Funny, I thought it was conservatives who were supposed to be immoral.

I don't recall any conservative columnists or editors wishing for the murder of a political leader. We've seen variations of this theme over and over this year from the left.

These guys usually are satisfied with pseudo-intellectual dismissal of anyone who disagrees with them, but their loss of power, especially in the U.S., has revealed their true character and commitment to freedom, democracy and humanity. People like Mr. Brooker no longer seem to be the Guardians of anything except vitriol and vile resentment.

I could understand how someone might object to the war in Iraq. I don't agree, but I could respect a principled opposition. But this isn't that. This kind of hatred bespeaks a sense that one's whole ego is threatened. But how could that be, if one is secure in his beliefs. I think the real source of this viciousness is a realization that one's worldview is being revealed as an empty shell.

What is it that would make someone so full of rage as to call for assassination over political differences? Could it be that Brooker is the real fascist?

The polls

RCP is giving Bush 234 electoral votes based on states in which he's leading. Two new polls have him leading in Michigan, but it's still listed as a toss-up.

As Hugh Hewitt says, if it's not close, they can't cheat, or at least, cheating won't help them. I live in a safe state for Bush, so there's not much I can do but urge others to think about what this election really means. Will we continue to lead in the world or succumb to the jaded cynicism of the EU.

Kudos to Kudlow

I have a lot more respect for a man who acknowledges that he has faith in prayer.

He's also a good blogger, as this post on the effect of cellphones on polling illustrates. It might help explains why the polls are so erratic these days.

News roundup

The Israelis have killed the appropriately named Adnan al-Ghoul, number two in Hamas' "military wing." He was a bombmaker and inventor of the Qassam rocket, a guerilla weapon used against the Israelis.

The U.N. has declined to train judges for Saddam's trial because he could get the death penalty under Iraqi law. Who needs 'em? I'd just let a Sharia judge try him and then behead him in public. When in Baghdad, . . .

If Iraq is to have a democracy, it had better learn to ignore the U.N. Otherwise, it'll become a colony of the EU. Iraqis should hate the French, after they did everything they could to keep Saddam in power, short of actually using military force. Of course, the most powerful thing the French are willing to use is contempt.

Lastly, another Brit NGO employee snivels for her homeland to abandon the Iraqi people to save her pitiful life. I think the West has about a million and a half lives to lose before we suffer anything like the suffering Saddam inflicted on his fellow Arabs. I hate to see anyone murdered by these thugs, but she wanted to be a hero and serve the Iraqi people. Sometimes it takes more heroism than you counted on. Maybe all NGOs should require employees to sign a release in the future. You can't place national leaders in this kind of a spot. It's not fair to them and it only helps the terrorists. She was probably one of those who thought the inmates at Guantanamo were being inhumanely treated. Now she knows what real inhumanity is.

The anti-progress coalition

Via Instapundit, this report on the new Ugly American, the enviro-anti-global-trade-anti-capitalism-Chomskyite activists who think that American interference has been disastrous throughout the world, and are determined to keep the Third World from developing its resources, educate its children, provide more medical care than free condoms and build modern economies.

Winds of Change indeed

Let's hope this is a harbinger of what will happen on November 2. I suspect that a lot of people, when they finally get into the voting booth, will realize that keeping the heat on the terrorists, including keeping them occupied in Iraq, is just the only way to go.

Kerry's positions are blue sky promises and evasions.

Armed Liberal's announcement that he's voting for Bush may seem momentous to him, but it seems like a no-brainer to me. I think that most people who vote for Kerry expect him to pull out of Iraq and revert to isolationism (They can't really believe that the U.N. will lift a finger to stop terrorism.). They may well be disappointed. I expect him to become another LBJ, trying to prove his manhood without fighting in a way that will win anything.

The Trial Lawyers' answer

Pennsylvania's governor has defeated a request by the Justice Dept. for "delivery of a second absentee ballot and a two-week extension for the counting of military and overseas ballots cast in the November presidential election."

Rendell's general counsel cited the judge's holding for the proposition that "ruling that the proposal by the Federal Government would have 'invited unpredictability to an otherwise orderly and time tested elections process . . .�"

I hadn't realized that predictability and orderliness was a concern of the Democrats. It sounds to me like they want the courts to decide this election, despite grousing about Bush's being "appointed, not elected" since 2000. When's the last time lawyers made things more predictable and orderly? I'm not too sure that more lawyers will really do much more than muddy things up more than before.

Best line about Kerry's goose hunting trip

Hewitt: "How do you ask a goose to be the last goose to die for a campaign stunt?" Personally, I think Canada geese are a nuisance, so three down is no great loss.

Kerry said everybody in his party got one. Four men, three birds. Maybe Kerry practices "catch and release" goose hunting. That would be just like him.

Too dumb to vote?

George Will on the "disenfranchisement" charges.

Non-mother Teresa

Lileks comments about her slight of Mrs. Bush. It's getting more play than I would have expected.

Let 'em starve!

This letter, complaining that the environment wasn't discussed in the debates, was in yesterday's paper. Note the third paragraph:

The countries that we are currently outsourcing factory jobs to have less-restrictive pollution and labor laws, which greatly contribute to the bottom line but do nothing to further protect our environment.

So if we didn't allow their goods into this country, these countries wouldn't pollute or continue to have substandard (in these people's view) labor laws? Aren't these the same people who oppose the war because we have no right to impose our ideas on other countries? I wonder how the Iraqis would feel if we told them their oil industry was polluting the earth and they couldn't continue it.

Swap your vote

This is "progressive?" It tells you something about how ignorant these people are and how desperate they are to regain control of government, that they'd take such a cockamamie idea seriously. If I wanted to vote for Nader, why wouldn't I want it to count in the state where I live? What kind of person would be willing to do this? Someone who wants to protest Kerry but still elect him, I guess. Maybe Kerry appeals to people who can't make up their minds.

Swap your vote

This is "progressive?" It tells you something about how ignorant these people are and how desperate they are to regain control of government, that they'd take such a cockamamie idea seriously. If I wanted to vote for Nader, why wouldn't I want it to count in the state where I live? What kind of person would be willing to do this? Someone who wants to protest Kerry but still elect him, I guess. Maybe Kerry appeals to people who can't make up their minds.

The squawk of the pseudo-intellectuals

Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, in endorsing John Kerry, made the statement that the world is "less free" now than when Bush took office, blaming Bush for Putin's movement away from democracy and for a dictatorship in Uzbekistan and Pakistan. I'm sure those are really concerns for the average voter.

Beinart was the first journalist I heard make the "Bush Lied!" argument based on the Niger story, a bootstrap argument if I ever heard one. That's when I decided that he was not only not too bright, but dishonest as well. I doubt that TNR's endorsement will help Kerry much, but it confirms my decision not to waste my time on that magazine.

Yeah, I know that I'm not supposed to close my mind to other points of view, but I've pretty well considered this one and rejected it.

Flipping, flopping and flailing

The explanation du jour is that there are "two wars," one against "the terrorists" and one in Iraq. He doesn't mention whom we're fighting in Iraq. Presumably he thinks they are "freedom fighters" or Iraqi patriots.

Still the media accord him the benefit of the doubt by analyzing his statements as if they were really motivated by policy concerns. They're not. He's flailing around trying to find an argument that will turn voters against Bush. The problem with that is that he still hasn't given them any reason to support John Kerry. The only reason Bush isn't up by 20 points is that the media have gone about as far out as they can to undermine him without just admitting that they're partisans themselves.

Two Americas. Two wars. When you have to borrow ideas from the people you beat in the primaries, you're getting pretty close to empty, yourself. The only real question I have now is whether the voter fraud will be sufficient to put Kerry in. I keep remembering the vandalism at the White House by Clinton's people when they left. Petty, dishonest and willing to hurt the country if they don't get their way. That's what the Democrat Party has become.

Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme

Here's to Neil Cavuto. His commentaries today and yesterday are spot on. If America is going to make it to 300 years old, we're going to have to wean ourselves from the New Deal and its offspring, and get back to the values of self-reliance, responsibility and financial sanity.

Maybe it was his little riff in French

Jim Garaghty is almost as giddy as Hugh Hewitt about the polls coming in today. Bush up by 3 in Florida.

I'm not going to relax until this thing is over with next January. Voting has already started, so the result is smeared over weeks. A single poll doesn't tell us as much as it used to about what the election results are. With all the speculations about fraud, new registrations, faulty voting systems and lawyers paratrooping into close states, I'm not sure that anybody can be sure about anything. We really aren't equipped to deal with voter fraud, especially after the Bush v. Gore opinion which should have smacked down the Florida Supreme Court and just handed it back to their Secretary of State. What if there really is voter fraud? As Clinton's campaign justified its illegal fundraising in 1996, once you've won it really can't be undone. So if Kerry wins, will we spend the next four years reading about how his stole the election? I wouldn't be surprised.

The last refuge of a loser

Kerry is resorting to scare tactics, the sure sign that he knows he's losing. Hugh Hewitt is jubilant because Kerry is falling behind in the polls. I'd support that more if Bush had a 20 point lead. I would have thought, after 9/11, that somebody with Kerry's arguments would be laughed out of the country.

The rest of the left are no better. Robert Scheer, who has never had very high standards of accuracy when it comes to anti-Bush rumors, is claiming the administration is sitting on a damaging CIA report, calling it "shocking." Even if it were true, it wouldn't be shocking. It is exactly what I'd expect from any administration involved in a close election, including every Democratic one I can remember.

It's getting pretty hard to take any political rhetoric, especially the "shocking" claims, seriously. They've cried wolf too many times. Democrats have always depended on controlling votes of large blocs of ignorant voters who vote as their union, the NAACP or the AARP tell them to. It's the old machine politics, and it reeks of voter fraud. Add to that the huge numbers of illegal voters who can register under the relaxed rules spearheaded by the Democrats. Voting by mail and absentee ballots has made it very difficult indeed to know what the real vote is. It certainly won't be known for sure on November 2.

NASCAR

This made me wonder if Kerry has ever been to a NASCAR race. And if so, did he get it? I'm sure he'd prefer the European, Le Mans type racing.

Kerry askew

David Brooks has a round up of Kerry's descent into gutter politics and describes the cocooning on the left:

Why is he doing this? First, because in the insular Democratic world, George Bush is presumed to be guilty of everything, so the more vicious you can be about him, the better everybody feels.

But there is a deeper assumption, which has marred Democratic politics for years. Some Democrats have been unable to face the reality that people have been voting for Republicans because they agree with them. So these Democrats have invented the comforting theory that they've been losing because they are too virtuous for the country.

Beneath contempt!

If this is the way to world peace, give me war. I have always been struck by the anger and hatred you see at peace rallies.

Liberals like to talk about love, compassion and peace, but when you see how they handle power, you can't help but be impressed by their lack of responsibility. They disdain Christian religion except for a bastardized version of it: Everybody deserves forgiveness. Of course, Jesus forgave people with the instruction, "Go and sin no more." He taught repentence and he gave his life to be able to make it possible, but he did not excuse the unrepentent sinner. He had harsh words for those who present themselves as more righteous and refuse to acknowledge their own evil.

This just in

Kerry has been misstating the facts in his criticism of Bush's handling of the war. I guess 4 months and 12 days in combat as a Lieutenant Junior Grade doesn't make you a military expert after all.

Weirder and weirder

Putin endorses Bush, while the British Left are mailing campaign messages trying to influence our elections.

Pat Buchanan endorses Bush.

And if you want to know how to destroy a democracy, first you convince one group that it has been robbed, then tell them to commit voter fraud. If Kerry wins through stuff like this, it would be a real constitutional crisis--not like Watergate, which was a case when things worked as designed to prevent a takeover. The real test of this system will be when half the country is so bitter and angry at losing an election that it is willing tear down the whole system on the grounds that it is already so corrupted that it can't be saved and any act of fraud is justified. Hugh Hewitt has it right. He predicted there will be a massive attempt to cheat in this election, and the only way to stop it is to defeat the Democrats decisively. Cheating won the 1960 election, but Richard Nixon let it pass. I don't think that could happen this time.

I couldn't say it any better.

George M. McKelvey, a reader of the Boston Globe:

My support for President Bush is motivated by his stance in making national security the number one priority. Bush understands that the terrorists cannot be reasoned with at a United Nations debating society conference. Peace through strength brought down the Berlin Wall, and only peace through strength will defeat the terrorists.

"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

William Safire has a good piece on the Dems' attempt to use Mary Cheney's lesbianism to undermine Bush's support with the religious right.

It reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of religious people. Yes, they don't believe in the politically correct view on homosexuality. No, they won't abandon their own kids or anyone else's because they're ashamed of them. They aren't the Church Lady or Pat Robertson, and they aren't going to sit this one out because of a slimy, disgusting ploy. True Christians know that Jesus died for all of us, without an exception for gays. They also know that he taught that if we want forgiveness, we must be forgiving. The typical anti-religious point of view focuses only on the doctrine of repentence, which they view as intolerant. We view it as basic realism, because we also believe that sin is harmful to the soul. As someone said once, if you're in a hole and you want to get out, you must first stop digging.

Peacenik pathos

They're really, really, really sorry for invading Iraq. The Power Line bloggers are not amused. Tim Blair is.

I must say, these people are alien to me. I can't even imagine the weird pseudo-logic that makes them participate in stunts like this. Why apologize for something you didn't support? Just to draw attention to your own sanctimony?

Did any of them ever protest against Saddam and his wars and atrocities? What would they say to this Iraq?

Early on after 9/11, I decided that Arab peoples have been oppressed so long that they don't even understand the concept of having their own goals, hopes and plans. They've been told that everything is the will of Allah, in order to keep them docile, and they don't seem to understand the illogic of being judged by God when you are powerless to make any decisions. After seeing these photos, I'm not so sure that the American left isn't just as benighted. How did educational institutions produce such ignorance?