Misses
Well, I was wrong about Arlen Specter, who is a turd, and also wrong about Bush winning Minnesota. Looks like he's getting his clock cleaned there pretty good, in fact. Still holding out hope for Wisconsin, though.

But I think Ohio is still very possible for the President.

Come on, come on!

Wracked
Mood:  not sure
Just back from spending several enjoyable hours with my family and some great food (courtesy of my brother Jimmy).

What a nail-biter.

I hope Arlen Specter goes down hard. I got your Magic Bullet right here, beeyotch.

Crashes
Can't even log onto the InstaPundit or the Belmont Club. They're crashed.

And, unfortunately, Allah remains AWOL. But that's for some other reason.

Sentient Clothing
Mood:  energetic
I don't know about you, but that chick from Wonkette makes my pants talk. Ana Marie Cox? Mmmmm...

Which reminds me, somehow, of a story from my time in Athens back in 1995. By the time I got there on my little walkabout, my clothes were starting to get gamey. I was splitting a room in a hostel with a couple of guys, including a really great Japanese guy named Aioki. I was joking about how bad my clothes were getting, and remarked that I was worried that my shirts were starting to talk to me.

Well, at that, Aioki fell into the space I presume exists among the multilingual between doubting one's command of another language and the uncomfortable belief that the person one is talking to is a complete nutjob. Heh, heh. A priceless reaction (and a quick, sanity-affirming explanation). I guess my sense of humor doesn't translate.

But we did both agree that Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17 is our favorite of all Mozart's concerti.

It's good to be alive, even if I can't sit still for two minutes together just now.

Does Crow Taste Anything Like Chicken?
I'm getting a bad vibe from my usual sources. Jesus. Are the French really going to win this thing?

Oh, well. Better to have hated and lost than never hated at all.

Giving It the Old Electoral College Try
Forget the spin: according to a much more thorough translation of Osama's recent address provided by MEMRI (see my blogroll), we have again been threatened by the traitor Michael Moore's proud new convert. (The emphases are mine.)

The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired on Al-Jazeera on Friday, October 29th included a specific threat to "each U.S. state," designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words "ay wilaya" (which means "each U.S. state") to mean a "country" or "nation" other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: "Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

The Islamist website Al-Qal'a explained what this sentence meant: "This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately. When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, 'Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,' it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and those who fight for us, so that he doesn't treat all American people as if they're the same. This letter will have great implications inside the American society, part of which are connected to the American elections, and part of which are connected to what will come after the elections."

Now, the important thing to remember is that this more accurate translation of Osama's message was completely fucking buried by Big Media because that's how al-Jazeera wanted it.

Am I wrong? I couldn't care less. That's how it effectively went down.

They knew. They all knew that Osama made a specific threat against certain states.

Cowards and manipulators. Cover for our enemies. It's the [American] Way.

Traitor
Do you find this funny?

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

That's right, friends. The traitor Michael Moore is boasting to the President that a mass murderer of innocent Americans is a devotee of his fucking garbage. It's moral insanity.

I've seen a lot of interviews lately among the usual pundits and politicians and not one of them will acknowledge the obvious truth that, if Osama bin Laden were permitted to vote in tomorrow's election, he would vote for John Kerry. Why will no one admit that?

Because the truth hurts.

A vote for John Kerry is a vote for those who hate America.

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.