Best of the Web Today - October 29, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Best of the Tube This Weekend
We'll be joining Paul Gigot, Dan Henninger, Susan Lee and John Fund for this week's edition of "The Journal Editorial Report" on PBS. We are to appear on the second and third segments of the program. Air times are determined by local PBS stations; you can check the schedule by clicking here.
I'm Osama bin Laden, and I Approved This Message
ABC News has aired an English-language video that the CIA says "appears to have been produced by al Qaeda's media organization, al Sahab productions." It features a man calling himself "Azzam the American," who speaks oddly accented but apparently fluent English:
"No, my fellow countrymen you are guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. You are as guilty as Bush and Cheney. You're as guilty as Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and Powell," he says in what he calls his message to America. "After decades of American tyranny and oppression, now it's your turn to die. Allah willing, the streets of America will run red with blood matching drop for drop the blood of America's victims."
Mentioning Bush administration officials by name makes this sound like a Kerry campaign ad, though if we were a conspiracy-minded Democrat, we'd suspect Republicans planted this to paint terrorists as Kerry allies.
Meanwhile, reader Fritz Pettyjohn offers this theory to explain the behavior of Kerry and his partisan media allies in the election's home stretch:
Why did the New York Times and CBS choose the missing explosives story as their final hit piece on Bush? And why does Kerry continue to pound away at it, even though it is being discredited? I think it's because they believe the terrorists in Iraq are planning a major offensive this weekend, an offensive using their most effective weapon--suicide bombers in cars loaded with the sort of high explosives that were supposedly lost through Bush's negligence. They'll try their best to kill as many Americans as possible, of course. And the more Americans who are killed, the better for Kerry. He'll claim they might have lived if only Bush had secured that cache of explosives in al Qaqaa.
Let's hope he's wrong.
May We Have the Election, Please?
Writing in Long Island, N.Y.'s Newsday, Elaine Kamarck, an erstwhile adviser to Al Gore, warns of the danger of another disputed election. Kamarck begins by outlining a series of potential grounds on which Democrats might litigate a close election, then forecasts dire consequences:
If, a week from [yesterday], we find ourselves litigating the second presidential election in a row, we will face a national crisis of legitimacy unlike anything we have experienced since the breakup of the Union before the Civil War. . . .
This time there could be real anger--the kind of anger associated with elections in unstable developing countries, the kind that spills out into the street and terrifies people who have always believed in our stability. There are ugly racial overtones to the Republican plans to prevent "fraud" among all those new voters--most of whom will prove to be African-American. . . .
If the next president is litigated into office, he may find that his powers are severely limited by an opposition party ready to check him at every corner and by a country where half the voters feel they were robbed. These feelings were present four years ago, but 9/11 suspended politics as usual. Instead of returning to the campaign trail in the fall of 2001, Al Gore was declaring: "George Bush is my commander in chief."
The two premises of Kamarck's argument--that Democrats are likely to have grounds to litigate the election, and that an election decided after a court battle would be bad for the country--would seem to lead logically to the conclusion that the Dems should abjure litigation and accept a loss, even if it's close, à la Nixon in 1960. But she never actually makes this argument. But she certainly doesn't spell out that her argument is aimed at Democrats, and her suggestion that Republicans are racist for wanting to prevent voter fraud makes clear that she means to question only the legitimacy of a Bush win.
This is a pretty revealing column. Kamarck plainly is not confident that John Kerry will win the election, and she isn't confident that his lawyers will be able to steal it for him either. Kamarck does say, "We can hope for a clear and unambiguous outcome," and we're with her on that. But she seems to be arguing that if it's close, the only way to avoid another 2000 is for Bush simply to concede in the face of Democratic litigation and "anger." Somehow we doubt he's going to do that.
'We Got You Al Sharpton'
The New York Post's Robert George tells a story from the Kerry campaign trail that helps show why the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, is having trouble with black voters. Two weeks ago tomorrow, Kerry gave a speech in Xenia, Ohio, a largely black town outside Dayton. On his way was historically black Wilberforce University, where "organizers were led to believe that if there were at least 100 people, Kerry's motorcade would make a quick stop":
Eventually 150 students and supporters . . . gathered for four hours on a cold (rainy and snowy) Ohio day. And the Kerry caravan drove right on by. All the long-suffering got from the candidate was a clenched "victory" fist out the window.
According to Shavon Ray, president of Wilberforce's NAACP, the students were devastated--with comments such as "This is why I don't vote." . . .
After the incident--and Ray's criticism--made the local paper, the Democratic Party sent one Ken Miller to Wilberforce to meet with Ray. He offered 50 tickets--and 8 VIP tickets--to a Kerry event in Dayton. Ray declined what she saw as "hush tickets." . . .
Next, Miller offered to have Rev. Al Sharpton stop by as a speaker. That annoyed Ray even more: "We don't want a black face to speak to black students."
The final straw was when Miller said Sharpton would be sent to speak to Central State University--along with X-rated rapper Foxy Brown.
When Ray reminded Miller that they didn't want anything to do with Sharpton, Miller allegedly responded, "What do you want--Kerry to lose the f---ing race? We got you Al Sharpton. What more do you want?"
"Meanwhile, this past Wednesday, George W. Bush had a huge rally in the Pontiac Silverdome in the battleground state of Michigan," George adds. "On stage with him were two of the most popular black gospel singers--Marvin Winans and Freeport, Long Island's own Donnie McClurkin."
Blogger Jay Cost argues that Bush's appearance in Michigan--a state he lost in 2000 and can almost certainly afford to lose this year--is a sign of great confidence. Kerry is scheduled to appear in Detroit tomorrow, which suggests he isn't confident of his prospects in the Wolverine State.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that Dick Cheney plans to campaign Sunday in Hawaii, a state that only two Republican presidential candidates (Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984) have ever carried and that gave Al Gore a wider margin of victory than any other state save Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York. A pair of recent polls show the race virtually tied in the Aloha State, but still, sending Cheney almost seems overconfident--especially given all the flying time that he could be spending in certain battleground states. Then again, maybe the veep just decided to get out of his undisclosed location and get some sun.
Nuance Alert
A CNN report on an ABC interview with Bill Clinton includes this curious quote:
"I feel kind of distant from the to and fro of the elections," Clinton says in excerpts made available Wednesday, "and a lot of these things I see happening, I just shake my head and say, 'Gosh, I did that for 20 years, I know, but it doesn't have much to do with how we're gonna live when it's over.' On the other hand, I think it matters profoundly."
It doesn't have much to do with us, but it matters profoundly. That's nuance worthy of John Kerry!
Kerry's Mojo
We'd never heard of Mojo Jojo, a character in the animated series "The Powerpuff girls," but a reader alerts us to the similarities between Mojo and John Kerry:
Mojo Jojo speaks English with a Japanese accent. He has a bad habit of repeating, reiterating, and re-phrasing the same sentences over and over, continuously. He gets this speech pattern from a humorous interpretation of dialogue that is dubbed, probably from Japanese into English. It takes a longer time to say certain things in Japanese than in English. When dubbing, one wants to keep the English speaker's mouth moving for as long as the Japanese actor's mouth is moving. This can most easily be done by repeating phrases, again and again, and again. Thus a character in a Japanese movie seems to be repeating himself when listened to by English-speaking audiences.
But does Mojo Jojo have a plan?
Wile E. Kerry
"Kerry Hammers Away on Explosives as Bush Shifts Focus"--headline, New York Times, Oct. 28
Bite Dogs Man
"Bad News Dogs Bush as Election Nears"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 29
But Brokaw Is a Credit to His
"Dan Rather Handicaps the Race"--headline, CBSNews.com, Oct. 28
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How to Create a Landslide
Yesterday we noted that The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh had explained President Bush's political support in this way: "I think one thing you have to face up to is the fact there are roughly 70 million people in America who do not believe in evolution--and those are Bush supporters." This may, however, be an underestimate, as the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof observed in an August 2003 column:
Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent).
If John Kerry has the support only of Americans who believe in evolution, then, he will have the lowest popular-vote percentage of any major-party presidential candidate since William Howard Taft (23% in 1916). And indeed, even evolutionists may have second thoughts about voting for Kerry, seeing as how he's a descendant of apes.
Meanwhile, Pittsburgh's WTAE-TV reports that "Teresa Heinz Kerry on Thursday called attacks on her husband's foreign policy views 'Neanderthal.' " Has anyone else noticed that Kerry is a bit Cro-Magnon-looking?
The Maryland Redskins
It turns out the source on which we relied for "Redskins rule" got it wrong: The rule posits a correlation between the Washington Redskins' last home game before a presidential election and the election's outcome, not the last game. The 1996 loss to the Bills that we cited yesterday was a road game, so it doesn't count.
Well, fair enough. But what isn't as widely known is that the Redskins haven't played in Washington since 1996, when they began playing "home" games in Maryland. The team played its last true home game Dec. 22, 1996, beating the Dallas Cowboys 37-10. If the Redskins rule--victory means a win for the incumbent party--applied, Al Gore would now be president.
The inescapable conclusion is that the Redskins rule doesn't predict the actual election, only the popular vote.
Signs of Change in Saudi Arabia
A curious report from the English-Language Arab News:
A Saudi newspaper yesterday reported the discovery of what it called a rare coin with unique features that belonged to an ancient civilization. The paper said the coin had an inscription in an unknown language that was not English. It described the coin as having a palm tree with eight branches, a woman sunbathing, a ship and a castle with a dome.
According to the newspaper, the coin belonged to an ancient civilization that flourished in Al-Jouf.
The strange thing is that the "strange" coin, which the paper claimed had an inscription in an unknown language, had Puerto Rico inscribed clearly on it. The coin is believed to have been left behind by one of the tourists visiting the area and does not belong to any ancient civilization as claimed by the newspaper.
That is strange. We thought Puerto Rico's currency was the American dollar.
Angry Left: The Next Generation
The Stranger, a left-wing Seattle Weekly, has a hilarious collection of Halloween costumes for Angry Left kids. Among them: "Florida's electronic touch-screen voting machines," "arrested protester" and "the littlest prisoner at Abu Ghraib." Our favorite is "Lyndie [sic] England" ("Transform Daddy's little girl into America's NEW favorite bad girl").
Meanwhile, the Canadian Press reports that officials in northern Manitoba are urging kids not to dress up as baby seals for Halloween:
Predator and prey disguises are definite no-nos in the midst of the Western Hudson Bay polar bear population's annual migration to the ice.
"Bears' natural source of food on the pack ice is seals," said Richard Romaniuk, district supervisor for Manitoba Conservation.
"To be honest with you, I've never seen a kid dressed up as a seal--but the message would be don't dress up as a polar bear or a seal," he added with a laugh.
Restoring Standards
This weekend marks the end, for this year, of Daylight Saving Time, except in Arizona, Hawaii and most of Indiana, which stay on Standard Time year-round. That makes this weekend an especially exhilarating time for conservatives. Just two days before the election, we actually get to turn the clock back. |
