Category: Old Dish

Whereby you cast a vote to piss someone else off; or hope for Kerry’s victory to bring misery to Bill O’Reilly; or Bush’s victory to piss off Michael Moore. Dumb, but irresistible.

THE ENEMY STRIKES: Another Jihadist murder – this time aimed directly at the West’s freedom of speech:

A Dutch filmmaker who had received death threats after releasing a movie criticizing the treatment of women under Islam was slain in Amsterdam on Tuesday, police said. A suspect, a 26-year-old man with dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality, was arrested after a shootout with officers that left him wounded, police said. Filmmaker Theo van Gogh had been threatened after the August airing of the movie “Submission,” which he made with a right-wing Dutch politician who had renounced the Islamic faith of her birth. Van Gogh had received police protection after its release.

We often hear cant about suicide bombers being “martyrs”. Nope, Theo van Gogh is a martyr – for exposing the misogyny at the heart of Islamism.

BEWARE THE EXIT POLLS: Mark Blumenthal helps us out again. But of course if I come across any today, I’ll leak them.

Some straws in the wind (via Wonkette):

Kerry – Bush
AZ 45-55
CO 48-51
LA 42-57
MI 51-48
WI 52-48
PA 60-40
OH 52-48
FL 51-48
MICH 51-47
NM 50-48
MINN 58-40
WISC 52-43
IOWA 49-49
NH 57-41

Not sure whether this will hold up throughout the day, of course. Those huge margins for Kerry in Pennsylvania and Minnesota look way out of line to me. But we’ll see. A Kerry landslide? Could be. Could be.

Over at National Review, calm does not prevail:

Do not, again, do not take any exit poll resports too seriously. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE. Exit polls not always reliable, ESPECIALLY early ones. AND, this isn’t over until the polls close. So please get to work while there is still time.
DO NOT get depressed. DO NOT get mad. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE.

Chill, Kathryn. The American people are speaking. Even if you might not like what they have to say. At least as far as the early buzz is concerned.

I’m taking the beagle for a walk, getting lunch at my local diner, finishing an overdue freelance piece and then going on a bike ride. If there were any time that a blog should be silent, it’s now. As I write this, as you read this, hundreds of thousands are silently, privately marking their votes. They do so in peace, and there’s a kind of gravity about that in this noisy insta-culture. Yes, I’ll post any exit polls if and when I get any. But these few hours are a pause in the chattering and venting and spinning. The arguments are over. Let’s enjoy the quiet for just a tiny bit longer.

Jeff Jarvis has the details. Bottom line:

After the election results are in, I promise to:
: Support the President, even if I didn’t vote for him.
: Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.
: Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.
: Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.

Hold me to it. Somehow, I think you will.

THE EXIT POLLS: Doesn’t such heavy early voting somewhat undermine the exit polls? If, in some areas, like Florida, there has been extensive early voting, and most of it skewed Democrat, wouldn’t that make the exit polls look more pro-Bush than the votes might actually be? Just asking …

HOW SICK IS REHNQUIST? Probably sicker than we have been told. Here’s some interesting data:

The combination of radiation and chemotherapy raises the suspicion that Rehnquist’s cancer is not one of the common types that are usually easily treatable, said Dr. Joseph Geradts of Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. The most common types are papillary and follicular cancer, and they are generally responsive to radioactive iodine, Geradts said. Chemotherapy could be needed if it is the more aggressive form, called anaplastic, he said. He noted that the gland is often removed as part of cancer treatment, but in cases of anaplastic cancer the thyroid sometimes cannot be readily removed. The presence of a tracheotomy to ease Rehnquist’s breathing also might indicate anaplastic cancer, Geradts said, since that form can squeeze the trachea.

Why does this matter? Because the Supreme Court is a paramount issue in this election. And a new nomination may come sooner than anyone thinks – perhaps the next president’s most pressing domestic obligation. And that’s another reason I’m for Kerry. If you’re gay, or if you have a family member who is, this election is the most important in the history of the civil rights struggle. No, Kerry is by no means perfect. But he is not actively leading a movement that would strip a whole minority of basic civil rights.

MysteryPollster looks at the Columbus Dispatch’s old-fashioned mail-in poll. It’s a very big sample – close to 3,000 – and has a good track record. It shows the race an absolute dead-heat. But there’s a wrinkle:

One difference between the latest poll and the one published four weeks ago is the inclusion of more newly registered voters in the sample, whose names were in the latest available data from the secretary of state’s office. About 88 percent of the new voters – including those from Ohio’s largest counties – were among the potential poll participants. And which candidate did those new voters prefer? “These newbies now represent one in eight Ohio voters, and they support Kerry by nearly a 2-1 margin [65% to 34%].”

Uh-oh. There’s more:

Meanwhile, the poll contains troubling signs for Bush. Only 44 percent say things in the nation are headed in the right direction. Fewer than half approve of his handling of Iraq and the economy. And his overall approval rating is 49 percent, a measure that many political experts say represents a ceiling on his support Tuesday.

I’ve been asked to make a prediction. It’s so close you’d be a fool to do so now. So I’ll stick with my hunch back last March and say Kerry is going to win. I say that simply because Bush’s record is too poor to merit re-election. And I trust the American people to realize that. As soon as Kerry proved he was a viable alternative in the debates, he won.

STEYN THREATENS TO QUIT: If Kerry wins today, Mark Steyn has said he won’t wrote again for a while. Money quote:

Usually after making wild predictions I confidently toss my job on the line and say, if they don’t pan out, I’m outta here. I’ve done that a couple of times this campaign season – over Wes Clark (remember him?) – but it almost goes without saying in these circumstances. Were America to elect John Kerry president, it would be seen around the world as a repudiation not just of Bush and of Iraq but of the broader war. It would be a declaration by the people of American unexceptionalism – that they are a slightly butcher Belgium; they would be signing on to the wisdom of conventional transnationalism. Having failed to read correctly the mood of my own backyard, I could hardly continue to pass myself off as a plausible interpreter of the great geopolitical forces at play. Obviously that doesn’t bother a lot of chaps in this line of work – Sir Simon Jenkins, Robert ‘Mister Robert’ Fisk, etc., – and no doubt I could breeze through the next four years doing ketchup riffs on Teresa Heinz Kerry, but I feel a period of sober reflection far from the scene would be appropriate.

This, of course, is silly. If Kerry is elected, it will merely mean that Americans have chosen a different commander-in-chief to pursue an enemy that we all recognize still exists. And may I offer the sincere hope that anyone who can pen prose as elegant and as consistently hilarious as Mark Steyn should never quit journalism? He should continue to do so – but from a distance that allows him greater insight into the American psyche. Canada, perhaps? Or France?

With some last minute thoughts.

A HAWK FOR KERRY: A Brit who faced the wrath of his fellow Guardian readers for supporting the Iraq war says he’s now for Kerry.

ZOGBY: His penultimate poll basically gives the election to Kerry, barring Florida. He has a tie there.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Another conspicuous aspect of the tape is the absence of common Islamist themes that are relevant to the month of Ramadan, which for fundamentalists like bin Laden is the month of Jihad and martyrdom. Noticeably absent from the Al-Jazeera tape was his usual appearance with a weapon, and more importantly the absence of references to Jihad, martyrdom, the Koran, the Hadith (Islamic tradition), Crusaders, Jews, and the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad on the duty to wage Jihad against the infidels. For the followers of the Al-Qa’ida ideology, this speech sends a regressive and defeatist message of surrender, as seen in the move from solely using Jihad warfare to a mixed strategy of threats combined with truce offers and election deals.” – Yigal Carmon, president of MEMRI, on the latest OBL tape.

VOTER-SUPPRESSION: Using homophobia to suppress the black vote. It’s been going on in Michigan.

October 30 – Fox poll shows Bush up by 2. Headline: “Fox Poll: Bush Up By Two Points Over Kerry”
November 1 – Fox poll shows Kerry up by 2. Headline: “Fox National Poll: Voters Split.” You really can’t make this up. Well, as Neil Cavuto has opined, Osama was all but wearing a Kerry button.

David Bernstein calls this the “most depressing presidential election for a libertarian since 1972.” It is. The idea that freedom works – even when it advances ideas hostile to you – has been consigned to the margins of discourse. Kerry is a statist; Bush is a statist. Kerry hankers after liberal conformity in most areas; Bush has done more to sever the GOP from individual freedom at home than anyone since Goldwater. Money quote:

I find virtually nothing to admire about John Kerry. W. deserves credit for a certain steadfastness in the War on Terror, but his administration is suffused with the sort of hubris, sense of entitlement to power, and belief in the ameliorative powers of government action (in both the foreign and domestic realms) that one normally associates with the worst types of statists. And let’s not forget the Administration’s blatant lies about the cost of the Medicare law, and Karl Rove’s apparent plan to drive all well-educated, secular folks out of the party in exchange for the votes of the most ignorant elements of the fundamentalist community, a traditional Democratic stronghold.

Yes, depressing. But freedom will re-emerge. It’s just a dark day right now.

Here’s the full transcript. Basically: loony and vile.