Archive for October, 2004

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST IS RELEASED FROM THE HOSPITAL, according to this report, which quotes Justice Clarence Thomas saying he expects the Chief back “as unforgiving as ever,” the Court being “a place where people work as if they’re paid by the hour.”

JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN: Ever wonder what the skulls of the candidates look like? Well, now you know.

DEPARTMENT OF NONSENSE: So Osama has released a new video in which he harshes on Bush:

“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,” bin Laden said, referring to Bush’s visit to a school when the attack occurred.

Just goes to show, you get a little nutty when you spend too much time living in a cave.

A NEW BIN LADEN VIDEO AIRS ON AL-JAZEERA. But you can’t tell from this early report whether there was any material in his statement proving it is a recently made video. There’s also nothing about how sickly he looked.

UPDATE: Now, we have a longer story complete with a screen-grab photo showing OBL — or someone who looks like him — holding up his index finger in lesson-giving style. There is a mention of John Kerry as well as George Bush, which provides some basis for guessing when the tape was made.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Is this an OBL effect?

THE AFTERMATH OF THE KERRY VISIT TO MADISON. You might be picturing a hot political environment here in Madison today, but you would be wrong. I just walked down Bascom Hill, through the Library Mall, and up State Street, and I saw no political activity whatsoever. I started looking even for buttons and stickers and saw just one backpack with a Kerry sticker. There are lots of young people here today. For one thing, the weather is very warm, in the 70s, and people are out and about in sandals and tank tops. For another thing, it’s the big Halloween weekend, which is a major event drawing many people to Madison. I don’t hear people talking about politics on the street or in the restaurants and cafés. Well, for that matter, even at the rally yesterday, I didn’t hear the kids in the crowd talking about politics. The streets are full of young people today, but I think they are in a Halloween-partying frame of mind. To me, the college kids don’t seem that political.

I’m blogging this in a restaurant, where I just opened a fortune cookie that reads: “Be patient, you will hear comforting news.” I’m sitting at a table by the second floor windows, and I’m just starting to see some costumes mixed in with the street clothes. Have fun kids! This may be the most important Halloween of your lifetime. And don’t break anything!

THOSE NEOCONS! Now they’re giving people shingles. Way to go, neocons.

HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: David Hogberg takes issue with the notion that electing John Kerry would force him and his party to take the terror threat seriously. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and even tough guy Ronald Reagan under-reacted. He argues with Andrew Sullivan in particular. (I do not mean to pick on Sullivan. I know where he’s coming from. I made the same argument a month ago myself.)

REVOLUTION CALLING: Iran Press News reports that more than 150 anti-government protests, strikes, and riots took place in Iran in the second half of September and the first half of October. That’s an average of more than five per day. 20 involved violent street battles with Iran’s “disciplinary forces.” A government office in Ramsar was attacked by armed gunmen.

DO I HAVE TO DRAW YOU A PICTURE? IMAO draws you a whole set of pictures to explain who to vote for. Alternatively, there’s this audio.

FRENCH DOCTORS think Yasser Arafat may have leukemia.

A U.S. ARMY OFFICER told Fox News that one of his 3rd Infantry Division teams moved 250 tons of material, including explosives, from the al Qa Qaa facility in April 2003.

TWO BUSHBABIES. Here and here.

UPDATE: I’ve removed two updates with bad links. Sorry. Hope that didn’t violate any Instapundit standards and practice!

JOHN KERRY has a new constituency: Underpants gnomes.

MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY!!! One by one, the undecided voters in my family have fallen, two to Bush and one to none of the above. I’ve lingered, though. I know that few people believed this, but this wasn’t some stunt; I’ve honestly been undecided. A couple of times I came {imagine two fingers pressed together} this close to deciding for Kerry, on the grounds that Bush is a pigheaded incompetent; one time I decided I was going Bush, because Kerry is a rank opportunist and a multilateralist naif. But then something has always pulled me back into the battleground of indecision. I’ve been here before; I voted for Gore in 2000 at the last minute, and then switched my allegiance during the Florida Ballot Wars. What can I say? I’m a flip-flopper nuanced.

But now I’ve decided. You can read the endorsement at my blog (where you can comment), or click for an extended entry. As you can see, I was up into the wee-sma hours writing this, so be kind on any grammatical errors or typos you may find.

One more thing: though I’ve decided who to vote for, it wasn’t an easy choice, and I won’t be too jubilant if he wins, nor downcast if his opponent comes in. Like all Americans (I hope), I’ll be wishing whoever wins the best of luck in Iraq and a rising economic tide to lift all boats.

(more…)

WHAT HAS ARAFAT GOT? Medpundit thinks cancer, with liver metastes. I have absolutely no medical qualifications whatsoever, but I also thought cancer when I saw him, from his emaciated face and bloated belly. And he looks . . . small . . . the way dying people do. I think he may be close to the end.

PHOTO FINISH: A reader emails the following:

If you review the pictures on the KSTP web site that has the ABC video everyone is using you can see a very clear picture of a seal with its number (#144322). The PDF document of the UN inspections available show the numbers of the seals and none of them have that number. Therefore, it is clear that the bunkers that ABC videoed were not the ones that held the HMX the UN inspected.

I’m more inclined to trust a news organisation than a UN bureaucracy, but its certainly worth investigating.

UPDATE: A colleague points out that the seal in question is just a sample, not one of the ones that’s supposed to be at the site. Mystery explained.

BUTTONS. Megan and Michael aren’t here yet, and I’ve got to get my notes together for my CivPro2 class, which means I’ve got to start settling my mind around the topic of supplemental jurisdiction. So let me leave this for you, dear Instapundit readers. It’s a collection of buttons displayed in the window of a shop on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin:

DEALING WITH THAT DRAFT RUMOR. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld writes:

To my knowledge, in the time I have served as secretary of Defense, the idea of reinstating draft has never been debated, endorsed, discussed, theorized, pondered, or even whispered by anyone in the Bush administration.

But are the people who believe the rumor about the draft going to believe Rumsfeld? I’d like to think people are getting savvier about political manipulation all the time. But I guess then you have to be skeptical of Rumsfeld as well as the people who are selling the draft rumor. Who knows what force drives people down one decisional path or another? I’m glad no one really knows how people decide who and what to believe. It make it harder to manipulate them. That the human mind is a mystery is one of the great safeguards of democracy.

UPDATE: Or is the mystery about to be unlocked?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Several people emailed me a link to this lame Tom Harkin piece, aimed at Minnesota students. But this is the email-of-the-day on the draft, I think:

Short of a hot WWIV in which our borders are overrun with hordes of enemy combatants, there will be no draft and conscription of “cannon fodder”! My husband works very high-level force reconfiguration issues for the Army and I can PROMISE you there is no talk of a military draft. A draft is the last thing our professional armed forces need and want. Draftees are a tremendous drag on the system, training and discipline issues are just for starters, and the military has studied for years how important domestic political goodwill is essential for supporting military ops and campaigns. Drafting unqualified and unhappy warm bodies into the military would degrade our readiness to a tragic degree, and our military from the top brass down to Privates knows this. Viscerally. Remember ‘Nam?

Today, we have the best armed forces in the solar system, with motivated, highly qualified, and super competent personnel. Yes, they are stretched in our current engagements, but not to the breaking point. Redeployments, force reconfigurations and hardware systems coming on line will alleviate and strengthen any strain. Also, re-enlistment rates are quite good. The only people “asking” for a draft are liberal Democrat scaremongers in Congress who have cravenly written up some draft bills that are essentially dead but which are being used to trick our young folk into believing they are at risk of being conscripted. The effect of what they are doing is also to treat even voluntary service as if it were something to be avoided. Dems don’t have to say this directly, only to raise the specter of military time as being one of privation and death.

There is no equivalency between Rumsfeld’s denial about the draft and authoritative word on this issue and that of unethical Democrat partisans using cheap fear tactics in an important election. This situation alone, their unbelievably irresponsible and dishonest abuse of our military and its planners, would compel me never to put Kerry and his DNC in charge of our armed forces. They have gone and are going a lie too far. They don’t care the damage they do to military morale or to citizens’ trust in our military and their policy. And they’re doing this while our amazing men and women are in harm’s way on our account and while they are accomplishing all sorts of “progressive” missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, such as allowing for democratic elections and more civil liberties and building infrastructure in countries that had suffered under regimes deadly dangerous to us and to their own people.

Oh, I forgot. “Progressive” these days doesn’t mean in support of liberation, democracy, security and prosperity for those living under oppressors and madmen opposed to the US. My bad!

TWO STRATEGIES AT THE KERRY RALLY IN MADISON YESTERDAY, as reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. First, campaign workers swirled through the crowd (I saw them) asking who has a cell phone.

Thousands of cards asking people to call and urge others to vote for Kerry were passed out. The cards included a script that people could read, and the crowd was asked to make the rally “the biggest phone bank in political history.” But not many people appeared to be making calls.

This is an interesting study in human behavior. I think people doing a scripted phone call don’t like to be standing around in public being seen and heard. I’m not surprised people weren’t eager to do this. I can also see why campaign people got fired up thinking it would be great: all those kids have cell phones … what if they all called from the big rally? Some high tech ideas just don’t take off. And I wonder if the campaign people realize how sick of phone calls from them at least this person of Wisconsin is.

Here’s the second strategy:

People … were urged to go from the rally to the nearby Madison city clerk’s office to vote early. However, no major surge of people appeared to be doing that. Early and absentee voting has been brisk in Madison and elsewhere in the state. The clerk’s office said it would stay open until 8 p.m. Thursday to accommodate voters.

So that one wasn’t so popular either? I guess part of the idea of early voting is to avoid lines, so when 80,000 people are urged to go over and vote, you’ve really lost the whole attraction. And remember, the crowd was urged to show up at 10 a.m. and the rally ended around 2 in the afternoon. Time to trudge over to another downtown location and stand around. No, maybe time to go get something to eat or do some studying. Yesterday was actually a big mid-term exam day here on the UW campus.

UPDATE: According to this report, fewer people showed up to vote in City Hall yesterday than came in the previous day.

MORE DRINK-RED-WINE ADVICE. Fine, I’m always open to that suggestion. Apparently, white wine makes it worse, and rosé is like running in place. Ah! What the hell? Don’t even go to the link. Just drink red wine. Scientists say it’s good for you. And get on with life. What’s to object to?

THE O’REILLY SETTLEMENT. Beldar has some intriguing speculations.

THEN AGAIN, those explosives at al Qa Qaa may have gone missing after Saddam’s regime fell. Here are some screen shots of videotape taken April 18, 2003, which may show the cache of explosives in question.

UPDATE: Or maybe not.

GET A PAPER ROUTE: Jim Rutenberg wrote an article for the New York Times about journalists spooked by “Internet writers.”

Journalists covering the campaign believe the intent is often to bully them into caving to a particular point of view. They insist the efforts have not swayed them in any significant way, though others worry the criticism could eventually have a chilling effect.

A chilling effect? Journalists, chill. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be an “Internet writer?” Do you really think we don’t get criticized, too? Come on. My blog has a comments section that on any given day dozens and even hundreds of people use to yell at me and at each other. Instapundit doesn’t have comments, but it does have email. I can’t even read it all, let alone answer it.

The blogosphere is not an entity. It’s a network. The political blogosphere has two halves. And those who inhabit different halves blast each other’s writing as often as they train their sights on the media.

When I was a kid I worked at a pizza joint. The manager liked to say “if you can’t work with people, get a paper route.” That’s great advice. It goes for adults, too. If you can’t take criticism you can always deliver the paper. You don’t have to write for it.