Atrios and Steve Soto at the Left Coaster and Chicago Progressive at the Daily Kos are recommending ways to put pressure on Sinclair and its TV stations in response to the plan to broadcast an anti-Kerry documentary next week.

I'm certainly in favor of angry letters and reminding these guys that we're free to take our TV watching elsewhere. But I wonder if there's really a chance we can stop the airing of the movie -- the Michael Powell FCC certainly isn't going to intercede on our behalf, and Sinclair has obviously made a corporate decision that being on Bush's good side is the best choice for the bottom line. And I have mixed feelings -- part of me wants to stop the broadcast, a 90-minute in-kind contribution to the Bush campaign disguised as news, but I wonder if stopping it, or trying to, would create the impression that (a) we're the side that silences people and/or (b) we're afraid that Kerry can't win if the movie is seen.

Whatever we do about Sinclair, I think we ought to be looking at the movie, the filmmaker, and the people behind the film.

I've told you that the filmmaker has been a journalistic whore for the Moonies, that he's a friend and sometime employee of Tom Ridge, and that the film can be tied directly to the Swift boat liars. But look at what seems to be the film's most damning charge -- that Kerry's words led directly to the torture of POWs. I alluded to this over the weekend, but in this Hardball transcript Phil Butler -- a POW for eight years -- says it's a crock:

PHIL BUTLER, FORMER PRISONER OF WAR:  Yes.  I was captured on April the 20th of 1965 and released on February the 12th of 1973, just a little short of eight years.  I‘m the eighth longest-held prisoner of war in Vietnam.  And I was in Camp Unity, which was the camp that was mentioned earlier, I think, after the San The raid, from November the 20th of 1970 to May the 25th of 1972.  During that time, I lived in room 2 of that camp with Ken Cordier (ph).  And next to me in room 3 were Paul Galante and Jim Warner for a while, and also, Bud Day (ph) and Robert Shoemaker (ph) were in room seven of that camp.

And I can assure you that in Camp Unity -- there were several hundred of us there --during all that time period, from 1970 up through May of 1972, we absolutely never heard of John Kerry.  And if John Kerry's name was used or mentioned in other camps, I can assure you that, certainly, in my opinion, John Kerry has absolutely no connection whatsoever either with anybody being tortured or with prolonging the war in any way, shape or form.

[CHRIS] MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you generically, Phil, did you ever experience as a POW the kind of threats that Mr. Warner suffered, where they said to you, We're going to try some of you guys after this war is over, we're going to execute some of you guys after this war, and then show that kind of material, show that kind of propaganda, which for them was propaganda, testimony from Jane Fonda or anybody in the anti-war movement?  Was anything like that ever done to you?

BUTLER:  No.  They never really used anybody in the anti-war movement to torture me.  I was tortured numerous times between 1965 and 1969, for which I received Purple Hearts and -- real Purple Hearts and two Silver Stars, and so on and so forth.  But other POWs have, as well...

MATTHEWS:  From the other POWs, sir, did you ever hear stories of them being told that testimony by people like John Kerry back home was threatening them or could be used against them in future war criminal trials?

BUTLER:  Absolutely not.  Absolutely not.  I did not know the name John Kerry until quite a while after I came home.

This is what we need to get out.

Also this, from an unfortunately muddled news story that preceded the Hardball conversation:

...[REPORTER DAVID] SHUSTER:  ... Kerry's testimony from 30 years ago is edited, making it seem he claimed to have witnessed heads and arms being cut off by U.S. soldiers, when, in fact, he always attributed those dramatic allegations to others.

As for the news conference, former senator Bob Dole was originally slated to join the veterans at the unveiling of the film, but he didn't appear.  Sources close to Dole say he changed his mind after learning the film was not just a project to praise former POWs but also a sharp attack on John Kerry.  And the Reserve Officers Association, which rented out the room, issued a statement saying their hospitality was not an endorsement of the film.

We need to talk about deceptive editing. We need to talk about why Dole and the Reserve Officers Association distanced themselves from the film. People who know the subject need to write about the movie -- the DVD is readily available -- and, if appropriate, pick it apart. If, as seems likely, this is a dishonest work, let's discredit it before it ever airs.

DUMB, IMPULSIVE, IMPETUOUS, CONSUMED WITH RAGE

As you may already know from this CNN story, the Bush campaign has rushed out an ad in response to an intelligent, thoughtful statement on terrorism by John Kerry that appeared in The New York Times Magazine:

"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance," Kerry said. "As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life."

The attack ad turns what Kerry said on its head and suggests that he now thinks terrorism is a "nuisance."

Can the ad be effective? Here it is. -- I can't tell. But my guess is no, and here's why: The Bush campaign, which ought to be called the Anger Management Tour, couldn't control its impulse to rush this ad out two days before the final debate. That means Kerry has nearly 72 hours to hone a reply to it in the forum where the line of attack will get the most exposure. You just know Bush is going to bring it up, regardless of the fact that this is the domestic-policy debate. And now Kerry should be able to see this pitch coming and hit it out of the ballpark.

If the Bushies thought this line of attack could be effective, why didn't they save it up and spring it on Kerry on Wednesday? Well, recall this New York Times story from August:

President Bush will accept his party's nomination in New York this week on the crest of a campaign that aides say reflects an unusual level of involvement from the president himself, particularly in driving attacks on Senator John Kerry that have characterized his re-election effort since the spring....

I think the president -- the guy with the biggest anger management problem in the administration -- wanted it out now.

For the hardcore GOP crowd -- talk radio, Ann Coulter, Fox News, Free Republic folks -- this is huge: Terrorism is not a law enforcement issue, dammit! But it's utterly bizarre that these folks get red in the face about this and then crow about arrests of suspected terrorists in Pakistan and Lackawanna. It's bizarre that on Monday they sneer at anyone who speaks favorably of using law enforcement against terrorism and then demand Patriot Act II on Tuesday. It's bizarre that they almost seem to be implying that working hard to dry up terrorist funding is a bad thing.

But remember that the Bushies are the hardcore GOP crowd. I think Frank Rich was right yesterday:

"I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience" is how Dick Cheney put it earlier this year....

But those who live by Fox News can die by Fox News. If you limit your diet to Fox and its talk-radio and blogging satellites, you may think that the only pressing non-Laci Peterson, non-Kobe, non-hurricane stories are "Rathergate" and the antics of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Your diet of bad news from Iraq is restricted, and Abu Ghraib becomes an over-the-top frat hazing. You are certain that John Kerry can't score in the debates because everyone knows he's an overtanned, overmanicured metrosexual. You reside in such an isolated echo chamber that you aren't aware that even the third-rated network news broadcast, that anchored by the boogeyman Dan Rather, draws 50 percent more viewers on a bad night than "The O'Reilly Factor" does on a great one (the Bush interview).

Eventually you become a prisoner of your own fiction and lose touch with reality.

Let's hope that's what's going on.

Bin Laden 'no longer top target'

Coalition commanders in Afghanistan have begun playing down the importance of Osama Bin Laden -- in sharp contrast to the statements made earlier this year that he would be caught by the end of 2004.

"From the Afghan point of view we don't want to focus too much on Bin Laden," said Major-General John Cooper, deputy commander of the American-led coalition forces.

"He is not necessarily the major player. He will be caught one day but his whereabouts today won't have a huge effect."

Cooper, the most senior British officer in Afghanistan, admitted that after three years of searching the hills and valleys of Afghanistan, the coalition forces had no idea where their other main target, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, is hiding. "We don’t even know which country he's in," he said....

--Times of London

******

Then he said, "Col. Birdwell, you are a hero, and we are going to get the guys who did this. This is not going to go unanswered." And he's been very true to his word in that.

--Colonel Robert Birdwell, victim of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, recounting a hospital encounter with President Bush in a WorldNetDaily interview published Sept. 11, 2003

Remember Karen Ryan? AP reports that she received even more of your tax money than you realized:

The Bush administration has promoted its education law with a video that comes across as a news story but fails to make clear the reporter involved was paid with taxpayer money.

The government used a similar approach this year in promoting the new Medicare law and drew a rebuke from the investigative arm of Congress, which found the videos amounted to propaganda in violation of federal law.

...The video includes a news story that features Education Secretary Rod Paige and promotes tutoring now offered under law.

The story ends with the voice of a woman saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." ...

The Education Department's video uses "the same exact mode of operation," said Nancy Keenan, education policy director at People for the American Way. The video encourages students to take advantage of tutoring and says that families give the idea an "A-plus."

"It's basically propaganda, not general information about a program," she said. "And it's portraying to the American public, via a video news release, that it's news." ...

Go here for the story from last March about the government sponsored "news" story, starring Ryan, that was meant to make everyone feel good about Bush's Medicare changes.

Oh, and because the Education Department apparently has even more money to throw around (despite the fact that it's not funding No Child Left Behind adequately), there's this:

The Education Department also has paid for rankings of newspaper coverage of the No Child Left Behind law, a centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda. Points are awarded for stories that say President Bush and the Republican Party are strong on education, among other factors....

Stories got five points each for positive messages, such as mentions that the law gives choices to parents and holds schools accountable.

Five points also went to stories that send a message that "The Bush Administration/the GOP is committed to education."

Stories lost five points for negative messages, including claims that the law is not adequately funded or is too tough on states....

******

What you've got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm.

--disgruntled ex-Bush administration official John DiIulio, on the administration's M.O.

TWO DEGREES OF SEPARATION, TOPS

So, about this anti-Kerry film that the Sinclair TV stations are going to broadcast in a couple of weeks -- a film Sinclair seems prepared to say is news, not political advocacy ... how many degrees of separation are there between the "newsman" who made the movie and the White House?

A hell of a lot fewer than six:

And speaking of homeland security, a former [Tom] Ridge confidant and administration official, Carlton Sherwood, is now executive vice president of the WVC3 Group, a well-connected anti-terrorism, security firm headquartered in Reston, VA. (www.wvc3.com). Sherwood directed then-Gov. Ridge's award-winning broadcast TV and radio operations in Harrisburg. Sherwood has been tapped to create and manage a new Fed website- www.firstresponder.gov-a key Bush Administration public outreach program directed to the more than 8 million police, fire, EMS and emergency management personnel nationwide. The new "professional" internet site, scheduled to go on-line later this year, will feature an array of training and educational components in addition to news and information tailored to the interests of the first responder community.

(That report is dated June 2003; www.firstresponder.gov is still not live.)

And there's this:

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
February 7, 2002
Remarks By Governor Ridge At National Press Club Luncheon
National Press Club Washington, D.C.

Governor Ridge: Well, thank you very much for that very kind introduction. I'm grateful for the opportunity to spend some time with you. I do have a few thoughts I would like to share with you, but two people who have been very close to me that -- one you recognized but I want to recognize him again, my friend, Sergeant Schaff (phonetic) from the Washington Times. John Fields and I have been friends for 20 years -- (applause). He'll be the first one to tell you, bet on a vet, right, John. Bet on a vet.

And the other Marine -- I do have a couple Marines that are friends. (Laughter.) Everybody ought to have a couple Marines as friends. Then your homeland would definitely be secure -- is Carlton Sherwood (phonetic), who headed up my commonwealth media services when I was privileged to serve the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. A decorated Vietnam veteran, a prizewinning journalist himself. So, Carlton, I would like you to stand up and be recognized. (Applause.)...

Ted Widmer reviews Kitty Kelley's The Family for The New York Times Book Review and reminds us that the Bushes are a real class act:

As president, Kelley says, [Bush the Elder] had an African statuette (male) in his private bathroom, and you can guess what anatomical protuberance he hung the toilet paper on.

Yikes.

*****

Widmer also notes that, according to Kelley, our current president "hung a Confederate flag in his prep school dorm room," and that W's grandfather, Prescott Bush, had

"pernicious habit of fooling" (which led him to concoct an extravagant tale of heroism in a publicized letter from the front in World War I....)

(Phony bravery? I'd say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, except for the fact that Prescott later apologized.)

From the New York Daily News, September 9, 2004:

Bush backers led by former Sen. Bob Dole fired back by unveiling a new anti-Kerry documentary called "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal."

In it, former Vietnam POWs Ken Courdier and Paul Galanti claim their captors used Kerry's anti-war statements against them. Courdier also appeared in the Swift Boat ads.

But in a Washington Post interview last month, ex-POW Phil Butler said Courdier and Galanti were "full of it." "We never heard a blooming thing about John Kerry while we were there," he said.

And yes, this film is directly connected to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

So, is anybody going to screen the DVD and do a reality check before Sinclair broadcasts it?

(If you don't know what this is in reference to, see my previous post or go here.)

Atrios is right -- this is pretty outrageous:

Conservative TV Group to Air Anti-Kerry Film

The conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes with TV, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War, network and station executives familiar with the plan said Friday....

Sinclair has told its stations — many of them in political swing states such as Ohio and Florida — to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," sources said. The film, funded by Pennsylvania veterans and produced by a veteran and former Washington Times reporter, features former POWs accusing Kerry — a decorated Navy veteran turned war protester — of worsening their ordeal by prolonging the war....

The company made headlines in April when it ordered seven of its stations not to air Ted Koppel's "Nightline" roll call of military dead in Iraq, deeming it a political statement "disguised as news content." ...

--L.A. Times

Y'know, it's a free country, and you're free not to watch anything, ever, on any of Sinclair's TV stations, or buy any product advertised on them.

The documentary was made by Carlton Sherwood. Here's a book he wrote a while back -- Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Sherwood let Moon's Unification Church exercise editorial control over the book, then lied about it, as Frontline noted in 1992:

Narrator: One week after talking to Regnery [publisher of Inquisition], FRONTLINE obtained a copy of a letter addressed to Sun Myung Moon. The letter was written by James Gavin, a Moon aide. Gavin tells Moon he reviewed the "overall tone and factual contents" of Inquisition before publication and suggested revisions. Gavin adds that the author "Mr. Sherwood has assured me that all this will be done when the manuscript is sent to the publisher." Gavin concludes by telling Moon, "When all of our suggestions have been incorporated, the book will be complete and in my opinion will make a significant impact.... In addition to silencing our critics now, the book should be invaluable in persuading others of our legitimacy for many years to come."

Narrator: Although he refused an on-camera interview, Carlton Sherwood told Frontline that the Unification Movement exerted no editorial control over his book.

Narrator: When we visited Gavin's office in McLean, Virginia, our request for an interview was refused.

I'll stop there. I'm sure this story will get uglier the more we look into it.

Over at The Corner at National Review Online, the bloggers may have persuaded themselves by now that Bush was the hands-down winner, but they weren't exactly dancing in the aisles last night:

EMBRYOS, JUDGES [Rick Brookhiser]
By not being sufficiently moral, Bush gave a weak answer on embryos. And does he expect Dred Scot to be relitigated?
Posted at 10:27 PM

LOTS OF READERS [Jonah Goldberg]
Keep telling me Bush is winning, kicking butt etc. I just don't see that. If you imagine you're a swing voter it's at best a draw so far, I think.
Posted at 10:07 PM

THE STARBUCKS PLOT [Rod Dreher]
OK, who dosed Bush with the double extra-shot latte? This is not going well. Not. Going. Well. I'm beginning to think that it might be a good idea to call up Berlitz and brush up on my college French. If Bush doesn't get it together, it could come in handy over the next four years.
Posted at 09:51 PM

SAD TO SAY [John Hillen]
Kerry is rolling. He just rolled in the deficit issue on the back of the Medicare question. He’s systematically – and smoothly running through his repertoire. The President is on the back foot but has plenty of time to come back if he can pull it together.
Posted at 09:49 PM

"WHY ARE WE SAFE?" [Michael Graham]
This is the test question for Bush. He must win this one. He got it done, but just barely.
Posted at 09:45 PM

TGIF [Ramesh Ponnuru]
is all I can say.
Posted at 09:43 PM

NICE POINT RE ALLIANCES [Rick Brookhiser]
But W should have mentioned Australia. Kerry's Missouri response was effective.
Posted at 09:43 PM

WHY DOES BUSH... [Jonah Goldberg]
Sound like he's angry at the guy asking about making drugs cheaper?
Posted at 09:41 PM

KERRY TONIGHT [Jonathan H. Adler]
Kerry is clear, articulate and forceful. If all I knew about him was what I saw tonight, I'd be a big fan. The key for the Bush camp will be to point out that the WashU Kerry is not the same person as Senator Kerry or Democratic primary Kerry.
Posted at 09:41 PM

"Unmanned Ve-hick-uls" [Rick Brookhiser]
Come and listen to mys tory bout a man named Jed,

Poor mountaineer barely kep his family fed...
Posted at 09:36 PM

ANOTHER MISS [Rick Brookhiser]
Bush doesn't bring up the bribed frogs yet again. A constraint of power? Also, his answers seem too short.
Posted at 09:27 PM

INTERNATIONAL POPULARITY [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Bush did alright on that one, although that opening line about his decisions causing people to misunderstand American values was not so good. Kerry's hitting him hard on the no-exit-strategy stuff right now, though, even though it has little to do with the question.
Posted at 09:22 PM

IRAN, NORTH KOREA, IRAQ [John Derbyshire]
The President did not answer the question, which is on a lot of people's minds: Why was Iraq so much more invasion-worthy than Iran or North Korea?
Posted at 09:20 PM

UGH [Ramesh Ponnuru]
I don't think Bush has even made the flip-flop charge stick tonight, and it's practically incontrovertible. Kerry, meanwhile, has hit Bush unanswered on jobs, and health care--also on lying, although Bush gave an implicit answer. Kerry's barely been answered on rushing to war. Bush mentioned "$87 billion" without explaining the reference. So far, so bad.
Posted at 09:16 PM

WELL THIS ISN'T A GREAT START [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Awfully reminiscent of the last debate, no?
Posted at 09:08 PM

OK, I'll admit, I cherry-picked these. The NRO folks still hate Kerry and love Bush. But I'm not sure they think Bush is the best possible representative of Bushism.

Well, I think it was a wash, or a slight win for Kerry, mostly because of Bush's relentless exasperation. Both drifted away from the questions -- if I were an average-Joe undecided, I think I might still be groping for a candidate. That's fine -- I think (I hope) it's going to be hard to spin this as a Bush win, which is all I ask. Kerry still looks presidential. Bush still looks as if he can't control his temper.

...I just heard Chris Matthews on MSNBC saying neither candidate cited a particular case of an actual human being in talking about stem-cell research. That's utter bullshit. Kerry talked about an ordinary citizen he met at a campaign appearance (and about Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve). Does Matthews even listen to these things before bloviating about them?*

...Linda Douglass on ABC just called Bush "a hot personality" and Kerry "a cool personality" -- in a McLuhanesque sense, apparently. Go figure. She thinks both appealed to their partisans. On ABC, at least, it's a wash, I think.

...George Will also called it a draw.

Meanwhile, as I type this, Kerry's up 69%-29% in Yahoo's poll.

...and ABC's poll is up: Kerry 44%, Bush 41%.

...at Free Republic they're complaining that Fox isn't acclaiming Bush's mastery in this debate ("I think it is getting time to boycott FNews"). They're delighted with MSNBC's coverage, however.

...summary of the views of NBC's panel of undecideds: a draw.

I'm going out on a limb and summing up the conventional wisdom as: a draw.

--------

*Or are "this fellow" and Michael J. Fox the same person?

...you know, I was at a forum with Michael J. Fox the other day in New Hampshire, who's suffering from Parkinson's, and he wants us to do stem cell, embryonic stem cell.

And this fellow stood up, and he was quivering. His whole body was shaking from the nerve disease, the muscular disease that he had.

And he said to me and to the whole hall, he said, "You know, don't take away my hope, because my hope is what keeps me going." (transcript)

It doesn't matter. Michael J. Fox is a person.

He's so angry -- the same tone as always: I wouldn't have to explain this to you if you weren't an idiot. Is that really going to get him reelected?

SEAN HANNITY: DELIVER ME FROM TOURIST CLASS

Phony Fox "regular guy" Sean Hannity canceled an upcoming appearance at Washington University in St. Louis because he wasn't satisfied with the available selection of private planes:

Since he can't fly in style, Sean Hannity says he won't come to St. Louis at all.

After promising to counter Michael Moore's speech this Friday, the conservative commentator pulled out of the deal less than a week before his scheduled appearance-but reportedly asked that the media not be informed of his motivations for the decision.

Hannity cited personal reasons for his cancellation, said law student Ruth Hollander after speaking with the right-wing pundit over the phone yesterday.

Hannity, Hollander said, requested a private jet to fly him to St. Louis for the speech, but then rejected "several" different jets offered by a private donor. He told Hollander about a "bad experience" with the prominent company that had manufactured all the jets offered for his trip....

"We've really put our hearts and souls into getting this thing taken care of," said Hollander. "The amount of time that we've spent every single day for the last week working on this thing non-stop. It's been such a huge time commitment for two people that don't have a lot of time to waste on this."

Also on their to-do list: canceling the four off-duty police officers Hannity had requested for extra security...

I particularly like this because Hannity was invited specifically to balance Michael Moore, who's often chided for talking populist talk while living a millionaire's life. (Alas, I can't find the old New York Press column -- columns? -- in which Russ Smith, aka Mugger, said Moore had a reputation for insensitivity to the people who work for him.)

Link via Hard Attack News.

Current projection at Electoral-Vote.com: Kerry 280, Bush 239.

Nice.

I was afraid of this yesterday, but now I know Kerry will be fighting an uphill battle tonight -- the press already knows the story it wants to write, and that story is "Bush Bounces Back."

Yesterday we had The New York Times reacting to Bush's same-as-always-only-nastier stump speech as if it were a profound artistic breakthrough; now we have USA Today all but declaring Bush tonight's winner in advance:

Debate preview: Bush might have an edge in St. Louis

He's no Oprah, and his audiences are supporters who don't usually ask tough questions, but President Bush has an aptitude for the town hall format that will be used in Friday night's debate with Sen. John Kerry.

In 19 question-and-answer sessions this year, Bush has parried with a few hostile questioners, showcased his easygoing nature and created some poignant moments and laughs.

He seems comfortable roaming a stage, riffing on his views instead of delivering his standard speech. Friday night's rules allow Bush to move around the stage and respond to the voters who will pose the questions. "Being close up where he can interact with people directly" may give him an advantage, says John McAdams, a political science professor at Marquette University....

It's all like that -- pure, unadulterated praise for his skill in forums like this with no attempt at "balance." And those "few hostile questioners" he's "parried with"? Here's the example given:

On Sept. 7 in Sedalia, Mo., a questioner said her daughter, a fifth-grade teacher, was "very concerned" about how his education policies affect learning-disabled children. Bush said his policy is flexible and added, "But I will tell you something, I'm not going to yield when it comes to assessment."

"Very concerned"! A questioner hit him with "very concerned," and he had a comeback! What a man!

The USA Today piece is just outrageously slanted. But the feeling I'm getting is that the press wants to call this election a seesaw battle, and will do so starting at 10:30 tonight unless Bush, well, does as badly as he did last time around.

Of course, he might just do that. It seems to me that all Bush has done in public appearances of late is belittle Kerry, in an unstatesmanlike and nasty manner, and tonight he'll probably want to do the same thing out of force of habit, but it will be hard to get away with that with Kerry in the room. Belittling an opponent is easy when the opponent isn't there; when he is there, it seems rude and mean-spirited. And Kerry can respond -- he can be the grown-up. And if he has his facts straight, he can win again on points.

A lot of people do like Bush, alas -- as I noted a couple of days ago, the New York Times/CBS poll has his likability at 61%. (Audience members will titter when, inevitably, Bush says "flip-flop.")* Also, there's just enough in the Duelfer report about Saddam's ability to skirt sanctions and buy (non-WMD) weapons for Bush to put Kerry a bit on the defensive.

Kerry will have an answer for that, though, undoubtedly. And Kerry surely will press Bush to explain why he insists the world is safer in the wake of the terror attack in Egypt and the beheading of Kenneth Bigley, and press him on today's lousy job numbers and ever-rising energy prices.

But the press wants Bush to win. Kerry will have to score a knockout to be declared the winner.

*****

UPDATE: Michael Berube has an advance transcript of MSNBC's post-debate analysis.

*****

*However, a new Time survey has Kerry ahead of Bush on likeability. Thanks to Raw Story for the link.

Also via Skimble: Is it odd that George W. Bush has postponed his annual medical check-up this year?

If depleted uranium is just one of those non-issues silly lefties like to whine about, why was the child of a DU-poisoned U.S. soldier recently born with a severely deformed left hand? The non-liberal Washington Times reported the story last week; the New York Daily News (which arranged the test of the sick soldier for DU) has more. (The News notes that the soldier and his wife "have seen photos of Iraqi babies born with deformities that are eerily similar.")

(Link via Skimble.)

SADDAM WAS THE GREATEST DANGER. SADDAM IS IN A PRISON CELL. THE WORLD IS SAFER NOW.

...Israel's intelligence chief told Cabinet ministers Friday that the bombings at Egyptian resorts were most likely carried out by al-Qaida.

The intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, made the assessment at an emergency Cabinet meeting convened a day after the deadly bombings, which wounded more than 120.

...Israel's deputy defense minister, Zeev Boim, told Israel's Army Radio that Palestinian militants apparently were not involved and he suspected al-Qaida affiliates: "On the face of things, this is different from what we are familiar with from Palestinian terrorist groups."

...Contributors to Islamic Web sites praised the attacks and linked them to a recent video said to have been issued by al-Qaida's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri.

That video, shown by Al-Jazeera television Oct. 1, called for militants to organize and attack countries that had given Israel "means of survival." The tape also urged holy warriors to fight Israelis and Americans before they enter Egypt....

--AP

A British man held hostage for more than three weeks in Iraq has been killed by his captives, television and news agency reports said today.

A "Reuters witness" saw a videotape of Kenneth Bigley's captors beheading him with a knife, the news agency reported. Abu Dhabi Television, quoting "informed" sources in Iraq, said Mr. Bigley was killed by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian allied with Al Qaeda....

--New York Times

Oh, and read the rest of that Times article. The horror in Egypt is disturbingly similar to just another day in Iraq:

In the insurgent stronghold of Falluja, an American airstrike Thursday night killed 11 people and wounded 17 at a wedding party, with women and children among the casualties, according to a doctor quoted today by Reuters.

The American military said the "precision strike" had hit a safe house being used by the network of Mr. Zarqawi.

Insurgents fired two rockets into the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel in central Baghdad on Thursday night, setting rooms ablaze and forcing the temporary evacuation of scores of journalists and foreign contractors working on reconstruction projects in Iraq.

No deaths were reported but the attack sparked chaos, as American soldiers, security contractors and police officers opened fire from hotel checkpoints and rooftops. Red tracer rounds arced through the night sky as guests, many stumbling from their rooms dazed and wearing flak jackets, scrambled next door to the Palestine Hotel. Broken glass littered the lobby floor and thick smoke filled the area....

This afternoon, Atrios and other bloggers linked this suspiciously timed story:

The Education Department is advising school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia....

The advice is based on lessons learned from the Russia siege. But there is no specific information indicating a terrorist threat to any schools or universities in the United States, [Deputy Education Secretary Eugene ] Hickok said.

Now ABC has this:

Schools in six states in particular are being watched closely based on information uncovered by the U.S. military in Baghdad this summer, law enforcement and education officials told ABC News.

A man described as an Iraqi insurgent involved in anti-coalition activities had downloaded school floor plans and safety and security information about elementary and high schools in the six states, according to officials.

School officials in Fort Myers, Fla.; Salem, Ore.; Gray, Ga.; Birch Run, Mich.; two towns in New Jersey; and two towns in California have been told to increase security in light of the discovery.

Officials in the New Jersey towns, Franklinville and Rumson, were notified by counterterrorism officials last month that their schools had been possibly singled out....

And William Matthews, superintendent of schools in Jones County, Ga., sent a letter to parents, faculty and staff last week notifying them that security was being increased during the election season....

...though the information was recovered in July, it was not given urgency until the attack in Beslan....

Is it odd that nothing was said last summer, when the information was recovered (even to officials of the schools involved)? Was anything said around the time of Beslan siege, which was at the very beginning of September? When last month did the Jersey school districts get their notification? What about the others?

And, of course, we know that nothing was said to the general public until Kerry pulled up even with Bush in the polls.

And of the eight schools involved, five are in swing states. Curious? (And I can't help wondering where the California schools are -- given the fact that every state on California's border is a swing state.)

And the guy who downloaded the floor plans was an Iraqi insurgent? You mean, in the middle of a guerrilla war, these guys are planning the sort of transoceanic terror strike that takes Al Qaeda years of time and training to execute? What -- in between sticking IEDs in dead goats? Wow, that's thinking big.

*****

UPDATE: WJRT in Flint, Michigan has this (emphasis mine):

First of all, there is no need for parents to panic at this point. Walt Reynolds of the Bay City office of the FBI confirmed Birch Run [Michigan] was one of the cities mentioned in what he calls "dated and vague intelligence."

That being said, the FBI acted swiftly when that intelligence was received, just as it routinely does throughout the year with the thousands of threats that come in. State and local police investigated, along with the FBI.

The good news is that this threat was deemed not credible.

And local news here in New York City suggests that the information could have been downloaded by someone involved in some aspect of Iraqi reconstruction.

"A massacre in the making?" asks this right-wing blogger. Sorry to disappoint you, pal, but apparently not.

*****

UPDATE: There it is, via CNN:

The Department of Homeland Security official said the material was associated with a person in Iraq, and it could not be established that this person had any ties to terrorism. He did have a connection to civic groups doing planning for schools in Iraq, the official said.

MSNBC's Martin Wolk does some cheerleading for Bush:

 Monthly employment figures due Friday are likely to bolster President Bush's standing on key "pocketbook" issues that are crucial to his bid for re-election over Sen. John Kerry.

Forecasters expect the Labor Department to report the economy added about 158,000 jobs last month, which would be the best result in four months.

But the CNN/Money story I quoted a couple of days ago has a different perspective: Given that

U.S. businesses announced 107,863 job cuts in September, up from 74,150 job cuts in August, a gain of 45.5 percent

and

companies announced plans to add just 16,166 new jobs, down from 132,105 in August

Robert Brusca of Fact and Opinion Economics

has forecast just 100,000 new jobs.

We'll see who's right.

*****

UPDATE: 96,000 -- the cheerleaders were wrong.

The paper is fishwrap by now, but I wonder if you noticed the reappearance of a certain canard in last Sunday's New York Times, one that David Brooks put forth and then apologized for back in January: namely, that a lot of people who've criticized the Iraq war have done so because they hate (and blame) Jews.

The reappearance of this canard took place in an overly long Paul Berman review of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (emphasis mine):

During the last two or three years, large publics in Western Europe and even in the United States have taken up the view that, if extremist political movements have swept across large swaths of the Muslim world, and if Baathists and radical Islamists have slaughtered literally millions of people during these last years, and then have ended up at war with the United States, Israel and its crimes must ultimately be to blame. And if America has been drawn into war in Iraq, it is because President Bush's second-level foreign policy advisers include a few Jews (though all of his toplevel advisers are Protestants), and these second-level figures have manipulated everyone else to the bidding of Ariel Sharon.

This would be somewhat more recognizably McCarthyite if Berman had gone all the way and suggested a specific number of people who hold this vile belief, instead of limiting himself to the vague "large publics." Berman, of course, doesn't bother to identify these "large publics" or suggest where they can be found. Those in America surely must have published statements in English that can be readily quoted to back his assertion, but no such quotations are forthcoming.

And note that there's no hedging -- no "it is at least in part because" or anything of the sort. Berman is saying that large numbers of Americans who opposed the war don't think it took place because of oil, or out of a desire for empire, or as a result of American exceptionalism or Christian messianism run riot, or because administration officials believed phony intelligence, or because the Bushies were simply incompetent, or because the battle for Bush's brain was won by scoundrels and dunderheads of a variety of races, colors, and creeds. Berman -- ignoring virtually everything that's actually been said by U.S. war critics -- asserts that large numbers of Americans think the only cause of the war was the treachery of evil Jews.

Saying this is unconscionable. Believing it is nuts.

*****

I also don't accept the part of the passage that I didn't highlight.

Do war opponents say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the jihadists' grievances? Sure -- but that's very different from saying that "Israel and its crimes must ultimately be to blame" for Islamist terrorism.

Consider the following passage about the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany:

Conditions were ripe for the development of such a party. Resentment at the loss of the war and the peace terms added to economic chaos brought widespread discontent.

That's from the notorious anti-Semitic tract the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Would Berman argue that the Britannica is saying that economic stresses and the peace terms of World War I "must ultimately be to blame" for Hitler? I hope not. That's not how any rational person would read the passage. Hitler rose to power on a wave of discontent, but discontent in no way exonerates Hitler. Nor does the ongoing Palestinian crisis exonerate bin Laden or justify jihadist terror. But it's fair to look at grievances and wonder whether tyrants are able to make use of them in their public appeals, no matter what Berman believes.

Yes, but our pals the Iraqis are still happy we invaded, despite the Duelfer report, right?

"The results of the report confirm that there was no justification for invading and destroying Iraq the way they did, and the report would only increase hatred of Iraqis against America and gives the resistance more enthusiasm and justification to escalate the resistance campaign against occupation," said Mohamed Hussein, a writer.

"It is time now that the world would say to America 'that's enough, stop what you're doing to Iraq and its people," said Mohamed Al Imam, a cloths shop owner.

"Saddam was a tyrant, but we didn't see in his era this killing and destruction," he added.

"Leave Iraq, for you had enough hatred of the Arabs and Muslims against the American administration," he said....

"After the issuing of this report, Iraq has the right to prosecute the United States and hold it responsible for the destruction in Iraq because of the occupation," said Waleed AlZubaidy, a political analyst....

"The whole world, including America, was safer before the occupation than it is now," Abbass Al Hamdani, a school teacher, said.

"The ulterior reason for the United States to invade Iraq was not the WMD. Washington planned to occupy Iraq for other reasons," said Saadi Al Ani, a colleague of Hamdani....

Oops!

(Source)

I don't know -- maybe Bill Clinton never should have admitted any wrongdoing whatsoever with Monica. Maybe he should have just stuck with "I did not have sexual relations" to the bitter end, and then, when the Starr Report came out, angrily insisted that it vindicated him outright, and sent surrogates out to say the same thing.

Hey, is that any different from the response we're getting to the Duelfer report from Bush and (especially) Cheney?

Believe this or remain skeptical, but Zogby says that Kerry's winning in 13 of 16 battleground states and that if the election were held today, Kerry would win in the Electoral College, 322-216.

And Electoral-Vote.com, averaging multiple pollsters' recent state polls, now has Kerry 253, Bush 264 -- both under the needed 270. Moreover,

Michigan and New Hampshire are exact ties. If Kerry wins Michigan and Bush wins New Hampshire, then Kerry wins the election 270-268.

Getting better....

(Zogby link via BuzzFlash.)

Maybe articles about tax policy make your head swim, but you might want to look at this one from the business section of today's New York Times. First, look at this chart:



Now read this:

As he campaigns for re-election, President Bush is vowing to lead a bipartisan effort to overhaul the personal income tax and make it "simpler, fairer and progrowth."...

Mr. Bush has not provided specifics on what he means by "fundamental tax reform," but many Republicans and some of his campaign advisers view his call as one that would replace the income tax with a system that would basically tax personal consumption, effectively eliminating levies on investment and savings.

Got that? Look at how much of the income of the rich comes from investments. Now look at the fact that Bush might rfecommend that we stop taxing all that income.

Bush bashes Kerry for wanting to raise taxes on the rich. Somebody -- maybe on Friday night? -- ought to ask Bush whether he wants to eliminate taxes on a huge percentage of the income of the rich (and the majority of the income of the super-rich).

It may not exactly be rapid response, but I don't know of anyone else who's done something like this -- even people who can walk:

Pro-Kerry group confronts author of 'Unfit for Command'

CHICAGO - The battle over John Kerry's Vietnam War record flared up in Chicago Tuesday, when members of a fledgling group that supports the Democratic presidential nominee confronted the author of an anti-Kerry book at a downtown luncheon.

At one point, the bickering became so intense that organizers called in police. No arrests were made, but the book signing and speech, sponsored by the City Club of Chicago, was punctuated with sharp exchanges between author John O'Neill and members of a group called truthandtrust.com....

As O'Neill autographed books for admirers, veteran Bobby Muller approached in his wheelchair, shook the author's hand, then asked repeatedly if O'Neill would debate him on Kerry's record.

After the two bickered for a few moments, O'Neill's wife, Anne, intervened, telling Muller to stop while nudging him away in his wheelchair....

Organizers called in security and threatened to throw Muller out, but he was allowed to stay for the luncheon. Several times during O'Neill's speech, Kerry supporters in the audience jeered or shouted "that's not true" as O'Neill laid out the basis of his book.

Later when former Swift Boat captain and Kerry supporter Skip Barker asked a question, O'Neill dismissed him and others as Democratic Party plants....

--Chicago Tribune/Kansas City Star

Do you know who Bobby Muller is? He took a bullet in Vietnam and now he's a quadriplegic, but, as The Boston Globe's Michael Kranish explained in 2003, he's done some good:

... after graduating from law school, Muller devoted himself to securing more benefits for veterans. Muller, Kerry, and two other veterans cofounded Vietnam Veterans of America. "As far as I'm concerned, Bobby Muller is one of the great heroes of the veterans' efforts in the country," Kerry says.

When Time magazine in August 1979 compiled its list of 50 future US leaders, it picked Muller...

In the 1980s,

Muller took a trip to Cambodia that changed his life once again. The country was filled with victims of genocide, including many left limbless by land mines. After so many years focusing on US veterans, he was increasingly concerned about victims of war everywhere. He started by setting up an organization to provide prosthetics to Cambodians. Then, concerned about the millions of land mines still buried around the world, he worked to establish a campaign to ban land mines. The campaign seemed quixotic, but several groups signed on to the cause, and Muller hired an activist named Jody Williams to help run the operation, which would later be called the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines. Muller's veterans foundation would eventually spend $5 million on the effort....

One day in 1997, a representative of the Nobel Peace Prize called Muller with the news: The Nobel had been awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, with Williams as a co-recipient. Muller wasn't named in the prize. Kerry, like many friends, regrets that Muller was not singled out. "In my judgment, Bobby Muller was one of the co-winners of the prize," Kerry says. "If there could have been a way for him to be named also, he should have been."...

Oh, and Muller's been immortalized in song:

...his work for Vietnam veterans eventually landed him in the orbit of Springsteen.... Springsteen helped save Muller's organization [with a 1981 benefit concert]....

A couple of years later, Springsteen began thinking about a song titled "Born in the U.S.A.," a dark and deep tale about a recruit going off to war. The disillusioned vet comes back with "nowhere to go . . . I'm a cool rocking daddy in the U.S.A." Springsteen later confirmed in a television interview that Muller was the man behind the phrase.

Here's the Truth & Trust site.

(Via Letter from Gotham, where you can read the whole Tribune article, which requires registration.)

How do I know we have momentum on our side? Now Republican bloggers are saying, "What our guy really needs to do is make an ad like the one I just wrote...."

(This guy actually thinks Bush can turn the race around with an ad suggesting that we should use battlefield nuclear weapons. Er, I don't think so, no matter what his pals at Free Republic say.)

After a shaky debate performance and new controversy over the war in Iraq, President Bush is stepping up his criticism of Sen. John Kerry on national security and the economy.

Bush, in a speech Wednesday in the swing state of Pennsylvania, was to contrast his record with his Democratic rival's, declaring that Kerry spent a Senate career voting against measures to protect the nation and that his economic policies would derail recovery....

--AP

That's going to be the big momentum-changing speech we were told about yesterday? The "significant speech"? "I'm right, he's wrong, I've made you safer, he'll get you killed, I've brought prosperity, he'll kill it"? In other words, the "significant speech" is the same speech Bush always gives, only louder?

This is a good sign -- I think Bush is rattled and it's bringing out his petulance and childishness. Kerry really did give a major speech at NYU a couple of weeks ago; his talk about foreign policy has been sharper ever since, and his poll numbers are improving. Now it seems Bush is stamping his feet like a brat and saying, "Oh yeah? Well, now I'm going to give a major speech!" That means that on Friday night Bush might just be the same jerk he was in last week's debate.

*****

UPDATE: Same old same old -- just nastier.

Is someone trying to mess with the black votes in Florida again?

A spot-check of voters who were registered using photocopied forms indicates that they really did sign up to vote, Leon County's elections chief said Tuesday, but doubts continue about their choice of party.

Leon County received about 1,500 photocopied voter registrations, mostly from Florida A&M University and nearby black neighborhoods. The overwhelming majority registered as Republicans, which made Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho suspicious because the FAMU precincts are lopsidedly Democratic.

His staff has contacted 36 voters so far, all of whom said they signed color registration forms, not the black-and-gray photocopies forwarded to Sancho. And only one of the 36 said he intended to sign up with the GOP....

Two registration-drive organizers say they used original forms, not photocopies.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) has been asked to investigate. Of course,

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating accusations that FDLE agents intimidated black voters in Orlando by going to their homes to interview them about alleged voter fraud.

As you know if you read Bob Herbert. (Though I'll be fair and link this defense of the investigation, if you're care to read it.)

Post-debate polling at ABC:

First presidential debate: Kerry won, but Bush's 4-point among debate viewers lead remained unchanged.

Vice-presidential debate: Cheney won, but Bush's 3-point lead among debate viewers was cut to a 1-point lead.

I don't get it. But I'll take it.

(Oh, and the debate viewers this time were disproportionately Republican -- 38% GOP, 31% Dem, 27% independent -- so a near-dead heat among them after the debate is very satisfying.)

*****

But Edwards won CBS's poll of uncommitteds, 41%-28%. Good news. And these stats from the CBS poll are terrific:

The North Carolina Senator is better liked among uncommitted voters than the Vice President. Eighty-two percent of men and 72 percent of women of this group of voters said they would like Edwards personally, while half of both men and women said Cheney was likeable.

Eighty-two percent of tonight’s uncommitted viewers said Edwards shared their priorities for the country, nearly twice the number who said this about Cheney. The Vice President did receive higher scores on leadership qualities from tonight’s uncommitted viewers, but majorities said both candidates had strong qualities of leadership.


*****

I think Cheney is the more skilled debater -- he seems smart and he packs a lot (assertions and attacks) into his allotted time.

But I think Cheney was hurt by the fact that he was the stereotypical Democrat in this debate. What I mean is that successful Republicans -- Reagan, the Bushes -- have always been able to come off as jes' folks, as pork-rind-eatin', brush-clearin' regular Americans, while painting their opponents -- particularly Mondale, Dukakis, and Gore -- as humorless political technocrats. On that basis, Cheney embodied his own party's stereotype of the opposition.

In last week's debate, Kerry didn't come off as a humorless technocrat. Kerry came off as strong and direct. One of the arguments made about Kerry's slip in the polls in August and September was that he lost votes not because voters believed the Swift boat attacks, but because they didn't think he was strong enough to be president if he wasn't willing to confront those attacks. The first debate helped put those concerns to rest -- Kerry will go on the attack.

Kerry didn't seem evasive or deceitful. Neither did Edwards last night. They seem sincere and straightforward, and I think it's harder now for the Republicans to portray them as sneaky little flip-floppers.

Bush is the guy who really did live up to the criticism he gets -- in the debate he seemed immature and arrogant; he seemed like someone who won't listen to anything he doesn't want to hear and won't acknowledge and try to rectify his own mistakes. People have always been uneasy about Bush -- hey, he lost the damn election -- and last week he embodied their concerns. No wonder he's slipping in the polls ... even in a poll taken after a debate among voters who thought his guy won.

John Kerry would have kicked Cheney's ass.

Rove's handpicked Florida Senate candidate, a former Bush cabinet secretary, used executive-branch power to shaft ordinary citizens and please a lobbyist who raises money for Bush:

Before he resigned as the nation's housing secretary last year, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mel Martinez blocked release of a study of whether the nation's two biggest mortgage lenders discriminated against minorities.

The taxpayer-funded study, which is still secret, is at the center of a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of thousands of consumers who said they were refused credit or charged higher interest rates because of automated credit-scoring systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In his Senate campaign, Martinez promotes his record as a housing secretary who helped many Hispanics and African-Americans realize the American dream of home ownership.

...At the time Martinez blocked release of the study, one of Fannie Mae's lobbyists was Al Cardenas, former chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Cardenas is a fund-raiser for President Bush and a supporter of Martinez's Senate candidacy....

--AP/WKMG (Orlando)

Just another day in Bushworld.

This needs to get more attention:

States May Ban Abortion if Roe Overturned

Thirty states are poised to make abortion illegal within a year if the Supreme Court reversed its 1973 ruling establishing a woman's legal right to an abortion, an advocacy group said Tuesday.

The Center for Reproductive Rights said some states have old laws on the books that would be triggered by the overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. Others have language in their state constitutions or strongly anti-abortion legislatures that would act quickly if the federal protection for abortion was ended and the issue reverted to the states.

"The building blocks are already in place to recriminalize abortion," said Nancy Northup, the center's president.

...The center found that 18 states had pre-Roe laws totally or partially banning abortion. In some cases those laws have been blocked by a court, but could easily be revived if Roe were overturned. Alabama is one state where the abortion ban was never enjoined by the courts, and could be immediately enforced.

Other states such as Ohio don't have abortion bans, but both the legislature and the governor oppose abortion and without Roe there would likely be a rush to pass legislation banning abortion, the center said.

It concluded that 21 states are at high risk, and nine states at middle risk, of banning abortion within a year of Roe being overturned....

--Newsday/AP

High-risk states include Wisconsin, Michigan, and Rhode Island.

Order or download the full report here.

Is anyone else worried about tonight's debate? Frankly, I'm worried about all of them -- Edwards and Kerry are now the favorites in all three, which means that a mere hint of human decency on Cheney's part, or of maturity on Bush's, could upend expectations and set off a new round of "the complexion of the race has changed again" stories.

In the two remaining presidential debates, Kerry will be helped by the fact that he really is good, yet it's still a surprise every time he hits the center of the target; moreover, at least in the next debate, Bush, with his lack of impulse control, will be trying not so much to persuade voters as to get vengeance against Kerry, which means he might be as snappish and unlikable as he was last week. On the other hand, in the next debate he'll almost certainly be cooed over by at least some of the voters asking questions -- maddeningly, the New York Times/CBS poll finds that 61% of voters think of Bush as someone they "would like personally" (Kerry gets 48%) -- and he'll respond to that stroking of his ego; he'll grin and chuckle and a lot of people will just eat it up.

As for tonight, Edwards has to worry about seeming soft and about seeming slick, whereas Cheney just has to flash one or two glimpses of humanity before telling us Kerry will get us all killed. I predict that whatever the first question is, Cheney will mention his grandchildren, and that will surprise everyone expecting Darth Vader, after which he can be Darth Vader for the rest of the debate.

I don't know how Edwards beats expectations. Then again, he made a lot of money surprising people.

Bush boom keeps booming!

Companies set highest number of cuts since January while hiring plans tumbled.

The number of job cuts planned by U.S. employers jumped in September to the highest level in eight months while hiring announcements fell sharply, a job search firm said Tuesday....

U.S. businesses announced 107,863 job cuts in September, up from 74,150 job cuts in August, a gain of 45.5 percent, according to Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which keeps track of monthly job-cut announcements.

It was the worst month for job-cut announcements since January, when 117,556 cuts were announced. September's job-cut plans were 41 percent higher than the 76,506 cuts announced in September 2003.

Meanwhile, companies announced plans to add just 16,166 new jobs, down from 132,105 in August....

This September was the second-worst for cuts since Challenger started keeping track in 1993, behind only September 2001....

--CNN/Money; link via Raw Story

That's not a lot of Septembers, but it's the worst since September 2001.

Is a notorious letter linking Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden a crock? That's what this article in England's Telegraph says:

No concrete proof of the link between Zarqawi and bin Laden was offered until US officials this year trumpeted the discovery of a computer disk, allegedly intercepted by Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas. Among its files was an apparent draft of a letter from Zarqawi to bin Laden.

"We will be your readied soldiers, working under your banner, complying with your orders and indeed swearing fealty to you publicly and in the news media," the letter read.

That seemed proof enough for the US government. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of the connection to al-Qa'eda affiliates and al-Qa'eda," Mr Bush said in June.

But senior diplomats in Baghdad claim that the letter was almost certainly a hoax. They say the two men may have met in Afghanistan but it appeared they never got on and there has been a rift for several years.

One diplomat claimed that there was evidence to suggest that Zarqawi's aides may have passed on information to the Americans that led to the arrest of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the main planners of the September 11 attacks.


The article also questions the Bushies' campaign to make Zarqawi into Evildoer #1:

The Bush administration has seized on Zarqawi as the principal leader of the insurgency, mastermind of the country's worst suicide bombings and the man behind the abduction of foreign hostages. He is held up as the most tangible link to Osama bin Laden and proof of the claim that the former Iraqi regime had links to al-Qa'eda.

However, fresh intelligence emerging from around Fallujah, the rebel-held city that is at the heart of the insurgency, suggests that, despite a high degree of fragmentation, the insurgency is led and dominated not by Arab foreigners but by members of Iraq's Sunni minority.
 
...one agent said: "...From the information we have gathered we have to conclude that Zarqawi is more myth than man. He isn't in the calibre of what many politicians want to believe he is.

"At some stage, and perhaps even now, he was almost certainly behind some of the kidnappings. But if there is a main leader of the insurgency he would be an Iraqi. The insurgency, though, is not nearly so centralised to talk of a structured leadership."

If we don't vote Bush out, he and his team will never stop cherry-picking intelligence in order to construct fables
that match their theories and their rhetoric.

(Link via Rational Enquirer.)

SPIN ALLEY

On NPR a few minutes ago, Juan Williams (who, of course, also gets paychecks from Fox) managed to get the phrase "trial lawyer" into his story on the upcoming VP debate three times. Once he used it to help explain why Halliburton was likely to come up in the debate (yes, Williams actually said Edwards will probably bring Halliburton up because he's a trial lawyer). Very fair; very balanced.

*****

UPDATE: I was so angry about the repeated use of "trial lawyer" that I missed the fact that Williams repeated Bush's "global test" distortion in the same piece, as Eric Alterman's guest blogger, Siva Vaidhyanathan, notes:

... this morning on NPR's Morning Edition, even Juan Williams bowed to the creeping laziness and conservativeness of NPR management and repeated Bush's accusation as if it were fact.  "He talked about getting global consent for America to take preemptive action," Williams said of Kerry.  The anchor, Renee Montaigne, said nothing to correct Williams.  Don't they watch the debates or read the newspaper at NPR? 

Lots of polls showing the race a dead heat or at least tightening, and the latest is CBS/New York Times.

In both a head-to-head matchup and a three-way race including Ralph Nader, the Republican and Democratic tickets each won the support of 47 percent of registered voters surveyed in the poll.

Last month, Mr. Bush led Mr. Kerry by 50-42 in a two-way race and 50-41 in a three-way race.

The sample isn't GOP-heavy -- it's 29% Republican 34% Democratic, 28% independent, 10% "don't know/not applicable" -- but 35% say they voted for Bush in 2000, as opposed to 29% who say they voted for Gore (the rest didn't vote, voted third party, don't know, or won't say). So is it really representative?

I'm not sure why I never did it before, but I just added MyDD to the blogroll.

An e-mailer points out that years before John Kerry, another group of Americans talked about subjecting geopolitical upheaval to a "global test":

Kerry: "No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when I do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Declaration of Independence: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Certainly the preemptive attack on another sovereign nation demands the same "decent respect to the opinions of mankind".

Good point.

In The Boston Globe, a day before the VP debate, we get

Cheney presses Hussein-Qaeda link

The phrases vary. Some days, Vice President Dick Cheney says Saddam Hussein had "long-established" ties to Al Qaeda. Other days, he says the former Iraqi dictator "had a relationship" with the terrorist group.

But the underlying message remains unchanged -- Cheney plants the idea that Hussein was allied with the group responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001...

Meanwhile, over at the right-wing Cybercast News Service, we get something a bit more alarmist:

Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties

Read the story. Apparently everything the UN couldn't find before the war, everything U.S. inspectors couldn't find after the war, has suddenly shown up -- and dropped in the lap of a reporter for a marginal right-wing Web site! No one's found a smoking gun in the eighteen months since Baghdad fell, and now, out of nowhere, there are enough smoking guns to restage the St. Valentine's Day Massacre! Who'da thunk it?

According to documents obtained by CNS, in 2000 Saddam was purchasing mustard gas and "malignant pustule" (i.e., anthrax)! According to more documents obtained by CNS, in 1993 Saddam urged the Baath Party to "hunt the Americans" -- nine months before "Black Hawk Down" in Somalia! Oh, and Al Qaeda connections? According to CNS's documents, there were Al Qaeda connections up the wazoo!

I said "documents." CNS claims to have these documents, but all you get on the Web site are translations in the same typeface as the main story. CNS isn't going to risk posting PDFs of the actual material allegedly in its possession -- after all, the best way to avoid a Dan Rather embarrassment is never to expose your documents to scrutiny, right?

Oh, and vouching for all this is, among others, Laurie "Oklahoma City Was the Work of Saddam" Mylroie.

Yes, it's a joke. But does Cheney know it's a joke? Might he cite the article tomorrow night, in a way that's both patronizing and avuncular ("I don't know if you saw this, John, but yesterday the Cybercast News Service posted new documents on the Internet indicating that Saddam ..."). I'm sure Edwards is ready for Cheney to claim Saddam and Osama were the best of pals, but this article, with its preposterous but scary-sounding details, is so below-the-radar that I'm sure it hasn't made its way into his debate prep. Would Cheney actually use it to try to throw Edwards off stride? And could it work?

If you've been reading about Fox News's phony Kerry "I do manicures" story, which Josh Marshall and others have been discussing for a couple of days, you've probably seen the New York Times story about Fox's retraction. But that's not nearly as satisfying as what I saw all along my route to work today: copies of Newsday's free NYC paper amNewYork with this on the cover:

Is FOX faux real?

Fox News bared its right-wing bias in two blunders this weekend, adding to the argument that the media outlet is a Republican attack dog against Democratic candidates.

On Friday, the cable news channel's chief campaign correspondent Carl Cameron wrote a bogus news article that was posted on Fox's Web site that quoted Sen John Kerry bragging that he was a "metrosexual."

The fake article quoted Kerry as saying, "Women should like me! I do manicures."

"Why would you be doing this if you were a 'fair and balanced' reporter?" aked Joan Deppa, a professor and media ethicist at Syracuse University. "To what extent was his [Cameron's] behavior a reflection of the climate in which he works?" ...

The amNewYork story, unlike the Times story, also cites the Fox article by Jane Roh that, in its original version, published pro-Kerry statements by members of "Communists for Kerry" while failing to acknowledge that "Communists for Kerry" is a Republican prank. As amNewYork notes:

Roh claimed that she was fooled by "Communists for Kerry."

But Deppa said that even if her excuse is true, being so ready to believe the pranksters could be a sign of Roh's own biases.

Indeed.

amNewYork isn't a major player in New York media -- it's a fluffy giveaway paper -- but a lot of people pick it up as a quick subway read. Nice to know that this will be a lot of people's first read of the day.

I learned from All Things Considered this afternoon that the Catholic Church has just beatified Anne Catherine Emmerich, the nun whose sometimes anti-Semitic visions were an inspiration for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

You won't learn from the NPR story what exactly is anti-Semitic in Emmerich's visions, but you can get a taste of her The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ in this article from New York's Jewish Week:

Speaking of Jesus, one passage in the book said, "His body was entirely covered with black, blue, and red marks; the blood was trickling down on the ground, and yet the furious cries which issued from among the assembled Jews showed that their cruelty was far from being satiated."

Said another: "The Jews, having quite exhausted their barbarity, shut Jesus up in a little vaulted prison, the remains of which subsist to this day." Other passages labeled the Jews as "wicked" and "cruel."

Nevertheless, the Vatican pressed on with beatification, arguing that (a) those may not be her words and (b) it wouldn't matter anyway. In the NPR story, John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter explains:

The official Vatican position, actually, is that [the writings] are largely the work of a German Romantic poet by the name of Clemens Brentano, who came into Sister Anne Catherine's life towards the end and became quite a devotee of hers, and listened to her describe her visions and then went off and fleshed them out, so to speak, and perhaps dramatized them a bit. And because it's not clear how much in the actual book is the original insight of Sister Anne Catherine and how much is the Romantic embellishment of Brentano, the Vatican took the position that they were not going to consider the content of the visions in the beatification process....

From the Vatican's point of view, a beatification and an eventual canonization is never an endorsement of the particular theological or political positions someone took during their life. It's instead a judgment about what the Vatican calls their heroic virtue, which basically means the quality of their interior life, the quality of their devotion, their prayer, their private relation with God.

What was so special about her "interior life"? Allen explains that she had stigmata, that she suffered nobly through a long illness, and that she subsisted during the last ten years of her life on water and communion wafers. Oh, and for all you Dostoevsky fans, the Jewish Week story notes that her body was exhumed six weeks after her death and found to be free of "corruption and odor."

All this, I guess, makes up for the distinct possibility that she believed Jews are evil.

The Jewish Week story credits Gibson with the push to beatify Emmerich:

Efforts to beatify her began in 1892 but were halted in 1928 by the Vatican...

The beatification process was resumed in the 1980s, but ... Her application languished until Gibson said in an interview last fall that her book had influenced his movie.

I was raised in the Catholic Church. I've been out of it for quite a while, but it still infuriates me on a regular basis. It's a church that whispers its opposition to the death penalty and the Iraq war, but shouts its opposition to stem cell research, homosexuality, abortion, and condoms even as an AIDS preventative. It's a church that saw widespread pedophilia and worried most about scandal.This is relatively harmless, but it's infuriating nonetheless.

Before it disappears into subscribers-only land, I want to direct you to page 2 of Gallup.com's "Kerry Wins Debate" page. You know what's on page 1 -- Kerry beat Bush, 53%-37%, in Gallup's sample (which, yes, had a pro-GOP skew -- 36% Republicans, 32% independents, 32% Democrats). But on page 2 we learn the results of instant polling after past debates:

First Bush-Gore debate? Gore 48%, Bush 41%. (Yes, the one with the famous sigh.)

Third Bush-Gore debate? Gore 46%, Bush 44%.

(Yes, Bush won #2, 49%-36%.)

First Dukakis-Bush debate? Dukakis 38%, Bush 29%.

(No, that's not the one with the Kitty Dukakis question, for which Gallup inexplicably provides no data.)

You "know" Gore and Dukakis lost all their debates -- but what you "know" just ain't so.

The Bushies are going to fight back -- for starters, they're going to try to hang the phrase "global test" around Kerry's neck. AFP reports:

"Senator Kerry, last night, said that America has to pass some sort of global test before we can use American troops to defend ourselves. He wants our national security decisions subject to the approval of a foreign government.

"Listen, I'll continue to work with our allies and the international community, but I will never submit America's national security to an international test," Bush told the cheering crowd.

They're already trying to work this at Free Republic (here and here).

AFP presents the quote in context:

"No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America," said the Democratic senator from Massachusetts.

"But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

But if the Bush campaign starts getting away with quoting this out of context and it's unchallenged, that's a problem for Kerry.

An AFP reporter inspects the latrines at a Marine air base in Iraq and finds something unexpected:

...if one straw poll is to be believed on this gigantic air base in the western Iraqi desert, Kerry is due to rout Bush in the November 2 elections after the Massachusetts senator picked up 73 votes to 58 on the bathroom wall.

This may not be reliable:

However, the vote has come in for criticism amid suspicions Kerry supporters voted more than once due to the identical hashmarks on his side of the column inside the foul, humid brown and green plastic stalls, known as "Port-a-Johns".

However, what would prevent Bush supporters from responding in kind?

More telling, perhaps, is some of the other graffiti:

One diatribe says: "The only thing Bush cares about is a good fight to make a name for himself. If you think he really cares about us you're out of your fucking mind. If you really believe 9/11 is related to Iraq then you're just as delusional as the hippie that thinks there will ever be world peace.

"You're not fighting for America. You're fighting for fucked-up politics. End of story Cinderella."

Another pundit opines: "If you are a retard, vote Bush. He is too!"

There's quite a bit of anti-Kerry graffiti as well ("If you want a pussy in office vote Kerry," for instance). But

Kerry gets off scot-free compared to Bush who is called "a scumbag, alcoholic, draft-dodging millionaire daddy's boy" ...

What? Our brave fighting men don't think Kerry is a pampered traitor who looks French? Commies.

Left on the sidelines of the presidential debate, long-shot candidate and alleged race-spoiler Ralph Nader was nonetheless at the University of Miami -- criticizing the two headliners and plotting an unscripted cameo on the prime time stage.

"If I could only go through the ducts and leap out onstage in a cape -- that's my dream," said Nader....

--Miami Herald, via Democratic Underground

I guess Kerry is running against two children.

One last debate thought: Even if Kerry's performance hasn't changed the minds of a lot of voters yet, it will reenergize his base, which has been demoralized lately. The rally crowds will be bigger and more enthusiastic. The press (I hope) will pick this up -- campaign reporters like to sneer at Democrats (to prove they're not biased liberals), but they also like a race to be a race, and they can say it's a race again if there's new energy on the road after Kerry's debate success. And that might sway swing voters -- if they start being told again that Kerry's a credible candidate, they might give him another look.

Bush seemed sluggish and scattered last night -- think it's because the debate ran past his bedtime?

From a February 2001 article in National Review:

Bush now makes a strict routine of retiring by 9:30.... Country singer Larry Gatlin has told of going to the Governor's Mansion in Austin for dinner: "And at 8:30, 9 p.m., [Bush] said, 'It's time for y'all to go home. It's time for me to get in my pajamas.'"

Widdle Bushie was cwanky! Widdle Bushie needed his nappy!

I was almost giddy last night, but the conventional wisdom is disappointing: Kerry was clearer and more presidential than expected, but the debate was a draw on content. In the print edition of The New York Times, the headline of the jump of this Todd Purdum story gives you the CW in twelve words: "With Nation Watching, Both Candidates Stand Firm aand Their Messages Are Clear."

Kerry was terrific, but he really may have needed to be better than terrific to change this race. Or it may be that being solid for ninety minutes was fine, but he would have gotten a huge boost if he'd connected with one good quip ("There you go again"; "You're no John Kennedy").

Kerry sounded strong, but I don't know if confused swing voters who've heard months of GOP attacks on him will now think his positions are clear. (Sorry -- I'm a bit spooked by ABC's snap poll, which shows that voters gave a clear debate edge to Kerry but also shows virtually no movement in presidential preference.) I wish Kerry had turned the "nuance" attack around and used it on Bush, by pointing out, say, that Bush's insistence on six-party talks rather than two-party talks to deal with North Korea sounds pretty damn nuanced.

The elephant in the room that post-debate analysts all seem to have decided that they absolutely can't discuss is the fact that Bush seemed scatterbrained and utterly lacking in dignity and maturity. In 1984, Reagan had one moment in which he desperately groped for a word; Bush last night had at least half a dozen moments like that. In 2000, Gore (scroll down) sighed once, and was hammered for it for days afterward; Bush spent virtually all of last night's debate in a petulant snit. Is the lesson that if you're going to lose your composure it's better not to bother regaining it? Or are we now playing by the Bush Rules, under which this president always gets a gentleman's C no matter how ineptly he makes his case?

*****

UPDATE: I see that there's a short piece in The Washington Post that focuses on Bush's temper:

President Bush has thrown Sen. John F. Kerry's words back on him during nearly every speech of the campaign, but he rocked back in irritation during the first presidential debate Thursday night when the Massachusetts senator did the same thing to him.

...Bush's apparent annoyance at the idea of Kerry as the commander in chief was perhaps the debate's clearest emotion. Bush repeatedly prefaced his answers with "of course" and even used the phrase he uses to rebuke offending journalists: "Let me finish." ...

Good -- although the first half of the oh-gosh-we'd-better-make-sure-it's-balanced headline -- "Kerry vs. the Format, Bush vs. His Temper" -- seems to have been written about what insiders thought was going to happen; there's nothing in the article that suggests Kerry had any problems with the format.

Atrios adds CNN/USA Today/Gallup -- Kerry 53, Bush 37. And in case you don't click on his links, he's getting that from the Kerry-Edwards site, which provides some choice pundit quotes, among them

Mort Kondracke: "This is the President's turf, this is the place that the President is supposed to dominate, terror and the war in Iraq. I don't think he really dominated tonight. I think Kerry looked like a commander-in-chief."

Kate O'Beirne, National Review Online’s the Corner: "I thought the President was repetitive and reactive."

Joe Scarborough: "It was John Kerry's best performance ever ... As far as the debate goes, I don't see how anybody could look at this debate and not score this a very clear win on points for John Kerry." (MSNBC)

Tim Russert: "Tonight he seemed to find his voice for the Democratic view of the world."

Fred Barnes on FNC: "Kerry did very well and we will have a Presidential race from here on out."


I'll add this, from Deborah Orin, a GOP apparatchik at the New York Post:

It may have been the worst debate that President Bush has ever had -- while Democrat John Kerry scored one of his best....

It's almost as if Bush and Kerry swapped places -- it was Kerry who was focused and aggressive while Bush sounded more like the senator, tangled into jargon and using insider phrases like "six-party talks" with North Korea.

Kerry also had a laser-clear way of presenting himself as the agent of change for people who fear America is on the wrong track, summing Bush's program in four cold words, "More of the same." ...

The debate could give Kerry a fresh start and a real rebound -- and will force Bush and his aides to rethink their entire debate strategy, because it certainly didn't work last night.

"I think we've got a long campaign ahead of us," said Kerry spokesman Mike McCurry with a smile. And he was almost certainly right.

Above all, by being the dominant figure in a debate with the president, Kerry validated himself as a potential commander-in-chief and set himself on a more equal footing.

Bush also got caught by the camera at times scowling or looking peeved as he listened to Kerry's remarks, and the president even seemed to make some audible sighs, shades of Al Gore in 2000....

Indeed.