Mason-Dixon madness – Jim Geraghty reports that the Mason-Dixon poll has some numbers breaking for the GOP Senate candidates with Rhode Island as the big shocker, showing Chafee up by one.

Finally, some good election news!

In Turkey:

Thousands of nationalist Turks marched in the capital Saturday, vowing to defend the secular regime against radical Islamic influences and urging the government not to make too many concessions in order to gain European Union membership.

Some 12,000 people from more than 100 pro-secular associations waved Turkish flags as they marched to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. "Turkey is secular and it will remain secular," they chanted during a march broadcast live on television.

Right now, Turkey is just about the closest thing to a Muslim democracy in the world because the army strictly enforces the secular nature of the government. This status has been threatened over the past couple years by the rise of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who double-swears he’ll maintain Turkey’s secular nature even though he rose to power as part of an Islamic party.

Let him dangle – Saddam Hussein sentenced to death: “Saddam Hussein, the iron-fisted dictator who ruled Iraq for nearly a quarter of a century, was found guilty of crimes against humanity Sunday and sentenced to death by hanging.”

Et tu, Bill Kristol? - Election predictions at the Weekly Standard

Now everybody’s a jokester - Via BlackFive, a sign appeared at last night’s Air Force-Army football game reading: "We support those not as smart as John Kerry." Ace notes: “Drooling Imbeciles Show Proficiency At Advanced Comic Form Known As "Irony"”

GOTV in America – The Economist (UK) looks at the party effort to get out the vote for the midterms: “Time for the ground war.”

Anthrax attack still unsolved, five years later

At first glance, the list of potential suspects for this case must be vanishingly small. After all, how many people in the world know how to weaponize anthrax? But now the FBI is claiming that the spores weren’t as sophisticated as once believed:

In the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FBI scientist Douglas Beecher sought to set the record straight. Anthrax spores mailed to politicians and journalists in September and October 2001, Beecher wrote, were not prepared using advanced techniques and additives to make them more lethal, contrary to ``a widely circulated misconception.''
The notion the anthrax spores were ``weaponized'' had fueled conjecture that only a government insider could have carried out the operation.
Beecher's article suggested a much wider universe of potential suspects -- who showed they could kill without highly refined spores.

Well. I feel so much better. Wake me when the investigation defrosts.

Nancy Pelosi emerges from her hole, reads job report. Lies anyway.

Hey, where did she come from?

Pelosi was not to be outdone, however, firing back at the president who she claimed had "the worst jobs record since the Great Depression," in spite of Friday's news that the October jobless rate fell to 4.4 percent, the lowest it has been in more than five years.

Pay no attention to those shills at the Labor Department!

You better sit down kids

Found via Willisms, here’s a table from Congressman Todd Tiahrt’s web site:


When the Social Security trust fund is depleted sometime around 2041, then - by law - the government can only pay out benefits equal to payroll tax revenues. This is estimated to amount to a 27% decrease in promised benefits and the cuts will continue due to the shifting demographics towards an older population. But don't worry: reform is coming after the election...in 2042.

Election fraud update – Diebold jokes are so 2004. Via Red State: “ACORN workers indicted in Kansas City for voter registration fraud.”

More – From Gateway Pundit: “35,000 questionable registration forms.” Betsy has a roundup also.

Let the people, and the market, decide

In a remarkable editorial, the WashPost announces that Americans can make market choices on their own, without government interference.

It's fair to object that consumers may not be equipped to make smart decisions; the market signals they send may reflect the success of gauzy drug commercials rather than clinical evidence. The attraction of the market-based model depends on consumers being guided more by science-based Web sites created by universities or other groups. It's an open question whether consumers, led perhaps by their insurers, will learn to make sophisticated drug choices, but the fact that Medicare patients already buy more generic medications than other Americans is an encouraging sign of the capacity for smart purchasing. A switch to government purchasing of Medicare drugs would choke off this experiment before it had a chance to play out, and it would usher in its own problems. For the moment, the Democrats would do better to invest their health-care energy elsewhere.

Imagine that. In related news: “Walmart sells 143 drugs for $4 each today.”

And then there’s New Jersey – I must admit (again) that I’m completely vexed by the Senate race in New Jersey between Republican Tom Kean Jr. and Democrat Bob Menendez. A month ago, when a federal investigation was announced against Menendez, I thought it was an easy pick-up for the GOP. But the polls haven’t budged at all and it looks like a hold for the Dems right now. I don’t know what Junior is doing wrong, but this line from a Slate profile suggests he may not have the gravitas for the job: “Almost everyone I talked to said they were planning to vote for him. I couldn't tell whether he had left a lasting impression or whether they were saying they'd vote for him out of kindness, an act of hospitality due an outsider who had come to visit the neighborhood.”

But there’s good news, too – At least for those of us who enjoy a nice merlot (“Sideways” be damned) with dinner: “Substance in red wine extends life of mice”

Senate on the fence

Here’s part of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball predictions for the midterms:

The Crystal Ball sees either 5 or 6 seats going to the Democrats, resting [sic] party control of the Senate squarely on the edge of the butter knife.

The word, dear sir, is “wresting” as in to take away by force. I’m praying that your political analysis is as faulty as your grammar. Your welcome for the spelling lesson.

Update - Oops, my bad. As an astute commenter noted, Sabato writes that party control is "resting" on a butter knife. I think my mind blocked out all the prepositional phrases. No wonder I keep losing at Scrabble.

It’s not a big college town – From Radio Equalizer: Al Franken’s Air America gig has been cancelled in San Francisco, of all places.

All eyes on Kerry

Theory: John Kerry planned the “botched joke.”

Try this on for size: Kerry made his “gaffe” with the certain expectation that the White House would respond. In his counter-response, the Senator gained the opportunity to flash his veteran status while highlighting the lack of experience by his opponents. I think Kerry further believed that by standing up to the White House, it would burnish his credentials among the left-wing of the Party as a “fighter.” It’s a win-win for Kerry who would dominate the news cycle heading into the midterm elections.

The problem is that Americans didn’t think the joke was so obvious (just like an Aaron Sorkin script) and resented Kerry’s elitist implication that we commoners couldn’t understand his intention. When Democrats across the country looked at the overnight poll numbers, the house of cards came down.

How can a semi-intelligent politician make such a disastrous miscalculation? Almost certainly it’s because John Kerry’s self-regard knows no bounds. Here’s a guy who has produced almost nothing after two decades in the Senate, yet believed he should be commander-in-chief based on five months in Vietnam. When the mask slips, it reveals Kerry’s elitism and disdain for those of us without yachts. Here’s a blast from the past with P.J. O’Rourke: “Kerry loves the mainstream media…and has contempt for the American people.”

Addressing the audience of tame Democrats, Kerry explained his defeat. "There has been," he said, "a profound and negative change in the relationship of America's media with the American people. . . . If 77 percent of the people who voted for George Bush on Election Day believed weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq--as they did--and 77 percent of the people who voted for him believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11--as they did--then something has happened in the way in which we are talking to each other and who is arbitrating the truth in American politics. . . . When fear is dominating the discussion and when there are false choices presented and there is no arbitrator, we have a problem."

America is not doctrinaire. It's hard for an American politician to come up with an ideological position that is permanently unforgivable. Henry Wallace never quite managed, or George Wallace either. But Kerry's done it. American free speech needs to be submitted to arbitration because Americans aren't smart enough to have a First Amendment, and you can tell this is so, because Americans weren't smart enough to vote for John Kerry.

Kerry tried to ride the fightin’ Dems into the midterms and come out the other side as the presumptive nominee for 2008. Instead, he eradicated his own presidential aspirations, motivated the conservative base, and possibly tipped Congress to GOP control in the midterms. Snap.

Update – Kerry sends out a new “apology” via his web site. What, no press conference?

Midterm prediction - Right Wing News has the collective opinion of right-of-center bloggers (including yours truly) on whether the GOP will hold the House and Senate. I’m not as optimistic as others, but maybe they know something I don’t.

Confuse the kids first then raise taxes

Pity the AARP. The senior organization has worked tirelessly to prop up Social Security, no matter what the long term realities demand. But now they risk alienating a whole new generation of retirees who are destined to pay more and receive less because the AARP blocks necessary reform. The short term answer, apparently, is to temporize, confuse, conflate, and obfuscate until Americans can be fooled into another tax increase.

The liberal entitlement lobby has asked candidates around the country to fill out a questionnaire asking, "Will you support a balanced Social Security plan to continue the program's guaranteed benefits for future generations?" That may sound innocuous, but here's how AARP defines its balanced plan on its Web site near the above question: "AARP believes that a bipartisan plan that balances additional contributions from high income workers with modest adjustments in future benefits can maintain guaranteed Social Security benefits for future generations."

What this means for younger workers is even higher payroll taxes for a revenue-transfer program that will, at best, produce a return on investment of 2%. Social Security is the deal so good, they had to make it mandatory.

Big Dig update – From the Boston Globe: “Safety margin for tunnel was smaller than most, US says.” In other words, the safety margin was zero as there were no redundant systems to hold up the ceiling tiles in case of bolt failure: “The Big Dig tunnel ceiling that collapsed in July was designed with a smaller margin of safety than other tunnel ceilings around the country, leaving nothing to prevent heavy concrete slabs from falling on a passing car when ceiling bolts fell out, according to a preliminary report by federal investigators obtained by the Globe.”

Religion of peace update – Jeff Jacoby reviews the march of jihad in countries all around the world. Time to wake up, Europe.