280-258
Using a screenshot of the interactive electoral map from the Los Angeles Times, here's how I think Election Night will go.

President George W. Bush will be re-elected, 280-258. And he will win the popular vote.

If you want, leave your predictions with me in the comments section.

Yutz
Here's a little something from the New York Post:

This campaign is ending just in time before someone gets hurt. John Kerry's stepson, Chris Heinz, 31, displayed his mother Teresa's famous lack of rhetorical restraint at a recent campaign event with a group of Wharton students. Philadelphia magazine reports: "Heinz accused Kerry's opponents - 'our enemies' - of making the race dirty. 'We didn't start out with negative ads calling George Bush a cokehead,' he said, before adding, 'I'll do it now.' Asked later about it, Heinz said, 'I have no evidence. He never sold me anything.'" Heinz also reminded writer Sasha Issenberg of Pat Buchanan by saying, "One of the things I've noticed is the Israel lobby - the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state." Buchanan was blasted as an anti-Semite years ago when he cited Israel's "amen corner" in Congress.

This is outrageous. But do you really think it will get much play? Of course not. Nothing that the Kerrion say will cost their man a single vote because their hatreds run more deeply than their principles.

Any Jew who votes for the crypto-Jew/pseudo-Irish Kerry ought to have his head examined.

No Mas! No Mas!
The Bush-haters say that the new OBL tape hurts the President because it reminds people that OBL is still on the loose. Maybe. But I am inclined to believe that it will also piss off a lot of Americans because they see it is an attempt to influence our elections next Tuesday.

And, then, some of the best minds online, like Wretchard at the Belmont Club and Donald Sensing, see OBL's message as a pathetic bid for a truce. Sensing makes a very detailed case for this interpretation, including this:

I think it's telling that al Jazeera only broadcast a very short excerpt of the whole tape and only summarized what it didn't broadcast. One US newscast said that al Jazeera explained its snip of a broadcast by saying that it didn't want inadvertently to broadcast secret codewords for terrorist attacks in the tape, a concern that seems never to have bothered the network before. Evidently al Jazeera is no longer awed by the great and mighty Osama bin Laden anymore; maybe it is even trying now to hedge its bets. Or maybe the arabist network was just too embarrassed by bin Laden's new humility to show it all.

There've been some weird stirrings among the al-Qaedists lately, with Zarqawi's profession of fealty to Osama and this crap from "Azzam the American." It's like they're all jockeying for position on the final lap coming into the homestretch (i.e., the Great Satan's elections next week). But to what end? They're not going to surrender because the only thing they've got that we want is their own bodies, preferably blown to pieces.

But, after all is considered, I agree with Sensing: OBL is in justification mode, trying to shore up his defenses while calling off the dogs. To him, John Kerry's election would be the biggest dogs calling-off he could hope for. That's because Kerry is an appeaser who wants to work with "allies" and circle-jerk it at the UN.

Let's have none of that. If Osama is showing us an olive branch, I'd say it's time to snatch it from his hands and beat his ass with it.

Indicative
This is what David Brooks has to say in today's New York Times:

Back in December 2001, when bin Laden was apparently hiding in Tora Bora, Kerry supported the strategy of using Afghans to hunt him down. He told Larry King that our strategy "is having its impact, and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively, and we should continue to do it that way."

But then the political wind shifted, and Kerry recalculated. Now Kerry calls the strategy he supported "outsourcing." When we rely on allies everywhere else around the world, that's multilateral cooperation, but when Bush does it in Afghanistan, it's "outsourcing." In Iraq, Kerry supports using local troops to chase insurgents, but in Afghanistan he is in post hoc opposition.

This is why Lurch cannot be trusted. He is a liar and a hypocrite. He is also Osama bin Laden's choice for the White House.

Is our country so decadent and blind that we would allow this murderous son of a bitch to influence our elections like the al-Qaedists did in Spain? Kerry's election would be a disaster. Muslim terrorists the world over would be dancing in the streets. At last, they'd cry, one of ours is in power again.

Kerry Must Be Stopped
You'll need to read British historian Paul Johnson's essay on how crucial it is that John Kerry be defeated.

The moment of truth is at hand, friends. Don't wake up next Wednesday morning to the sight on your TV of Palestinians, Frenchmen, and other sorts of terrorists and backstabbers dancing in the streets like they did in the aftermath of the atrocities of 11 September 2001. Because the simple truth is that America's enemies want John Kerry to win. Osama does. You know Zarqawi does.

Don't let that happen.

The Word on Natch
Being a native and lifelong Texan, I never quite understood it when, as a kid, I would be reading some Marvel comic book (was never much of a DC man, frankly) and one of my favorite characters would say "Natch." Usually it was Ben Grimm, who was full of slangy, yankee goodness. He was always saying some crazy shizznit.

Anyhow, it's only been recently that I caught on to it as a diminutive form of "naturally." Sorta interesting. Maybe.

Do people really say that up north, though?

Bully for them.

The Pain of Recognition
They won't admit it, but the Dhimmicrats have had about a day now to recognize that their nominee ---and they themselves--- are saying the exact same shit about this President that Osama bin Laden did in his Spanish opening yesterday. Doesn't it embarrass them in some way? Don't they stand indicted by that? I certainly think so.

Of all the assholish nonsense to issue out of their nests, maybe Bush's Infamous Seven-Minutes of Inaction is the most chickenshit of all the Dhimmicrats' complaints. Ask one of them why he or she thinks that Bush's conduct upon hearing of the second plane hitting the WTC was so awful. No one who has spent time with children thinks so. No one who has any common sense and really thinks about what effective difference could have been made by leaping up from his chair and losing it thinks so. Face it, Moore-ons: you're chickenshits. That's a mathematical fact.

Instead, let History record that the very first thing George W. Bush did when he knew that war had been declared on the United States was to remain calm and be strong for a classroom full of our children. It is only a mind diseased with hatred for him as a person that could take from his reaction anything less than the very essence of human virtue and strength. President Bush did not falter, waver, or fail; he summoned up his fortitude and went to work.

What would you have done with those seven extra minutes? Something desperate, probably. Something that stinks and stains your place in the order of things.

(Hat tip to Charles Johnson, natch.)

A Losing Argument
John Podhoretz says that Kerry's political instincts are the Bush campaign's secret weapon.

The other day, Kerry said: "After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this administration failed to guard those stockpiles -- where nearly 380 tons of highly explosive weapons were kept. Today we learned that these explosives are missing, unaccounted for and could be in the hands of terrorists."

Kerry has just bollixed up his own storyline about the war in Iraq. He is concluding his campaign by drawing an explicit association between Saddam Hussein, dangerous weaponry and international terrorists.

That's Bush's argument. Not Kerry's.

Kerry's account of the past 18 months is that Saddam's weaponry wasn't sufficient grounds for invasion and overthrow. After all, he said in the first presidential debate, "35 to 40 countries in the world had a greater capability of making weapons [of mass destruction] at the moment the president invaded than Saddam."

But in thundering about the vast danger posed by 380 tons of high explosive, Kerry is sure making it sound like Saddam possessed uniquely dangerous weapons.

And, once again, Lurch won't come within a mile of a reporter with the stones enough to ask him why he's obsessing over a few hundred tons of explosives thats status is unknowable when the entire country of Iraq remains one gargantuan ammo dump where hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives have been secured and destroyed by our soldiers. Is Kerry saying that those particular explosives are especially dangerous? Why? Because some of them ---HDX/RDX--- have nuclear applicability? Hmmm. If those aren't weapons of mass destruction, they certainly qualify as hyperactive cousins.

So why are such dangerous materials still around? Because Blix and el-Baradei didn't want to deprive Saddam of his sovereign right to own explosives that he might have needed for mining or whatever the excuse was. And these are the people John Kerry trusts more than his own government or military. Pathetic.

I Was Wrong
I was wrong. I thought Osama was dead, killed in the mountains of Tora Bora back in 2002. But, if this tape al-Jazeera released today is deemed authentic, it's one of the greatest games of possum ever played.

President Bush and his Administration were wise not to have suggested that he was dead. They have always publicly assumed, whether they believed it or not, that Osama was still alive and on the run. Pervez Musharraf has long believed that, but I figured that Osama would have had plenty of opportunities by now to wag his finger in our faces.

The message was clearly released now in attempt to influence our elections, but I don't know how that will play out. It can't be too comfortable a feeling for the Kerrion to know that Osama could have been speaking straight from one of their press releases. And, of course, Osama appears to be a fan of the America-hater Michael Moore. Will the Moore-ons pretend it's not so? No. They're probably proud to be validated in this way. That's because people who believe in the message of Fahrenheit 9/11 are ill-informed stooges for Islamofascism.

"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the country (Bush) would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone ... because he thought listening to a child discussing her goats was more important."

And you know this is a damning criticism from a man whose culture prizes the sexual qualities of goats more than those of actual women.

Let's see how Kerry responds to this endorsement from Osama. He should probably tread lightly, lest his words be seen as an acceptance of that support.

Got Pissed?
Mood:  don't ask
Have a look at Greg Djerejian's latest post on the chickenshit New York Times and their trumped up stories on the missing explosives at al-Qaqaa. I haven't been reading him too long, but this post is unusually angry ---and altogether righteous.

Try to keep in mind, comrades, that in a war where we have secured and destroyed some 400,000 tons of explosives and ordnance, the extremely questionable question of where 380 tons of it has gone to is, in a word, a quibble.

And try to get to this, too: if the New York Times and Mohamed el-Baradei and all the other rectal thermometers in this story are so concerned that the missing explosives could be used in a nuclear device, doesn't the very fact that Saddam was in possession of them militate against these fools' assertions that Saddam was not a threat and had no weapons of mass murder?

It doesn't seem possible that the hyperlegalistic preoccupation that the anti-war Left has with WMDs being the sine qua non of any acceptable rationale for the war could be surpassed, but now the impossible has come: the war was falsely justified because there were, it is said, no WMD ---but now that these 380 tons, if such was ever the amount, are missing, they may have fallen into the hands of terrorists or used in the detonation of a nuclear bomb. The absurdity of this logic will not faze you if you never believed that Iraq was full of terrorists before the war, anyway, nor will it faze you if you never believed that Saddam had pretensions to the development of weapons of mass murder, including nuclear.

We do not know the full story about these explosives, but that hasn't stopped the New York Times or CBS or John Kerry from opening up on this Administration with what they believed would cause the most political damage. To call what they have done irresponsible is too kind. What they have done, in collusion with assholes like el-Baradei, is to attack the integrity of the Commander-in-Chief and his fighting men and women in the middle of a war using intelligence that was produced nearly 18 months ago. It has all been presented as a current development, with the insinuation that these very same explosives have been used against our forces in Iraq in the innumerable IED and car bomb assaults ---even though they cannot know that.

As the President says, there is no limit to what Kerry will say to hurt our military for his own political gain. That is a habit of Kerry's going back decades. It would be a disaster for this country and our power in the world if this Francophile sack of shit is elected.

Why Is Mike McCurry Wearing Eyeliner?
Kerry mouthpiece Mike McCurry, who has very obviously taken to wearing some sort of eyeliner lately, was telling Paula Zahn on CNN last night that President Bush didn't have a plan to win the peace in Iraq because we went in with too few troops. Nothing unusual there; all the Kerrion ---and even a lot of people who are in support of the war--- say the same.

But my question is "Why?" Why do Kerry and his people say that we didn't send enough troops to Iraq? I thought the idea was that they didn't want any troops there. Are they really such adherents of the Powell Doctrine (i.e., if you go, go all out)? I doubt that. So how does Kerry get away with saying to a party that is overwhelmingly anti-war that we are not as completely committed to Iraq as we should have been from the start?

I don't know. They're all assholes to me. But I do know, as I have observed elsewhere, that there is no reason for Kerry not to make as many criticisms of the President as he can. He will not be held to account for them in any event, so why not at least try? He may come out ahead for the effort and almost certainly will not suffer for any of it, no matter how contradictory.

Tributes to John Peel
Courtesy of NRO, this is a nice story from the Independent about John Peel, the British disc jockey who passed away this week on vacation in Peru. I didn't know much about him as a person, but his influence as the voice on BBC One for just about 30 years should be known to all who love British rock n' roll.

At the bottom of the piece, after several glowing testimonials, is something called "Peel's All-Time Festive 50." Check it out.

Truly a man of wealth and taste.

Final Devastation
Courtesy of the BeldarBlog, be sure to help yourself to these latest mini-documentaries from the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth. They are well-made, unmistakably genuine, and still unrefuted. Taken together, they constitute the final devastation of John Kerry's credibility as made by the men who served in the same war and same places he did.

So go fuck yourself, Larry O'Donnell.

Bill Maher Must Be Proud
The new taped warnings from al-Qaeda that ABC got a hold of feature some guy named "Azzam the American." Azzam is warning us that the horrors that are coming will make the atrocities of 11 September 2001 pale by comparison.

"No, my fellow countrymen you are guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. You are as guilty as Bush and Cheney. You're as guilty as Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and Powell," he says in what he calls his message to America. "After decades of American tyranny and oppression, now it's your turn to die. Allah willing, the streets of America will run red with blood matching drop for drop the blood of America's victims."

It's all pretty dire, of course, but the part of ABC's report I found most interesting was this:

Azzam makes references to several American officials, including 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, and even refers to the controversial remarks made by comedian Bill Maher about the cowardice of the U.S. launching cruise missiles compared with terrorist suicide attacks.

Nice. Very nice. What we've got here is some asshole college boy who escaped Amerikkka to go be a hero to the world's oppressed Muslim Minutemen. Maybe he's even a self-hating Jew. But Azzam's steeped enough in America's [intellectual discourse] and knows enough of world history and geopolitics that he thinks it fit to cite a smarmy and ill-informed shitbag of a TV comedian like Maher in threatening us with death. If it weren't a matter of life and death ---hell, it would still be funny. Azzam, before he left this intolerable Nazi police state, was probably just the sort of pseudo-intellectual slacker-asshole who gets his news from Jon Stewart.

Say, Bill and Jon, you're not yet at the level of true traitors like the sickening truck stop toilet Michael Moore, but hang in there, keep up the good work of tricking for the Dhimmicrats, and who knows? Maybe some day, Zarqawi will quote you as he saws off another American's head.

Kicking the Kerrion's Ass
Be sure to read Ralph Peters' column in today's New York Post. It completely kicks Kerry's and the New York Times' asses as asses rarely get kicked.

The bottom line is that, if the explosives were ever there, the Iraqis moved them before our troops arrived. There is no other plausible scenario.

Sen. Kerry knows this is a bogus issue. And he doesn't care. He's willing to accuse our troops of negligence and incompetence to further his political career. Of course, he did that once before.

The October Surprise? That a bullshit lie cooked up by our enemies, the Left-wing press, and the Democratic nominee is going to backfire and destroy them all.

Don't let up on this, Mr. President. Turn it back on them and watch them crawl.

An Old Story
Mood:  on fire
Courtesy of Little Green Footballs, read this article in the New York Sun about the IAEA's long-standing problems getting their heads and their asses wired together.

Nine years ago, U.N. weapons inspectors urgently called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to demolish powerful plastic explosives in a facility that Iraq's interim government said this month was looted due to poor security.

The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations' atomic watchdog to remove tons of explosives that have since been declared missing.

Mr. Duelfer said he was rebuffed at the time by the Vienna-based agency because its officials were not convinced the presence of the HMX, RDX, and PETN explosives was directly related to Saddam Hussein's programs to amass weapons of mass destruction.

Instead of accepting recommendations to destroy the stocks, Mr. Duelfer said, the atomic-energy agency opted to continue to monitor them.

And these internationalist tools are who Jean le Kerrie is defending? What the fuck? Whose side is he on?

Do note that the information is still very much in flux, as intellectually honest Americans will concede at any point. We don't know the extent of the 101st Airborne's searches at al-Qaqaa when they got there 10 April 2003, nor do we know what the 3ID did when they had arrived there almost a week before. But we do know that for Kerry and Edwards and all their lickspittles to be popping off about the situation there before they know is an absolute disgrace. They very much want you to believe that they support the troops, but they continue to effectively blame them while nominally attributing that blame to the President. No one's buying it, Hanoi John. You are a willing tool in the hands of assholes like Mohamed el-Baradei and the UN and Chiraq and Blix and all those lousy bastards. Keep accusing the Commander-in-Chief in a time of war of committing these crimes of negligence and incompetence. That's an old story with you, anyway, you sorry sack of shit.

Quid pro Crap
Jim Geraghty at the NRO's Kerry Spot has put together some items for your perusal concerning the sequence of events that has moved Mohamed el-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, to play his hand. He knows that President Bush doesn't want his sorry ass around for a third term, so he is doing what he can to save his job. You need to read the whole of this post. Here's the money quote:

In late September the U.S. says no third term for ElBaradei, and Oct. 1 he writes to Iraq demanding answers about this old weapons depot!

Then, in a memo that appears to be dated Oct. 10, the Iraqis respond that the explosives are missing... and it just happens to show up on the front page of the New York Times eight days before Election Day. An article that quotes a European diplomat as saying "Dr. ElBaradei is 'extremely concerned' about the potentially 'devastating consequences' of the vanished stockpile."

I'll bet he is! He's so concerned, he felt a need to make this issue that he's been quiet about since spring 2003 and press the Iraqi government for an immediate answer that he knows will make the Bush administration look bad!

One has to wonder - has John Kerry or a member of his staff indicated they would keep ElBaradei around for another term? We know ElBaradei wants a change in U.S. policy on his third term.

ElBaradei is doing everything he can to help Kerry. What's in it for ElBaradei?

There is no way we can let this go, friends. Kerry is the choice of our enemies and so-called allies. They want him in because it will be a vindication of their corruption and inaction.

"All of Iraq was a weapons cache..."
Bernard Kerik, one of the true leaders to emerge from New York City's response to the atrocities of 11 September 2001, told Hugh Hewitt yesterday

What John Kerry doesn't know or doesn't understand is that we seized more than 280,000 tons that were detonated already. We seized another 160,000 tons that are pending detonation. You know, Hugh, every day that I was in Iraq, every single day, for the four months I was there, every aftrenoon at 12 o'clock in the afternoon, there were massive explosions out by the international airport. It was the U.S. military blowing this stuff up. People have to realize that all of Iraq was a weapons cache. The whole country was saturated with explosives. And this is what President Bush meant when he talked about the threat. This was a part of that threat. We have been addressing the issue since we got there. The problem is that John Kerry just doesn't have a clue.

And what the New York Times/CBS/Kerrion cabal want you to think about is 380 tons of stuff that no one can yet say for certain wasn't already missing when our guys showed up. It's pure chickenshit, especially as the selling point for this hysterical story was that some of the missing explosives were the kind used to detonate nuclear bombs. Well, if that was such a concern, why didn't the fucking IAEA destroy that stuff already? Because we have to persist with this gibberish about its dual use? Note to dumbasses: "dual use" to a psychotic dictator means something different from what you think it means.

Hewitt later observes that

The other problem that Commissioner Kerik didn't mention is that John Kerry instinctively trusts the U.N. bureaucracy at the I.A.E.A. to do its job better than the 101st Airborne. No wonder the troops that are either serving in Iraq or have served there prefer George Bush by a three to one margin over John Kerry.

Don't doubt for a moment that el-Baradei is trying to influence our elections by leaking this shit to the Times ---and that Jean le Kerrie is happy to abet him.

Respond Like This
Mood:  on fire
Here's a post from Jim Geraghty at NRO's Kerry Spot:

Come on, guys. The New York Times, international bureaucrats like Mohamed ElBaradei and the Kerry campaign are coordinating October-surprise hit pieces on President Bush. This is screaming for a tougher response. Something like an attack ad stating, "Kerry is playing Monday Morning Quarterback with the 101st Airborne's performance in Iraq. In 1971, John Kerry smeared our troops as rapists and butchers then... He's smearing them as incompetent now. This Nov. 2, show John Kerry what you think of his attacks on our troops."

Do not back down on this, goddammit! Kerry is in league with these degenerate "internationalists." BURN THEM.

Schwing!
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: "Cypress Avenue" by Van Morrison
Not to be too much of a letch, but did you happen to see footage of Sydney Perry casting her first vote yesterday at the courthouse? Sweet Jesus. She's incredible! And very frugal, too, wearing her favorite shirt from 5th grade.

God Bless America.