Round One...

Overall, tonight was a bad night for the President. I think in terms of substance--the point, counterpoint of debating--Bush edged out Kerry. Kerry opened himself up to so many attacks that I'm upset at how few Bush pounced on--but he pounced on just enough that I think Bush won the debate on substance and correctness. (I was upset, though, that Bush didn't attack Kerry for saying that the war in Iraq was a mistake but that the troops weren't dying for a mistake--the two together make no sense whatsoever, and Kerry wasn't rebuked for it). But beyond that, Bush destroyed himself. Kerry really presented the President with no surprises. His stylistic approach to debate and the points he made were easily foreseeable. Kerry didn't do that great in my opinion, but he didn't do badly either. Rather, it was the President's poor stylistic performance tonight that will feed a media love fest for a week until the next debate.

President Bush's greatest strength has always been his sincere, warm personality; it provides a stark contrast to Kerry. Don't get me wrong, Bush still struck me as sincere and warm, but he lacked passion and was too repetative and because of this, his strengths were diminished. He just didn't look as good as Kerry and that means a world of difference today (Nixon arguably lost the Presidential election of 1960 for failing to wear makeup for his first TV debate with Kennedy).

And I don't know how the Bush camp can account for this, but they abandoned the stunningly successful formula they devised for the Republican convention: 9/11 9/11 9/11. The more Bush talks about 9/11 the more votes he gets, the more passionate he becomes, and the more his war on terror and the war in Iraq make sense. There was far too much repetative talk from Bush about the war in Iraq without that essential link and emphasis on 9/11. Kerry has no ground to stand on when Bush talks about this, and why Bush didn't exploit that is beyond me.

Yes, the polls will tighten and the media is fast marching to the drumbeat of their preordained Kerry comeback. But I think this will make little difference in the election (assuming Bush is par for the course in the next two debates). If this is Bush's worst performance, its a good thing its the first debate. The memory and impact of tonight will fade, and new events (and new Kerry flipflops) will continue to redefine the campaign. Remember, Reagan, as an incumbent President got whacked by Mondale in their first debate in 1984. But Reagan came back strong in the final debates and won in a landslide in November. Any boost Kerry gets in the polls is likely to come from the Democratic base that up to this point has been demoralized and stripped of their desire to support Kerry.

In the short term, tonight was a disaster for Bush. But in the long run, I think it provided the Bush campaign with a healthy reality check: they can take nothing for granted; they have no room to be cocky (confident, yes, but not cocky); and Bush must work much harder to better engage the issues and show the American people not only his sincerity and firmness, but his passion and enthusiasm for what he believes.

Terrorists for Kerry?

One of the biggest problems John Kerry is having in this election is the fact that a large number of people who normally vote for the Democrat because of their social liberalism are voting for Bush because to them, foreign policy and national security are far more important. These voter clearly recognize that when it comes to fighting the war on terror, Bush is simply stronger. He's more likely to be aggressive and decisive in destroying these terrorist thugs. Kerry's lack of conviction and his desire to only engage in a foreign policy that pleases the French and Germans is obviously not the way to fight terror, and many people who would normally vote for a Democrat know this. Unfortunately, many terrorists realize this as well. The insurgents in Iraq, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority have all shaped their terror strategies to bring about the defeat of Bush in the upcoming election. The reason that conditions on the ground will be more favorable to their objectives if the Bush administration is defeated in November. The logical inference here is that they clearly see a Kerry administration as being more conducive to their agenda. They want Kerry to win. If Kerry presented himself as being tougher on terror than Bush, then they clearly would settle for the lesser of the two evils in their mind and endure another 4 years of Bush. But this isn't how they think. Kerry has left them with the opinion that they would be better off under his watch--that their terror would be more effective and their long term goals closer with Bush out and Kerry in.

Today's Haaretz (an Israeli newspaper) has an excellent piece about terrorist organizations in Syria. During the course of the article, the following point is made:

"Neither the Shi'ite leadership in Iraq, which is far from being a monolithic body and contains fierce opponents to the United States, or even the Shi'ite leaders in Iran, dared to say what Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah did in precise terms, pulling no punches, and in public before a crowd of thousands of his followers.

"The resistance movement [against the U.S. in Iraq] may not be able to remove the U.S. from Iraq within a year, but it will be able to remove Bush, [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and [National Security Adviser] Condoleezza Rice, together with their Zionist friends, from the White House," Nasrallah assured his listeners. Nasrallah's scenario requires no deep understanding: Suicide attacks and sabotage operations against the American forces in Iraq will cause American public opinion to turn against the president and not re-elect him, thus bringing about the disappearance of this group of leaders from the White House."

Put in very simple terms, a vote for Kerry can, in this context, be viewed as giving in to terrorism.

Tuesday's post

The Florida Myth from The Wall Street Journal

Flirting with Disaster by Christopher Hitchins

Jimmy Carter's War on Democracy a New York Post editorial

If there was any doubt about France...
France seeking to put pullout on agenda from the Internationl Herald Tribune

And on the space front...
Huge asteroid to fly past Earth from CNN online
Encounters with asteroids are always interesting because it causes you to start wonder what would it be like to live through an impact. How would it alter everything we take for granted on Earth?

Kerry's problem

A few worthy articles...

That Times Article.... by David Frum

That 1997 Speech that Damns John Kerry by Real Clear Politics

That last link is especially interesting. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it from the Bush campaign. They should pull the video from that speech and unload on Kerry--not so much for his inconsistency but for how disingenuous he has been every time he's opened his mouth during this campaign to talk about the Iraq war. It would seem from Kerry's own statements that both he and Bush saw the same evil threat in Saddam and the same disregard for international law. The only difference then between the two is that Bush has stood by his decision to act in the face of that threat, while Kerry has retreated from any semblance of decisiveness. All the polls, btw, are showing that the public is starting to figure this out. It looks like it's going to take a major screw-up by Bush for Kerry to win.

Weekend blogging

With some help (thanks David) I've added some of my favorite links relevant to the subject matter of this blog to the right sidebar. Once I have enough links, I'll probably divide them into two categories--one for space and the other for politics. I've been fairly preoccupied with politics recently. I think it might have something to do with this crazy election that looms over us. I have several books on space exploration and astronomy sitting on my shelf, and I have every intention of getting to them, but law school, my fascination with everything going on politically, and my persistant apethy have kept me from them. I'm not sure why I went off on this tangent. I think it's guilt.

Anyway, John Kerry's abhorrent behavior this past week deserves some informed commentary...

Bill Kristol has it right: "Kerry and his advisers have behaved disgracefully this past week. That behavior is sufficient grounds for concern about his fitness to be president." Kerry continues to baffle me. I'm finding it harder to believe that he really does want to be President. Just from a political standpoint, he seems to making so many stupid mistakes that you start to wonder about his level of competance. Don't get me wrong, I know he's an intelligent man. But I think we're seeing an amazing level of misdirection merged with overall frustration, and the result is the waywardness we've seen the last few days. An hour after Bush spoke at the Republican convention, Kerry took the stage at his midnight rally in Ohio to fuss in the most pathetic of ways. And this week, not an hour after the Prime Minister of Iraq addressed a joint session of congress to thank America for liberating Iraq and to express his optimism about Iraq's prospects for a healthy democracy, Kerry starts ranting again (in Ohio of all places). Kristol puts it well in his article about how Disgraceful Kerry has been:

"But Kerry's rudeness paled beside the comment of his senior adviser, Joe Lockhart, to the Los Angeles Times: "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips."

Is Kerry proud that his senior adviser's derisive comment about the leader of free Iraq will now be quoted by terrorists and by enemies of the United States, in Iraq and throughout the Middle East? Is the concept of a loyalty to American interests that transcends partisan politics now beyond the imagination of the Kerry campaign?

John Kerry has decided to pursue a scorched-earth strategy in this campaign. He is prepared to insult allies, hearten enemies, and denigrate efforts to succeed in Iraq. His behavior is deeply irresponsible--and not even in his own best interest."


And along those same lines...
"Kerry's looking for American failure -- and he's it" by Mark Steyn

And this is one of the best articles I've read in a long time. Mr. Hanson hits the nail on the head:
"The Fall" by Victor Davis Hanson

In the name of allah

The Rape Jihad by Robert Spencer

This article speaks for itself and further calls into question any claim that Islam is a peaceful religion.

Daily dose...

Dead Soldiers by Ralph Peters
A Hole-in-One for Anti-Americanism by Laura Ingraham
The Anti-War Turn is a Loser by Dick Morris
Rove touts Bush headway in key areas by Bill Sammon
Loose cannons undermining Kerry by Robert Novak

Scruggs

Mississippi attorny Dick Scruggs is featured in this Time magazine article. There's a reference to his practice here in Oxford...

Can't Be Sure...

Today's Washington Post has an excellent recap of the CBS document disaster. The article focuses mostly on the timeline of events within CBS. The piece ends with an example of CBS's arrogance: ""So much of this debate has focused on the documents, and no one has really challenged the story. It's been frustrating to us to see all this reduced to a debate over little 'th's." I can't imagine CBS saying something like this if they took seriosly the journalistic standards any sound media outlet should embody.

Blogosphere

One of the more interesting aspects to all the uproar over the almost certainly fraudulent documents that aired on CBS is the prominent role bloggers are playing. Investor's Business Daily has a fascinating article about the part bloggers played in this developing story. I think the best point from the article is that in the blogging world, posts can be subjected to literally thousands of "editors" quick to add their thoughts (or expertise).

Memogate

If there's any lingering doubt about whether or not the National Guard documents CBS aired on 60 minutes are forged, then go here. I hadn't heard of this site until I heard people talking about it on both CNN and Foxnews. There seem to be a lot of interesting links in the sidebars too. I wonder how the guy came up with the name Little Green Footballs...

What, media bias?

Is Newspaper Coverage of Economic Events Politically Biased?
This is the contention of a new paper from the American Enterprise Institute. The abstract speaks for itself, but the whole document can be downloaded here.

"Accusations of political bias in the media are often made by members of both political parties, yet there have been few systematic studies of such bias to date. This paper develops an econometric technique to test for political bias in news reports that controls for the underlying character of the news reported. Our results suggest that American newspapers tend to give more positive news coverage to the same economic news when Democrats are in the Presidency than for Republicans. When all types of news are pooled into a single analysis, our results are highly significant. However, the results vary greatly depending upon which economic numbers are being reported. When GDP growth is reported, Republicans received between 16 and 24 percentage point fewer positive stories for the same economic numbers than Democrats. For durable goods for all newspapers, Republicans received between 15 and 25 percentage points fewer positive news stories than Democrats. For unemployment, the difference was between zero and 21 percentage points. Retail sales showed no difference. Among the Associated Press and the top 10 papers, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, and New York Times tend to be the least likely to report positive news during Republican administrations, while the Houston Chronicle slightly favors Republicans. Only one newspaper treated one Republican administration significantly more positively than the Clinton administration: the Los Angeles Times’ headlines were most favorable to the Reagan administration, but it still favored Clinton over either Bush administration. We also find that the media coverage affects people’s perceptions of the economy. Contrary to the typical impression that bad news sells, we find that good economic news generates more news coverage and that it is usually covered more prominently. We also present some evidence that media treats parties differently when they control both the presidency and the congress."

Wisdom of this world

From Book Five of Augustine's The Confessions:

5.4.7 Can it be true, Lord God of Truth (Ps. 31.5 [Ps. 30.6]), that whoever possesses this mathematical and astronomical knowledge is already pleasing in your sight? Unhappy indeed is the man who has this knowledge, but does not know you; blessed is the man who knows you, even if he does not have this knowledge. But blessed indeed is he who knows you and who knows also mathematics and astronomy. He is not more blessed on their account; he is blessed on account of you alone, if having known you he honours you as God, and gives thanks to you, and does not dwindle away to nought in his own conceits (Rom. 1.21). A man who knows he possesses a tree, and gives thanks to you for the use he has of it, is better off, even if he does not know how high this tree is or how wide it spreads, than a man who measures it and counts all its branches, and yet neither possesses it, nor knows you or loves you, its Creator. In the same way, only a fool would doubt that a believer, even though he does not know the wheeling track of the Great Bear, yet owns the earth in all its riches and though poor, yet possesses all things (2Cor. 6.10) through his faith in you, who all things serve (Ps. 119.91 [Ps. 118.91]), is better off than one who measures the heavens and numbers the stars and weighs the elements, yet ignores you, who have appointed all things in their measure, their number, and their weight (Wisdom 11.21).

Is Kerry heading for Defeat?

Here are a few more articles that touch on the ongoing implosion of Kerry's campaign:

Kerry advisor Bob Shrum's 0-7 record when it comes to campaigns...

Maureen Dowd's take on the wind-surfing Democrat...

Divided Democrats...

Kerry at it again...

This is hate mongering at its worst. As long as Democrats keep trying to exploit racial issues in this country and stir up feelings of hatred and fear, racial harmony will never reach its full potential in this country. Now Kerry's trying to fire up the black base by convincing them that the GOP has an agenda to deny as many blacks as possible their vote. In essence, he's accusing the GOP of voter fraud BEFORE the election.

The Streets of New York

Bob Novac has a telling article today about the high level of intense hatred permeating American politics. The point is made that the hatred that fills the streets of Europe for American policy has spread to America. Having spent nearly half a year living in France, I can attest first hand to how good Europeans are at hating America. The thought that masses in this country are beginning to ape the blind hatred is sad. And I'm not talking about people who have honest policy differences. I'm talking about the kinds of people that are identified in this column.

A good week for Bush

The first preliminary polls after the Republican Convention are out and things are great for the President. Independent polls from Time and Newsweek show a double digit lead for Bush. Even more encouraging is the fact that these polls don't fully take into account the effects of Bush's speech (which I thought was absolutely excellent and epic in its reach and vision). And here's a short article that mentions the panic mode democrats are starting to spiral into. The article is right too about Kerry making an idiot of himself by staging that fussy rally at midnight. A truly classic sign of a campaing hitting the panic buttom.

This week

I have to say that this week has been tough as far as blogging goes. I've been bogged down with law school (I think this is going to be the norm). And on top of that, the Republican Convention has been eating up my evenings. I have to say it's been a good showing for the GOP. The press is in stitches; they don't know how to handle such an effective convention except to ask every delegate and speaker "what's up with the all the moderates speaking at the convention? doesn't that bother you? is this the real republican party?" Bush is going to win this election and it's not going to be as close as people are thinking. He's tied or ahead in the polls in states such as New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Pennslyvania--states he lost in 2000.

Featuring Oxford

CNN online has a relatively flattering article about the magical world that is Faulkner and Oxford...