MARK STEYN’S LAST PRE-ELECTION COLUMN is up.

UNHINGED: The Beeb asked its audience “What is your reaction to the [bin Laden] tape and its message?” Whoo boy. Britain’s Eric the Unread points out that way too many of those polled are wallowing in conspiracy theory-riddled bollocks.

A KERREY GEOGRAPHY FUMBLE IN OHIO: Here. “How inconvenient that people who actually live in or around Galena actually exist! Did you not know that you were intended to be a mere rhetorical frill? Since when do figures of speech send email?” Heh.

CBS OVERPLAYS ITS HAND, and drives another voter into the Bush camp.

UPDATE: And, though I don’t think CBS is to blame, Dale Amon is announcing for Bush, too:

It really came down to a no-brainer though. I have voted for a Republican for President for the first time in my life. I don’t agree with George Bush on many issues, but I do indeed agree with him on the war and the war cabinet is one I quite like. There is a minor plus that all the right people are totally off the wall and over the top insane about the prospect of him winning.

Okay, maybe CBS did figure in somewhere.

BELDAR LOOKS AT politicians and their secrets.

UPDATE: Hmm. Compare these transcripts with this report and Beldar’s double standard is emphasized.

OCTOBER SURPRISE: A new Kerry radio ad using Osama’s words? Heh.

THE BELMONT CLUB rounds up news on Fallujah.

JOYCE MALCOLM CONTRASTS self-defense in Britain and America.

I SHOULD HAVE LINKED THIS BEFORE, but as I am an idiot understandably absent-minded professor, I forgot. But here’s my review of Neal Stephenson’s new novel, The System of the World.

JIHAD TV: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT: At least some people took a look at the uncut and unrated version of Osama bin Laden’s latest episode of Jihad TV. Niles Lethem at the New York Post has the details.

Officials said that in the 18-minute long tape — of which only six minutes were aired on the al-Jazeera Arab television network in the Middle East on Friday — bin Laden bemoans the recent democratic elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence involved with it.

On the tape, bin Laden also says his terror organization has been hurt by the U.S. military’s unrelenting manhunt for him and his cohorts on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

A portion of the left-out footage includes a tirade aimed at President Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, claiming the war in Iraq is purely over oil.

The tape also sparked some concern that an attack aimed at disrupting Tuesday’s election may be planned.

IT’S A HALLOWEEN ROUNDUP over at BlogCritics.

MORE UPSTANDING BEHAVIOR AT THE UNITED NATIONS:

A senior UN official was cleared of sexual harassment earlier this year because the secretary general rejected the verdict of an internal watchdog. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers, 65, a former Dutch prime minister, escaped censure in July when Kofi Annan dismissed a complaint.

But a revised report issued by UN watchdogs on Thursday revealed that investigators supported the allegation.

I’m shocked.

TEARS FOR TERRORISTS: At the BBC.

BOB KERREY’S DEFENSE OF JOHN KERRY ON “MEET THE PRESS.” Read the whole transcript. Overall, it was a bumbling performance, but let me point out two things he said. First:

One thing we know about Osama bin Laden, his whereabouts, he’s not in Iraq. By the way, for the American people, this guy is a mass murderer. You know, he’s Jeffrey Dahmer times a thousand. So nobody should listen to him with any sympathy. Nobody should listen to him and try to make their decision about who they’re going to vote for based upon what he says. We need to track this guy down and arrest him or kill him, one of the two.

This is the old view that bin Laden is a criminal — like Dahmer, but with more victims — who needs to be arrested. Of course, this chimes with recent statements of John Kerry’s.

Second:

MR. RUSSERT: George Bush by going into Iraq has removed Saddam Hussein, has eliminated hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions, and if John Kerry was president, Saddam Hussein may still very well be in power.

MR. KERREY: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: So how can he criticize the president for having munitions that are missing?

MR. KERREY: Well, the problem is 400 tons of HMX and RDX are now in the hands of terrorists and they weren’t before. That’s the central point. Look, I supported the war in Iraq and still do, still believe it was the right thing to do. But, boy, I’m telling you this president tested my support for that war when he stands the Iraqi army down and now has our military over there acting as a police force and border security. You can’t sustain that, Tim. It’s become unpopular.

I was in Galena, Ohio, down in the southeastern part of Ohio. They don’t give a damn about the war in Iraq. They’re terrified about the loss of their job, health care, their pensions. That’s what’s bothering them and then wondering what we’re doing sending out Guardsmen over there to be a police force in Iraq.

I cried out in pain when Kerrey said “They don’t give a damn about the war in Iraq.” What a bunch of selfish louts Kerrey imagines the people of small town Ohio to be! In Galena, those people can’t even imagine the wider world. They’re all about “where’s my money .. where are my benefits?” I know how badly you want to win Ohio — really, Ohio is practically the whole game, now, isn’t it? — but in your eagerness to please them, you reveal your contempt for them!

UPDATE: (Posted by Glenn Reynolds) Several readers send emails like this one:

Mr. Kerrey needs to consult an atlas. Galena, Ohio is about 20 miles north of Columbus which is, the last time I checked, in the middle of the state. Also it is a bedroom community for Columbus with a lot of new homes starting in the $400,000 range.

p .s. I live in Columbus

I looked on MapQuest and, well, it’s true. It’s another “Lambert Field” gaffe.

ANOTHER UPDATE: (Althouse, here) How inconvenient that people who actually live in or around Galena actually exist! Did you not know that you were intended to be a mere rhetorical frill? Since when do figures of speech send email?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: (from Glenn Reynolds) Reader Barry Dauphin emails: “If the Dems can’t find Galena, how can they help find explosives in Iraq?”

AND ANOTHER UPDATE: (Althouse, again) I received an email suggesting that Kerrey had meant to say Gallia, which really is a place in southeastern Ohio. So I went back to my TiVo’d “Meet the Press,” and there really is no “n” in the town name he says. It’s “guh – LEE – uh” on the show, not “Galena” as in the transcript, so I don’t think this is a case of not getting the geography. I do stand by my original point, though, which is that he is assuming that people in a small town in Ohio are only concerned about their personal economic situation.

STILL MORE: (Still Althouse) More email came in from overnight, after I posted that “Gallia” update. I’m told it’s “GAL – yuh” — though I’m not positive I’m not being tricked into mispronouncing it so I’ll look like an outsider, which I am. One emailer, who called herself “a Buckeye” (and you know I’m a Badger), added: “Ohioans have strange ways of pronouncing towns, Versailles is ‘Ver-sales’ and Rio Grande is ‘Rye-oh Grande.’  It’s a secret way to weed out outsiders who speak with a forked tongue. … As a lifelong resident I can tell you we’re all united in one thing around here: we can’t wait for this election to be over so people like Bob Kerrey will stop pretending to care about anything other than our votes.”

A MUSICAL INTERLUDE: Stopped off at a place this afternoon and they were playing Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet — Having an Average Weekend, which you can hear a snatch of by following the link. They came to Knoxville several times about ten years ago, playing at the late, lamented Ella Guru’s. They rocked.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ENDORSES BUSH:

The News endorsed Clinton and Gore in the three races beginning with 1992, each time judging their domestic agendas in the best interests of the American people. But it is no longer Sept. 10th. The world has changed. And nowhere has it been more tragically altered than in New York. And nowhere are the stakes higher.

As the preeminent symbol of America, this city remains Ground Zero, primary target of Islamic radicals. How best to win the war against terror so the country and its leading city emerge from jeopardy is the overriding concern in the election. The News believes Bush offers the stronger hope in this urgent regard.

Tested severely by 9/11, Bush recognized it was not enough — it had never been enough — to treat Islamic terrorism as a criminal-justice matter, or just to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen. The President had two crucial insights: First, that rogue states were a grave threat in that they could provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists as a force multiplier. And, second, that the Mideast’s backward, repressed societies were generating virulent, homicidal hatred of the U.S. . . .

Kerry has promised to be tough on terror. His words are resolute — he will hunt down and kill terrorists — but they betray a skittishness about the exercise of American military power, conjuring up endless diplomacy before action while reducing the fight against Al Qaeda and cohorts to cell-by-cell skirmishing.

Forged in Vietnam, where he was both valorous and appalled by U.S. policy, Kerry has long been uncomfortable with the use of American might. Witness his senatorial votes against defense and intelligence spending proposals. And witness his vote in 1991 against giving the first President Bush authority to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, a step that was compellingly necessary to prevent Saddam from becoming a dominant force over the Mideast and its oil.

There’s no doubt that Kerry has become more realistic since then, but his votes for and against the war and his shifting campaign rhetoric raise grave doubts about what, exactly, a President Kerry would do in Iraq.

Indeed.

READER DAVID FROST emails that he used to not be able to figure out where I stood politically, and that he’s disappointed to see me abandoning ambiguity to support Bush. Well, Bush isn’t my ideal candidate, but elections are about making choices and being counted. I’ve chosen to support Bush because the Democrats have left me with no choice, given the importance I place upon the war. And I’m damned unhappy with them for doing that.

THE MOORE’S LAST SIGH?

HOLLYWOOD WOMEN VS. AFGHAN WOMEN: A photo essay from Jessica’s Well.

ANTICIPATORY RETALIATION posts a roundup of U.S. presidential election endorsements by Iraqi bloggers.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER WRITES on “Kerry’s Afghan Amnesia:”

Within days of Sept. 11, the clueless airhead president that inhabits Michael Moore’s films and Tina Brown’s dinner parties had done this: forced Pakistan into alliance with us, isolated the Taliban, secured military cooperation from Afghanistan’s northern neighbors, and authorized a radical war plan involving just a handful of Americans on the ground, using high technology and local militias to utterly rout the Taliban.

President Bush put in place a military campaign that did in two months what everyone had said was impossible: defeat an entrenched, fanatical, ruthless regime in a territory that had forced the great British and Soviet empires into ignominious retreat. Bush followed that by creating in less than three years a fledgling pro-American democracy in a land that had no history of democratic culture and was just emerging from 25 years of civil war.

This is all barely remembered and barely noted. Most amazing of all, John Kerry has managed to transform our Afghan venture into a failure — a botched operation in which Bush let Osama bin Laden get away because he “outsourced” bin Laden’s capture to “warlords” in the battle of Tora Bora.

Outsourced? The entire Afghan war was outsourced. How does Kerry think we won it? How did Mazar-e Sharif, Kabul and Kandahar fall? Stormed by thousands of American GIs? They fell to the “warlords” we had enlisted, supported and directed. It was their militias that overran the Taliban.

“Outsourcing” is a demagogue’s way of saying “using allies.” (Isn’t Kerry’s Iraq solution to “outsource” the problem to the “allies” and the United Nations?) . . . .

Once again, the senator’s position has evolved, to borrow the New York Times’ delicate term for Kerry’s many about-faces.

This election comes down to a choice between one man’s evolution and the other man’s resolution. With his endlessly repeated Tora Bora charges, Kerry has made Afghanistan a major campaign issue. So be it. Whom do you want as president? The man who conceived the Afghan campaign, carried it through without flinching when it was being called a “quagmire” during its second week and has seen it through to Afghanistan’s transition to democracy? Or the retroactive genius, who always knows what needs to be done after it has already happened — who would have done “everything” differently in Iraq, yet in Afghanistan would have replicated Bush’s every correct, courageous, radical and risky decision — except one. Which, of course, he would have done differently. He says. Now.

Ouch.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

U.S. employers probably added 175,000 workers to payrolls in October, the most in five months, while the unemployment rate held at a three-year low of 5.4 percent, the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists shows. . . .

Manufacturing, responding to increased third-quarter consumer demand and business spending on equipment, probably expanded in October, a report tomorrow is forecast to show. The Institute of Supply Management’s gauge of factory activity is forecast to hold at 58.5 in October. Readings above 50 signal expansion and the index has shown growth since May 2003.

I’m guessing this report won’t get much attention.

THE STRUGGLE OF IDEAS: Marc Danziger (aka Armed Liberal) fisks Richard Clarke and the Century Foundation. His blog Winds of Change is having technical difficulties so I agreed to host his essay at my place.

THE EMPTY THRONE: An election-eve message from Iraq, via The Mudville Gazette.

THE DEEP ROOTS OF BUSH-HATING. Larry Ribstein overcomes his recent reluctance to blog about politics to remind us that the virulent hatred for President Bush, which during the campaign has found expression in criticism of the war in Iraq, was well in place before the war. He sets out a long quote from a Michael Moore email sent out on September 12, 2001. Moore wrote:

In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms race — you name it, and Baby Bush has blown it all. . . . .

Ah, I remember on the morning of September 11th being told by one of my colleagues that the attacks were a response to our withdrawal from the Durban conference on racism. Living in Madison for the last twenty years, I’d grown used to hearing strong left-wing opinion without verbally reacting, but that was the moment when I started to say no. It wasn’t a decision I made, but purely instinctive revulsion that this was someone’s first assessment of the events of that terrible day.

What the Iraq war has done, Ribstein suggests, is to give the extreme left an issue that works in discussions with more moderate voters. But I would note that the extreme left lost the candidate it wanted in the primaries. Even among the Democrats, a more moderate position was sought, and Kerry got the nomination. Kerry has made a mush of his positions over the months by trying to keep the extreme left segment of the voters, and though he lost me by doing this, I still am somewhat sympathetic to the problem he faced, which is pretty similar to the problem Bush faces on his extreme right. Like Ribstein, I hope Bush wins and I hope, if he does, the Bush haters settle down. But, by the same token, I hope that if Kerry wins, the Kerry haters settle down. There is difficult work ahead for whoever wins, and he’s going to need our support. I think reasonable, moderate, sensible people are in the great majority in this country, and passionate as things may feel as the election comes down to the wire, when the election is over, we’ll be paying a lot less attention to overheated windbags like Moore.