s'kerry
Happy Halloween! (via Betsy)

AlGoreRhythm

Flushed with excitement at the prospect of a whole night of disco, Al Gore, wearing the brand-new guayabera and lei from his trip to the islands, jumps to the front of the conga line.

The Lancet, blunted
Yesterday The Gantelope wrote about The Lancet’s Iraqi casualty estimate of “8,000 more people and 194,000 more people may have died because of the war”. Lots of room for error there. Hardly surprising sinceAlthough the teams relied primarily on interviews with local residents, they also asked to see at least two death certificates at the end of interviews in each area. That means that in 30 areas with 30 interviews each, a total of 900 interviews (30 x 30), they only asked to see 60 death certificates (30 clusters x 2) -- and, did they actually see those? Fred Kaplan in Slate points out,

It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)
This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.

"The study purports to show civilian casualties 5 to 6 times higher than any other reputable source", states Shannon Love and she explains why the methodology is off. She explains cluster samples, faulty assumptions (such as "violent deaths were widespread"), self-reporting, and the study's statement, "Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja", among other things. One of her commenters asked,

The lead author was an opponent of the war.
The lead author submitted it to the Lancet on the express condition that it be published before the election.
Do you suppose the guy might have a bit of bias of his own?

Tim Worstall takes The Lancet to task in his article The Lancet: A Casualty of Politics

. What is being said is that we don't have enough information to be able to say anything meaningful about it. "Statistically insignificant" means "we don't know".

In effect, what has been found in this paper is nothing. Nada. Zip.

Except of course that one of the two leading medical journals in the world has published a piece of shoddy research four days before the US elections with the obvious motive of influencing them. Sad, that, and my apologies as an Englishman that it should be one of my countrymen who did such a thing.

.

It wasn’t just a Brit. The team included researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies as well as doctors from Al Mustansiriya University Medical School in Baghdad. Does that mean that Johns Hopkins and The Lancet now join the Guardian and CBS?
Sad.

The internals must be looking really bad
Last evening on Fox News, Geraldine Ferraro, when asked about recent poll results, stated,

I don't believe in polls

Heh.

Watch FarenHYPE 9/11 this weekend, updated
I purchased a copy of FarenHYPE 9/11 through Overstock.com and received it yesterday afternoon. Apparently the DVD is also sold at Wal-Mart. You can rent it at Netflix, but that would take some waiting.

I urge every person reading this blog to watch this movie. If you're interested in fairness, something I assure you Michael Moore doesn't care for, you can download Farenheit 9/11 on line ( did that several weeks ago) and then watch FarenHYPE 9/11. Either way, watch FarenHYPE 9/11.

And I plead to Dick Morris, please release FarenHYPE 9/11 on line for free this weekend. Everyone should see this film.

Update Great minds think alike

Osama, updated
So the Qaqaa’s dying on the vine, so to speak, and by now so much stuff has crossed the airwaves people won’t be surprised by much – even when the NJ Dems are trying to resurrect the Haliburton meme. Then last evening “Osama” turns up, and he’s channelling Michael Moore, no less, after obviously having processed and digested the lessons of Farenheit 9/11.

Here's a side-by-side of the Osama transcript vis a vis Michael Moore: (Moore quotes from INDC journal and Michael Moore in Quotes)

ObL: "I am telling you security is an important pillar of human life. And free people don't let go of their security, contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom." MM: "They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen".

ObL: "Bush is still practicing distortion and misleading on you" MM: Bush lied. "There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them."

ObL: "and obscuring the main reasons and, therefore, the reasons are still existing to repeat what happened before. I will tell you the reasons behind these incidents" MM: "DO YOU FEEL like you live in a nation of idiots?

ObL: "Here he [Bush Sr.] is being influenced by these regimes, royal and military" MM: The Bush family’s in cahoots with the Saudis (Farenheit 9/11)

ObL: "So he [Bush Sr.] transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son, and they call it the Patriot Law to fight terrorism". MM: "The Patriot Act is the first step. "Mein Kampf" -- "Mein Kampf" was written long before Hitler came to power. And if the people of Germany had done something early on to stop these early signs, when the right-wing, when the extremists such as yourself (Bob Novak), decide that this is the way to go, if people don't speak up against this, you end up with something like they had in Germany. I don't want to get to that point."

ObL: "He was bright in putting his sons as governors in states, and he didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times." MM: W stole the election, and “Unfortunately, Bush and Co. are not through yet. This invasion and conquest will encourage them to do it again elsewhere. The real purpose of this war was to say to the rest of the world, "Don't Mess with Texas - If You Got What We Want, We're Coming to Get It!"

ObL: "it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes" MM: My pet goat section of Farenheit 9/11

ObL: "Each state that doesn't mess with our security has automatically secured their security." MM: "There is no terrorist threat in this country.”

Osama couldn't miss the opportunity to remind us that it's American support of Israel that got him angry:

When the U.S. permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the assistance of the 6th fleet. In these hard moments, it occurred to me so many meanings I can't explain, but it resulted in a general feeling of rejecting oppression and gave me a hard determination to punish the oppressors

and also stated he wants the US to be the next Sweden, or something like that.

I have thought ObL‘s dead, and until someone out there with credible credentials on biometrics does some serious research on this video -- as was done with the Afghan lady's photos -- I won’t believe ObL’s alive. If he's alive, he's obviously in a location where he can get to watch movies. Be that as it may, Belmont Club examines the situation with clarity

It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech. He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically sayingif you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.
The American answer to Osama's proposal will be given on Election Day. One response is to agree that the United States of America will henceforth act like Sweden, which is on track to become majority Islamic sometime after the middle of this century. The electorate best knows which candidate will serve this end; which candidate most promises to be European-like in attitude and they can choose that path with both eyes open. The electorate can strike that bargain and Osama may keep his word. The other course is [my bold print] to reject Osama's terms utterly; to recognize the pleading in his outwardly belligerent manner and reply that his fugitive existence; the loss of his sanctuaries; the annihilation of his men are but the merest foretaste of what is yet to come: to say that to enemies such as he, the initials 'US' will always mean Unconditional Surrender.
Osama has stated his terms. He awaits America's answer.

Which, in plain English means, we’re winning the war on terror.

We need to stay the course. Vote for Bush.

Update The Bin Laden Video: Democrat Talking Points?, and Osama bin Laden / John Kerry, via LGF

Good hair math at The Bad Hair Blog
1 + 1 = Laugh out loud

Awash in Hitchens's irony
As a long-time Hitchens reader, I thought his Kerry endorsement was devastating, particularly this phrase, " Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure". Several others were puzzled, in view of his (slight) endorsement of Bush.

Harry was among the confused, so he wrote his nephew, who's "in the third year of an Ironic Degree at Oxford".

I didn't know one could get an Ironic Degree. Questions arise as to whether there's extra credit for sarcasm, or for puns (Iron Men majoring in Irony), or whether points are deducted for bad jokes (iron supplements for the Irony crowd, a new Geritol market?) but I digress. Back to Harry's nephew.

The Irony major came to the conclusion that Hitchens's "endorsement of Bush a few days ago is best interpreted as some kind of sophisticated double-bluff irony feinting manoeuvre, rendering today’s support for Kerry even wittier than it already would have been."

If you can't blind them with brilliance, baffle them with . . .

More Qaqaa
ABC News Report: Video Suggests Explosives Disappeared After US Took Control: Evidence Indicates US Military Opened Al-Qaqaa Bunkers, Left Them Unguarded, a report that came right after the same network's Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts: Documents Show Iraqis May Be Overstating Amount of Missing Material. Jim Geraghty explains,

at first glance, it appears to make the case that when the 101st Airborne Division arrived on April 18, 2003, there was still a large supply of explosive materials in the facility.
But there are still a few problems with this story.
. . . Specifically there are 79 other substances and types of explosive material and supporting equipment that would get the 1.1 D label, including gunpowder, flexible detonating cord, photo-flash bombs, mines, nitroglycerin, rocket warheads, grenades, fuzes, torpedoes and charges. And few of them require any liquid dilution.
Is what’s on this news report video HMX, RDX, or PETN? Possibly, if the material inside is some sort of diluting liquid that we didn’t see on the tape, or if the Iraqis were storing these high-grade explosives in an unsafe manner. Or it could be one of the 79 other substances. Or some containers could have the big three, and some could have others.
As usual, it is foolish for folks to jump in and conclude that they know what was in the containers without gathering all of the facts. How many Kerry-backing writers who will cite this video as a smoking gun are familiar with what materials are classified 1.1D?

Problem two: This doesn’t quite explain the internal IAEA documents ABC reported that suggested that significant amounts were gone before the invasion began.

Problem three: This doesn’t quite explain the Pentagon’s satellite photos of large numbers of trucks leaving the facilities before the war.

Problem four: This doesn’t quite explain how all this could be taken down a road full of heavily armed U.S. forces, under skies full of coalition warplanes.

Problem five: This doesn’t quite explain why none of this explosive has to date shown up in any Iraqi insurgent attack

Belmont Club points out that the IAEA "had not actually looked inside the bunkers and seen the actual RDX during its last mission in March, 2003 but had had simply relied upon the existence of the seals for verification."

while it is possible for about 350 tons of RDX to be lurking unremarked in the bunker outside the field of view visited by 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, it is not likely. So the journalist's pictures are it or nothing. If the boxes in the videos are not identified as containers of dual-use or IAEA controlled explosives, and are in fact merely ordinary munitions behind UN seal it will be devastating for Baradei.
. . .
A variety of scenarios are possible from this data. First, 350 tons of RDX were in the warehouse when 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS visited but no one recognized it and it was subsequently stolen, either carried off on foot by looters or loaded into dozens of flatbeds with no one the wiser. The second is that it was taken in the time between the departure of the IAEA staff and the arrival of US forces. The third was that it was already gone behind the flimsy seal even during the last UN inspection.

Captain's Quarters notices that Fifteen paragraphs into the story, the [NY] Times finally tells its readers that it cannot even confirm that the video was shot at Al Qaqaa".

Yasser's in Paris
No word as to whether he packed his Smurf hat.

And now for something completely different, Giraffe blogging!

photo courtesy of Maria.

Lileks rules!
Today: "All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. And all you need to know about the UN, I suppose, is that they let him".

Yesterday: (replying to Sullivan) "He has said quite clearly that he will not "cut and run" in Iraq. And the truth is: He cannot.
Because that would lead to helicopters on the roof and boat people and reeducation camps and mass deaths, and God knows the world has never seen anything like that."

Every day: Interior Desecrations : Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s (ah, the 70s: the "what was I thinking" decade), and The Gallery of Regrettable Food.

Today in the Garden State
. . . the weather's beautiful and the candidates were running naked? From All Politics NJ,

Quote of the Day:
"I was walking down the block and I see this guy naked on his front porch, and my friend tells me he's running for mayor, so I go running back and start taking his picture." --- 18-year-old Hector Rodriguez, who used his camera phone to take a photo of Jersey City mayoral candidate Jerramiah Healy. (Associated Press, 10/28/04)

Sure enough, One of the best-known candidates, Councilman Jeremiah Healy, has drawn the most unwanted attention of the race after photographs were taken of him early the morning of Aug. 21 by a teenager walking past Healy's house.
Elsewhere in the state, Lawsuit Targets Electronic Voting Machines.

Here in The Principality the candidates are modestly clothed, much to their credit, and fully sober. The saga of the parking-garage-built-on-the-stream lawsuit apparently has come to an end -- Suit challenging downtown development dies again -- at least for now. One of the residents was criticizing the Bush economic policies, but "without coming off as blatantly partisan", which is something that, of course, he'd never do. Let's just say he doesn't share the views of the latest winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. More overtly partisan, however, was the visit of the editor of the Crawford, Texas newspaper (circulation 400).

As for the local candidates, I have already endorsed Evan and Paul, and most definitely endorse Irene White, a dear friend who's also a proud owner of a Lakeland Terrier, for those of you in the Lakeland constituency.

The missing explosives, today, updated
Yesterday Investor's Business Daily said, flat out, "There's no polite way to put it: This story was a lie, apparently cooked up to serve the Times' partisan ends."

ABC News: Discrepancy Found in Explosive Amounts: Documents show Iraqis may be overstating amount of missing matieria

The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.

But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.

Today The Washington Times story Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms states

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.
. . .
"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
. . .
A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.
The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.
"The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.
The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.
According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.
It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.

a similar story is also in the Financial Times. Bill at INDC Journal has more details.

Even Slate, that arm of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, by now is asking "I'd like to hear the IAEA explain what logic it used in deciding that hundreds of tons of high explosives could be trusted to the custodianship of Saddam Hussein", the implications of which Paul and Robertowere pondering yesterday: "This is the same UN that John Kerry wants to entrust with our safety".
(Obviously Slate couldn't resist the headline, "Al-Qaqaa hits the fan", but then, who am I to talk?)

Power Line Blog explains,

DEACON adds: If Shaw's version, as reported by the Washington Times, holds up and (as importantly) gets heard, the consequences for Kerry could be serious. The Senator will have
(a) jumped to a conclusion that wasn't supported by the facts,
(b) assumed the incompetence of our troops,
(c) confirmed President Bush's position that Iraq had weapons worth worrying about, and
(d) unleashed evidence that, as Rocket Man notes, suggests that chemical and biological weapons could easily have been moved out of Iraq just before we invaded. One question that arises, though, is why, if the Defense Department has evidence that the Russians helped clean out Al Qaqaa, we haven't heard about this before. The answer, apparently is that Shaw recently obtained the information about the Russian arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services. According to these sources, the Russians were in Iraq mainly to destroy evidence of their weapons collaboration with Saddam's regime.

Roger L. Simon points out that

I saw Paul Bremer being interviewed by Brit Hume tonight. This was evidently Bremer's first appearance of this nature since returning and he made it to refute the Times' explosives story. He said it would have been impossible for the dozens of trucks necessary to remove 380 tons of explosives at that time to have done so without having been noticed by US forces (well, maybe it was only 3 tons... then, who knows?). The roads were apparently empty then. I guess the Times didn't want to ask about that either.

As for the Kerry campaign (a campaign which in my eyes has been in the panic mode for a while now, and whose advisor Richard Holbrooke said on Fox News last Tuesday that he didn't know the truth about the explosives), Edward Dailey of Men's News Daily sees it this way,

What should also be glaringly obvious to anyone paying attention is that these people will stoop to any depths necessary to assure a Democrat victory on election day. That they continue to believe in the premise that the end justifies the means, no matter how malicious and deceitful those means may prove to be, is all any undecided voter needs to understand as we go to the polls on November the 2nd.

Kerry's not the man I want for Commander In Chief.
Update NZBear has a round-up (via Roger).

With friends like these . . .
Slate's staff has endorsed Kerry, which surprises no one. What surprises are the rationales:

• "I'll pull the lever for Kerry, if for nothing else than to defeat the misconception that being contemplative is somehow paralyzing"
• "I cringe a little at where Kerry's line on terror and Iraq has lately ended up."
• "I remain completely unconvinced that Kerry understands the limits of multilateral diplomacy"
• "Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure. Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq." (the Independent Women are wondering as to what he means by this, though)
• "These times demand strong positive leadership. I don't know if John Kerry can provide it"
• "Sen. John Kerry is the least appealing candidate the Democrats have nominated for president in my lifetime . . . can't pretend to like John Kerry. He's pompous, he's an opportunist, and he's indecisive"
• [Kerry] "appears to struggle with the contradictions in his beliefs."
• "I'm voting for Kerry — he's in many ways the antithesis of Bush"
• "I plan to vote for him mainly because I want George Bush evicted from the White House."
• "But most of all, I'm voting for Kerry so that every time I turn on the TV (which I have to do a lot for my job) I don't risk having to look at that whiny, pusillanimous face and listen to that fake cowboy drawl."
• "I'm voting for Kerry as much as against Bush"
• "I remain totally unimpressed by John Kerry . . . Kerry's major policy proposals in this campaign range from implausible to ill-conceived. He has no real idea what to do differently in Iraq. His health-care plan costs too much to be practical and conflicts with his commitment to reducing the deficit. At a personal level, he strikes me as the kind of windbag that can only emerge when a naturally pompous and self-regarding person marinates for two decades inside the U.S. Senate. If elected, Kerry would probably be a mediocre, unloved president on the order of Jimmy Carter."

Don't see any ringing endorsements there.

Of the three Bush supporters (What media bias!?), however few as they were, one is voting against Kerry because of Edwards's bigotry, and the other two focused on the war:

• "The simple fact is that he is the only candidate who has had the courage to envision a long-term solution to the danger of terrorism—the liberalization and democratization of the Middle East."
• "Nothing, though, is more important than Iraq and terrorism, and Bush "gets it" better than Kerry. Removing Saddam was right—as Tony Blair said, "history will forgive" an absence of WMD—whether we had U.N. approval or not. The insurgency is deeply troubling, but I don't trust Kerry to improve the situation. The only fresh idea in his four-point plan for Iraq—the promise to bring in more allies—has been rendered moot by statements from France and Germany (talk about a coalition of the bribed and the coerced!) that they would not send troops. His convention-speech promise to "respond" to every terrorist attack combined with his "global test" comment in the first debate, convey a certain squishiness toward threats to our nation. Mock me as a security mom if you will, but I'm sticking with Bush"

Do we really deserve a "mediocre, unloved president on the order of Jimmy Carter" at a time of war?

A round-up on the explosives, updated
Arthur asks,

The question now is: we know why the mainstream media would want to land this one on Bush only a few days before the election; we also know why ElBaradei would want the world to know; what we don't know is - is the Abbas letter simply something that opportunely and coincidentally played into ElBaradei's agenda, or is it itself a part of the plan? And if so, why would Iraqi officials want to damage Bush?

Very good question, particularly in view of the 50 massacred Iraquis, an inside job if there ever was one. Terrorists hope to defeat Bush through Iraq violence, after all.

Roger explains that the explosives were gone before the war started. NRO realizes that "even International Atomic Energy Agency experts cited in the Times report say Iraqi officials probably removed the explosives prior to the war." Belmont Club, observes how The RDX Problem Resolves Itself -- "the inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound".

Juliette and several commenters in other blogs sees through the media's low opinion of the military. Roberto explains the true outrage, which goes ignored by the MSM:

Yes, the true story is that it appears that officials at the United Nations, in particular the head of the International Atom Energy Agency Mohammed El Baradei, conspired with the NY Times and CBS and possibly the Kerry campaign to try to influence this election, to try to undermine the president of the United States during war time. This is the same UN that John Kerry wants to entrust with our safety

As they asked yesterday on NRO, Does John Kerry trust the U.N. bureaucracy (the same U.N. that evidently did nothing about weapons in Iraq) more than the U.S. armed forces?

Captain's Quarters asks CBS, "If the danger to America and its military forces is so acute, why wait a full week to report it?". The WSJ has an answer

Both of these possibilities are logical, if contradictory, and both acquit the Administration. But there's one more thing we'd like to know: How did this story come to light, oh, one week before the presidential election? The IAEA informed the U.S. of the missing stockpile on October 15; according to our sources, it also notified the government that the story was "likely to leak." Leak, of course, is what it did, and to no one other than CBS's "60 Minutes." Funny how that rings a bell.

But wait! CBS was reporting on the site back on April 4, 2003, and raised valid questions on WMDs being manufactured or stored there.

Then there's the pretzel logic aspect:

So, according to the liberals, we SHOULD remove the President of the United States from power because terrorists might get these weapons but a brutal dictator who murdered hundreds of thousands of people SHOULD NOT have been removed from power just because he might give the terrorists these same weapons.

and the Kerry people can't vouch for the New York Times's "explosive" explosives story, but they're running with it anyway, which keeps them in character as fabulists.

Update: Article emailed by a friend, from Investor's Business Daily: There's no polite way to put it: This story was a lie, apparently cooked up to serve the Times' partisan ends.

Kerry campaign steps on Qaqaa
just in time! Here's the ad they've come up with.

Compare that with the Daily Recycler video.

The Bush Administration Questions Timing of IAEA Weapons Letter

The letter, signed by the head of the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei, addressed the disappearance of the highly explosive material from a deserted military base in Iraq. The non-nuclear explosives had been monitored by the Vienna-based watchdog agency because they could be used to detonate nuclear bombs.

"The timing of this seems puzzling," the spokesman for the American U.N. mission, Richard Grenell, told The New York Sun yesterday.

The letter was brought to the attention of the council on the last full week before the American presidential elections, quickly becaming a campaign issue. It was also a week after Mr. ElBaradei announced that he would seek another term as the director general of IAEA, despite American opposition.

Best Of The Web Today:

The Bush administration opposes ElBaradei's reappointment, so one suspects that this was a foreign effort to influence the outcome of America's presidential election, aided by our domestic partisan liberal media.

As I pointed out earlier, Cliff May has stated "The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration.".

Breaking news at The Onion
Kerry: Stem-cell research may hold cure to cure ailing campaign.

Extra, extra, read all about old news, updated x 2
Yesterday the NYT dedicated rivers of ink and dead tree coverage to a story on explosives that disappeared after early April 2003. Coincidentally, the Kerry campaign had soundbites at the ready.

The NYT story misses a few subtle points, among them,

• It's an old story, folks. If this was so pressing, why did it take the NYT a year and a half to write about it?


• CBS Had Iraq Story, Just Not in Time. The network was the first to know about the missing explosives, but getting interviews on tape proved a problem: "our plan was to run the story on [Oct.] 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold, so the decision was made for the Times to run it."


• Among the clamor of no WMDs, now, on the last week of the campaign, the NYT writes about these explosives, HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon?


• If the I.A.E.A. knew of this (see January 27, 2003 I.A.E.A. report to the UN Security Council, items 53 and 54) why didn't they insist that it be disarmed? The weapons disappeared after the last IAEA inspection, which occurred before the invasion


• Following up on the prior point, Captain's Quarters points out, "Putting aside the fact that no one knows when these munitions disappeared, the fact that they were still there after 12 years of UN inspections and sanctions establishes the futility of the entire UNSCOM process"


• NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing


• CNN Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived

As Belmont Club points out,

the RDX explosive was already gone by the time US forces arrived. Although one may retrospectively find some fault with OIF order of battle, most of the damage had already been inflicted by the dilatory tactics of America's allies which allowed Saddam the time and space -- nearly half a year and undisturbed access to Syria -- necessary to prepare his resistance, transfer money abroad and disperse explosives (as confirmed first hand by reporters). Although it is both desirable and necessary to criticize the mistakes attendant to OIF, much of the really "criminal" neglect may be laid on the diplomatic failure which gave the wily enemy this invaluable opportunity. The price of passing the "Global Test" was very high; and having been gypped once, there are some who are still eager to be taken to the cleaners again.

something for which the Kerry campaign won't have appropriate soundbites.

Then there's the question of, are the explosives really missing, since, as the NYT story says, "By late 2003, diplomats said, arms agency experts had obtained commercial satellite photos of Al Qaqaa showing that two of roughly 10 bunkers that contained HMX appeared to have been leveled by titanic blasts, apparently during the war".
Roger L Simon gets it right,

the New York Times report of 380 tons of escaped explosives published this morning was so much propagandistic drivel timed to encourage the defeat of a sitting president in favor of a candidate, I am almost certain, the paper's publisher and editors do not even care for in the first place. How pathetic is that! How deeply reactionary! This kind of distortion during an election is a worse disgrace than the Jayson Blair affair.

How ironic that the locale in question is named Al-Qaqaa.

Update Cliff May at NRO goes out on a limb,

Sent to me by a source in the government: “The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The US is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

Has the qaqaa hit the fan yet?

2d Update Daily Recycler video now ready for your perusal.

The Halloween constituency
-- a group that is seldom pandered to, but this year anything goes -- will be happy to hear that Democrat candidate John Kerry has a haunted barn in one of his wife's properties.

Instead of being demolished, the barn was sold to the Sussex-based Heritage Oak Buildings and was dismantled timber by timber. It was kept in storage until 1987, when a brochure from the company’s agent in New York was sent to Serena Stewart, an architect working for John Heinz III, the wealthy Pennsylvania senator.

“Jack Heinz was a bit of an Anglophile, and I showed the brochure to him and he went nuts,” Ms Stewart said. “There was a slide presentation in New York and there were five barns, and Jack picked one of them.”

After being rebuilt in Idaho, it became one of John Kerry’s five American homes, worth a combined $33 million (£18 million), following his marriage to Teresa Heinz in 1996, five years after the death of her husband in a plane crash.

THe Bad Hair Blog was unable to reach the Kerry campaign to find out what costume the junior senator from Massachusetts will wear next Sunday.

Update: Chrenkoff and The Bad Hair Blog, both at the forefront of trend-spotting? Should the trend catch on, Kerry will start campaigning at cemeteries to appear lively

Comparison
Kerry rally:



Bush rally:

55,000 supporters.

It's Monday, so it's time for good news
from Iraq, from Arthur.

Foreign policy lies
Jack has a very insightful post, Oil-for-food and the collapse of containment:

Genuine opponents of the Iraq war -- excluding those who supported the war but for its timing, manner, and diplomatic context -- need to demonstrate how containment, which was never meant to have been a long-term policy, could have been sustained credibly for the expected life of the Saddam-Uday-Qusay regime. Unless they do, they must have been willing to countenance Saddam Hussein or one of his less rational sons armed with nuclear weapons, or have been genuinely willing to fight a future war against Iraq on Saddam's terms, rather than ours

Bob Woodward sat down with President Bush and asked 22 questions on foreign policy, which the President answered. Woodward tried to interview Sen. John Kerry on the same but Kerry has refused. By answering Woodward's questions, Kerry might have clarified his position on containment -- but he won't.

Instead, Kerry goes on the campaign trail and makes all sorts of assertions, which are subject to change, or are downright false. The latest one is that Kerry claims that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.

Well, those Security Council members deny meeting Kerry:

But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.
The former ambassadors who said on the record they had never met Mr. Kerry included the representatives of Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria. The ambassador of a fourth country gave a similar account on the condition that his country not be identified

The Washington Times was only able to confirm directly that Mr. Kerry had met with representatives of France, Singapore and Cameroon, hardly the entire Security Council.

Kerry has lied about items big and small (while the MSM ignores it): lied about being in Cambodia, lied about his war record, lied about meeting with foreign leaders "who privately endorsed" him, lied about meeting with the Vietnamese communists in Paris, lied about hunting, lies about cargo inspections, even lied about running marathons and attending a baseball game. Small wonder that some ask, Is John Kerry a sociopath?

Kerry's on the record calling truthfulness "the fundamental test of leadership." That's a test he has failed.

The McGreevances don't end
as one can fully realize by reading Roberto's latest, Generalisimo Jim McGreevey is Still Governor, Part 7, including his having "appointed or reappointed 74 people to a variety of state commisions, councils and committees".

And I ask, will he be going in November?

Er, those allies?
Roberto at Dynamo Buzz writes about the Star Ledger's endorsement of Kerry, which came as no surprise. One sentence stood out from the whole editorial:

Three years ago, after 9/11, the entire world was in support of the United States

If by support the Star Ledger has in mind the type of support shown by say, Le Monde in its famous September 12, 2001 editorial by Jean-Marie Colombani, We Are All Americans", I dare suggest to NJ's largest newspaper the following: The support never was there in the first place.

The Colombani editorial, if you bother to read it, says, essentially, that "we are all Americans, and must blame ourselves for having brought this on" -- in his own words,

But the reality is perhaps also that of an America whose own cynicism has caught up with. If Bin Laden, as the American authorities seem to think, really is the one who ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, how can we fail to recall that he was in fact trained by the CIA and that he was an element of a policy, directed against the Soviets, that the Americans considered to be wise? Might it not then have been America itself that created this demon?

The Star Ledger's deluded itself into thinking that "old Europe", as they call France and Germany, "surely would be more willing to consider assisting in the rebuilding of Iraq with George Bush gone". If the scenario that Dr. Krauthammer discussed last Friday were to be on the table, possibly. Barring that, had the SL's editors bothered to read/watch the French newspapers/TV for the past five years (yes, five -- attitudes haven't improved in all that time), they would realize that, surely, they won't.

The undertaker as governor
Unknown to me until this morning, the upcoming governor (?) of NJ is a licensed funeral director.

Jim at Parkway Rest Stop has 74 more things to remember McGreevey by. Jack has the lowdown on being The Principality's other pro-Bush blogger.

The Guardian's latest
Scott, who keeps an eye on these things, has the evidence on the Guardian's latest: incitement to murder.

After the Guardian's initiative "What you can do to beat Bush - with a little help from the folks in Ohio" didn't go over well with the folks in Ohio, the Grauniad forges ahead in full panic mode. (Kathleen posts the link to the Guardian's How to complain page.) As Charles Moore says,

So who gains if Bush loses? The Labour Left, of course, and the political power of the European Union, the Guardian readers who have been writing magnificently counterproductive anti-Bush letters to the voters of Clark County, Ohio, and every twerp who says with a trembling lip that Mr Bush and Mr Blair have "blood on their hands"; not to mention every corrupt, undemocratic, "pragmatic" government in the Middle East that longs for a return to stasis.
. . . and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and terrorists

The Grauniad's editors, never shy, never unwilling to promote the ridiculous, today have an article expousing the theory that Shakespeare's work resembles the teachings of the Islamic Sufi sect. I wonder if the Bard turned to that out of disappointment after having his letters rejected by the Ohioans.

The shadow candidate: Gumby

While absent-minded Democrat candidate John Kerry tosses a baseball on the tarmack, Gumby makes his first campaign apperance. No word as to Pokey's location.

Not just another Kerry waffle,
but something at the core of the man himself, a lack of character and humanity from the candidate who was "reporting for duty" at the DNC last Summer: the issue of the MIAs.

From the February 24 Village Voice (hat tip to Pat), Sidney Shanber's article When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A.: Senator covered up evidence of P.O.W.'s left behind (my bold print)

The stated purpose of the special Senate committee—which convened in mid 1991 and concluded in January 1993—was to investigate the evidence about prisoners who were never returned and find out what happened to the missing men. Committee chair Kerry's larger and different goal, though never stated publicly, emerged over time: He wanted to clear a path to normalization of relations with Hanoi. In any other context, that would have been an honorable goal. But getting at the truth of the unaccounted for P.O.W.'s and M.I.A.'s (Missing In Action) was the main obstacle to normalization—and therefore in conflict with his real intent and plan of action.

Kerry denied back then that he disguised his real goal, contending that he supported normalization only as a way to learn more about the missing men. But almost nothing has emerged about these prisoners since diplomatic and economic relations were restored in 1995, and thus it would appear—as most realists expected—that Kerry's explanation was hollow. He has also denied in the past the allegations of a cover-up, either by the Pentagon or himself. Asked for comment on this article, the Kerry campaign sent a quote from the senator: "In the end, I think what we can take pride in is that we put together the most significant, most thorough, most exhaustive accounting for missing and former P.O.W.'s in the history of human warfare."

Shanberg's articles has "details of a few of the specific steps Kerry took to hide evidence about these P.O.W.'s", and goes on to say,

The Kerry committee's final report, issued in January 1993, delivered the ultimate insult to history. The 1,223-page document said there was "no compelling evidence that proves" there is anyone still in captivity. As for the primary investigative question —what happened to the men left behind in 1973—the report conceded only that there is "evidence . . . that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number" of prisoners 31 years ago, after Hanoi released the 591 P.O.W.'s it had admitted to.

With these word games, the committee report buried the issue—and the men.

By January 1994 Kerry was pushing through the Senate a resolution calling on President Clinton to lift the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam. The article concludes "Kerry's resolution passed, by a vote of 62 to 38. Sadly for him, the passage of ten thousand resolutions cannot make up for wants in a man's character."

Dumb celebrity quote of the week
(via Arthur), Patrick Swayze's "I know a great deal about the Middle East because I've been raising Arabian horses for over 20 years"

That's like saying "I know a great deal about the United Kingdom because I've been raising Welsh Corgis for over 20 years". But then, maybe the late Queen Mum would agree?

Colonel Mustard,
on the tarmack, wearing a baseball cap, boring the crowd to death.

WATCH STOLEN HONOR FOR FREE ONLINE
The documentary is 42 minutes long.

Wild-goose hunting for a makeover
Extreme makeover: John Kerry a `guy's guy'. Senator's hunting trip latest salvo in battle for voters. Campaign tries to emulate Bush's macho persona
Note to Kerry campaign: Shooting one goose isn't going to do it. Shooting a whole gaggle won't, either. Especially if you get the reporters annoyed enough.

Meanwhile, I can't wait to see my husband's reaction to the latest spin on Teresa: "She's a very subtle cross between Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren" (nothing subtle about Sophia and La Lollo, methinks). I expect that his reaction, after he stops laughing, will be more like Christopher Buckley's, "I think Teresa Heinz would be by far the only thing to enjoy during what I suspect will be four dreary years of the human tree", but I'll wait until he gets home this evening.

Yesterday Thomas Sowell took a good look at the the candidates. Like Sowell, I've had plenty of "plans" that have had to been changed due to hard reality. Sowell looks at the current race:

Back then, we knew that the job was to win the war, not to score political points over it. We didn't even have these debatable "debates" of today. The idea of choosing a wartime leader on the basis of quick-reaction sound bites would never have occurred to anyone.

Sound bites are usually not very sound. Those who have spent their whole political careers talking may be very glib, but what have they actually done? It is amazing how long that question has been kept off the table by the Beltway media, who are on record as being for Senator Kerry by 12 to one.

Neither Senator Kerry nor Senator Edwards has administered anything. Nor have they created a single piece of major legislation in their combined two dozen years in the Senate. Both have incredible records of absenteeism at meetings of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But they talk a great game. And they have "plans."

What they also have is utter irresponsibility.

. . . Kerry and Edwards remain viable candidates only because their rhetoric has obscured their reality -- and because too many in the media seem reluctant to bring out the facts against candidates who share the media's vision of the world.

Charles Krauthammer looks at the foreign policy connotations,

He [Kerry] really does want to end America's isolation. And he has an idea how to do it. For understandable reasons, however, he will not explain how on the eve of an election.

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel

Kerry has said that the United States should supply Iran with nuclear fuel. Iran's Mullahs have sworn death to Israel. Even Kerry's top Iranian fund-raiser, Hassan Nemazee (who's raised over $500,000 for the Kerry presidential campaign) has agreed that the current Iranian government is a terror-exporting regime. Going by the facts, Dr. Krauthammer's analysis is spot-on. Additionally, as William Kristol has said, "His [Kerry's] near obsession with gaining the approval of the U.N., and for that matter of France and Germany, for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy would make him the riskiest commander in chief of any presidential candidate since George McGovern--and surely makes Kerry unsuitable to govern in a post-9/11 world."

On the economy, today Dr. Sowell examines the 'Tax cuts for the rich!' canard. Sowell recognizes the fact that "Income is not wealth and income taxes do not apply to wealth," something painfully obvious to people who live in high-expense, high-tax states like NJ.

Now, if the Kerry campaign tried a makeover that took that into consideration, actually took a substantive look at the war, and dared to verbalize the foreign policy implications, then we'd be talking makeover.

History's gone forgotten
Jimmy Carter, in yet another display of ignorance, said, in the 'Hardball with Chris Matthews' Oct. 18 show

the Revolutionary War, more than any other war up until recently, has been the most bloody war we’ve fought. I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war.
Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial’s really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely, and of course we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a nonviolent way.

"Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive", we would be having elevenses in the morning and tea in the afternoon, Jimmy. "We would have been a free country now" here in the North East, and would still be part of the Commonwealth, too. The rest of what is now the USA would have gone into separate countries (see Red Mind's speculation). Thank G-d the Founding Fathers and the colonists didn't have a plan to win the peace, but instead charged right along and fought for independence.

As a Southener,and former governor of Georgia, Carter's memory has erased the fact that the Civil War was "the most bloody war we’ve fought". You can read about it here and here: "More Americans were killed in the Civil War than in all other American wars combined from the colonial period through the war in Afghanistan in 2001". Amazing that Carter would forget that.

As Michael said, "I think it's time for Jimmuh to consider that retirement home down in south Georgia".

Oh those pesky endorsements . . .
from Palestinian Authority leader and sometime terrorist Yasser Arafat, Kim Jong Il, North Korea's totalitarian dictator, Fidel Castro (who needs no introduction), former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, just keep coming. So do the gaffes, like "the rights that we afford people." And let's not forget a few good comments from a staunch supporter, always willing to lend a helping hand.

One would think that'd be enough for a campaign to go into panic mode. The panic signs are all there: lame duck hunting expeditions (where of course, "someone else carried the bird he said he shot", but "none witnessed Kerry taking any shots") to appeal to the rifle demographic; giddy statements over the Red Sox; commercials are being written, edited, produced and put on satellites for the purpose of generating news articles, just so there's spin to the spin, and let's not forget fraudulent voter registrations and the crackhouse Chad.

Then there's the sympathetic "Sucking Democracy Dry" article and cartoon, and the meddling British newspaper. Plus the fearmongering on Social Security and the draft, the blame game on the flu vaccine, combined with insulting one of the oponents for getting flu shots.

More telling, a former president will be campaigning in a blue state, while the recount strategy and the armies of Florida lawyers are lined up, with promises not to "repeat Al Gore's mistakes" on the recounts.

And let's not forget a last-minute flip-flop: now the Patriot Act doesn't go far enough.

If this doesn't look like someone's pushed the panic button, I don't know what does.

Update To add to the ignominy, Dan K. O'Leary (who's wanting to buy beer) has a soundboard where the candidate can debate himself.

More on stem cell research, from someone who knowswhat he's talking about, part 2.
Last Friday I posted on Dr. Krauthammer's views. Today, James Kelly writes,

In fact, a few weeks after his testimony, a study funded by his own Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation was published in The Journal of Neuroscience Research, beginning with the sentence: "Pluripotent stem cells have been detected in multiple tissues in the adult, participating in normal replacement and repair while undergoing self-renewal." The authors cited eleven other studies showing the same thing. They proceeded to show why adult bone-marrow stem cells "may constitute an abundant and accessible cellular reservoir for the treatment of a variety of neurologic diseases."
. . . By 2002 the capacity to remyelinate spinal cords had been discovered in bone-marrow cells, olfactory-ensheathing cells from the nasal cavity, adult neural progenitor cells, oligodendroglial progenitors from the adult brain, and adult Schwann cells. Each of these could be obtained from the patient's own body. As one of the studies indicated, "such transplantation would therefore be autologous and obviate the need for immunosuppression."

And as Scottish cloning expert Ian Wilmut noted this February in The British Medical Journal, it now seems cloning is unnecessary for treating spinal injury, because the central nervous system is "immune privileged" — it does not reject genetically dissimilar cells the way most body systems do.
. . . Many Americans with spinal-cord injury now know that one of the most promising new techniques for restoring sensation and movement is being conducted in Portugal by Dr. Carlos Lima. The centerpiece of his protocol is a surgical technique using stem cells and other tissue from patients' own nasal mucosa."

Kelly points out, "Embryonic stem cells have produced nothing like this — in fact, their tendency toward uncontrollable growth and tumor formation has so far made them unfit for any trials in humans. Even in animal trials they have not been able to treat long-lasting or chronic injury." There are studies in which embryonic stem cells have caused cancer. No researcher is anywhere close to significant progress in developing practical embryonic stem cell therapies.

That was some apology, Updated

"I had forgotten that Mrs. Bush had worked as a school teacher and librarian, and there couldn't be a more important job than teaching our children. As someone who has been both a full time mom and full time in workforce, I know we all have valuable experiences that shape who we are. I appreciate and honor Mrs. Bush's service to the country as First Lady, and am sincerely sorry I had not remembered her important work in the past."

Millions of stay-home moms will ponder the "important work" portion of the statement, thank you.
Update Juliette uses psychology to examine the situation.

More cream for that Kofi?
Via Samizdata, in the wake of the UN Oil-For-Food scandal (see today's post below), Kofi's proposing (since the Goals of The Millenium are not being met) the creation of

an International Finance Facility that would be capable of doubling aid flows to the developing world up to 100 billion dollars a year

Ehem.

In his own words,
Why John Kerry Shouldn't Be President -- In Quotes, link emailed by M. (who's now happy about the Zegna link)

UNScam today
Claudia Rosett's article La République des Bananes: Kofi Annan tries to explain away France and Russia's Oil for Food wrongdoing has Kofi implying that "Saddam's oil money had nothing to do with it. Nobody buys the officials of France, Russia and China. They are serious and important".

Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, finds it "inconceivable" that Russia, France or China might have been influenced in Security Council debates by Saddam Hussein's Oil for Food business and bribes. "These are very serious and important governments," Mr. Annan told Britain's ITV News Sunday. "You are not dealing with banana republics."

Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, Scott, who's on a roll, has a link to the BBC's latest finding: Oil wealth 'can cause corruption': Oil wealth often ends up in the wrong pockets, TI says. Oil wealth is often a breeding ground for corruption. Maybe the Beeb should talk to Kofi.

The Truth About Irak,
via Arthur, has a section on Myths and facts. An example:

Myth: There is no hope of "winning the peace."

Truth: The people with the most information about the situation in Iraq - the Iraqi people - are optimistic.
51% of Iraqis say Iraq is on the right track. In July of 2003, before the recall election, 24% of Californians thought California was on the right track.
62% of Iraqis think the new government has done a good job since the transfer of power.
87% believe that Iraqi security forces can maintain security without the Coalition Forces.
70% of Iraqis say that they would support a family member in a decision to join the Iraqi security services

I'm adding this to my list of websites today

Taken to task over my Presidential Fashion Update from yesterday
M. wrote saying, "Fausta, no link to the Zegna site, so you miss a chance for the visitors to view Adrien Brody?"
My apologies. Here's the Zegna site with the Brody photos.

Barcepundit's "extremely, extremely disturbing"
video of the Atocha station terrorist attack of March 11.
We are at war.

Social security
I'm in the demographic group that will not see much social security from her Social Security. According to my calculations, modest as they are, I expect that by the time I'm old enough for Social Security there won't be enough young people in the workforce to be paying for my benefits. It's been estimated that the amount paid out to retirees will begin to exceed that paid in by workers in 2018, so my numbers are not that much off. Therefore, all my working life I've been building a nest egg, so I won't be a burden to my offspring or other relatives. Several of my friends are currently supporting their disabled parent(s) and their child(ren) in college; being a financial burden is one of the things I'd fear most from old age. And yes, I have done a good job in my pension planning. Therefore I believe that I can do a better job than the government in spending, or "investing", my money. Not being a particularly talented investor (Warren Buffet has nothing to fear from me), I expect that the average person, like myself, can do a capable job if allowed.

Today the Wall Street Journal writes on "privatizing Social Security":

Start with the political scare word, "privatization." This accusation works with some voters because many Americans mistakenly assume that their payroll deductions are currently going into a government account with their name on it that will then be paid out when they retire. Privatization conjures up a vision that they will have to provide for their own retirement with no government safety net whatsoever.

Sorry to break it to these trusting souls, but there are no Social Security accounts. Today's payroll taxes are spent by today's politicians. And in today's system, future benefits depend on politicians elected years from now keeping to the spirit of vague promises made by today's politicians. That's not the kind of guarantee we find comforting. Mr. Bush is talking about giving workers the kind of personal accounts, with an actual property right, that many thought they had all along, and filling them with real assets, not mere promises.

Social Security would still be a government program, but one with a choice of whether to stick with the negative real returns currently offered, or obtain positive growth available from a diversified portfolio of assets. Even the safety net part of Social Security would be made stronger and more reliable by putting government finances on a more sustainable footing. Far from cutting benefits, this is the only way to preserve them, short of raising taxes to a level that would destroy the economy.

I also believe that the "privatizing" would have a beneficial effect on financial markets and the financial net worth of individual investors, if only by decreasing the expected tax burden. As Dr. Prescott said, "The idea that you can increase taxes and stimulate the economy is pretty damn stupid."

The good hair candidate
Video via Betsy's page. Thank G-d Dick Cheney's bald.

Michelle, however, is kind.

Presidential Fashion Update
This morning Scott's introducing the Ablution Art Appreciation Academy, but he also posts that John Lichfield, the Independent's "Man in Paris," thinks that President Bush is a hypocrite, because he wears "a French-made suit", b y a tailor named George de Paris (really. That's his real name). Therefore my assessment that the debaters both hit Barney's on the first day of the semi-annual sale, wearing identical outfits was incorrect. John Lichfield is also wrong, too. Georges de Paris is not only a naturalized American citizen, he's been working from DC for decades.

Apparently George's custom-made suits run approx. $4,000, more than Brooks Brothers, comparable to Zegna, and less than Armani. Nice.
And no need to add a poncho, either.

Is this legal?
First, the donor says he stole the money.
Then he tells the candidate.
Then the candidate accepts the money, from a minor.

Stealth bloggers strike
the Eiffel Tower!

No poncho for me, thanks
Prone as I am to shamelessly lying about my age, the latest fashion trend brings back memories of The Man With No Name, and other unsightly fashions of the 1970s, the "What Was I Thinking?" Age of Fashion. Today I read that Slate shares my dislike of blankets covering up otherwise good clothing.

The Slate article goes on to talk about, ""capelets" by Jill Stuart, Behnaz Sarafpour, and Ellen Christine Millinery, suggesting that these minicapes will inherit the mantle. They may make you look like a superhero, but in my opinion, that's far preferable to resembling a fort". No thank you. I'll pass on that trend, too. As much as I like the novels of Anthony Trollope, there's no reason for me to try to look like Lady Glencora, even if she did have the final word.

Two former democrats who will be voting for Bush,
Maria, and Roger L. Simon's blog, brought this article to my attention: I'm a Democrat for Bush.

My decision is based on a straightforward proposition: I do not want the global jihadists and women-hating fundamentalists to be celebrating Bush’s defeat. They do not deserve to win, even if Bush deserves to lose, a position I am not quite willing to concede.
Tax cuts for the rich? Kerry can roll them back with my blessing. It is not a matter that affects me greatly. The deficit? Perhaps he will reduce it, though I’m sceptical. Abortion rights? By all means, let’s hang on to them. Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research? Good idea, I hope it works. Health? I would love to see more people insured. The death penalty? I’m against it even for terrorists, which puts me to the left of the Democrat candidate.
But, if Bush is ousted, there will be victory celebrations across the undemocratic Arab world. More “martyrs” will step forward, eager to play their part in the decline of the West. The fundamentalists are playing a long game: is Kerry? I suppose pollsters could classify me as a “security mom”: I have two children, aged four and seven. After the attacks of September 11 I feared we were entering a new, war-torn century. The peaceful years of my childhood, in contrast to the violence experienced by my parents’ generation, suddenly looked like the historic aberration.
I was standing next to the World Trade Center, gazing in horror at the torment above, when the towers collapsed. I was showered with pulverised masonry and the ashes of nearly 3,000 people. I decided fairly quickly that America was a beacon of freedom that needed defending against the anti-western, freedom-hating religious bigots and death cultists. I am determined my children will grow up in a world of increasing democracy where terrorists are captured, tyrants overthrown.

DenBeste has a statistically correct interpretation on poll results. Belmont Club interprets the results:

The most striking thing about the Kerry trend line is that it suggests a system that has been maxed out, like an engine which has reached the limit of its design. That suggests a far larger problem for Liberals then the mere weakness of a Kerry candidacy. To a substantial extent, Kerry is a proxy for an abstract candidate called 'Anybody But Bush'. The failure to get maximum acceleration when the Left needs it most could indicate that its traditional political instruments are losing traction. Celebrity endorsements, mainstream media support, favorable reviews from academia plus street events rooted in the old antiwar-civil rights movement -- the old winning combinations -- no longer have an overwhelming effect. That doesn't mean they have no effect. We will know whether Steven den Beste's long term trend lines are correct in a little over two weeks.

Mark Steyn remarks,

That's the difference: Bush believes America needs to shape events in the world; Kerry doesn't and, even if he did, because he doesn't know how he'd want to shape them the events would end up shaping him. There would be lots of discussion. Frenchmen would be involved. And, in the end, President Kerry could claim that however things turned out was what he wanted all along because, on Saddam and Iran and North Korea and a whole lot more, who the hell can say with confidence what Kerry wants anyway? How it would all turn out is anybody's guess. And on November 2 America won't be in a mood to vote for a guess.

Steyn isn't the only one realizing this. Matthew Manweller, a political science professor at Central Washington University points out that we are at a once-in-a-generation crossroads. Additionally, some of us really mind that Kerry's been getting endorsements from Mahathir Mohamad and the Palestinian Authority.

My friends aren't the only democrats voting for Bush, it looks like. The Kerry Spot says that in a poll with a majority of Democrats, Bush and Kerry tied at 46 each in New Jersey.

Good news from Afghanistan, part 5

Despite concerns about holding elections in an uncertain security climate among people with no previous experience of democracy, the election was a success because ultimately the people of Afghanistan wanted it to be a success

Arthur explains what it took to bring about the elections, and has details on the country.

Jacques's museum not popular
Conveniently close to Jacques's Chateau de Bity, in the village of Sarran, you can visit "the state-funded museum built to display gifts showered on President Jacques Chirac by foreign dignitaries".

Not surprisingly, the crowds aren't knocking down the doors to get in.

the museum, opened in 2000, cost almost £5 million to build and lost more than £400,000 in a single year.

The restaurant's also losing money.

In the interest of fairness, the article says "all museums in the three departments of the region of Limousin" aren;t doing much better, except for the "museum of L'Évêché at Limoges, with its collection of 12th century enamels and masterpieces by the locally-born Renoir".

Jobs
Via The Jawa Report

The average unemployment rate during Clinton's first four years was 6.4%. Not spectacular, but the trend was good in that it steadily improved over time. The average unemployment rate for the G.W. Bush Presidency is (through Sept. 04) 5.5%--and still improving. Today's 5.4% unemployment number is also lower than the average for the past 30 years.

Gross domestic product increasing, unemployment rate at 5.4%.

McGreevey, walking right along
Yesterday morning the governor was walking downtown, undisturbed, with his young child. People respected his right to a quiet walk. While I certainly want him out of Drumthwacket, I wasn't going to say anything that might be interpreted as unpleasant when he's walking with his child on a nice Saturday morning.

That I save for today, after reading Qualifications don't count when McGreevey hires young friends. The Asbury Park Press (APP)investigated several McGreevey appointees

• Theodore Pedersen, 26, who works at the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, earning $56,595


• Al Harris Jr., who works for the governor as an advance man, earning $35,000


• Labor Commissioner Kevin McCabe, 32, who earns $141,000. McCabe was a best man at the governor's second wedding.

That report from Sandy McClure of the APP was followed by an investigation by Lilo Stainton which showed that

under McGreevey, more than $2.6 million in special pay was distributed to employees. Between 2002 and 2004, two of every five raises went to political appointees, who account for 10 to 15 percent of the work force.
There is a little-known outfit to do the rewarding. It's called the Salary Adjustment Commission, an ad hoc panel consisting of the personnel commissioner, the state treasurer and the management and budget director. It has no office or stationery or standing schedule.
Where are the Republican watchdogs on this? Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, of course. They're no place to be seen or heard, as usual. They don't want to rock the boat in the unlikely event they should ever be in power again.
Only one stood up to be counted. Assemblyman Paul DiGaetano of Essex County

NJ needs more DiGaetanos. In the meantime, the lobbying campaign on behalf of Kevin McCabe , the commissioner of labor who is fighting to keep his job, is backfiring.

The Needle exchange [program's] on the ropes: Opponents fight off panel vote leaving passage unlikely before McGreevey exits, and the debate does not fall along party lines. In an article about the McGreeveys's real estate quest, the NY Post says "members of the governor's administration are in ongoing negotiations with the New Jersey Treasury Department to determine how large McGreevey's transition budget will be."

Yes, but, is he going?

UNScam today
“Conflicts-of-Interest-R-Us”: Kofi Annan uses the Iraqi people’s money to investigate the Oil-for-Food fiasco.

the U.N.-authorized investigation into Oil-for-Food, the "independent inquiry" headed by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, will be funded with money left over in the administrative account of...Oil-for-Food.

Just about now this is the thought that pops to mind, but I digress. Claudia Rosett continues,

That's bad enough. The other problem with Annan's plan is that all Oil-for-Food money flowed from the oil wells of Iraq and was meant to bring aid to the Iraqi people. Any leftover funds belong by rights to the Iraqis, to serve their needs — not those of the U.N. So why should Annan use the Iraqi people's money to pay for an inquiry into an Iraq-relief program that under U.N. management became the biggest bungle in the history of humanitarian relief?

Claudia Rosett also has an article on how Saddam, Syria Colluded Under U.N. Watch.

Nine raisins a day keep Teresa at bay, updated

From the looks of it, Kerry's been folowing his wife's advice and eats nine raisins to stay nimble: “You get some gin and get some white raisins — and only white raisins — and soak them in the gin for two weeks,” she said. “Then eat nine of the raisins a day.” She calls this “a highly effective” remedy for arthritis, and there were two doctors in the house that backed her up:

Despite the laughter, Dr. Steven Phillips, director of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Nevada quickly supported the prescription.

Phillips, on stage with Heinz Kerry as part of the panel, said sulfur and sulfides found in grapes are increased by the alcohol and could perhaps alleviate joint pain.

Dr. Michael Gerber, a noted homeopathic doctor in Reno, also said the formula has merit.

No one specified how much gin it'll take for the arthritic to feel no pain. The campaign remains true to itself, though, since, having a candidate for VP who made his fortune with junk science, now the proposed first lady also touts junk science.

In slightly more serious business, Betsy comments that Teresa's pretending to release her tax information. Tax Prof Blog points out that Ms. Heinz Kerry released just the front two pages of Form 1040, as did Senator John & Elizabeth Edwards. Teresa can afford a lot of raisins, though,

No information was provided about how much income was earned by trusts of which she is the beneficiary. If the trusts are as large as reported - and the Kerry campaign has not challenged the billion dollar estimate - then even a modest 5 percent return would have generated $50 million of income, 10 times what was on the two pages released by Ms. Heinz Kerry. A statement released by the Kerry campaign noted that income taxes are paid directly by the Heinz family trust, in addition to taxes that Ms. Heinz Kerry pays.

Apparently Ms Heinz Kerry, whose tax returns identify her only as Teresa Heinz will get $247,933 or so in tax refunds. She elected to apply the overpayment to this year's income tax, rather than getting a refund check sent in the mail.

While all of this makes for good blogging material, I can't help but think that a Kerry administration will only lead the country to one thing:


Udpate, Sunday Oct. 17 With the candidate still wearing his Col. Mustard jacket (in tune with other condiments), the Kerry campaign continues its current produce theme. Mercifully, no footballs appear to have been tossed, at least while in the presence of photographers.