria set forth in subsection (c) as eligible to receive assistance under section 4.

(b) DESIGNATION OF ADDITIONAL ORGANIZATIONS- At any time subsequent to the initial designation pursuant to subsection (a), the President may designate one or more additional Iraqi democratic opposition organizations that the President determines satisfy the criteria set forth in subsection (c) as eligible to receive assistance under section 4.

(c) CRITERIA FOR DESIGNATION- In designating an organization pursuant to this section, the President shall consider only organizations that--

(1) include a broad spectrum of Iraqi individuals, groups, or both, opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime; and

(2) are committed to democratic values, to respect for human rights, to peaceful relations with Iraq's neighbors, to maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity, and to fostering cooperation among democratic opponents of the Saddam Hussein regime.

(d) NOTIFICATION REQUIREMENT- At least 15 days in advance of designating an Iraqi democratic opposition organization pursuant to this section, the President shall notify the congressional committees specified in section 634A of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 of his proposed designation in accordance with the procedures applicable to reprogramming notifications under section 634A.

SEC. 6. WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL FOR IRAQ.

Consistent with section 301 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993 (Public Law 102-138), House Concurrent Resolution 137, 105th Congress (approved by the House of Representatives on November 13, 1997), and Senate Concurrent Resolution 78, 105th Congress (approved by the Senate on March 13, 1998), the Congress urges the President to call upon the United Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting, and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials who are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other criminal violations of international law.

SEC. 7. ASSISTANCE FOR IRAQ UPON REPLACEMENT OF SADDAM HUSSEIN REGIME.

It is the sense of the Congress that once the Saddam Hussein regime is removed from power in Iraq, the United States should support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing immediate and substantial humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, by providing democracy transition assistance to Iraqi parties and movements with democratic goals, and by convening Iraq's foreign creditors to develop a multilateral response to Iraq's foreign debt incurred by Saddam Hussein's regime.

SEC. 8. RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.

Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of United States Armed Forces (except as provided in section 4(a)(2)) in carrying out this Act.

The Iraq Liberation Act (October 31, 1998)

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

October 31, 1998

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998." This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.

Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.

My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.

In the meantime, while the United States continues to look to the Security Council's efforts to keep the current regime's behavior in check, we look forward to new leadership in Iraq that has the support of the Iraqi people. The United States is providing support to opposition groups from all sectors of the Iraqi community that could lead to a popularly supported government.

On October 21, 1998, I signed into law the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, which made $8 million available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition. This assistance is intended to help the democratic opposition unify, work together more effectively, and articulate the aspirations of the Iraqi people for a pluralistic, participa--tory political system that will include all of Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups. As required by the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for FY 1998 (Public Law 105-174), the Department of State submitted a report to the Congress on plans to establish a program to support the democratic opposition. My Administration, as required by that statute, has also begun to implement a program to compile information regarding allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes by Iraq's current leaders as a step towards bringing to justice those directly responsible for such acts.

The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 provides additional, discretionary authorities under which my Administration can act to further the objectives I outlined above. There are, of course, other important elements of U.S. policy. These include the maintenance of U.N. Security Council support efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons and missile programs and economic sanctions that continue to deny the regime the means to reconstitute those threats to international peace and security. United States support for the Iraqi opposition will be carried out consistent with those policy objectives as well. Similarly, U.S. support must be attuned to what the opposition can effectively make use of as it develops over time. With those observations, I sign H.R. 4655 into law.

WILLIAM J. CLINTON

THE WHITE HOUSE,

October 31, 1998.

So, I'm confused about something: the same Senator Kerry who voted for that act, which made regime change official U.S. policy, recently said that:

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.

By his own current lights, in voting to effect regime change in Iraq wasn't he choosing chaotic democracy for Iraq over an American security that required the brutal repression of the Iraqi people by Saddam? At what point did he switch sides?

---

HOW'D HE EVER CATCH UP TO THE AMBULANCES?:

Homestate Crowd Walks Out on Edwards (NewsMax, 9/27/04)

Half the audience who showed up last week to see John Edwards' first South Carolina appearance since he won his home state's primary in February walked out before he arrived - two hours late.

And in another sign of trouble in paradise, the state's Democratic Senate candidate - whose campaign the Edwards visit was supposed to boost - declined to be seen on the same stage with him.

Democrat U.S. Senate hopeful Inez Tenenbaum "has gone to great lengths to distance herself from the national party," reports the South Carolina newspaper, The State.

Edwards "is about as close as she’s going to allow herself to get to the national party," the paper added, noting, "Tenenbaum didn’t appear on the platform with him" at either the rally or a fund-raiser scheduled for later that day.

Aides said she would have skipped the event altogether if John Kerry had been the guest of honor.

They're sending John Edwards, who was quitting the Senate rather than be defeated for re-election, to campaign in a state where they don't have a prayer and the Senate candidate doesn't want them showing up, and he's two hours late to boot? These guys couldn't pour ketchup out of a windsurfing boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

---

MORE THAN A FEELING:

He feels Democratic but votes Republican: I'm in a political battle for my own soul. (Brian Kantz, 9/28/04, CS Monitor)

Entirely appropriate since Democratic policies derive from feelings and Republican from thought.

---

HE WOULDN'T HAVE CARRIED HIS HOME STATE EITHER (via Robert Schwartz):

If Howard Dean Were the Candidate ...: Flip-flops wouldn't be the issue; Iraq would. A look at what might have been (PETER BEINART, 9/27/04, TIME)

Political punditry is harder than it looks. That's what a lot of Democratic voters must be thinking right about now. Last winter Democratic-primary voters played political consultant. They tried to step inside the minds of swing voters and figure out which Democratic presidential candidate could beat George W. Bush. With an eye cast coldly on November, they rejected the man who had first won their hearts, Howard Dean, and flocked to the more "electable" choice, John Kerry. Among New Hampshire voters who said beating Bush was their biggest concern, Kerry beat Dean by a whopping 52 points.

Democratic voters should stick to their day jobs. With just five weeks until Election Day, there's reason to believe they guessed wrong — that Dean would be doing better against Bush than Kerry is. Yes, it's too late for Democrats to switch horses, but imagining how Dean might have done sheds light on what's going on now.

Given the robust economy, an incumbent president and a re-conservatizing America, there was no way the Democrats were ever going to win this election, however Howard Dean would have been a better nominee because he's got the necessary executive experience, doesn't have the deadly Senate voting record, and has a much more palatable personal demeanor. It is an indicator of how weak the Democrats are though that the best candidate they had on offer was another Northeastern liberal who'd not have been able to contend in any state south of Maryland.

---

MAKING CHICKEN SALAD...:

Al Qaeda's Uzbek bodyguards: As Pakistan rounds up more Al Qaeda operatives in its cities, hundreds of Uzbek fighters remain in the tribal hills. (Owais Tohid, 9/28/04, CS Monitor)

Hundreds of Uzbek militants now form the bulwark of Al Qaeda's defenses in South Waziristan. The Central Asians are filling the ranks left by Arab fighters who left the region for the Middle East on the orders of Mr. bin Laden months ago, say tribal sources.

"The Arab militants hardly participate in the [South Waziristan] fight as they have handed over control of the battlefield to these Uzbeks. This saves their ranks from losses," says tribesman Mohammad Noor. "They are using the Uzbeks cleverly here. Many locals are now unhappy with the Uzbeks" for drawing attacks from Pakistani forces.

With Al Qaeda's leadership focused on broad planning, command of the day-to-day fighting in the tribal region has been delegated to Qari Tahir Yaldashev. Mr. Yaldashev, who is directly linked to Al Qaeda's leadership, was a founding member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). He was the deputy of IMU's founder, Juma Naghanmani, who was killed in Afghanistan by US bombings following Sept. 11, 2001.

After suffering casualties from US forces in the Shah-e Kot mountains of Afghanistan, Yaldashev and some 250 families of Central Asian militants fled to South Waziristan. They joined hordes of Al Qaeda militants of Arab and African origins who escaped the US and its allies at the battle of Tora Bora.

Most of these militants found South Waziristan a haven; local mujahideen and staunch Islamist tribesmen were both ideological counterparts and fellow veterans of the US-sponsored fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Thus emerged a new anti-US triangle made up of core Al Qaeda militants, Central Asian fighters from Uzbekistan and Chechnya, and local force of tribesmen.

In the past, "Al Qaeda never let militants from other regions enter the inner circle, which is purely of Arab origin. But Al Qaeda leadership is aware of the qualities of Uzbek militants and their women.... Both are known as staunch jihadis," says Peshawar-based analyst, Mohammad Riaz.

Hard to believe that if Osama were alive and/or al Qaeda had any options they'd rely on non-Arabs. But, hey, all news in the war on terror is bad news, right?

---

UNFAIR TO THE IRRESPONSIBLE! (via Robert Schwartz):

New Health Savings Accounts Only Favor Savers (John Wasik, 9/27/04, Bloomberg)

If you are relatively young, healthy and a disciplined saver, the new Health Savings Account is like a super-sized Individual Retirement Account.

On the other hand, if you are a poor saver and have chronic health
problems, the new account may be an expensive shell game that mocks the
claim of the White House and lawmakers who say it's the bright future of
U.S. health care.

Touted as an "ownership" solution to health care, the HSA shifts more
medical expenses to individuals in exchange for a tax-sheltered savings
or investment account.

The point of course is to start them at birth so that you have them during the years when almost all of us are relatively healthy. If you're unfortunate enough not to be so blessed it will obviously make sense for you to get a less attractive but more comprehensive form of coverage.

Meanwhile, an added benefit of the accounts is that they may tend to make people better savers generally. Even people who are not good savers will presumably prefer to keep money for themselves than squandering it on needless medical procedures and treatments, no?

At any rate, you don't design universal systems for the exceptions, but for the rule.

---

SHOCK AND AWE

Town at war over 'peace monument' (Bruce Hutchinson, National Post, September 27th, 2004)

Fox News producers learned of a local plan, hatched this month, to celebrate and memorialize thousands of U.S. draft dodgers and war objectors who ran to Canada during the war in Vietnam. Dozens are said to have settled here, in this bucolic, mountainside community 700 kilometres east of Vancouver.

The Fox crew arrived last week, and its story was broadcast internationally.

Nelson's city hall was immediately flooded with angry phone calls, e-mails and letters, most of them from furious Americans vowing never to set foot here again.

The dodgy celebration is the brainchild of a small group with an excruciatingly long name, and an equally cumbersome acronym: the Reunion Committee to Reunite War Resisters and Those Who Assisted Them during the Vietnam War, or RCRWRTWATDVW.

Leading the group is Isaac Romano, a local child therapist who moved here from Seattle five years ago. He envisions a ''spectacular'' weekend of discussion, and the premiere of a feature- length documentary about American war objectors in Canada.

What really seemed to rankle Fox viewers, however, is RCRWRTWATDVW's plan to unveil a metal sculpture meant to honour male and female war objectors, and Canada's role in welcoming them from the U.S. The work will depict a trio of people holding hands.

''If you think a monument to yellow belly cowards is going to somehow give a sense of respectfulness to these shameful Americans, who turned their backs on their country, you are sadly mistaken,'' one angry American wrote in an e-mail to city hall. ''I for one will never visit your town and spend a thin dime ever again, if this thing is built.''

That was among the milder comments the city received.

Contrary to popular belief, the Canadian component of RCRWRTWATDVW was not motivated by anti-Americanism. They were on a purely humanitarian mission. Somebody had to teach those guys macrame fast or they would have starved.

---

JE COMPRENDS, JACQUES

No French or German turn on Iraq (Jo Johnson, Betrand Benoit and James Harding, Financial Times, 9/26/04)

French and German government officials say they will not significantly increase military assistance in Iraq even if John Kerry, the Democratic presidential challenger, is elected on November 2.

Mr Kerry, who has attacked President George W. Bush for failing to broaden the US-led alliance in Iraq, has pledged to improve relations with European allies and increase international military assistance in Iraq.

"I cannot imagine that there will be any change in our decision not to send troops, whoever becomes president," Gert Weisskirchen, member of parliament and foreign policy expert for Germany's ruling Social Democratic Party, said in an interview.

The French and the Germans are not willing to fight for American principles. Senator Kerry should understand that if anyone does.

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WE KNOW ABOUT FIRE, BUT MURDER IS SPEECH TOO? (via Flag of the World):

Free to Clone (BRIAN ALEXANDER, 9/26/04, NY Times Magazine)

This election year, the debate over cloning technology has become a circus -- and hardly anybody has noticed the gorilla hiding in the tent. Even while President Bush has endorsed throwing scientists in jail to stop ''reckless experiments'' (and has tried to muscle the U.N. into adopting a ban on all forms of cloning, even for research), it's just possible the First Amendment will protect researchers who want to perform cloning research.

Dr. Leon Kass, the chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics and a cloning foe, would like to keep that a secret. ''I don't want to encourage such thinking,'' he said during the council's July 24, 2003, session. But the notion that the First Amendment creates a ''right to research'' has been around for a long time, and Kass knows it.

In 1977, four eminent legal scholars -- Thomas Emerson, Jerome Barron, Walter Berns and Harold P. Green -- were asked to testify before the House Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space. At the time, there was alarm in the country over recombinant DNA, or gene splicing. Some people feared clones, designer babies, a plague of superbacteria. The committee wanted to know if the federal government should, or could, restrict the science.

''Certainly the overwhelming tenor of the testimony was in favor of protecting it,'' Barron, who now teaches at George Washington University, recalls. ''I did say scientific research comes within the umbrella of the First Amendment, and I still feel that way.''

Berns, a conservative political scientist who is now at the American Enterprise Institute, was forced to agree. He didn't like this conclusion, because he feared the consequences of tinkering with nature, but even after consulting with Kass before his testimony, he told Congress that ''the First Amendment protected this kind of research.'' Today, he believes it protects cloning experiments as well.

Research may be protected in some general way by the First Amendment--certainly some aspects would--but the idea that just because you claim that you are engaged in science you have the absolute right to fiddle with the integrity of another person or even kill them is too bizarre to be countenanced. The exact argument that Mr. Alexander is making would protect those who conducted the Tuskeegee experiments and the eugenicists who applied Darwinism on innocent and helpless victims. We've run the experiment of giving science free reign over humans once, with disastrous results. There's no excuse for making the same mistake again.

---

NO MAS

Kerry appeals for end to election advertising war (afp, 9/27/04)

Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry appealed for an end to the TV advertising war that has marked his election battle against President George W. Bush.

Kerry said the avalanche of negative television spots and attacks being shown on US screens was scaring off voters.

"Americans need a real conversation over our future," Kerry said in a speech at a school in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

"What they don't need is all these trumped up advertisements, they just make people curl up and walk away," added the Massachusetts senator.

"I'm calling them 'misleadisments,'" Kerry said of the adverts. "It's all scare tactics ... because (Bush) has no record to run on."

The Democrats have complained bitterly about a new advertisement that shows Osama bin Laden, September 11 hijack leader Mohamed Atta, Saddam Hussein and the ruins of the World Trade Center, and questioned whether Kerry was up to dealing with them.

There's so much here my head is going to explode.

1. "Hey, George, it's John. You know those vicious attack ads that have devastated my campaign, while not touching you? Why don't we call them off?"

2. I'm sure that makes sense to Agence France-Presse.

3. This is the perfect campaign. They haven't missed a single item on the loser's checklist.

4. How far up inside the bubble are these guys stuck? No matter how much the Democrats assure each other otherwise, the American people just don't hate the President. Showing up is not enough to elect JFK II.

5. "Misleadisments"? That's just pathetic.

6. (From Kay) Saying that the President doesn't have a record to run on doesn't actually make it so.

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MR. KLAUS...PARTY OF ONE...YOUR TABLE IS READY

EU constitution a threat to freedom: Czech president (TurkishPress, September 27th, 2004)

Czech President Vaclav Klaus on Monday dubbed the embryonic EU constitution a potential threat to freedom which would not resolve the problems facing the 25-nation bloc.

"It is a radical text with wide-ranging consequences for freedom and for the well-being and future of the nation state", Klaus said as he wrapped up the first day of a two-day visit to Spain.

The Czech leader, a dyed-in-the-wool Eurosceptic, told a conference on "European problems and their non-solutions" that the EU constitution as drawn up by former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing "does not resolve Europe's real problems."

He slammed the blueprint for dealing with what he called "narrow" issues, such as how many EU commissioners each member country should have or what voting weight each country should be afforded.

Casting doubt on the wisdom of foisting a single monetary policy on the union, Klaus told his hosts: "I am not sure that economic and monetary union can exist long term."

Klaus, who earlier lunched with King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia at the royal Pardo Palace, earlier told El Pais daily that despite EU efforts to unite the continent "a European identity does not exist."

Klaus told El Pais that Europe was merely a "geographical abstraction," and later warned that any idea borders could be done away with "could end up destroying Europe."

He insisted it was a fallacy to regard Europe as having ever had a "collective identity" and excoriated the idea that "big is beautiful."

He told El Pais that in his view "European countries should be good partners but their differences should not be sacrificed on the altar of a united Europe, something which has never existed and which, I hope, will never exist."

They must just love him in Paris and Berlin.

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DEVELOPING BENCH STRENGTH:

A national retail sales tax? GREAT IDEA!: Aim for goals of liberty (HERMAN CAIN, 09/24/04, Atlanta Journal Constitution)

The most popular of the various national retail sales tax plans is called the FairTax. It is in both houses of Congress today as HB 25 and SB 1493. It is a replacement, not an add-on, for the federal income tax and for federal payroll taxes collected to fund Social Security and Medicare.

The FairTax provides a dollar-for-dollar replacement of all revenues now collected through such taxes and eliminates the need for annual and quarterly income tax filings, the surveillance by the federal government of wages and investment income and the need for anyone to hire an expert in order to comply with federal tax laws.

The FairTax is a progressive tax. The biggest-spending wealthy will pay an effective tax of $23 for every $77 they spend on new products and services. The poorest get money back. American families would receive a monthly refund equaling the amount of sales tax a poverty-level family would normally pay.

Here's your chairman of the President's tax reform commission.

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HOLDABLE:

Alaska's votes belongs to Bush, but the Senate is up for grabs (Mike Bradner, 9/26/04, Alaska Journal of Commerce)

The big question for Alaskans in the November general election is our choice in the U.S. Senate race: Republican Lisa Murkowski vs. Democrat Tony Knowles. This race will be a close one despite our general political colors.

The recent primary election results don't necessarily tell us much, not with closed primaries and their restricted ballots. As we went to the polls in August, Alaska voter rolls showed 115,104 registered Republicans and 69,182 Democrats. Compared with the 2002 primary election Democratic registration was down about 2,000, while Republicans were up about 1,000.

However, both party registrations are dwarfed by a huge pool of roughly 238,000 registered voters who declare themselves "no party or undeclared," plus another 35,000 voters who declare to be Libertarians, Greens, Republican moderates, members of the Alaska Independence Party and so on. This is a sizable independent quantum of voters. In many respects, this is the "independent jury" of the public, those to which partisan candidates must appeal in the general election. However, only about 50 percent of those registered in political parties or otherwise are likely to vote in the November election.

We also have just finished a contentious primary election on the Republican side in the U.S. Senate race. While the survivor, Murkowski, marshaled 45,477 votes, her challenger, Mike Miller, garnered an impressive 29,176. There are some unhappy voters among Miller's group, and Miller himself has seemed a reluctant endorser of Murkowski.

Despite the imbalance in party registration, we have a horse race between incumbent Sen. Murkowski and former Gov. Tony Knowles. Murkowski is the Republican appointed to the U.S. Senate seat by her father, Gov. Frank Murkowski, who resigned the senate seat in 2002 to become governor. Knowles served two terms as governor and is a former mayor of Anchorage.

Even Bob Dole got 58% in Alaska and W 59% last time, so you figure he's over 60% easy. Send Dick Cheney to make the case for how badly the GOP needs that seat in the Senate.

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JOHN KERRY 2004--SUMMONING US ALL TO A GREATER PORPOISE (via John Resnick):

Hardly seems fair to Flipper

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IT'S HIS M.O.:

Disgraceful: The disgraceful behavior of John Kerry and his team is sufficient grounds for concern about his fitness to be president (William Kristol, 10/04/2004, Weekly Standard)

[K]erry and his advisers have behaved disgracefully this past week. That behavior is sufficient grounds for concern about his fitness to be president.

[K]erry was asked about Kofi Annan's description of the war in Iraq as an "illegal" invasion. Kerry answered: "I don't know what the law, the legalities are that he's referring to. I don't know." So the U.S. government is accused of breaking international law, and Kerry chooses not to defend his country against the charge, or to label it ridiculous or offensive. He is agnostic.

Then Kerry continued: "Well, let me say this to all of you: That underscores what I am saying. If the leader of the United Nations is at odds with the legality, and we're not working at getting over that hurdle and bringing people to the table, as I said in my speech yesterday, it's imperative to be able to build international cooperation." It's our fault that the U.N. is doing almost nothing to help in Iraq. After all, according to Kerry, "Kofi Annan offered the help of the United Nations months ago. This president chose to go the other way."

Leave aside the rewriting of history going on here. The president of the United States had just appealed for help from the United Nations and its member states to ensure that elections go forward in Iraq. Kerry could have reinforced that appeal for help with his own, thereby making it a bipartisan request. He chose instead to give the U.N., France, Germany, and everyone else an excuse to do nothing over these next crucial five weeks, with voter registration scheduled to begin November 1. If other nations prefer not to help the United States, the Democratic presidential candidate has given them his blessing. [...]

Two days later, Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi spoke to a joint meeting of Congress. Sen. Kerry could not be troubled to attend, as a gesture of solidarity and respect. Instead, Kerry said in Ohio that Allawi was here simply to put the "best face on the policy." So much for an impressive speech by perhaps America's single most important ally in the war on terror, the courageous and internationally recognized leader of a nation struggling to achieve democracy against terrorist opposition.

But Kerry's rudeness paled beside the comment of his senior adviser, Joe Lockhart, to the Los Angeles Times: "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips."

Is Kerry proud that his senior adviser's derisive comment about the leader of free Iraq will now be quoted by terrorists and by enemies of the United States, in Iraq and throughout the Middle East? Is the concept of a loyalty to American interests that transcends partisan politics now beyond the imagination of the Kerry campaign?

John Kerry has decided to pursue a scorched-earth strategy in this campaign. He is prepared to insult allies, hearten enemies, and denigrate efforts to succeed in Iraq. His behavior is deeply irresponsible--and not even in his own best interest.

There is some chance, after all, that John Kerry will be president in four months. If so, what kind of situation will he have created for himself?

The same kind he left Richard Nixon in Vietnam and tried to create for Ronald Reagan in Nicaragua?

MORE:
Flirting With Disaster: The vile spectacle of Democrats rooting for bad news in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Christopher Hitchens, Sept. 27, 2004, Slate)

Ever since The New Yorker published a near-obituary piece for the Kerry campaign, in the form of an autopsy for the Robert Shrum style, there has been a salad of articles prematurely analyzing "what went wrong." This must be nasty for Democratic activists to read, and I say "nasty" because I hear the way they respond to it. A few pin a vague hope on the so-called "debates"—which are actually joint press conferences allowing no direct exchange between the candidates—but most are much more cynical. Some really bad news from Iraq, or perhaps Afghanistan, and/or a sudden collapse or crisis in the stock market, and Kerry might yet "turn things around." You have heard it, all right, and perhaps even said it. But you may not have appreciated how depraved are its implications. If you calculate that only a disaster of some kind can save your candidate, then you are in danger of harboring a subliminal need for bad news. And it will show. What else explains the amazingly crude and philistine remarks of that campaign genius Joe Lockhart, commenting on the visit of the new Iraqi prime minister and calling him a "puppet"? Here is the only regional leader who is even trying to hold an election, and he is greeted with an ungenerous sneer.

The unfortunately necessary corollary of this—that bad news for the American cause in wartime would be good for Kerry—is that good news would be bad for him. Thus, in Mrs. Kerry's brainless and witless offhand yet pregnant remark, we hear the sick thud of the other shoe dropping. How can the Democrats possibly have gotten themselves into a position where they even suspect that a victory for the Zarqawi or Bin Laden forces would in some way be welcome to them? Or that the capture or killing of Bin Laden would not be something to celebrate with a whole heart?

Because they hate George W. Bush more than Islamicism.

---

DOES ANYONE THINK HER HUSBAND WAS KEEPING IT SECRET?:

A Leak Probe Gone Awry: The year-old investigation into who named a covert C.I.A. agent has devolved, as we feared, into an attempt to compel journalists to reveal their sources. (NY Times, 9/27/04)

The focus of the leak inquiry has lately shifted from the Bush White House, where it properly belongs, to an attempt to compel journalists to testify and reveal their sources. In an ominous development for freedom of the press and government accountability that hits particularly close to home, a federal judge in Washington has ordered a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, to testify before a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the covert operative's identity and to describe any conversations she had with "a specified executive branch official."

The subpoena was upheld even though neither Ms. Miller nor this newspaper had any involvement in the matter at hand - the public naming of an undercover agent. Making matters worse, the newly released decision by Judge Thomas Hogan takes the absolutist position that there is no protection whatsoever for journalists who are called to appear before grand juries.

This chilling rejection of both First Amendment principles and evolving common law notions of a privilege protecting a reporter's confidential sources cries out for rejection on appeal, as does the undue secrecy surrounding the special prosecutor's filings in the case.

Mr. Novak has refused to say whether he received a subpoena. But other journalists have acknowledged getting subpoenas and some have testified about their contacts with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. They say they did so based on his consent, but consent granted by government employees under a threat of dismissal hardly seems voluntary. Once again, none of these journalists were involved in the central issue: the initial public identification of Mr. Wilson's wife.

Setting aside for the moment the question of whether there should be any privileges, the central issue is not that the information was revealed but whether it was illegal to reveal.

If the communication of information was in and of itself a crime then it can not, or should not, be privileged.

However, such communication would not even be illegal if Ms Plame was not covered by the statute because not a covert operative operating outside the United States in the last five years--which seems entirely likely--or if the CIA was not concealing that she had been covert--her identity seems to have been open knowledge in Washington--or if the revealer would not have known she had been covert--again quite likely.

If it wasn't illegal to reveal that she worked at CIA then the probe should end. If it was then the reporters should reveal details of the crime they unwittingly participated in.

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THEY'RE DOING AN AWFULLY GOOD IMPRESSION OF LOSING THE WoT:

Hamas: Arab state may have helped Israel with assassination (Amos Harel, Yoav Stern, and Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondents, and news agencies, 9/27/04, Ha'aretz)

Hamas said on Monday an Arab country might have helped Israel assassinate one of its leaders in Damascus, an act it called "treason."
Senior Hamas official Iz a Din al-Sheikh Khalil was killed by a car bomb in the Syrian capital on Sunday.

"We were not convinced initially, this would be treason for an Arab security apparatus to be involved in this," Hamas Lebanon head Osama Hamdan said of a report in the Al-Hayat daily.

The Arabic daily said an Arab country had given the Israeli spy agency Mossad information about the movements and habits of Hamas leaders abroad. [...]

Syria's response to the assassination was one of weakness and confusion. The government's official news agency released a short statement from an interior ministry source saying Khalil "did not carry out any activities on Syrian soil," and that various authorities were investigating the incident.

"He is one of the Palestinian citizens who was expelled by the occupation authorities to Lebanon, and he was not allowed to return to the Palestinian territories," the statement said. No details as to how the operation was carried out or who is suspected to be behind it were given.

"Our response will be civilized and sensible," said Ahmed al-Haj Ali, an aide to Syria's information minister. "It needs to be made clear that Damascus is not open to these criminals. "

If al Qaeda's aim was to provoke weakness, confusion, and charges of treason in the Arab world then you could say they're winning--or they would be if there were any of them left alive and out of jail.

MORE:
Alleged Top al-Qaida Man in Lebanon Dies (AP, 9/27/04)

The alleged top al-Qaida operative in Lebanon, who was captured in a security operation that broke up a terrorist network, died of a heart attack Monday, hospital and security officials said.

Ismail Mohammed al-Khatib was taken from his prison cell to the Bahanes Hospital, 18 miles outside Beirut, after suffering a heart attack, but doctors were unable to save his life, hospital officials said.

Lebanese security officials confirmed al-Khatib's death of a heart attack.

Al-Khatib was one of two top operatives of al-Qaida organization captured by Lebanese authorities Sept. 17 along with 10 other suspects. The other one was Ahmed Salim Mikati.

Mr. Mikati is probably looking a little peaked too.

---

NOT YOUR FATHER'S GOP:

Pawlenty pushes plan to double ethanol in gasoline (Associated Press, September 27, 2004)

Gov. Tim Pawlenty proposed on Monday to double the portion of ethanol sold in every gallon of gasoline in the state, from 10 percent to 20 percent. [...]

He said that increasing the use of renewable fuels was one way to lessen the country's dependence on foreign oil. [...]

Pawlenty also announced plans to reduce the use of gasoline in state government vehicles by 50 percent by 2015. That would be done by using more alternative fuels, adding hybrid vehicles to the state fleet, and other measures.

The plan would also encourage the sale of hybrid vehicles to the public by allowing those cars to drive in express lanes.

---

BUSH VS. THE SPOOKS:

Is CIA at war with Bush? (ROBERT NOVAK, September 27, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

A few hours after George W. Bush dismissed a pessimistic CIA report on Iraq as ''just guessing,'' the analyst who identified himself as its author told a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about going to war in Iraq. This exchange leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other.

Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, sat down Tuesday night in a large West Coast city with a select group of private citizens. He was not talking off the cuff. Relying on a multi-paged, single-spaced memorandum, Pillar said he and his colleagues concluded early in the Bush administration that military intervention in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility throughout Islam. This was not from a CIA retiree but an active senior official. (Pillar, no covert operative, is listed openly in the Federal Staff Directory.)

For President Bush to publicly write off a CIA paper as just guessing is without precedent. For the agency to go semi-public is not only unprecedented but shocking. George Tenet's retirement as director of Central Intelligence removed the buffer between president and agency. As the new DCI, Porter Goss inherits an extraordinarily sensitive situation.

Pillar's Tuesday night presentation was conducted under what used to be called the Lindley Rule (devised by Newsweek's Ernest K. Lindley): The identity of the speaker, to whom he spoke, and the fact that he spoke at all are secret, but the substance of what he said can be reported. This dinner, however, knocks the Lindley Rule on its head. The substance was less significant than the forbidden background details.

What did Mr. Novak think was the point when his White House source told him that the Joe Palme Niger trip had been a CIA scam?

---

THE COMMON TOUCH (via David Cohen):

No Assault Rifle for Kerry, After All (JODI WILGOREN, 9/27/04, NY Times)

Senator John Kerry's campaign said yesterday that Mr. Kerry did not own a Chinese assault rifle, as he was quoted as saying in Outdoor Life magazine, but a single-bolt-action military rifle, blaming aides who filled out the magazine's questionnaire on his behalf for the error.

Here's the thing, someone on the Kerry campaign thinks it's better for him to be seen as the kind of guy who mistakes a flintlock, or whatever they're pretending it is now, for an assault rifle than the kind of guy who keeps his favorite gun in defiance of a government ban.

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SHHHHHH, THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ANNOUNCED AT THE DEBATE:

Report: Top Bin Laden deputy caught in Pakistan (THE JERUSALEM POST, Sep. 27, 2004)

Top Bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri has been caught in Pakistan, according to a report from the region quoted on Israel Radio Monday.

Pakistani forces operating against al Qaida strongholds in the country report capturing the Egyptian national, who was formerly the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which operated in the past against the Egyptian regime.

The Kerry campaign denounced this as a distraction from the war on the War on Terrorism.

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ANOTHER KERRY PROBLEM, NO RED ZONE OFFENSE:

Campaigns leave red state Arizona behind (The Associated Press, 9/27/2004)

The presidential campaign has left Arizona behind. Democratic Sen. John Kerry made four visits and spent nearly $4 million on television commercials in an attempt to make the state competitive. But polls this fall show President Bush with a comfortable lead, and Kerry has tabled plans for advertising in the first week of October.

The Bush campaign responded by pulling down its commercials Friday. Kerry has not ruled out airing Arizona ads in late October, but advisers say privately it would take a significant shift in the race to put the state back in play.

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STILL EARLY INNINGS (via Michael Herdegen):

Taking stock of GOP's revolution (John Aloysius Farrell, September 26, 2004, Denver Post)

With pomp and celebration, Republicans here are marking the 10th anniversary of the "Gingrich Revolution." [...]

What hath Newt wrought? When citing their accomplishments, the Republicans can claim just credit for reforming America's welfare system.

GOP congressional leaders joined with moderate Democrats and put a welfare reform bill on Bill Clinton's desk that fulfilled his campaign pledge to "end welfare as we know it" and gave him no choice but to sign it.

The new law's work requirements kicked in during the dot-com boom - an opportune moment of low unemployment and high economic growth. All sorts of social indicators soon signaled success. The poverty rate dipped, as did the percentage of teenage mothers and the number of children living in poverty.

An underappreciated skill of governing is recognizing when a wink is as good as a shove. The Republicans can claim credit for nudging along some favorable trends that, for largely demographic and sociological reasons, have continued to improve on their watch.

Crime is down, including violent crime. The rate of home ownership is at a record high. The mean net worth of American families was $245,000 in 1995 and $395,000 in 2001.

The Bush tax cuts may have shifted more of the overall federal tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class, but the Republican-controlled Congress also expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, raised the child tax credit and created a new 10 percent tax bracket that gives a break to the working poor.

Indeed, there are several positive trends in post-revolution America that don't fit the political stereotypes of Republicans as heartless, greedy polluters.

Hunger is down in America. Our air is cleaner. The death rate from AIDS fell from 16.3 per 100,000 in 1995 to 5.2 per 100,000 in 2000.

The immigrant dream is alive: The percentage of American children who speak another language at home has risen from 14.1 to 16.7.

And how's this for a sign of a strong social fabric? Under Republican rule, the number of interracial married couples has continued its climb - to 1.7 million in 2002. And African-Americans made significant gains in educational attainment and college degrees.

The GOP's economic record, it must be said, is middling. The party of business has presided over less-than-stellar growth, even with Republican Alan Greenspan chairing the Federal Reserve Board. Thanks mainly to the recession of 2001, the growth in gross domestic product since 1994 (an average of 5.16 percent) has not matched that of the preceding 10 years (6.9 percent) or the 10 years before that (10.2 percent).

If Mr. Gingrich was the shover, Mr. Bush is the winker par excellence.

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IRAQ FIRST:

Could Philip Roth's forthcoming novel tip the scales IN FAVOR of Bush?: Out next week, and right before what seems now to be a close presidential election, the book is sure to draw all sorts of contemporary comparisons and analogies. (Abe Novick, 9/27/04, Jewish World Review)

For many Jews going to the polls in November, they must wonder if the same long-standing enemies of Israel, are also the enemies of The United States due to its support of The Jewish State.

It will be interesting to see the debate swirl over Roth's corrosive satire.

But what will be even more fascinating, is the novel will be appearing during a nastily contested presidential election. One with many Jewish voters torn between President Bush's War on Terror and his support for Israel, and their longstanding, traditional loyalty to leftwing ideals personified by The Democratic Party.

The Wife's response upon hearing Mr. Roth interviewed on NPR: "I don't get it. If Lindbergh was an isolationist, isn't Kerry more like Lindbergh?"

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WHY 60 MATTERS:

Bench mark: Election winner will have lasting impact (Greg Gordon, September 27, 2004, Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

With one or more Supreme Court justices inching toward retirement, the November election could reshape the court and dramatically affect laws covering everything from abortion to civil rights to environmental regulation, legal experts say.

If President Bush wins, his appointments are expected to give conservatives a vise grip on the nation's highest courts for years to come. If Democrat John Kerry prevails, he is expected to swing the high court to the left of center.

"Clearly, the next president will be able to shape the course of justice in this country not just for four years, but for 40 years," said Nan Aron, president of the liberal-leaning Alliance for Justice.

If a Bush victory were followed by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, widely viewed as the court's pivotal swing vote, "then I think rights and protections that we Americans cherish will be gravely threatened, particularly in the areas of [abortion] choice, civil rights and gay rights," Aron said.

Glenn Lammi, chief counsel for legal studies at the conservative-leaning Washington Legal Foundation, agrees that the election's effects on the courts could be huge, but he doesn't expect drastic change. He said that the Republican-appointed majority on the current court has issued no "outrageous" opinions.

And it's unlikely that Bush would choose nominees seeking "radical change," Lammi said, because they would almost assuredly provoke a fierce confirmation battle with Senate Democrats.

What's really exciting is that the President will have the opportunity to nominate qualified young conservatives who just happen to play to political constituencies. Here's a trifecta for you: Janice Rogers Brown, Miguel Estrada, and Viet Dinh.

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ABBIE HOFFMAN SHOULD HAVE LIVED TO SEE THIS:

Strong Charges Set New Tone Before Debate (ADAM NAGOURNEY and ROBIN TONER, 9/27/04, NY Times)

A senior Kerry adviser, Joe Lockhart, laid out what Democrats said would most likely be another major theme for Mr. Kerry leading up to the debate, as he accused Mr. Bush of "using the war on terror as a political tool and a political weapon" in seeking to silence dissent. [...]

"There used to be a time when aiding and abetting the enemy was a treasonous offense," Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in an interview. "Now it's become a routine political charge."

If liberals had a sense of humor you'd swear this whole campaign was some kind of absurdist prank. First you have the spokesman for a major party presidential candidate telling the leading paper in the world that dissent is being stifled. Then you have Senator Durbin wondering not why aiding and abetting has become but why the charge has. Unfortunately, but necessarily, they appear not to get their own jokes.

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THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN ALIVE:

Bush Offends Sophisticates’ Pieties (John Zvesper, September 2004, Ashbrook.org)

Journalists the world over have written off President Bush’s speech at the United Nations this week as a performance addressed more to his domestic electoral needs than to an international audience. [...]

What really offended the assembled delegates of the world’s governments and the watching journalists is that Bush presented this call for enhanced human dignity in the context of his call for widening the circle of liberty and democracy. As he said, "no other system of government has done more to protect minorities, to secure the rights of labor, to raise the status of women, or to channel human energy to the pursuits of peace." Though Bush—as always when discussing this topic—made it clear that the development of liberal democracy takes time and cannot be imposed from without, his discussion was offensive for several reasons.

First of all, the most immediate opportunities for this widening are located in the Middle East, with Iraq naturally at the top of the list. This suggestion—in addition to offending the anti-Israeli thinking of many UN member states—provoked the ill will that many UN representatives still feel towards Bush’s defiance of the non-decisions of the UN with regard to Iraq in 2003. Because the war in Iraq continues, this ill will is now accompanied by not a little feeling that having made its bed, the United States (and its often forgotten coalition partners) must lie in it. The prim told-you-so pronounced after Bush’s speech by the Swiss president, Joseph Deiss, has been frequently quoted in the European press: "In hindsight, experience shows that actions taken without a mandate which has been clearly defined in a security council resolution are doomed to failure." (In fact, previous experience would seem to suggest that very often it is such mandates that precede failure. As for the present case, we shall see.)

Another reason that Bush’s words fell on stony ground is that no one’s call for more liberal democracy is likely to please the majority of governments in the UN, who are neither liberal nor democratic, and could hardly be expected to rally to the cause of human liberty. As Bush did not hesitate to note, it is not only terrorists but also "their allies" who "believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Bill of Rights, and every charter of liberty ever written, are lies, to be burned and destroyed and forgotten."

However, there was also (at best) a tepid response to Bush among the representatives of liberal democratic regimes, and this needs further explanation. What most offended these sophisticated UN delegates was Bush’s rejection of their postmodern pieties, their unwavering faith in the dogmas of pragmatism and moral and cultural relativism. Bush justified his call for the expansion of liberty by asserting that "the dignity of every human life" is "honored by the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, protection of private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance." Many of these traditional liberal principles have become suspect in pragmatic, "progressive" circles. But especially grating to the postmodern mentality that dominates sophisticated minds in liberal democracies is Bush’s claim that "we know with certainty" that "the desire for freedom resides in every human heart," and that therefore the "bright line between justice and injustice—between right and wrong—is the same in every age, and every culture, and every nation." Recognition of such self-evident truths is completely inadmissible in the postmodern faith, in which the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

It's entirely appropriate for other nastions to hate George W. Bush more than Osama bin Laden because our ideas are transforming the world, not al Qaeda's.
The only way that Senator Kerry could hope to reconcile us to our former allies and varied enemies is to deny the self-evidence of the truths upon which our Republic stands. That would make him popular in Paris, Berlin, Beijing, Havana, Damascus, and Pyongyang, but despised at home.

MORE:
Bush's UN speech, de-mythologized (Stephen Zunes, 9/27/04, Foreign Policy in Focus)

Commentators in the mainstream US media seem genuinely perplexed over the polite but notably unenthusiastic reception given to President George W Bush's September 21 address before the United Nations General Assembly. Why wasn't a speech that emphasized such high ideals as democracy, the rule of law, and the threat of terrorism better received?

The answer may be found through a critical examination of the assumptions underlying the idealistic rhetoric of the US president's message. Below are a number of examples: [...]

"The dictator [Saddam Hussein] agreed in 1991, as a condition of a ceasefire, to fully comply with all Security Council resolutions - then ignored more than a decade of those resolutions. Finally, the Security Council promised serious consequences for his defiance. And the commitments we make must have meaning. When we say 'serious consequences', for the sake of peace, there must be serious consequences. And so a coalition of nations enforced the just demands of the world."

First of all, the majority of member states that voted in favor of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 - which warned of "serious consequences" for continued Iraqi non-compliance - explicitly stated that this was not an authorization for the use of force and that a subsequent resolution would be needed. The two times in its history that the UN Security Council has authorized the use of military force to enforce its resolution - in response to the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950 and to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 - such authorization was quite explicit.

Second, if one were to accept Bush's interpretation of "serious consequences" as simply another term for a foreign invasion of a sovereign nation, it is downright Orwellian to claim that such "serious consequences" must be inflicted "for the sake of peace".

Finally, at the time the US launched its invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi government had allowed United Nations inspectors back in with unfettered access to wherever they wanted to go whenever they wanted to, and they were in the process of confirming the fact that Iraq had indeed dismantled, destroyed, or otherwise rendered inoperable its proscribed weapons, delivery systems, and WMD programs. Therefore, the US-led invasion did not "enforce the just demands of the world" since the demands were already being enforced without the use of military force.

Except that the just demands delineated in the Security Council resolutions included liberalizing Iraq. In effect, failure to change the regime himself put Saddam in violation of international law and required regime change from without. It's such a radical notion that folks don't seem able to wrap their minds around it, but the President has made it quite clear.

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CLARIFY THE LINES (via Robert Schwartz):

What if America Just Pulled Out? (ROGER COHEN, 9/26/04, NY Times)

A decision to withdraw would focus the minds of Iraqis, and perhaps their neighbors, on the need to grapple seriously with establishing security and an inclusive political system. It would also remove a chief target of the insurgents - American infidels in uniform - and so presumably undermine their cause.

"A withdrawal plan says to the Iraqis: you want this to be your country, you must make the deals to keep it together," said Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. "If we are there to fight, they won't do this. So a timetable should be established."

But the counterarguments are also powerful. Withdrawal in the absence of stability would amount to a devastating admission of failure and a blow to America's world leadership. The credibility of the United States, already compromised, would be devastated. More than 1,000 young lives would appear to have been blotted out for naught.

Iraq might descend into all-out civil war and split into three pieces, one Kurdish, one Shiite, one predominantly Sunni.

The important thing here is that both the best case scenario--the Sunni triangle quieting down once we leave--and the worst case--open civil war between Shi'a and Sunni--are favorable to us.

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A FITTING EPITAPH:

From Role Model to International Bully in Three Short Years: In September 2001, Europe wept for us. Now it won't even play baseball. (Frederic Morton, September 27, 2004, LA Times)

"How is your baseball team doing?" I asked my young bank teller friend in Vienna recently.

A small pause. "Tomorrow is our final game."

"Finished for the season?"

"Well, not just for the season," he said, looking down to count again, rather unnecessarily, the dollar bills he had just counted. "Uh, it's in view of what's been happening. I mean, I guess we're over that phase. We're going back to soccer."

Here lies:
Europe
(600 B.C.-August 1914 A.D.)
"Back to soccer."

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NO WONDER HE PROVOKED WAR:

The New Deal Debunked (again) (Thomas J. DiLorenzo, September 27, 2004, Mises.org)

Macroeconomic model builders have finally realized what Henry Hazlitt and John T. Flynn (among others) knew in the 1930s: FDR's New Deal made the Great Depression longer and deeper. It is a myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt "got us out of the Depression" and "saved capitalism from itself," as generations of Americans have been taught by the state's educational
establishment.

This realization on the part of macroeconomists comes in the form of an
article in the August 2004 Journal of Political Economy entitled "New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis" by UCLA economists Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian. This is a big deal, since the JPE is arguably the top academic economics journal in the world.

"Real gross domestic product per adult, which was 39 percent below trend at
the trough of the Depression in 1933, remained 27 percent below trend in
1939," the authors write. And "Similarly, private hours worked were 27
percent below trend in 1933 and remained 21 percent below trend in 1939."

This should be no surprise to anyone who has studied the reality of the
Great Depression, for U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that the official
unemployment rate was still 17.2 percent in 1939 despite seven years of
"economic salvation" at the hands of the Roosevelt administration (the
normal, pre-Depression unemployment rate was about 3 percent). Per capita
GDP was lower in 1939 than in 1929 ($847 vs. $857), as were personal
consumption expenditures ($67.6 billion vs. $78.9 billion), according to
Census Bureau data. Net private investment was minus $3.1 billion from
1930-40.

Cole and Ohanian write as though they were surprised--even shocked--to
discover these facts, not so much because they were bamboozled by The Myth
of the New Deal, but because of their devotion to "neoclassical model
building" as opposed to the study of economic reality. They label as
"striking" the fact that the recovery from the Great Depression was "very
weak" (a dramatic understatement). And why is it so striking? Because
"[t]hese data contrast sharply with neoclassical theory . . ." [...]

[V]irtually every single one of FDR's "New Deal" policies made things even worse and prolonged the Depression. Austrian economists have known this for decades, but at least the neoclassical model builders have finally caught on--we can hope.

Cole and Ohanian apparently emerged from the rarified world of macroeconomic
model building for a long enough period of time to discover that the
so-called First New Deal (1933-34) was one giant cartel scheme, whereby the
government attempted to enforce cartel pricing and output reductions in
hundreds of industries and in agriculture. This of course was well
documented in John T. Flynn's book, The Roosevelt Myth, first published in 1948. Henry Hazlitt had also written about it some fifteen years earlier. "New Deal cartelization policies are a key factor behind the weak recovery, accounting for about 60 percent of the difference between actual output and trend output," the authors write.

The fact that it has taken "mainstream" neoclassical economists so long to
recognize this fact is truly astounding. For generations their own
neoclassical textbooks have taught that cartels "restrict output" to raise
prices. It has also been no secret that the heart and soul of the First New
Deal was to use the coercive powers of government to prop up wages and
prices by cartelizing the entire economy.

FDR and his advisors mistakenly believed that the Depression was caused by
low prices, therefore, high prices--enforced by threats of violence, coercion and intimidation by the state--would be the "solution." Moreover, it is hardly a secret that if less production takes place, fewer workers will be needed by employers and unemployment will subsequently be higher. Thus, the First New Deal could not possibly have been anything but a gigantic unemployment-producing scheme according to standard neoclassical economic theory.

It is our great misfortune that the War came along to bail him out before the New Deal could be thoroughly discredited.

MORE (via Mike Daley):
: A review of Rethinking the Great Depression, by Gene Smiley (Richard Vedder, August 31, 2004, Claremont Review of Books)

Over the last 60 years or so, there have been four kinds of explanations concerning why the Depression occurred. The first is the underspending hypothesis, the Keynesian favorite, which dominated discussion for several decades. According to this view, the Depression arose from underspending on consumer durables and housing in the very late '20s, which, in turn, may have been a byproduct of the maldistribution of income during that roaring decade (a twist favored by John Kenneth Galbraith). The stock market crash had a profoundly negative psychological impact, leading both consumers and investors to be cautious in their spending habits. Underinvestment and underconsumption following the stock market crash led to a need for "fiscal stimulus" in the form of government-induced increases in aggregate demand, preferably from government spending increases, but also from tax reductions. In the Keynesian view, that stimulus was not provided, at least not in sufficient doses. Smiley thinks, correctly in my judgment, that this explanation is fundamentally faulty, and largely ignores it.

A second explanation, which grew in popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, focuses on the money supply and the failure of the Federal Reserve to stem a sharp decline in it, which induced significant deflation, leading to bank failures and the subsequent paralysis of business. This monetarist
explanation, championed by Milton Friedman and others, is respected by
Smiley, who believes that bank failures and related happenings played a
major role in the big economic descent after 1929.

A third explanation builds on old neoclassical notions of the determinants
of employment and unemployment, and on the Austrian theory of Ludwig von
Mises and Friedrich Hayek. It argues that excessive monetary creation by the
Federal Reserve in the 1920s led to artificially low interest rates, which
induced a spending boom that set the stage for the 1929 stock market crash.
Subsequently, Hoover's and Roosevelt's coercion of American business
prevented appropriate wage adjustments from being taken to alleviate
unemployment. Other interferences in markets (e.g., price-fixing under the
National Industrial Recovery Act) helped prolong the downturn as well.
Smiley likes this perspective, and draws on works by Murray Rothbard, Lowell
Gallaway, and me in his account of it. For example, he provides rich detail
on how the High Wage policy worked in practice, both during the Hoover
downturn and the tepid Roosevelt recovery.

The final explanation emphasizes the international dimensions of the
downturn, a perspective stressed by Herbert Hoover himself and numerous
scholars since. The Federal Reserve's fixation on the maintenance of the
gold standard led to policies that were wholly inappropriate, such as in
1931 increasing the discount rate (interest rate) that banks had to pay to
borrow from the Fed at precisely the time when appropriate monetary policy
(from the domestic standpoint) would have been the opposite. Add to that the
folly of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, enacted in 1930, and its subsequent
disastrous impact on imports to the U.S., and you have the basis of a severe
and prolonged downturn. Smiley loves this explanation, advanced in modern
times by Barry Eichengreen and others, and gives it prime billing.

The three types of explanation that Smiley emphasizes focus on failures of
public policy-poor Federal Reserve decisions, inappropriate tariffs (not to
mention higher income taxes), government-induced manipulation of wages and
prices by presidential "jawboning," laws like the National Industrial
Recovery Act, and so forth. The modern literature, well-interpreted by
Smiley, has moved dramatically away from the traditional Keynesian story of
market failure-of the inability or unwillingness of individuals and
businesses to spend enough money to get us out of the Depression. A major
intellectual rationalization for modern big government-that it must play an
activist role to overcome market-induced spending deficiencies, thereby
preventing major downturns-stands largely discredited, not by right-wing
ideologues but by scholars of every political stripe investigating nearly
every aspect of the Depression. Perhaps unexpectedly, and certainly without
much public acknowledgement, the Depression's use as a laboratory to
evaluate economic theories has contributed to a sharp decline in Keynesian
influence in the economics profession. By masterfully summarizing most of
the research and making it accessible to the lay reader in a compelling
manner, Smiley provides a great public service.

---

WHAT A DOOFUS

Carter fears Florida vote trouble: Carter has monitored more than 50 elections worldwide Voting arrangements in Florida do not meet "basic international requirements" and could undermine the US election, former US President Jimmy Carter says (BBC, 9/27/04)

In an article in the Washington Post newspaper, Mr Carter, a Democrat, said that he and ex-President Gerald Ford, a Republican, had been asked to draw up recommendations for changes after the last vote in Florida was marred by arguments over the counting of ballots.

Mr Carter said the reforms they came up with had still not been implemented.

He accused Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Republican, of trying to get the name of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader included on the state ballot, knowing he might divert Democrat votes.

He also said: "A fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons."

Mr Carter said Florida Governor Jeb Bush - brother of the president - had "taken no steps to correct these departures from principles of fair and equal treatment or to prevent them in the future".

"It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation," he added.

"With reforms unlikely at this late stage of the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to focus maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious process in Florida."

Leaving to one side the idiocy of the arguments from the man who blessed the Venezuelan election, does anyone in their right mind think that this is at all helpful to John Kerry? If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that President Carter is preparing to explain why the President's reelection isn't legitimate.

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EVERYTHING NEW IS OLD AGAIN:

Angry Brown attacks Blair over Labour's true values (FRASER NELSON AND JAMES KIRKUP, 9/27/04, The Scotsman)

GORDON Brown has rejected the olive branch offered by Tony Blair over his demotion in the coming general election campaign, and today will launch a robust defence of his role as the guardian of Labour’s core values.

The Chancellor will tell Labour’s annual conference that they must be "based on more than a set of individual policies announced by politicians" - a remark that will be seen as a direct jibe at the Prime Minister and his allies.

He will also raise the issue of "trust", a delicate point for Mr Blair, who is now facing a vote on Iraq after delegates forced the issue as a topic for debate at a conference already overshadowed by the fate of hostage Kenneth Bigley. [...]

[M]r Brown will go on to challenge the assumption - championed by Mr Milburn - that campaigning on the economy is a vote-losing cliché that cost Labour dear at the European Parliament elections last June.

"With the economy central to people’s concerns at the election, as at every election, that is the way to maintain, entrench and retain the trust of the people and pay for the much-needed reform and investments in public services," Mr Brown will say.

He will launch a coded attack on the idea - popular among Mr Milburn and his aides - that the best strategy for the election is to forge a list of individual promises, spelling out to voters what a third Labour term will do for them individually.

He will say: "I want us to build a shared national purpose, a British progressive consensus much more than a set of individual policies announced by politicians, but a set of beliefs that come to be shared by the British people."

Bring back Clause IV!

MORE:
Tony Blair needs a big idea. Adam Smith can provide it: No need to return to old Labour thinking to combat inequality (Gareth Stedman Jones, September 25, 2004, The Guardian)

[L]abour is terrified of the E-word because it fears the reaction to higher taxation for the rich. This would be understandable if it were simply a tactical concern. But it seems more basic. For the evidence suggests New Labour agrees with the new right critique that greater equality could only be at the expense of a free-enterprise economy, and that its pursuit would consequently lead back to an ever more entrenched public sector. In short, a return to Old Labour. Therefore, giving up "socialism" means abandoning the goal of greater equality as well.

This is a fallacy. It is based upon a foreshortening of history, in which the intellectual origins of neo-conservative laissez-faire are dated back to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, of 1776. Omitted from the story is the fact that Smith's original reputation was that of a progressive whose work provided the foundation of the radical critique of aristocratic monopoly and of the bellicose state that protected it.

It also forgets that the first thinkers and activists to build on Smith's work were libertarians of the left. They included people such as the English radical Tom Paine and the French revolutionary Condorcet, both of whom believed growing inequality was not the inevitable price of a free-enterprise economy, but could be remedied by science and "the social art". They were the first to propose universal pensions and schooling, death duties and tax-based systems of social insurance as remedies for poverty and ignorance. For them, two obstacles confronted social advance: "force" (aristocratic or oligarchic rule and the laws that protected it); and "fraud" (unreasoning superstition and prejudice born of ignorance). Unshackled from this legacy of injustice and oppression, capitalism went together in their minds with scientific progress, increasing equality, free trade, feminism, anti-slavery, anti-colonialism and anti-racism.

This was not the founding moment of neo-conservatism. That came a few years later at the end of the 18th century with the frightened reaction to the French revolution. In England, loyalists burned Paine's effigy. In France, Condorcet died in prison. In this climate, anti-revolutionaries such as Edmund Burke and Thomas Malthus denied the radical implications of Smith's work, ridiculed Paine and Condorcet and set in motion the long-term association between liberal economics and conservative politics.

But an accurate account of this period shows that the pursuit of equality can be conceived in terms quite other than those of socialism. The language of Paine and Condorcet was that of the coming together of commercial society and the modern democratic republic elaborated in the era of American and French revolutions. Greater equality with a minimal state, universal education, moderate redistributive taxation and social security belonged together in a language of reason and citizenship. As little reliance as possible was to be placed upon the state, since it was associated with a legacy of tyranny and corruption.

Instead, the inequality and uncertainty constantly generated by a modern exchange economy was to be curtailed by a democratic constitution in which a framework of law was maintained by a combination of voluntary associations and local authorities - in modern terms, mutual associations, friendly societies, cooperatives, elected local boards, ethically oriented companies and trade unions.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, this new language of citizenship and democratic enlightenment was increasingly pushed aside by opposing extremes: on the one side, laissez-faire individualism and a language of markets; on the other side, socialism and the language of worker and capitalist.

Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and George W. Bush have tried to thread this needle with varying levels of success, but because it does involve departing from the respective parties traditional core values the effort can apparently not withstand, at least in the early stages of the process, any situation where the leader has to lean upon his base. They end up being able to dictate terms to him and demanding a return to orthodoxy.

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JUST A TYPICAL REPUBLICAN:

The Contender
Melvin Bilal is an attorney, a Republican, and a Muslim, and might be the next 6th District City Council representative—if he can beat incumbent Stephanie Rawlings Blake (Christina Royster-Hemby, Baltimore City Paper)

[R]awlings Blake is being challenged for her seat by Republican Baltimore attorney Melvin Bilal, who has been running ads on local radio stations to introduce himself to city voters. He says that accountability in local government is important to his campaign.

“I want people to hold me accountable,” Bilal says. “If in four years I don’t do what I say I’m going to do, then kick me out. This is what we should do for all politicians. If they’re not doing their job, they should go. And that is true for Stephanie Rawlings Blake.”

Bilal is an African-American man, who happens to be a Muslim and a Republican. He was the Maryland Republican Party’s nominee for lieutenant governor in 1986.

When asked how he reconciles being a Muslim and also a conservative, Bilal is quick to correct: “You assume that I’m a conservative Republican, I didn’t say that,” says Bilal, who was a staunch Democrat while growing up in the predominantly Republican town of Greenburg, N.Y., in the late ’60s. During that time, he says, he championed the Democratic cause tirelessly.

“At that time, Republicans fought a lot of civil-rights battles in the ’60s,” he says. “We had what we called ‘liberal Republicans.’ Now the party has changed.”

He says that these days being a black Republican makes good sense.

“People get too emotional about these parties,” Bilal says. “They should be used to benefit the constituents and individuals that join the party and those that they are concerned about.”

As an African-American, he says, “there’s no guarantee that either party will benefit us. No black [Democrat] has been elected [to statewide office] in Maryland, nor have they even run. The Democrats in that sense haven’t helped us.”

Bilal’s résumé is as diverse as his views: He owned and served as president and chief executive of a security firm called Security America Services for 22 years, and today he is an attorney who practices personal-injury and general-practice law for men who have been in prison. He also volunteers his legal services for Baltimore drug-treatment organization I Can’t, We Can. He’s chaired the foundation board of Coppin State College, been an assistant professor at Catonsville Community College, was a first lieutenant and military police officer in the U.S. Army, and currently sits on Provident Bank’s board of directors.

Today Bilal is focusing on the city’s needs, especially those of the 6th District. He says he’s most concerned about education, vacant homes, and instilling pride in the community.

---

9-11 CAN'T EXPLAIN 1994:

Bush Benefiting From Divided Nation's Unity on Security (Ronald Brownstein, September 27, 2004, LA Times)

Has Sept. 11 tipped the 50-50 nation toward the GOP?

Less cryptically, is a political environment centered on national security issues allowing the Republican Party to break the partisan deadlock that has characterized U.S. politics for the last decade?

That's the ominous question facing Democrats as Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and President Bush prepare for a debate on foreign policy Thursday night that could represent Kerry's best opportunity to regain the initiative in a presidential race defined primarily by war and terrorism.

For the last decade, the parties have been as evenly balanced as at any time since the late 19th century. In 2000, Bush won the second-narrowest electoral college victory ever. Voters in 2000 returned a Senate divided exactly in half. Probably not since 1880 had a national election, measured from all angles, finished so close to a tie.

Our recent partisan standoff was built on a political landscape shaped almost entirely by economic and cultural concerns. National security was probably less relevant to the elections of the 1990s than any since the 1930s.

In an environment where cultural and economic views drove most decisions, neither party had a clear or lasting advantage. The unusual Republican gains in the 2002 congressional elections, and Bush's lead now, raise the possibility that when security looms largest, the balance may tilt slightly toward the GOP. Or at least it does if Democrats can't convince voters they will do as good a job safeguarding the country.

Security was the Democrats' downfall in 2002, when Bush became only the second president since the Civil War to see his party win both House and Senate seats in the first midterm election of his White House tenure.

As much of a comfort as it is to the Left (and neocons) to think that GOP dominance is exclusively a function of 9-11, that's a fanciful notion given that the congress has been Republican for ten years now and the long term drift of statehouses from the Democrats to the GOP. The authoratative study on this can be read here: Terror, Terrain, and
Turnout: Explaining the 2002 Midterm Elections (GARY C. JACOBSON, Spring 2003, POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY)

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BETTER TIE DOWN JUMPIN' JIM (via AWW):

October Surprises: Five weeks and counting. (John J. Miller, 9/27/04, National Review)

Karl Rove insists that Republicans will pick up Senate seats this year, and Democratic senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey says control of the chamber is up for grabs. We'll know the truth in five weeks. Here's the latest rundown on the races, updating a previous report filed during the GOP convention.

Though his own analyses appear to indicate as much as a 6 seat pickup, Mr. Miller is sticking with 2. The question occurs: who was the last presidential candidate who had to return to a job in the Congress after losing? If Mr. Kerry doesn't resign to try and give his campaign a badly needed boost, he'll head back for the lame duck session in November as a junior senator of the minority party, a minority that conceivably won't even have the filibuster anymore. Does the widow Heinz really want to be married to a senator that badly?

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EVERYTHING WEST OF IL:

Kerry Can't Take Oregon for Granted (Sam Howe Verhovek, September 27, 2004, LA Times)

Democrats have not lost a presidential election in Oregon since Ronald Reagan's landslide reelection two decades ago. And it would seem relatively safe territory for Sen. John F. Kerry: Anti-Iraq war sentiment runs strong here, and the state has had the nation's highest unemployment rate for parts of President Bush's term.

Yet the double-digit lead Kerry rode in polls here earlier this summer has narrowed sharply, reflecting his general slide in national polls but also the unease many Oregonians express about Kerry's credentials as a commander in chief.

Now, just a month after Kerry drew 40,000 to a boisterous waterfront rally in Portland, Oregon's seven electoral votes are in play. The Democrat will have to spend time and money to hold onto this state, which Al Gore narrowly won in 2000. And based on the nationwide political landscape, carrying Oregon appears vital to Kerry's presidential hopes.

Bush's Oregon prospects could get a boost from a conservative turnout for a ballot measure that would amend the state's constitution to ban gay marriage. Current polls indicate the initiative is headed for passage by a wide margin. [...]

Of the four most recent statewide polls, two showed Kerry with a modest lead, one put Bush up slightly, and the fourth had the race at a statistical tie.

"I think overall, Kerry has a lead here, but it's precarious, and he's going to have to work to keep it," said Bill Lunch, the political science department chairman at Oregon State University in Corvallis and a radio analyst for Oregon Public Broadcasting.

OR is the kind of state that would seem a better target for the Bush campaign than NJ because they might pick up House seats and Ron Wyden's Senate seat behind a strong enough showing for the President and the turnout for the ballot measure.

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MOONDOGGLE:

The Genesis Project (CHARLES SIEBERT, 9/26/04, NY Times)

One morning, a little more than a year from now, a group of scientists, members of what is known as the Stardust mission, will be standing around on a remote stretch of salt flat in the Utah desert, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a very special package. It will, if all goes as planned, enter our atmosphere much like a meteorite, plunging earthward until the final stage of re-entry, when a small parachute will open. The object, about the size and overall appearance of a large metal cephalopod mollusk, better known as the nautilus, will drift harmlessly to the ground, its belly filled with the dust and debris gathered from the comet Wild 2, which scientists now expect may offer significant clues about life's origins here on earth.

''These comets are thought to contain some of the most primitive material in the solar system, more or less unchanged since its formation,'' Scott A. Sandford, a NASA research astrophysicist and co-investigator of the Stardust mission, told me one afternoon this past spring. We sat talking in the dining area of a huge white plastic tent pitched in the middle of the NASA Ames Research Center campus in Moffett Field, Calif., a tree-dotted, 440-acre sprawl of tan brick laboratory buildings.

''Among the things we'll want to know about the material we've collected,'' continued Sandford, a stout, rugged-looking man with a way of talking about even the most far-flung, wondrous endeavors as though he were a plumber discussing your bathroom pipes, ''is what fraction of it is organic, what kinds of organics they are and what possible role they may have played in life's emergence on earth.''

Searching for the origins of life in the dust of a comet might sound like a bit of cosmically cockeyed indirection, something straight out of a New Age sci-fi novel. The Stardust mission, however, is typical of a number of projects to divine life's origins, all part of a $75-million-a-year scientific enterprise now being financed by NASA. It is known as astrobiology.

Do they study ESP too?

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THE SECOND CHOICE IS YOURS:

'Ownership society': why the US can't buy in (David R. Francis. 9/27/04, CS Monitor)

Many Americans - perhaps most of them - aren't ready for President Bush's "ownership society." The idea sounds good. Employees could shift a portion of what they pay into Social Security and put it into individual accounts that might gain higher returns in, say, the stock market.

They could also reduce their tax bill by starting Health Savings Accounts, Retirement Savings Accounts, and Lifetime Savings Accounts.

These options reflect a certain conservative logic. Rather than having the government or your company decide how much retirement money or healthcare you get, you can decide for yourself.

"If you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of our country," Mr. Bush explains. "The more ownership there is in America, the more vitality there is in America."

The flaw in this logic is Americans' lack of financial sophistication. For example: Less than one-quarter of working-age people characterize themselves as "knowledgeable investors," according to surveys by John Hancock Financial Services. Even this minority shows "considerable confusion." For example: Many surveyed thought money-market funds included stocks and bonds.

That doesn't mean Americans are stupid. They just have better things to do.

That's why such a system has to be mandatory and have default settings, and only then a few choices available to those who pay attention. So, for example, anyone below the age of 50 or whatever would just have their contributions automatically directed to an S&P 500 index fund.

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LET YOUR FINGERS DO THE TALKING:

Israel sends Syria tough message with Hamas strike: The killing of a Hamas operative Sunday underscores Israel's intolerance for radicals in Syria. (Ben Lynfield, 9/27/04, CS Monitor)

In Damascus, a neighbor of Khalil who identified himself only as Nabil said, "He said good morning to us like he did everyday and walked to his car. He got into his car and then the phone rang. When he took the call we heard the explosion. We rushed toward his car and found pieces in the back seat." [...]

Ghazi Hamed, editor of the Hamas-affiliated al-Risala weekly, faults Washington for the bombing. "Israel would not do this without American permission," he says. "The United States is threatening Syria that 'Israel will attack you if you don't do what we want.' " [...]

Damascus, according to Mr. Paz, is no longer a safe place for Hamas not only because of Israeli military action but because of American pressure on Syria to oust radical groups headquartered there.

"Regimes like the Syrian regime might think that they are next after Iraq," he says. "And maybe [President] Bashar Assad would like to renew peace negotiations with Israel. He could easily sell out the Hamas leadership to improve his situation with the US or Israel."

Iraq worked.

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THE OBSESSION WITH AL QAEDA IS A DISTRACTION FROM THE REAL WAR:

Egyptians talk democratic reform: Egypt's ruling party conference yielded no major changes. But formerly taboo issues are being aired. (Dan Murphy, 9/27/04, CS Monitor)

Mr. Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP) provocatively called its annual conference last week "New Thought and Reform Priorities." Speaker after speaker, from the president's telegenic son Gamal Mubarak to Mohammed Kamal of the NDP's policy committee, addressed the theme of change and renewal.

"One-party rule is over,'' Mr. Kamal told reporters at the start of the conference. "All the doors are open," he says. And even President Mubarak said in his closing speech he would "spread the culture of democracy."

That and other declarations set off a buzz among Egypt's weak and generally demoralized democratic opposition, who reasoned the government would have to do something concrete - perhaps easing the restrictions on political parties - to at least give its promises a gloss of legitimacy.

The conference left Egyptians with only a few proposals and no real change to the political and emergency laws that have allowed the NDP to rule unchallenged since 1978. But a combination of US pressure and a faltering economy are allowing previously taboo subjects in Egypt to come to the fore.

Should the constitution be amended with presidential term limits to prevent Mubarak from taking a fifth five-year term next fall? If the ruling party is admitting past mistakes, why shouldn't it be removed from power? And why are emergency laws enacted after Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981 - which allow for indefinite detention without trial and cast a pall of fear over political activists - still in place?

While democratic gains are still a long way off in Egypt, the simple fact that the government is addressing the issue - which amounts to a tacit admission that it hasn't performed either in building democracy or in improving the lives of average Egyptians - gives opposition groups an opening.

Here's the frightening thing about Senator Kerry, he not only doesn't understand that this is integral to the war on terror but has said he'd remove the kind of pressure we're putting on Egypt, preferring "stability" to messy liberalization.

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DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMASTIME:

End the Genocide Now (William Kristol and Vance Serchuk, September 22, 2004, Washington Post)

The U.S. government has done everything it can diplomatically to resolve the crisis. For nearly six months Bush, Powell and other senior officials have urgently and publicly demanded that the Sudanese government pull back the militia. The U.S. government has repeatedly threatened "consequences" if Sudan failed to do so. In this, the Bush administration has the support, indeed the encouragement, of a bipartisan, right-left, "never again" consensus.

Now it's time for the threats to end and the consequences to begin. After all, in addition to the humanitarian imperative, the United States has a strategic interest in Sudan. Khartoum is one of seven regimes on the U.S. government's list of state sponsors of terrorism, and Sudan's dictatorship has had ties with almost every significant terrorist organization in the broader Middle East. Al Qaeda was based in Sudan during the 1990s, and other terrorist groups continue to operate there freely. This month Die Welt reported that Syria and Sudan have been collaborating in developing chemical weapons and may have used them against civilians in Darfur. Thus, in moving against Khartoum for its human rights abuses, we will also be striking a blow in the war on terrorism.

For months it has been obvious that stopping Sudan's campaign in Darfur will require putting several thousand foreign troops on the ground. It has also been obvious that some of these troops will have to be American. As in the case of the Balkans, Rwanda and Iraq, U.S. policymakers have waited for the United Nations to take the lead in authorizing such a force. But after Saturday's Security Council vote, it is clear that at least two members of the council -- China and Russia -- will veto any genuine action against Sudan. Khartoum enjoys a strategic relationship with Beijing, which is hungry for Sudanese oil and doesn't worry about human rights or, for that matter, genocide. The Kremlin has a robust weapons trade with Sudan, having just this summer shipped an order of the very MiG warplanes that have been implicated in strafing civilians in Darfur. (The Sudanese ambassador in Moscow reports that his government is "very pleased" with the purchase, which the Russians delivered five months ahead of schedule.)

Of course, U.S. policymakers might wish that the problem of Darfur could be outsourced to our allies in the region, and some African nations have indicated that they would be willing to contribute troops. But that contingent will need to be backed up by the United States. If the regime in Khartoum is going to be forced to accept foreign intervention on its territory, or if that regime is going to be changed, Washington must be a leader in the effort.

So, as is so often the case, the coalition of the willing that goes into Sudan is going to have to be largely organized, sustained and financed by the United States, most likely without a U.N. mandate.

It's a great American tadition--show folks starving kids at Thanksgiving and Christmas and they'll approve intervention alomst anywhere.

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WHEREVER TWO ARE GATHERED, WE'LL BE THERE:

U.S. Bombings Kill 100 Guerrilla Suspects in Fallujah, Military Says (Jim Krane, 9/26/04, Associated Press)

A month of U.S. airstrikes on rebel-held Fallujah has killed more than 100 suspected insurgents, taking a heavy toll on the terror network of Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, senior U.S. military officials said on Sunday.

The strikes have stopped attacks elsewhere in Iraq while setting off deadly feuds among insurgent groups holed up in the city west of Baghdad, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, deputy operations director for U.S.-led forces here.

"We're confident that, through these airstrikes, we have been able to thwart many large-scale attacks and suicide bombings that were in the planning process," Lessel said in a briefing with reporters. "We've gotten some of his associates and emerging leadership in his organization."

How can you hope to win a war where anytime and anywhere you cluster we bomb?

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IS THE WAR ON AL QAEDA A DISTRACTION FROM THE WAR ON TERROR TOO?:

Al-Qaida Suspect Killed in Pakistan Raid (ZARAR KHAN, 9/26/04, AP)

Paramilitary police killed a suspected top al-Qaida operative Sunday in a four-hour gunbattle at a house in southern Pakistan that also led to the arrest of two other men, the information minister said.

Amjad Hussain Farooqi had been wanted for his alleged role in the kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 and two assassination attempts against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in December 2003.

"I as chief spokesman for the government of Pakistan confirm that our forces have killed Amjad Hussain Farooqi," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated Press by phone from Amsterdam, where he has gone on an official trip with Musharraf.

Ahmed said "two or three other people were also arrested during a big gunfight." He declined to identify them but said they were still being questioned by authorities and were "very important."

"This is the work of our security agencies, and they have done a great job," Ahmed said.

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HE'S GOT A LITTLE LIST AND THEY'LL NONE OF THEM BE MISSED:

Plans: Next, War on Syria? (Mark Hosenball , 10/04/04, Newsweek)

Deep in the Pentagon, admirals and generals are updating plans for possible U.S. military action in Syria and Iran. The Defense Department unit responsible for military planning for the two troublesome countries is "busier than ever," an administration official says. Some Bush advisers characterize the work as merely an effort to revise routine plans the Pentagon maintains for all contingencies in light of the Iraq war. More skittish bureaucrats say the updates are accompanied by a revived campaign by administration conservatives and neocons for more hard-line U.S. policies toward the countries.

A neocon koan: what is the sound of Assad's bung puckering?

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RETURN OF THE WOBBLY WATCH:

Al Hayat: Arab country assisting Israel against Hamas: London based Arab daily claims Arab intelligence service providing the Mossad with vital information.
(Itamar Inbari and Maariv International, 9/26/04, Ma'ariv)

The respected London based Arabic daily Al Hayat reports that an Arab intelligence agency has been cooperating with the Mossad, providing it with significant and sensitive information about Hamas, especially its international activities.

According to the report, the Mossad requested the assistance, as it was unable to obtain the required information by itself, and has had little luck in penetrating Hams and other Islamic terror organizations, due to their effective counter-intelligence operational capabilities.

The information provided to the Mossad has given it detailed information on Hamas leaders, especially its leader Haled Mashal, who Israel attempted to assassinate in Jordan several years ago, and his deputy Mussa abu Marzouk. In addition the Arab intelligence agency has also furnished Mossad with detailed information on Hamas bureaus in Damascus, Beirut, Teheran and the Persian Gulf.

A western intelligence source hints that the Arab country in question may be Egypt. It claims that President Mubarak is gradually putting an audacious new strategy into place, which, if successful could provide credible foundations for a new Middle East power structure.

According to the intelligence source, the strategy is based on the assumption that Cairo can initially wean Damascus and the Palestinian terrorist organization from their alliance with Iran. The second stage is then to get Iran itself on board, after isolating it and leaving the Shiite Persians with no allies of any significance in the Sunni-Arab world.

Success of his endeavor would make the region a much friendlier place for the United States. Failure, he fears, would bring about the untimely withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and significantly weaken America’s status as a superpower.

If fears of U.S. wobbliness are fueling this, maybe we should elect John Kerry.

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GOT TO HAVE SOME OF YOUR POTENTIAL:

Sending in the 'Shahwanis': U.S. Marines build their own Iraqi militia to help them go against the insurgents (Ilana Ozernoy, 10/04/04, US News)

On the outskirts of this U.S. Marine base in hostile Anbar province west of Baghdad, an Iraqi military chant in Arabic cuts through the hazy stillness of the afternoon. "I'm a bayonet, and my strike is hard! I'm ready for death, not for shame!" shout a group of Iraqi men in military garb, their arms swinging and knees pumping to the beat of the song as they march in haphazard formation. "We're the Iraqi marines!" declares one of their officers, a 39-year-old man calling himself Major Haidr. "We're the Specialized Special Forces."

What makes this force really special is not that they are trained to rappel from helicopters or shoot with sniper precision, but that they are, effectively, an Iraqi militia under American command. U.S. Marine commanders hope the Iraqi force will bolster their units' strength in an area where the key to finding the enemy may be simply knowing whom to ask. "We're up against a country where we don't speak their language and don't know their culture," says U.S. Marine Capt. Jason Vose, 31, who works with the new Iraqi militia. These Iraqis, he says, "can go and identify the problems and the bad guys. They're sent into mosques that we can't go into. We've had them on the border; we've had them in Fallujah. And they just perform." [...]

The Marines call their allied Iraqi militiamen "Shahwanis," after their founder, Gen. Mohammed Shahwani, the recently appointed head of Iraqi intelligence, who fled Iraq in 1990 and was a key figure (along with current Prime Minister Ayad Allawi) in the unsuccessful 1996 CIA-backed coup against Saddam Hussein. After then occupation chief Paul Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army--a decision now widely viewed as a mistake that left a large pool of angry, disaffected Iraqis--Shahwani rounded up a few ousted Army generals and a group of former special forces instructors and last spring united them with U.S. Marines looking for a creative solution to handling the violent Anbar province. Now 700 strong, this force falls under the command of the U.S. Marines, not Iraq's Defense Ministry. "A lot of guys," Vose says, "see them as the Marine Corps's militia."

Vietnamization worked--there's no reason Iraqification won't.

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NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION:

Shouldn't we get a vote?: The truth is, Washington's decisions affect us more than those taken in Canberra. (Jonathan Freedland, September 27, 2004, The Age)

There's a reason every newspaper in the world will have the same story on its front page on November 3. The American presidential election will be decisive not just for the US but for the future of the world.

Anyone who doubts this need only look at the past four years. The war against Iraq, the introduction of the doctrine of pre-emption, the direct challenge to multilateral institutions - chances are, not one of these world-changing developments would have happened under a President Al Gore. It is no exaggeration to say that the actions of a few hundred voters in Florida changed the world.

So perhaps it's time to make a modest proposal. If everyone in the world will be affected by this presidential election, shouldn't everyone in the world have a vote in it?

It may sound wacky, but the idea could not be more American. After all, the country was founded on the notion that human beings must have a say in the decisions that govern their lives. The rebels' slogan of "No taxation without representation" endures two centuries later because it speaks about something larger than the narrow business of raising taxes. It says that those who pay for a government's actions must have a right to choose the government that takes them.

How about European gets a few electoral votes as soon as they repay us what we've spent saving and covering them in WWI, WWII, the Cold War and the War on Terror?

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BLESSEDLY CONFORMIST:

Protesters outnumber Neo-Nazis at own rally (Associated Press, 9/26/04)

About 100 white supremacists rallied at Valley Forge National Historical Park on Saturday as nearly twice as many opponents heckled them from a hillside.

Both groups were outnumbered by federal law enforcement officers.

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BETWEEN IRAQ AND PETRAEUS:

Battling for Iraq (David H. Petraeus, September 26, 2004, Washington Post)

Helping organize, train and equip nearly a quarter-million of Iraq's security forces is a daunting task. Doing so in the middle of a tough insurgency increases the challenge enormously, making the mission akin to repairing an aircraft while in flight -- and while being shot at. Now, however, 18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up.

The institutions that oversee them are being reestablished from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously in the face of an enemy that has shown a willingness to do anything to disrupt the establishment of the new Iraq.

In recent months, I have observed thousands of Iraqis in training and then watched as they have conducted numerous operations. Although there have been reverses -- not to mention horrific terrorist attacks -- there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security, something they are keen to do. The future undoubtedly will be full of difficulties, especially in places such as Fallujah. We must expect setbacks and recognize that not every soldier or policeman we help train will be equal to the challenges ahead.

Nonetheless, there are reasons for optimism. Today approximately 164,000 Iraqi police and soldiers (of which about 100,000 are trained and equipped) and an additional 74,000 facility protection forces are performing a wide variety of security missions. Equipment is being delivered. Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being reestablished.

Most important, Iraqi security forces are in the fight ...

Rick Atkinson of the Post has written extensively about General Petraeus one of the more fascinating characters of the Iraq War.

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WHAT'S THE REPUBLICAN ENRON?:

FANNIE MAE SCANDAL IS DEMOCRATS' ENRON (TERRY KEENAN, September 26, 2004, NY Post)

IS the growing scandal at Fannie Mae about to become the Democrats' Enron?

That's the hot question in Washington this week as regulators painted a scary picture of the huge home lender, detailing accounting shenanigans, including "cookie jar" reserves that smoothed out volatile results and paved the way for tens of millions of dollars in executive bonuses.

For those, including Alan Greenspan, who have warned that this government-sponsored lender is a ticking time bomb, the revelations seem to indicate that Fannie's own management believed its operations are a lot riskier than they let on.

That's just one reason this story has Washington and Wall Street buzzing. There are many others — starting with Fannie's chairman and CEO Franklin Raines.

Raines is not your average CEO, mind you. The Harvard educated exec, who pocketed $20 million from Fannie Mae last year, is just one of a handful of Democrats who easily bridges the Washington-New York power axis.

Raines was widely believed to be Senator John Kerry's first choice for Treasury Secretary in a Kerry administration, and was even mentioned as a potential Kerry running mate.

So, if, as Paul Krugman assures us, Enron is destined to be a bigger story than 9-11 and Fannie Mae is a bigger scandal than Enron it must be the biggest story since the Virgin Birth, eh?

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NO AD CAMPAIGN CAN SELL AN EDSEL:

Quick. Change the Brand. In Five Weeks. (JOHN TIERNEY, 9/26/04, NY Times)

By sticking to their theme of Mr. Kerry as flip-flopper, Republicans have put him in a bind: he could use a new message to move up in the polls, but any new message leaves him vulnerable to accusations of inconsistency. How do you reposition a candidate whose commonly perceived weakness, fairly or not, is his penchant for repositioning? And how do you do it so late in the campaign?

Democrats say that a turnaround is still possible in five weeks, and so do some experts who may have a more realistic view of the job - advertising executives experienced in reviving troubled brands. But Madison Avenue's masters of image makeover say it will take a simple, emotionally appealing message, the kind that has eluded the Kerry campaign so far.

Mr. Kerry might take comfort from Bill Clinton's repositioning in 1992, after being battered by scandals and rivals during the primary season.

"Clinton reinvented himself as the boy from Hope, a political Horatio Alger," said Stephen Wayne, the author of the "The Road to the White House 2004" and a history professor at Georgetown University. "He was also helped by the fact, and this is important for Kerry, that the election was less about him and more on the incumbent's absence of leadership."

In the same way, Mr. Kerry's new combativeness on Iraq could reinvigorate his campaign and shift the debate away from his character to Mr. Bush's record.

Kerry is a bad spokesman, but it's the brand that's in trouble--permissive Great Society Realpolitik liberalism--not just the pitch. When Bill Clinton jiggered his campaign it was to make himself seem a better advocate than George Bush Sr. or Ross Perot for the conservative positions all three shared.

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DO WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, MR. ASSAD?:

Israel kills Hamas leader in Syria (AP, September 26, 2004)

A car bomb killed a leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Damascus on Sunday and Israel claimed responsibility.

Police at the scene were seen retrieving pieces of the body of Izz Eldine Subhi Sheik Khalil. His death was also reported on the official Hamas Web site and by Israeli security sources.

Earlier, the local Palestinian media center reported that Khalil, 42, had been wounded and rushed to a hospital.

The bomb went off at 10:45 a.m. in the al-Zahraa district of the Syrian capital, the center told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. A member of the Hamas political bureau, Mohammed Nazzal, told the AP in Cairo that a bomb had been planted in Khalil's car and it exploded as he tried to start it.

Nazzal accused Israel of assassinating Khalil, 42, who used to work for Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

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GITMO SUDDENLY LOOKS TOLERABLE:

Taliban Fighter Said Dead in Afghanistan (NOOR KHAN, 9/26/04, Associated Press)

Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar, a former inmate at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, died in a gunbattle Saturday night in Pishi village in the southern province of Uruzgan, said Jan Mohammed Khan, governor of Uruzgan.

Khan said authorities had received intelligence that Ghaffar was hiding in the village and was planning an attack against the government. Security forces launched a raid after surrounding a house, and three men, including Ghaffar, were killed in gunfire. None of the security forces was hurt.

The governor said Ghaffar had been a senior Taliban commander in northern Afghanistan and was arrested about two months after a U.S.-led coalition drove the militia out of power in late 2001. After being held for eight months in Guantanamo, he was released and returned to Afghanistan.

Khan said Ghaffar was then appointed as the leader of Taliban fighters in Uruzgan, a rugged region believed to be a stronghold of the hardline Islamic militia.

Let them out and shoot them--sounds like a plan.

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EAT WHERE THE TRUCKS ARE PARKED:

38% of teachers pick private school (MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA, September 26, 2004, Chicago Sun Times)

More than a third of Chicago Public School teachers send their children to private schools, a new report finds.

They are not alone in snubbing the system where they work. Nationwide, urban public school teachers are more likely than other parents to enroll their kids in private schools, according to the report by the Washington, D.C.-based Fordham Institute and based on 2000 Census data.

CPS ranks third among the 50 largest school systems in the proportion of teacher households that send the kids to private school -- 38.7 percent.

That compares to 22.6 percent of non-teacher households in Chicago that send children to private schools.

"That's a pretty scary statistic," said parent Idida Perez, local school council member at Kelvyn Park and Prosser high schools. "What comes to mind is, 'What's wrong with my school that my school's not good enough for your kids?' "

The teachers sure aren't leaving their own kids behind.

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COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM GONE GLOBAL:

Operation Human Rights: How evangelicals got outside their comfort zone to help the oppressed overseas.: a review of Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights by Allen D. Hertzke (David Neff, 09/22/2004, Christianity Today)

Evangelical Protestants have had an unusually high global consciousness ever since the 19th-century blossoming of the missions movement. For a century and a half, missionaries' support letters kept North American churchgoers aware of countries and people groups they rarely read about in newspapers. Because of connections to missionaries and relief organizations, we hear about life in places like Mozambique, Tibet, Sri Lanka, and Rwanda. And when trouble starts brewing in such places, we often hear about it through these connections first.

But while missionaries and relief workers have been a great source of global connectivity—long preceding other factors in the much-ballyhooed phenomenon of globalization—they have often been slow to engage and resist the forces of oppression in the countries where they worked. It makes sense: Missionaries and relief workers serve at the discretion of their host governments. Criticizing political leaders would imperil their ministry.

Allen Hertzke's Freeing God's Children tells the story of how evangelical Protestants in the United States moved from reluctance and ambivalence about confronting persecution to passionate engagement and action. It also tells the story of unlikely alliances—as evangelicals linked arms with Roman Catholics, Jews, secularists, and feminists to address an array of human-rights issues. [...]

Secularist thinking has long been dominated by one or another variety of historical determinism. In the Marxist version, for example, history is determined by the inexorable clash and succession of economic classes. But Hertzke's tale is woven around the necessity of human action and its potential for changing history. That antideterministic thinking drove the Reagan-era confrontation with communism, and it also fueled Horowitz's passionate crusade for religious freedom.

But complementing Hertzke's antideterminism is the concept of Providence. Providential appears repeatedly in this book, suggesting (though only suggesting) a sense of divine blessing on human effort. One chapter title that illustrates this sense of history is chapter six, "The Hand of Providence in Congress." The chapter recounts the strategic decision to sponsor congressional legislation. After the initial burst of enthusiasm, the incipient movement needed a focus for its energies and "a tangible way for American Christians to exercise their citizenship on behalf of their coreligionists." The first piece of legislation to emerge was tough and offered the government only a blunt instrument with which to respond to religious persecution.

But not everyone was happy with the approach of the Wolf-Specter bill, and looked for a more calibrated, diplomatic approach. That was to be found in alternative legislation sponsored by Senators Nickles and Lieberman. Within evangelical ranks, the clash between advocates of the different approaches was fierce, and Hertzke offers glimpses of the bruising fight. He concludes that the struggle "suggests a pluralism in the born-again world not always appreciated outside the community." The outcome was the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which blended the strengths of each approach.

Hertzke suggests "there is a theological lesson here: that partisans had to suffer through the [acrimonious] process to ensure unanimity." The sense of success and accomplishment that was in the end shared by both factions gave confidence to the fledgling movement and allowed them to continue to tackle new issues: prison rape, sex trafficking, Sudan, North Korea.

The process by which conservative Evangelicals became practical about politics, which began in earnest with Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority and the election of Ronald Reagan, is probably the most important development in not just our own politics but, as illustrated here, in world affairs, where it is driving human rights intervention.

MORE:
-B uilding Alliances to Save Lives: Why evangelicals' partnership with others to fight persecution worked—and where the coalition is heading.: An interview with Allen D. Hertzke (Christianity Today, 09/22/2004)
-Falwell says evangelicals control GOP, Bush's fate (Scott Shepard, September 25, 2004, Cox News Service)

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IRAQ IS A QUIZ, NOT THE TEST:

How to Pick a War President: Time to debate: This is the first foreign-policy election in a quarter century. Voters are scared; they want to know who will be the best commander in chief. Here's what to look for (Fareed Zakaria, 10/04/04, Newsweek)

The candidates should face three tests that help reveal their strengths and weaknesses as leaders in war. First, how do they define this conflict? Second, how do they define success? Finally, how do they think victory can be achieved? As we watch the debate this week, we should bear these questions in mind, listen for answers and judge the candidates accordingly.

The first test is potentially the most important, because all else follows from it. What kind of conflict are we in? The Bush administration has striven to make the case that we are in a war much like World War II. Both the president and Vice President Cheney have repeatedly implied this. Cheney has often made specific analogies to it. The president's supporters explain that in a life-and-death struggle with a mortal foe, you have to fight anywhere and everywhere. Things don't always go well. Churchill and Roosevelt made many mistakes during the second world war. But they kept pressing forward. Looking back today, who knows if the North African invasion was worthwhile? Sometimes you take the wrong hill. That's war.

It's a powerful interpretation because, if accepted, it gives the administration a virtual carte blanche. All errors are forgiven, all blunders swept aside, all excesses dwarfed by the overarching conflict. Iraq may have been badly handled, but it is just one front in a many-front war. Abu Ghraib may have been appalling, but consider the pressures. During World War II, the United States interned Japanese-American civilians. It wasn't right, but it was war.

An alternative interpretation would hold that we are not in a classic war with a powerful and identifiable country. Rather, this new war is really much more like the cold war. It has a military dimension, to be sure, but in large part it's a political, economic and social struggle for hearts and minds. In such a conflict, as in the cold war, the question of where and how military force is used is crucial. Its battlefield successes always have to be balanced against political effects. An understanding of culture and nationalism becomes key because the goal is more complex than simple military victory. It is creating like-minded societies. Thus, if you are not sophisticated in your application of power, you can find yourself in a situation like Vietnam where you win every battle but lose the war.

One can argue that this is precisely the situation in Iraq, where America could easily crush the insurgency but at a political price that would make victory utterly counterproductive. And beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, the conflict becomes even more complex and less military. In Iran and North Korea, the military option is more bluster than fact. And how does one defuse militant extremism in, say, Indonesia, Morocco and Egypt? By working with those governments to find terrorists, and with those societies to help modernize them. And if this is the bulk of the task going forward, does it really resemble a war?

The second challenge for the candidates is to explain what would constitute success. Here Bush has been clear. Success requires victory in Iraq, which is "the central front in the war on terror." Bush seeks to establish democracy in Iraq as a way of breaking the tyrannical status quo in the Middle East that has bred repression and terror. Kerry has argued that the war in Iraq was justifiable but disastrously botched. More recently he's said that it has been a distraction from the war on terror. Though both are defensible positions, Kerry will have to choose one of them. [...]

Bush's central problem is with the third factor: the path to success. His goals are clear and effectively stated. But he appears unaware of the situation on the ground in Iraq. He says he is "pleased with the progress" so far and speaks of a "handful of terrorists" disrupting democracy in Iraq. Contrast this picture with the one painted two weeks ago by a team from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a hawkish think tank, that conducted an extensive survey of Iraq. They concluded that in every dimension, from security to reconstruction to economics, Iraq was slipping backward. This is also the view of the CIA and almost all journalists in Iraq. Bush risks coming across not as visionary but as someone disconnected from reality.

Mr. Zakaria, though often insightful, makes a significant mistake here when he notes that the President has cast this as a war of containment and transformation but compares that to WWII rather than the Cold War. WWII was easy enough because all you had to do was defeat a couple of discrete fascist regimes and you'd achieved all of FDR's goals (the disaster of setting such meager goals is another question). It was in the Cold War that we fought everywhere and anywhere, sometimes using our own troops, sometimes leading allies, often just funding insurgencies or counter-insurgencies that others fought for us. Meanwhile we spent money propping up rotten democracies in Europe and fostering nascent ones elsewhere, but at the same time defended authoritarian allies so long as they maintained liberalization as their ultimate goal. Similarly, in the War on Terror, where there is no one enemy state we can defeat, we sent our troops to Afghanistan (with many allies, at least rhetorical) and Iraq (with far fewer), are helping governments from the Philippines to Colombia to Pakistan to take on internal insurgencies, are aiding reform movements in Syria, Iran and the like, and are tolerating the Sa'uds and Musharraf and others so long as they keep moving in the right direction.

Given this more appropriate context it seems clear that Mr. Zakaria drifts further and further off course as he goes along. Iraq is not an end in itself in this case nor is a complete victory necessary. It would be most desirable if the entire country could be democratized, but a situation where the Kurdish north and Shi'a south were relatively liberalized and only a rump Sunni triangle stayed wartorn but surrounded would be a satisfactory intermediate outcome while we turned our attention elsewhere. After all, saving South Korea but leaving North Korea under communist control was sub-optimal but hardly meant the Cold War was lost.

Mr. Zakaria is so blinded by his focus on Iraq, as earlier intellectuals were by their focus on Vietnam, that he ignores the broader reality of rapid reform and democratic normalization in the rest of Islam--from orderly and regular elections in places like Turkey and Indonesia to Libya coming in from the cold to intrafada in Palestine to democratic evolution in places like Morocco and so on. Even our most likely next target in the broader war, Bashir Assad of Syria, seems hellbent on appeasing our demands in order to avoid being deposed militarily.

If you wanted just one test for picking a wartime president, you could do worse than this: Do you believe the war in Iraq to be the War on Terror incarnate, just one battle in a larger war, or a distraction from the criminal investigation of al Qaeda? The candidates' respective answers are revealing and should be determinative.

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HEY, MULLAH, COULD YOU HOLD THIS CAUSUS BELLI FOR ME?:

Saddam, the Bomb and Me (MAHDI OBEIDI, 9/26/04, NY Times)

Iraq's nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait - there is no doubt in my mind that we could have produced dozens of nuclear weapons within a few years - but was stopped in its tracks by United Nations weapons inspectors after the Persian Gulf war and was never restarted. During the 1990's, the inspectors discovered all of the laboratories, machines and materials we had used in the nuclear program, and all were destroyed or otherwise incapacitated.

By 1998, when Saddam Hussein evicted the weapons inspectors from Iraq, all that was left was the dangerous knowledge of hundreds of scientists and the blueprints and prototype parts for the centrifuge, which I had buried under a tree in my garden.

In addition to the inspections, the sanctions that were put in place by the United Nations after the gulf war made reconstituting the program impossible. During the 1980's, we had relied heavily on the international black market for equipment and technology; the sanctions closed that avenue.

Another factor in the mothballing of the program was that Saddam Hussein was profiting handsomely from the United Nations oil-for-food program, building palaces around the country with the money he skimmed. I think he didn't want to risk losing this revenue stream by trying to restart a secret weapons program. [...]

So, how could the West have made such a mistaken assessment of the nuclear program before the invasion last year? Even to those of us who knew better, it's fairly easy to see how observers got the wrong impression. First, there was Saddam Hussein's history. He had demonstrated his desire for nuclear weapons since the late 1970's, when Iraqi scientists began making progress on a nuclear reactor. He had used chemical weapons against his own people and against Iran during the 1980's. After the 1991 war, he had tried to hide his programs in weapons of mass destruction for as long as possible (he even kept my identity secret from weapons inspectors until 1995). It would have been hard not to suspect him of trying to develop such weapons again. [...]

In addition, the West never understood the delusional nature of Saddam Hussein's mind. [...]

So what now? The dictator may be gone, but that doesn't mean the nuclear problem is behind us. Even under the watchful eyes of Saddam Hussein's security services, there were worries that our scientists might escape to other countries or sell their knowledge to the highest bidder. This expertise is even more valuable today, with nuclear technology ever more available on the black market and a proliferation of peaceful energy programs around the globe that use equipment easily converted to military use.

Hundreds of my former staff members and fellow scientists possess knowledge that could be useful to a rogue nation eager for a covert nuclear weapons program.

Syria brokers secret deal to send atomic weapons scientists to Iran (Con Coughlin, 26/09/2004, Sunday Telegraph)

Syria's President Bashir al-Asad is in secret negotiations with Iran to secure a safe haven for a group of Iraqi nuclear scientists who were sent to Damascus before last year's war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. [...]

A group of about 12 middle-ranking Iraqi nuclear technicians and their families were transported to Syria before the collapse of Saddam's regime. The transfer was arranged under a combined operation by Saddam's now defunct Special Security Organisation and Syrian Military Security, which is headed by Arif Shawqat, the Syrian president's brother-in-law.

The Iraqis, who brought with them CDs crammed with research data on Saddam's nuclear programme, were given new identities, including Syrian citizenship papers and falsified birth, education and health certificates. Since then they have been hidden away at a secret Syrian military installation where they have been conducting research on behalf of their hosts.

Growing political concern in Washington about Syria's undeclared weapons of mass destruction programmes, however, has prompted President Asad to reconsider harbouring the Iraqis.

Whoever's holding these guys when the music stops gets deposed first.

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IN "HURTING" THEM WE HELP OURSELVES:

America the Conservative: Europe is in the 21st century, but we remain locked in the 18th (Edward L. Glaeser, September 26, 2004, LA Times)

Whether President Bush is reelected or Sen. John F. Kerry prevails, the United States will be the most conservative developed nation in the world. Its economy will remain the least regulated, its welfare state the smallest, its military the strongest and its citizens the most religious. According to data taken from the World Values Survey in the last decade, 60% of Americans believe that the poor are lazy (only 26% of Europeans share that view), and 30% believe that luck determines income (54% of Europeans say so). About 60% of Europeans say the poor are trapped, while only 29% of Americans believe they are. And roughly 30% of Europeans declare themselves to be left wing, but only 17% of Americans do.

Why is the U.S. such an exceptionally conservative nation?

It's tempting to think that American conservatism is the natural result of exceptional economic mobility in the country, but the odds of leaving poverty in Europe are higher than those in the United States, in part because European social democrats enacted national education policies that do a better job of looking after the poor than local schools in the U.S. Instead, American conservatism stems from political stability and ethnic heterogeneity. [...]

The nation's racial heterogeneity also partly explains its conservatism. U.S. heterogeneity sharply contrasts with the much greater homogeneity in Canada, Britain and continental Europe. People are much less likely to support income redistribution to people who are members of different racial or ethnic groups. Ethnic divisions make it easier for the enemies of welfare to vilify the poor, by making them seem like parasites who could be rich but prefer to live on the public dollar. The pro-redistribution populists were defeated in the South in the 1890s by politicians who stressed that populism would help blacks (which was true) and that blacks were dangerous criminals (which was not.) The enemies of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society also employed racial messages that conveyed the idea that welfare recipients were dangerous outsiders who should not be helped. The sharp racial division that runs through American society makes it possible to castigate poor people in a way that would be impossible in a homogeneous nation like Sweden, where the poor look the same as everyone else.

Across countries, ethnic heterogeneity strongly predicts a smaller welfare state. The U.S. states with larger populations of blacks have historically been less generous to the poor (even controlling for state per capita income). Work by Erzo Luttmer, professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, shows that people who live around poor people of their own races say they want the government to spend more on welfare. But people who live around poor people of another race say they want the government to spend less on welfare. Sympathy for the poor appears to be muted when the poor are seen as outsiders.

Increased immigration to Europe is making those societies more heterogeneous, and we have already seen opponents of social welfare, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, Joerg Haider in Austria and Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, use inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric to discredit generous welfare payments. We may like to believe that human beings are colorblind, but the reality is that American diversity has always made redistribution less popular here than in more ethnically and racially homogeneous places.

Yet another reason that nativism is the enemy of conservatism.

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PLAGIARIZE OR PERISH?:

The Big Mahatma: Laurence Tribe and the problem of borrowed scholarship (Joseph Bottum, 10/04/2004, Weekly Standard)

In 1985, Harvard University's Laurence H. Tribe, the most famous and widely cited constitutional law professor in the United States, signed his name to a book called God Save This Honorable Court that now appears--how shall we say it?--perhaps "uncomfortably reliant" on a 1974 book called Justices and Presidents by the University of Virginia's Henry J. Abraham.

POOR HARVARD seems to be going through a spate of such incidents. A national news cycle was generated in 2002 when THE WEEKLY STANDARD broke the story that Doris Kearns Goodwin--a member of Harvard's Board of Overseers and a former professor of government at the school--had done some serious copying for her 1987 book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and then bought off one of the authors from whom she lifted her material.

Next, in a more complicated case, Harvard law school's Alan Dershowitz was accused of overusing a single secondary source for his 2003 book, The Case for Israel.

Finally, just a few weeks ago, on September 3, Charles J. Ogletree, Harvard's Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, admitted on the university's website that the assistants who'd actually prepared his new All Deliberate Speed:

Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education lifted six consecutive paragraphs from a 2001 book by Yale's Jack M. Balkin.

ODDLY ENOUGH, Laurence Tribe plays a role in two of these stories. (And peripherally touches the third, if one counts the thanks he offers Dershowitz, his "friend and colleague," in the preface to God Save This Honorable Court.)

When the Goodwin incident prompted Harvard's undergraduate newspaper, the Crimson, to call for her scalp--"Goodwin's plagiarism of sentences, nearly verbatim, from source materials is inexcusable. . . . [S]he should recognize that her action is unbecoming an Overseer and resign her post immediately"--Tribe wrote a letter in the next issue expressing "great sadness" at how "mindlessly" the students' editorial had attacked her.

Goodwin "had not the slightest intention to deceive, to claim originality for thoughts that were unoriginal, or to appropriate another's deathless prose in hopes that she might be credited with a literary gift that belongs in truth to someone else," Tribe insisted. Oh, he admitted, she had "erred in following her own paraphrased handwritten notes without checking back in every last one of the 300 or so books she cited." But Goodwin's work was "documented with something like 3,500 footnotes," which according to Tribe proved both her commitment to scholarship and her "personal integrity."

Then, this year, Tribe initially appeared willing to excuse Charles Ogletree's plagiarism altogether, telling the Boston Globe: "It clearly represents the fact that because he so often says yes to the many people all over the country who ask for his help on all kinds of things, he has extended himself even farther than someone with all that energy can safely do."

Challenged about this apparent absolution, however, he later offered a rather different analysis. In an email posted on a blog about legal topics run by Lawrence R. Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, Tribe wrote, "What I told the Boston Globe about the way in which [Ogletree] has overextended himself was not intended to be a complete explanation or justification." And there is more to say, he allowed: "The larger problem"--the "problem of writers, political office-seekers, judges and other high government officials passing off the work of others as their own"--is "a phenomenon of some significance" and worth exploring.

THAT SEEMED a little rich for one reader of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, a law professor who suggested we take a look at Tribe's own God Save This Honorable Court if we wanted to explore the "problem of writers . . . passing off the work of others as their own."

And so we did, and the result is . . . well, what? It's awkward to name what Laurence Tribe has done in God Save This Honorable Court. In his letter to the Crimson about Doris Kearns Goodwin, Tribe proudly called himself a "scholar who values his own integrity and reputation for meticulous attribution as much as anyone could."

But even Goodwin's discredited book, by Tribe's own account, contained "something like 3,500 footnotes" citing "300 or so" other works; God Save This Honorable Court, by unflattering contrast, contains no footnotes at all--nor any other sort of "meticulous attribution." Instead, at the end of God Save This Honorable Court, we find a two-page "Mini-Guide to the Background Literature," which lists Henry Abraham's Justices and Presidents as merely the twelfth of fifteen books (including two of Tribe's own previous works) that "an interested reader might wish to consult."

The decline of the Democratic Party makes it a moot point, but so much for ever making the Court.

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DEVOLVING, NOT EVOLVING:

THE NEW FACE OF AL QAEDA: Al Qaeda Seen as Wider Threat: The network has evolved into a looser, ideological movement that may no longer report to Bin Laden. Critics say the White House focus is misdirected. (Douglas Frantz, Josh Meyer, Sebastian Rotella and Megan K. Stack, September 26, 2004, LA Times)

Authorities have made little progress worldwide in defeating Islamic extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda despite thwarting attacks and arresting high-profile figures, according to interviews with intelligence and law enforcement officials and outside experts.

On the contrary, officials warn that the Bush administration's upbeat assessment of its successes is overly optimistic and masks its strategic failure to understand and combat Al Qaeda's evolution.

Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Qaeda was a loosely organized network, but core leaders exercised considerable control over its operations. Since the loss of its base in Afghanistan and many of those leaders, the organization has dispersed its operatives and reemerged as a lethal ideological movement.

Osama bin Laden may now serve more as an inspirational figure than a CEO, and the war in Iraq is helping focus militants' anger, according to dozens of interviews in recent weeks on several continents. European and moderate Islamic countries have become targets. And instead of undergoing lengthy training at camps in Afghanistan, recruits have been quickly indoctrinated at home and deployed on attacks.

The United States remains a target, but counter-terrorism officials and experts are alarmed by Al Qaeda's switch from spectacular attacks that require years of planning to smaller, more numerous strikes on softer targets that can be carried out swiftly with little money or outside help.

It's lost Osama, much of the rest of its leadership, its bases and friendly regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving it with largely untrained foot soldiers. As a result, it is no longer strong enough to attack America or much of any hard target. The war is heavily focussed in one region of one country where we just happen to have a heavy troop presence on hand to kill them whenever they appear. Yet this isn't progress? What would progress look like?

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A TWO-FER OBLIGATORY:

President Lindbergh in 2004 (Frank Rich, 9/26/04, NY Times)

PHILIP ROTH is one of America's great novelists, but you don't expect him to be barreling up the best-seller list with a book that hasn't even been published yet. "Literary fiction," as it is now stigmatized in the cultural marketplace, no longer flies off the shelves unless struck by the TV lightning of Oprah or the "Today" show. And yet there was "The Plot Against America" in the top 25 at amazon.com this week, at one point the only serious contemporary American novel on the list, sandwiched between Clay Aiken's memoir and "The South Beach Diet." It ascended without benefit of a single author's interview on TV or anywhere else and with only the first few reviews, not all of them ecstatic.

Since the book isn't officially published until Oct. 5, online shoppers are quite literally judging it by its cover image, a one-cent stamp of the 1930's crisply postmarked with a swastika, and the bare bones of its story. The plot of "The Plot" belongs to a low-rent genre, "alternate history," in which novelists of Mr. Roth's stature rarely dwell. It spins a what-if scenario in which the isolationist and anti-Semitic hero Charles Lindbergh runs for president as a Republican in 1940 and defeats F.D.R. "Keep America Out of the Jewish War" reads a button worn by Lindbergh partisans rallying at Madison Square Garden. And so he does: he signs nonaggression pacts with Germany and Japan that will keep America at peace while the rest of the world, six million European Jews included, burns.

Where "The Plot Against America" fits into the hierarchy of Mr. Roth's canon, which I and so many others have followed for our entire reading lifetimes, may be beside the point over the short haul. Sometimes the public, acting on instinct, just picks up the scent of something it craves without regard for the aesthetic niceties. Whether it's major or minor Roth, this novel is on a trajectory to match the much-different "Portnoy's Complaint" in its anomalous permeation of the larger culture. That's because "The Plot Against America," set from 1940-1942, is on its face linked to the wartime of 2001-2004. It's going to be read by those who don't otherwise read Roth novels, or novels at all, as well as by those who do. Not for nothing does it sit on a best-seller list dominated, low carbs notwithstanding, by a single subject, George W. Bush.

Never mind George W. Bush, it's vile enough to reduce Lindbergh to an anti-Semitic caricature.

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ANATOMICALLY POLITICALLY CORRECT:

Mussolini's tone: a review of The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton (Martin Clark, Times Literary Supplement)

Paxton regards Fascism as a five-stage process. The first stage is simply one of grievances or threats to established interests or groups, and of normal democratic processes being unable or unwilling to resolve them. Often this is because the old political system or parties have collapsed, leaving a political vacuum or at least much instability. Paxton tends to blame irresponsible intellectuals for this: they undermine liberal regimes with their constant criticism, and they have a nasty habit of apologizing for violence. At any rate, instability is common enough, and hence there have been and still are a large number of "fascist" movements in temporary agitation. We learn, in this book, about the travails of the Greyshirts in Iceland and of the Blueshirts in Ireland. However, most of these agitators progress no further, and are of academic interest at most. The second stage, "taking root", is more serious. The "fascist" movements become not only spokesmen but also organizers for the disaffected, and start tackling the grievances themselves, illegally but effectively, and with some official connivance. Paxton is right to stress the importance of this development. It was not Mussolini, sitting in Milan and sounding off about Italy's rights on the Adriatic, who made Fascism a mass movement in Italy; it was the youthful "squads" of armed vigilantes in the Po Valley, destroying socialist labour unions and throwing out newly elected socialist mayors. They then founded their own unions and ran local government themselves. Much the same happened in Schleswig-Holstein. In these regions, populist vigilantism enjoyed the support of all right-thinking, or Right-thinking men, including policemen and judges. Elsewhere, however, it did not, and Fascism progressed no further. "Taking root" is more difficult than might appear, since the movement is bound to be local, there are always rivalries and splits, and governments can usually buy off the militants or take over the agitation themselves.

The third stage, "getting power", is the most vital of all. Paxton, who made a notable contribution to Franco-American relations in 1972 by pointing out, in Vichy France: Old guard and new order 1940-1944, that the Vichy regime was run not so much by Fascist zealots as by the French Establishment, argues that Fascists do not seize power, they have it thrust upon them. They make a "historic compromise" with existing state authorities, who are anxious to absorb the crude provincials into the official system and who of course assume that they themselves will continue to decide everything. The key to understanding how Fascists came to power in Italy and Germany lies, therefore, not so much with the manoeuvres of Mussolini or Hitler but with those of king or president, top army officers and a handful of others. Paxton's argument here is not novel, nor altogether convincing. Certainly both Mussolini and Hitler were appointed in a more or less constitutional manner, and certainly existing elites thought they would retain most of their power and status; but the two leaders' manoeuvres in the few months before they won office, and indeed their very personalities and their unwillingness to compromise, were vital to the outcome in both cases. They may not have needed to use much force, but they certainly had the threat of it available and they made sure everyone knew it. The existing authorities may have manoeuvred too, but the point is that they were outmanoeuvred. They did not "compromise" so much as surrender.

Paxton's fourth stage is the "exercise of power", but he has to admit that the two leaders behaved very differently once in office. Both of them, of course, got rid of their more obstreperous followers, and both managed to keep the Establishment fairly happy and to provide some rapid economic benefits. Both ended up trying to transform everything. However, Mussolini governed essentially through the state machinery, supplemented by ad hoc "parallel bureaucracies" run by state technocrats. The Party was for propaganda; also to distribute favours and to mobilize the young. Hitler was far more reliant on the Party and its parallel bureaucracies, although he too, of course, used the State. These differences were hugely important. It was not just that Mussolini had to put on a bowler hat and visit the King twice a week; it was that he did not control the armed forces, judiciary, or Senate, and that he might eventually be dismissed like any other Prime Minister when he lost the confidence of the King, that is, of the political and military elite. Hitler had no such worries. Moreover, in his later years Mussolini tried to run everything himself and allowed his colleagues little initiative; Hitler, far more idle, permitted competitive leeway. Paxton does not explain these politico- administrative contrasts, which clearly owed more to personality differences than to anything else. At any rate, generalizations about how the Fascists "exercised power" rather break down when there are only two examples, which differed as wildly as this.

Paxton's final stage is "radicalization or entropy?". He argues that both Mussolini and Hitler had to keep up the Fascist muscle tone (Paxton's phrase) by becoming ever more radical both at home and, particularly, abroad; otherwise their regimes would simply have become flabby. This looks very much like a psychological explanation, hitherto taboo. The fact is that any modern government, Fascist or no, needs to fight campaigns and proclaim resounding victories, or else the citizenry becomes restless. Perhaps Fascist governments are more liable to become extremist, but there is not much evidence: Mussolini had been in office thirteen years before he attacked Ethiopia, and only became noticeably radical at home three years after that -- by which time "entropy" had already set in. Hitler's regime also became more radical as Germany began losing. Radicalization and entropy were not alternatives, they went together.

It's a pretty good book, though in the attempt to keep Nazism inside the tent of fascism he basically has to force every other seemingly fascist movement out. He would have done better to treat all the others as fascism and Nazism as what it was, a weird hybrid of fascism and applied Darwinism.

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SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HIJACKER:

'Hurt' Brown battles Blair over future of Labour (BRIAN BRADY, 9/26/04, Scotland on Sunday)

A WOUNDED Gordon Brown was last night preparing for a titanic struggle over the heart and soul of the Labour party, as the simmering tensions between the Chancellor and Tony Blair threatened to overshadow the start of its annual conference.

Brown, who admits he was "hurt" by Blair’s decision to place Alan Milburn at the heart of formulating Labour election strategy, is privately battling to ensure his stewardship of the economy remains at the heart of the party’s bid for a historic third term.

The Chancellor’s allies fear Milburn and his fellow modernisers will ‘hijack’ the election campaign by emphasising Blairite reform of the public services.

And in another clear indication of the struggle to come, Brown’s followers last night insisted Blair was leading a party of ‘ins’ and ‘outs’, while the Chancellor was a "team player" who held out the promise of party unity. [...]

Renewed signs of tension with Brown will also make it difficult for the Prime Minister to convince his party - and voters - that he can finally deliver radical reform in a third term.

Though he's obviously achieved far more, the ultimate failure of Tony Blair seems certain to be that of Bill Clinton, the inability to reform his own party and make it genuinely believe in his Third Way, rather than just back him reluctantly for expedience sake. Mr. Blair leads the wrong party.

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WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?:

A Huge Opportunity Is Brewing (Donald Luskin, September 24, 2004, Smart Money)

THERE HAS BEEN a stock-market crash this year. You didn't know that? That's because it's invisible.

Think about this: So far in 2004, earnings for the S&P 500 have grown by 19%. Yet as of Thursday's close, the S&P 500 is virtually unchanged, having fallen by 1/3 of one percent before considering dividends.

With earnings up by that astonishing amount in just nine months, and the market unchanged — that's a crash. But it's not a crash you can measure in prices. It's a crash you have to measure in value. That's why it's invisible. But it's still very real.

All else equal, with earnings up 19%, the market should also be up by 19%. In fact, I think the market should be up even more than that, because at year-end 2003, stocks were already cheap.

Put it all together, and stocks are so cheap now that my valuation model says that the S&P 500 could rise by almost 35% from here and still be only fairly valued. [...]

I don't know exactly what the news catalyst will be to send the market higher. Maybe the oil price will drop dramatically — either falling of its own weight (because there's really no reason for it to be this high in the first place), or perhaps because of the Bush administration's decision to tap the nations' Strategic Petroleum Reserve (which the Clinton administration did before the 2000 election).

Or maybe a clear victor will emerge in the first presidential debate, now scheduled for Sept. 30. The strong lead that George Bush has established in the polls already should be a major boost for the market, because it goes a long way to eliminating the enormous uncertainty of which of two very different economic visions will guide the country for the next four years. If Bush emerges victorious in the first debate, it will make him unbeatable in November — and the last of the electoral uncertainty restraining stock prices will be gone.

At the moment, it truly is still an uncertainty.

That's the great mystery dragging on the economy. If 9-11 was, for good reason, enough to create this mood of uncertainty, what can break it? What would a positive equivalent to 9-11 look like? Would an election landslide suffice?

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NOT EVEN JUNIOR EXECUTIVE MATERIAL:

Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions (ADAM NAGOURNEY and JODI WILGOREN, 9/26/04, NY Times)

For 15 minutes in Milwaukee the other day, Senator John Kerry pummeled his staff with questions about an attack on President Bush, planned for later that morning, that accused the White House of hiding a huge Medicare premium increase.

Talking into a speakerphone in his hotel suite, sitting at a table scattered with the morning newspapers, Mr. Kerry instructed aides in Washington to track down the information he said he needed before he could appear on camera. What could have slowed down the premium increase? How much of it was caused by the addition of a prescription drug benefit? What would the increase cost the average Medicare recipient?

Mr. Kerry got the answers after aides said they spent the morning on the telephone and the Internet, but few of those facts found their way into his blistering attack.

The morning Medicare call was typical of the way Mr. Kerry, a four-term senator with comparatively little management experience, has run his campaign. And, his associates say, it offered a glimpse of an executive style he would almost surely bring to the White House.

Mr. Kerry is a meticulous, deliberative decision maker, always demanding more information, calling around for advice, reading another document - acting, in short, as if he were still the Massachusetts prosecutor boning up for a case.

How can a guy who's not competent to run an even mildly effective campaign hope to convince people he's competent to run their country? Who would let the guy run anything? Has anyone ever?

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YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SWING THE BLUES:

Pinpointing Battlegrounds Amid Debate Preparations (Mike Allen and Lois Romano, September 26, 2004, Washington)

President Bush will consider making an expensive run for New Jersey's electoral votes and is likely to spend more money in Washington state if his leads in heartland swing states hold up after the opening presidential debate Thursday night, Republican officials said Saturday. [...]

Officials said Bush aides feel that they have locked up Missouri and West Virginia, are confident about Florida and Ohio, and have barely had to fight for Arizona, Arkansas and North Carolina. Republican officials said that White House senior adviser Karl Rove and others in Bush's inner circle are laying plans to expand a potential victory well beyond the states he won in 2000, and into additional Democratic strongholds.

The campaigns were startled by recent news organization polls showing Bush tied with Kerry in New Jersey, which he lost by 16 points in 2000 and which has gone Democratic in the past three elections. Bush aides are debating whether they should reallocate final-days television money to the costly New York City market, which is needed to reach northern New Jersey. Bush has advertised from the beginning in Washington state, where he fell five points short last time, and Republicans said they are prepared to move staff and money there if other swing states become secure.

While NJ would be fun to win, it wouldn't seem to have enough side benefits to be worth a major effort, unlike WA, where the GOP could add a governor and a senator with a big night.

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DEM BONES:

A Very, Very Thin Thread (H.D. Miller, 9/25/04, Travelling Shoes)

Friend Miller tracks down and then savages today's obligatory Nazi reference.

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WOULD YOU RATHER BE YOKED TO AMERICA AND INDIA OR FRANCE AND GERMANY?:

Britain first: Tony Blair and George W. Bush are perfect partners — Christian soldiers armed with Bibles and bazookas — but Britain now has more in common with Europe than with the United States (Niall Ferguson, 9/25/04, The Spectator)

[A]s the slow grind of détente gave way to the breakneck disarmament of the Gorbachev years, the last really compelling incentive for Anglo-American solidarity — the Soviet menace — fell away. With the benefit of hindsight, the political romance between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was nothing more than a flicker of an old flame, sparked more by their shared preoccupations at home than by real common interests abroad. Indeed, had the Anglophobes won the argument in Washington, American support for the Falklands war might never have been forthcoming; few Republicans relished helping the British to salvage those last vestiges of South American empire.

By 1990, then, nothing meaningful remained of the special relationship at the level of geopolitics; the big decisions that ended the Cold War had been taken by the superpowers; on German reunification Mrs Thatcher had simply been overruled. All that remained were those specialised relationships I have already mentioned between the military, financial and academic elites. There was therefore a compelling logic to the European orientation of British foreign policy under the Major government. Neither Douglas Hurd nor Malcolm Rifkind paid much more than lip service to Anglo-American amity. They had seen through the special relationship for the fiction that it had become; with light hearts they accepted Britain’s post-imperial destiny to be ‘at the heart of Europe’. Too bad for them that its heart turned out to be so horribly diseased.

Mr Blair’s fervid Atlanticism therefore marks a discontinuity — a break in the longer-term deterioration of Anglo-American relations. It only makes sense as a backlash against the dismal failures of the Major government’s European strategy, in particular its hopelessly miscalculated responses to the break-up of Yugoslavia and the civil war in Bosnia. For it was Blair’s conversion to the American view of the Balkan problem — that the problem was Slobodan Milosevic — that led him to favour war against Serbia in 1999. And it was the success of that war, opposed as it was by so many of Mr Blair’s critics on both the Left and the Right, that led him in turn to favour war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The road from Pristina to Baghdad led through Kabul.

As he has made clear repeatedly, and most obviously in his speech to the Labour party conference in October 2001, Mr Blair relishes the American penchant to inject morality into foreign policy. Indeed, to him, war has become an instrument not of policy but of morality — a weapon to be used against wicked dictators in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘humanity’. When he talks in these terms, he can sometimes sound like an Anglicised Woodrow Wilson. But on closer inspection, Blair’s foreign policy has its roots in Gladstone’s idiosyncratic blend of High Church exaltation and evangelical fervour. It is, of course, precisely this that has enabled the Prime Minister to connect so successfully with two such different American presidents. For practically the only thing Bill Clinton and George Bush have in common is their Christianity.

Donald Rumsfeld once said that Americans don’t ‘do’ empire, rather as Alastair Campbell once said that Downing Street didn’t ‘do’ God. Yet Mr Bush’s tacit imperialism — so much more resolute than that of his predecessor — has found its staunchest support in Mr Blair’s private faith. On they march, these two Christian soldiers, each with a Bible in one hand and a bazooka in the other.

The trouble is that while a majority of Americans are receptive to what might be called a faith-based foreign policy, very few Britons are. The Americans are still a deeply Christian people. The British ceased to be some time ago. Consider the following results from a recent BBC/ICM poll. Over half of Americans agree with the statement ‘My God is the only true god’ compared with fewer than a third of Britons. An even higher proportion of Americans (53 per cent) regularly attend an organised religious service, compared with barely a fifth of Britons. Two thirds of Americans pray regularly; just 28 per cent of Britons do. More than 70 per cent of Americans agree with the statement ‘I would die for my God or beliefs’; fewer than a fifth of Britons do.

This is just part of a fundamental divergence in popular culture which increasingly makes a nonsense of the special relationship. Combining as it does religious fundamentalism, economic individualism and red-blooded patriotism, the American conservatism so vividly described by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in their book The Right Nation simply has no counterpart in this country. British Tories are a beleaguered minority, vainly trying to preserve a few picturesque pastimes and landscapes from the depredations of New Labour’s corrupt and cynical party apparat.

The decline of Christianity not only helps to explain the crisis of conservatism in Britain. It also forms part of the wider process of covert Europeanisation. Many of us still fondly imagine that we have more in common with ‘our American cousins’ than with our Continental neighbours. It may have been true once (though I find it hard to say exactly when). But it is certainly not true now. Travel to the United States and then to the other European Union states, and you will see: the typical British family looks much more like the typical German family than the typical American family. We eat Italian food. We watch Spanish soccer. We drive German cars. We work Belgian hours. And we buy second homes in France. Above all, we bow before central government as only true Europeans can.

And perhaps nothing illustrates more clearly how very European we are becoming than our attitudes to the United States. Asked in a recent poll to choose between the two candidates for the presidency, 47 per cent of us favoured John Kerry, compared with just 16 per cent who backed George Bush — at a time when Bush was more than 10 per cent ahead in the American polls. On the legitimacy of the Iraq war, too, the British public is now closer to Continental opinion than to American.

All this suggests that Tony Blair’s devout Atlanticism may actually represent the special relationship’s last gasp. For a strategic partnership needs more to sustain it than an affinity between the principals and the self-interest of a few professional elites. It requires a congruence of national interests. It also needs some convergence of popular attitudes. By both those criteria, the Anglo-American alliance is surely living on borrowed time.

This is all true except for one thing, the wisdom for Britain of switching from an Anglospheric orientation to Europeanization. The various pathologies that Mr. Ferguson cites above that make it a more natural fit with Europe than with America should be attacked, rather than blithely accepted, otherwise Britain has no meaningful future. You'd think continued existence would be any nation's paramount self-interest.

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THEIR DEWEY:

The doomed defeatist: John Kerry is a loser and a bore and the only thing he is consistent about is his opposition to the projection of US power in America’s interests (Mark Steyn, 9/25/04, The Spectator)

Kerry has spent two months doing everything wrong, beginning with his choice of running mate. His Vietnam nostalgia-night ‘reporting for duty’ convention speech was described by yours truly in the Telegraph as ‘verbose, shapeless, platitudinous, complacent, ill-disciplined, arrogant and humourless’. But most observers seemed to think it was a stroke of genius, and attributed the unprecedented lack of a post-convention poll bounce to the fact that Kerry was so good and so ahead of the game he’d gotten his post-convention bounce before the convention. This is an example of a phenomenon I’ve noted for a couple of years: the principal effect of America’s so-called ‘liberal media bias’ is that the Democratic party and the pro-Democrat press sustain each other’s delusions.

It happened again a week after the convention. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began their anti-Kerry campaign. The senator’s people assured the media that the charges were all false, the media assured the senator’s people that nobody in the press was going to go near the story. Partly as a result of this insulation from reality, by the end of August the underfunded veterans had driven Kerry’s numbers down, extracted crucial retractions of many of his most celebrated war stories, and forced the candidate into hiding, unable to risk giving an interview even to sympathetic TV softballers.

Desperate for payback for his month of SwiftVet hell, the thin-skinned Kerry demanded that his campaign went on the attack about Bush’s fitful National Guard service back in the Vietnam era. Nobody cares. But Dan Rather and CBS did a big story on whether Bush failed to show up for a physical in the War of 1812, and the Kerry campaign promptly lost most of September because Dan’s case had been built on laughably fake memos supplied as part of a convoluted deal involving the network, a man of dubious mental stability and key Kerry campaign contacts including Joe Lockhart, the former Clinton press secretary who was brought on board to get Kerry out of last month’s mess, not land him in this month’s.

In normal circumstances, you’d send the vice-presidential nominee out to serve as your attack dog and savage your detractors. But because Kerry is aloof and cold, he chose a running mate to supply all the warmth and charm and feel-good fluffiness he himself lacks. Whatever John Edwards’s strengths, he’s no attack dog. While Dick Cheney went around the country snarling devastating cracks about Senator Flip-Flop, Edwards was reduced to pleading for Bush to call off the SwiftVet ads. He looked as though he was about to burst into tears.

There is an attack dog on the Kerry team. Unfortunately, it’s his wife, and folks don’t like that in a prospective First Lady. Teresa Heinz Kerry dismisses her husband’s critics as ‘idiots’ and ‘scumbags’, and Kerry’s new advisers seem eager to limit her visibility. I’ve lost count of the number of Democrat women who’ve said to me that they can’t stand her.

So that was the state of play in mid-September: a candidate in hiding, a lightweight running-mate way out of his league, and a motor-mouth wife duct-taped and tossed into the cellar.

Other than a bad candidate, a bad wife, a bad vp pick, a bad staff, and a bad strategy, this has been about as good a campaign as the Democrats could run at this point in their decline.

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TURNING THE STRUGGLE INWARDS:

In the Shadow of the Wall
WHAT NOW FOR THE INTIFADA?: As it enters its fifth year, Foreign Editor David Pratt makes an emotional return to Jerusalem to find out the effect of Israel’s security barrier on its divided populace (David Pratt, 9/26/04, Sunday Herald)

[A]s the intifada enters its fifth year, many on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide are growing ever more concerned as to where it is leading them. According to recent Israeli Defence Force (IDF) estim ates, the coming year will be a critical period for the Palestinian people and the conflict.

“This year will be the year that will shape the Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian leadership will have to decide whether to aim towards a peace agreement with Israel or to continue with the armed resistance,” says one senior IDF officer.

But what of the Palestinians themselves? As Israel’s security wall daily encroaches into their territory and lives, do they also sense that a make or break showdown is fast approaching?

In the past, particularly in the years 1987 to 1993, following the first intifada or “war of the stones,” as it was known, anniversaries of the uprising were often opportunities for Palestinians to endorse resistance to the occupation through street demonstrations or an escalation of attacks on Israeli targets.

But this year the mood is different. While much of the fight against occupation by ordinary Palestinians remains heroic, these are unheroic times. Suicide bombings like that by a woman in the busy French Hill suburb of Jerusalem last week has lost the intifada some of its outside worldwide sympathy.

Meanwhile, a leadership crisis has led some to predict that what really preoccupies Palestinians these days is an “intra-fada” – an uprising not against Israel but against elements of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (PA), long perceived to be corrupt and politically out of touch.

Then there is the wall. It’s hard to overemphasise the sheer injustice of this concrete scar that gouges its way across olive tree orchards, family homes, grazing areas, places of work, schools and anything else that, frankly, the state of Israel decides to confiscate. Its sheer physical presence bears down when you are near it. Walking beside it, on either side, you can see Palestinians trying to live their lives under its weight. Like the South African regime during apartheid, the Israelis are well on the way with their policy of containment to creating the equivalent of the infamous Bantustans, where most black South Africans were forced to live.

“This used to be a beautiful place, now I live in the shadow, no sun, no light, even the air seems bad,” one local Abu Dis farmer tells me, struggling to make himself heard against the deafening sound of bulldozers working on the next stretch of wall nearby.

The degradation and humiliation of Palestinians is made all the worse by the employment of some of their men by private Israeli security firms to guard other Arab labourers who work on the wall’s construction.

“I know they blame us for this,” says one guard when asked what he thinks of the Palestinian villagers who stand nearby watching as a bulldozer digs up their back garden to lay cables used for high-powered security lights and electrified fencing.

Elsewhere, other Palestinian labourers can be seen daily running the gauntlet of army patrols to cross gaps in the wall before being picked up by Israeli employers to work in a variety of “dirty jobs” inside Israel itself. A useful source of cheap labour, few of these Israeli employers seem concerned by the security risk involved, or that one of their workers just might be a suicide bomber.

In these desperate economic times, most Palestinians have no choice but to take what they can that offers them a living. Even sometimes at the risk of being called a “collaborator”.

Why, most ordinary Palestinians ask, has the outside world been so quiet in its condemnation of the security wall despite the International Court’s ruling that its construction is illegal? Why is it called a “security” wall at all, when instead of just separating Israel from the West Bank it separates Arab from Arab?

Indeed, how can a people whose history is full of terrible ghettos, now themselves be building one?

Didn't he answer his own question just above when he wrote: "[T]hese are unheroic times. Suicide bombings like that by a woman in the busy French Hill suburb of Jerusalem last week has lost the intifada some of its outside worldwide sympathy.

Meanwhile, a leadership crisis has led some to predict that what really preoccupies Palestinians these days is an “intra-fada” – an uprising not against Israel but against elements of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (PA), long perceived to be corrupt and politically out of touch."

The wall is working, not least by changing an Israeli ghetto into a nation where folks are more concerned with what's happening within than attacking those without.

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RENOUNCING THE LANGUAGE OF HATE:

Language clash opens old wounds: Rwanda’s new elite wants English to replace French as the official language as Paris is probed over its role in the genocide (Fred Bridgland, 9/26/04, Sunday Herald)

Most of the guerrillas had French names – such as Jean-Jacques and Christophe – but they had already lost many Gallic customs because of their long exile in Anglophile states. They didn’t sing French songs, and certainly not the Marseillaise, as they advanced past villages dotting Rwanda’s green hills where boys drove herds of long-horned cattle through tree-shaded valleys. Instead, Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind was much favoured.

Not only had the imminent victors become Anglicised, but they loathed the French government, which had supported the Hutu regime of Juvenal Habyarimana, an ally of Paris and a great supporter of the French-speaking world.

When President Habyarimana was killed in a mystery plane crash in April 1994, Mille Collines, the French-language radio station, began inciting Hutus to “eliminate Tutsi cockroaches”. Announcers said: “The graves are half full. Who will fill them? In truth, all Tutsis will perish. They will vanish from this country.”

The Tutsi victory was a huge shock for Paris. The RPF accused French soldiers of training the Hutu genocide militias, known as the Interahamwe (“those who fight together”) and of protecting the militias when they retreated before advancing RPF troops.

Now President Kagame – infuriated with France and President Jacques Chirac – has signalled that Rwanda, whose strongest relations are with English-speaking countries, is poised to supplant French – the official language since independence was won in 1962 – with English, backed by Kinyarwanda.

English is growing in dominance despite only 3% of the population speaking the language fluently against the 8% who speak French. Already, the country’s three main newspapers are published in English and a decree has been issued that all laws be made in both French and English. Anyone applying to enter university must speak both , as classes are taught in the two tongues .

Kagame has ordered that all cabinet ministers and civil servants must speak English as well as French, a language he has not yet mastered.

This blow to French cultural pride comes as Kagame has ordered the formation of a commission to scrutinise France’s role in the genocide.

And there's no DeGaulle to cleanse the record this time.

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UNISLAMIC:

Why This Is A Crime Against Islam (Ayman Gomaa, of Al Akhbar in Cairo, 9/26/04, Sunday Herald)

Moderate Muslims are united in believing that the taking and killing of hostages is forbidden by the teachings of Islam.

Almost 150 foreigners have been seized in Iraq since April, in the name of Islam and under the pretext of a jihad (holy war) against infidels.

But the majority in the Islamic world describes such operations as a “grave crime which contradicts Islam and its teachings”. In fact, such teachings also forbid Muslims to kill unarmed soldiers in wartime.

Some radical Muslim clerics have scoured Islam’s sacred texts for justifications of violence and found them, but they remain a small yet very vocal minority within Islam. Safwat Hegazy, one of the most popular sheikhs in the Arab world, says: ‘‘Prior to the rise of this minority no-one ever spoke about the taking and maltreatment of hostages.

‘‘Unfortunately, some of the western media rarely give a balanced presentation of Islamic thought; they tend to over-emphasise the extreme radical fundamentalist element and largely ignore moderates within Islam.

"It should be clear that Islam maintains the protection of life and does not sanction any violation against it, irrespective of the people’s religion, race or sect.’’

It is perhaps safe to assume that the Islamophobes who say no Muslims ever denounces these acts don't read Al Akhbar.

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THE UNDEAD CICERO:

John Kerry: Comfortable with format, but television won't help (SCOTT SHEPARD, 09/25/04, Cox News)

As the debates approach, Bush campaign officials have tried to portray John Kerry as a modern-day Cicero, unequaled in his command of political rhetoric.

But while few presidential candidates have come to the debates with the experience of Kerry, the four-term senator from Massachusetts has a distinct disadvantage.

"Television is not a great friend of John Kerry's," said Tobe Berkovitz, the assistant dean of the communications department at Boston University, who has studied Kerry's debating talents for years.

Kerry is "an exceedingly confident debater [with] an unusual command of facts and specifics that makes him almost impossible to stump," Berkovitz said. But "television turns him into a caricature of himself, aloof and patrician," sometimes preventing him from connecting with viewers, he added.

The point is not to debate him, just let him talk and thereby alienate people.

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NJ AND W, PERFECT TOGETHER:

New Jersey, a Blue State, May Be Trying on Shades of Purple (DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI, 9/26/04, NY Times)

To those who view this year's presidential race as a battle between politically polarized red and blue states, New Jersey has usually been viewed as so unquestionably Democratic that it could be colored somewhere between midnight and navy.

But after trailing Mr. Kerry by 10 points in New Jersey as recently as late August, President Bush has sustained a bounce he received after the Republican convention, and three surveys released within the past 10 days suggest that the race for New Jersey's 15 electoral votes is now a statistical dead heat.

No one is certain whether Mr. Bush's surge represents a lasting shift or a momentary blip during a period when the presidential race has veered erratically between fierce personal attacks and withering exchanges about foreign policy. But the varying explanations for the tightening race offer a glimpse of the challenges facing Mr. Kerry as the campaign enters its final weeks.

As Republican strategists predicted earlier this year, the message of their convention in Manhattan, which portrayed Mr. Bush as an unflinching avenger in the war on terror, seems to have resonated in New Jersey, which lost 700 people in the 9/11 attacks, and where the gaping absence on the New York skyline is a backdrop of daily life. The state's Democrats, meanwhile, have spent the past two months buried in an avalanche of bad news: sordid corruption investigations involving Gov. James E. McGreevey's aides and contributors and Mr. McGreevey's resignation amid a sex scandal.

Beyond those local factors, Mr. Kerry's struggles in New Jersey seem to mirror national trends, in which he has lost ground among swing voters, independents and soft Democrats after the Republican National Convention.

Not only did Ronald Reagan win NJ twice but its last three Democratic governors have been despised while its Republican governors have been quite popular. Meanwhile, Senator Toricelli actually had to driop out of his re-election race two years ago to avoid losing. It's an entirely winnable state for the President.

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JUST MAKE SURE IT'S TRIGGER-LOCKED ON NOVEMBER 2ND:

In Magazine Interview, Kerry Says He Owns Assault Rifle (JODI WILGOREN, 9/26/04, NY Times)

Senator John Kerry, a hunter who supported the recently expired assault weapons ban, frequently tells audiences he has never met anyone who wanted to use an AK-47 to shoot a deer. But it is not clear what Mr. Kerry does with the Chinese assault rifle he told Outdoor Life magazine he kept in his personal collection.

In interviews appearing in the October issue of Outdoor Life, Mr. Kerry and President Bush were asked whether they were gun owners, and, if so, to identify their favorite gun.

Mr. Bush named the Weatherby 20 gauge (although he gave a slightly different answer in a separate chat with Field and Stream magazine.) Mr. Kerry's answer was more complicated.

"My favorite gun is the M-16 that saved my life and that of my crew in Vietnam," Mr. Kerry told the magazine. "I don't own one of those now, but one of my reminders of my service is a Communist Chinese assault rifle."

Mr. Kerry's campaign would not say what model rifle Mr. Kerry was referring to, where he got it and when, or how many guns he owned. A spokesman for the senator, Michael Meehan, said Mr. Kerry was a registered gun owner in Massachusetts. On Thursday morning, Mr. Meehan said he had not been able to ask Mr. Kerry about the rifle because of Mr. Kerry's hoarse voice; he did not respond to further inquiries.

Couldn't he scribble an answer on a piece of paper?

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BEING UNBEARABLE AND THE LIGHTNESS:

For Edwards and Kerry, an Evolving Partnership With Awkward Moments (RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, 9/26/04, NY Times)

The two had few things in common, beyond a friendship with Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and had never worked closely together in the Senate, though their voting records on significant legislation are comparable.

In the heat of the primary campaign they had exchanged only a few barbs, most pointedly when Mr. Kerry said during a campaign stop in Iowa: "When I came back from Vietnam in 1969, I don't know if John Edwards was out of diapers then. Well, I'm sure he was out of diapers.''

Mr. Edwards bristled and responded almost immediately, saying: "In 1969, I was sitting around a kitchen table with my parents trying to figure out how we would pay for college like so many Iowans do every single day. And that is a difference between me and Senator Kerry.''

Mr. Kerry called that same night to apologize.

After he had lost the nomination to Mr. Kerry, Mr. Edwards confided in a number of associates his feelings about Mr. Kerry's limitations as a candidate.

Never worked closely in the Senate? Neither has a single piece of legislation that they're responsible for.

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AN EASY TRIFECTA:

Upper Midwest Crucial to Kerry's Hopes (MIKE GLOVER, 9/25/04, Associated Press)

In 2000, political pundits summed up the race in three words: Florida, Florida, Florida. Here's three words to consider this fall: Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. President Bush is targeting their combined 27 electoral votes - the same total as Florida, where a bitterly contested recount settled the last election.

The trio of upper Mississippi River states narrowly backed Vice President Al Gore in 2000 and are, if anything, slightly more Republican four years later, raising the possibility that Democratic Sen. John Kerry could lose one or two of them.

"They are states we lost last time, but if we can carry one or more of them, it puts Kerry's ability to win the Electoral College in serious jeopardy," said Bush strategist Matthew Dowd.

Interviews throughout the upper Mississippi region - from a diner in Austin, Minn., to a farmer's market in Dubuque, Iowa, to a mayor's office in a Wisconsin river town - revealed a mix of emotions and an anxious mood among voters.

They are worried about the economy, though not as much as Rust Belt voters to the East, and the war in Iraq is a constant source of concern - even anger. But more people approve of the president's performance than disapprove, polls show, and there is significant ambivalence toward Kerry.

Presidents carry states where their approval numbers are higher than their disapprove.

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FAITH AND REASON

Crossing the piety divide (Hillel Halkin, Jerusalem Post, September 25th, 2004)

Yo'eli is a lovely young fellow, if you can call someone "young" who is already the father of several children. He's friendly and intelligent and I'm fond of him. He lives in one of the most isolated settlements in the Gaza Strip, in a house that - so he told me at the wedding - has been hit five times by Palestinian mortar fire. (No one, baruch hashem, has been hurt.) He grinned to see me look aghast at that. There is a gulf, perhaps indeed humorous, between those who do and those who don't count on God to protect their wives and children from mortar shells.

I asked Yo'eli what he thought of the Gaza disengagement plan. He was, of course, against it. As a member, he said, of the central committee of the Likud, he would do his best to prevent it.

"Fine," I said to him. "You're against it. You want to hold on to the Gaza Strip because it's part of the Land of Israel, and seven or eight thousand Jews have the right to go on living there in the midst of close to a million-and-a-half Palestinian Arabs. I understand the principle. I even sympathize with it. But what do you propose to do with all those Arabs?"

What did he propose to do with the additional two-and-a-half-million Arabs of Judea and Samaria who, together with the Gazans and the Palestinian citizens of Israel, are already half of the total population west of the Jordan and will soon, because of their far higher birthrate, be a clear and steadily growing majority?

"Don't let the numbers scare you," Yo'eli said. "When Zionism started out in this country, we Jews were barely 10%."

Yes, I answered. But there were then millions of Jews living in precarious circumstances in the Diaspora to whom Zionism offered a way out. And Zionism was then, in any case, a desperate gamble that had started with nothing and therefore had nothing to lose. Today a Jewish state is on the line.

"What happened then will happen again," Yo'eli said. "Millions more Jews will come. Millions of Arabs will leave."

"Come from where? Leave to where? You're dreaming," I said. "There are no countries left in the Diaspora that Jews are going to leave in droves - and even if anti-Semitism gets bad enough to make some Jews want to leave some places, say France, most have and will prefer other options, like the Jews emigrating from South Africa and Argentina. And since the Palestinians have no such options, every country in the world being closed to them, they will stay right here no matter what."

Yo'eli didn't try to argue with that. He couldn't because he had no arguments. He still had his grin, though. He said, "Your problem is that you have no faith. If you did, you'd leave it to God."

Now I was really aghast. [...]

I have no particular quarrel with those who see the hand of God in history. Give "God" a generous enough interpretation, and I might even agree with them. But I expect them to be consistent. You can't count some fingers of the hand of God and not others. The God that gave us the undivided land of Israel in the Six Day War is also the God that gave us the destruction of the First Temple, the destruction of the Second Temple, Auschwitz. And if Yo'eli and his friends are asking us to put our faith in the God of Auschwitz, they are asking us to commit a supreme act of folly, not because the God of Auschwitz does not necessarily exist but because His calculations are not the same as ours.

The belief in God can be a form of piety. But the belief that God is in one's pocket and will perform His duties like a trustworthy valet is a form of impiety.

Perhaps Christian comedian Brad Stine is trying to make the same point when he asks those sporting “God is my Co-pilot” bumper stickers whether, if God really is in the car, it might not perhaps be more respectful to let Him drive.

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ACTING LIKE THE MAJORITY PARTY:

Romney's baaack, and with vengeance (Thomas Keane Jr., September 22, 2004, Boston Herald)

There's a ``be careful what you wish for'' aspect to the recent exploits of Gov. Mitt Romney [related, bio]. Mocked for his many absences from the state, he has returned with a vengeance, vowing to go all-out to defeat Democratic state reps and senators in November. Democrats, understandably, are cringing. Maybe he should have stayed away.

Many others are cringing as well. Mitt's a new kind of Massachusetts Republican: harsh, partisan and aggressive. We remember Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift with affectionate nostalgia. Romney, on the other hand, looks more and more like, well, a Tom Delay - a take-no-prisoners kind of fellow who would just as soon kick sand in your face as build castles together. [...]

A recent Boston Globe poll suggested as much, with Romney's favorable rating falling from 61 percent in the spring to 54 percent today. That's not much of a drop, and it's hardly a surprise - is there any other state that has such a great animus against George W. Bush? Still, the governor's political team couldn't let it stand.

So Romney returned, vowing to wage war on Democratic incumbents. This has been a long-standing plan and, with 134 contested races (a 14-year high) and a promise to spend millions, it has put Democrats on edge. The talking points are familiar: rolling back the state income tax rate, pushing for structural reforms and beating up on the Democratic establishment, which means taking on Senate President Robert Travaglini and House Speaker Thomas Finneran.

In truth, I'm not sure Democratic incumbents should worry too much. Many have noted that the GOP candidates aren't, as a group, particularly strong, and Romney almost seems to be conceding in advance when he says it would be ``a victory'' to pick up even one seat. Still, facing a challenger is never a pleasant experience. Moreover, it is yet another sign that Romney is far different from the Republicans to which Massachusetts is accustomed.

To a degree, most of those who follow state politics keep trying to put Romney into the Weld box, thinking him another version of that genial governor's centrist politician. But Romney is the opposite. Despite campaigning against State House leaders, Weld worked effectively with them. That comity, legislators say, is now gone. There is little communication and little compromise. On both sides, politics have turned acrimonious.

All of which makes for some uncomfortable times. Yet as uncomfortable as it may be, Romney may be on to something. The old model - of GOP acquiescence to the Democratic hegemony - kept state Republicans on the sidelines, trading off real power for minor influence. Romney, plainly, is no longer willing to do that. Whether it's for reasons of national ambition, personal belief or mere tactics, he's adopted a new model, the confrontational approach so effectively used by national Republicans. He doesn't want compromises; he wants wins. And whether it's campaigning for Bush or governing the state day-to-day, the only way he wins is when Democrats lose.

MA Democrats much preferred guys like Bill Weld who even John Kerry could beat. EWhat seems most significant here is that if you accepot the premises of the essay then 54% of MA voters approve of a more hard-edged Republican conservatism. The column, even down to its headline, reminds of the recently cited polling on Arnold Schwarzenegger that shows him maintaining his popularity even as he comes to be seen as a partisan Republican.

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MEMOIRS OF FOX-HUNTING MEN:

Modern philosopher of tradition: a review of Michael Oakeshott by Paul Franco (Noel Malcolm, 29/08/2004, Daily Telegraph)

Asked to name the most important British political philosopher of the 20th century, most people with an interest in the field would probably hesitate for a while, and then come up with the name of Isaiah Berlin. Only a minority, I suspect, would nominate Michael Oakeshott; and yet, as time goes by, his claim to that title is arguably emerging as the stronger of the two. [...]

[F]ranco has produced a short but masterly introduction to the whole range of Oakeshott's writings, not only placing his thought in the context of earlier British philosophy, but also making illuminating comparisons with contemporary or later thinkers such as John Rawls, Richard Rorty and (inevitably) Isaiah Berlin.

The discussion of the earlier context of British "Idealism" (those followers of Hegel) is especially helpful. Many of the things that now seem so modern about Oakeshott - his insistence that all our knowledge and experience is by its very nature interpretative; his claim that an individual person is constituted by his social world almost i