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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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