I thought I'd post this before Kevin got to it. :)

I think the headline is screwed up; the unemployment numbers are good; it's the job growth numbers that are unexpectedly low. This could be a gift for the Kerry campaign. The game is afoot...

An interesting observation on Kerry's truthfulness over at rogerlsimon.com

Excerpt:

For some reason, among the many stories, a subchapter entitled "Christmas in 'Cambodia' - Vietnam, December 1968" struck a special chord with me. Apparently, on the floor of the US Senate in 1986, Kerry asserted he was ordered into Cambodia in Christmas 1968. As he later told the Boston Herald, "I remember spending Christmas of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."

Never mind that Nixon was not yet president at Christmas of 1968, a whole slew of people, quoted in the chapter say it was impossible for Kerry to have been within fifty miles of Cambodia. They also say where he was and what he did. (It wasn't pretty.) Are they lying? Well, consider this. Despite having been repeated by Kerry many times over the years, this story (according to the chapter) is curiously absent from the Senator's recent laudatory campaign bio Tour of Duty. Why, if it was so important to him, so meaningful?

This Boston Globe - Swiftboat ad story get curiouser and curiouser.

Looks as if the Globe is working its way down to the level of the NY Times.

I love this photo:

These poll numbers don't surprise me at all.

Among Veterans: Bush 58% Kerry 35%

John Kerry knocks President Bush for September 11th performance.

"...Kerry said he would have reacted much more quickly than President Bush did on Sept. 11, 2001, when he learned of terrorist attacks.

The president spent seven minutes reading to Florida elementary school children after learning that hijacked planes had been flown into the World Trade Center in New York."

Whoa! SEVEN minutes? I thought it was only six. I'm definitely voting for Kerry now.

Here's an interesting piece from the New York Times, of all places, on the economic records of the past few presidents. The results may surprise you. Be sure to look at the chart; that pretty much tells the story.

While some conservatives will take heart in these findings, they scare me a little. If history is to repeat itself, John Kerry could be reelected only to enjoy an economic boom that GWB created. Of course, Kerry will take credit for the strong economy about 5 seconds after being sworn in. It reminds me of another famous NYT headline the day Clinton was inaugurated. It said "The Recession is Over." They were conveniently about a year late on that one.

Hat tip to John, friend of DowneastBlog.

This amuses me to no end.

Here's Walter Williams with a great article on conservatives, liberals, and blacks. The proclamation at the end is priceless. This should be required reading for all liberals.

Now this is my kind of political film...

Woohoo!

The FairTax may be closer than we think.

Stories like this, this and this really make me wonder how the EU is ever going to make it.

Hi there. I’m succumbing to the old adage that “if it bleeds, it leads”, but this was pretty devastating. A massive gas blast occurred at about 8.30am local time on an industrial estate in Ghislenghien, which is only some 8 kilometers south from where I live. It appears a ground working machine pierced a gap into a large gas distribution tube. The actual explosions took place when a team attempted to seal off the leak. The explosion was horrific, and up till now it is reported that fifteen people have been killed and some 112 wounded, 30 of them with very severe burning wounds (U1 and U2, whatever that may be). Had I been at home, I would have heard it and seen the flames and the ensuing smoke pillar. It was all over the news, national and even international, see BBC and even CNN.

Interior Minister Patrick Dewael was first on the site, PM Verhofstadt and Minister of Public Health Demotte suspended their holidays in Tuscany and Bulgaria and hurried home. Most if not all people killed appear to be either police or firefighters. The Firefighter Chief of Ath, the city lying closest by, and appointed only two weeks, was among those killed. Very sad. I saw helicopter shots form the explosion site and surroundings and it looked like hell, with half of a factory blown to smithereens, several other industrial buildings nearby severely damaged and car parks with all parked cars in ashes. Part of the surrounding corn fields had been set ablaze too. The government declared it a national disaster.


Gas transport and distribution throughout Belgium and to the surrounding countries is the responsiblity of the FLUXYS company. There’s a large LNG Terminal in the North Sea port of Zeebrugge. Not only gas tankers moor there, it’s also the endpoint of the so-called Zeepipe, a gas pipeline transporting Norwegian natural gas to Belgium over the sea bed. Anyway, when you look on the Fluxys' small map (note Belgium’s jagged contours and triangular shape) you notice the purple lines, representing high-calorific gas lines, and some yellow lines, which stand for low-calorific gas transport. The explosion occurred somewhat two-thirds down the axis Zeebrugge (in the northwestern corner) / Blaregnies (central down). A lot of that gas crosses the border towards France, so I guess the gas supply of a lot of households and industries in Northern France got cut off. Luckily, from the map it seems the cut off line can be easily bypassed by the grid’s redundant conduits. Note also that Fluxys’ share was taken off the Brussels Stock Exchange.

Now that I am on it, I may elaborate a bit on the so-called Zeepipe. Part of it, Zeepipe I (the oldest tube system) links the Sleipner East and West natural gas fields in the Norwegian North Sea to Zeebrugge. The line carries 13 billion cubic metres of gas per year.


I have to mention yet that just today I read latest prose


Worse still, the commission has helped to resurrect the fable that we are hated for what we do or don't to Muslims rather than who we are. But the collective brain power of the commissioners could not adduce a simple explanation as to why French and Germans are busy rooting out plots to blow up their own citizens — despite billions of EU money sent to terrorist organizations like Hamas, support for Arafat, and cheap slurs leveled at America in Iraq. Why do Muslim radicals hate Europe when Europeans have no military power, no real presence abroad, give billions away to the Middle East, despise Israel, will sell anything to anyone anywhere at anytime, and have let millions of Arabs onto their shores? Are daily threats to Europeans earned because of what Europe does — or is the cause who they are?


I keep repeating myself when I say that Europe desperately needs columnists like VDH or Mark Steyn. These guys baffle me time and again with their compelling prose.

Here's a nice statistic from Time magazine:

Percentage of France's population that is Muslim: 6%

Percentage of France's prison population that is Muslim: 50%

Michael's reaction to this statistic: Priceless

Ok, Kerry's speech is over, so let's have at it. I think it was solid, but not terrific. Discuss...

OK, I caught most of Edwards' speech last night, and from the the standpoint of the Democrats, I think he did pretty well. It's clear they're going full out on the optimism angle, which is probably a good strategy. One aspect of the speech for me was very telling. At one point Edwards started reeling off the specific things that the Kerry administration was going to do for Americans. Every sentence started with "we're going to give you..." followed by some tax credit or some other item. This sums up what is wrong with the Democrats in my view. They see government revenue as the government's money. When they decide to distribute this wealth back to the people, they see this as "generous." What garbage. It's the people's money, and you shouldn't be bragging about giving it back to those who didn't put as much into the pile to begin with. I'm convinced that if the American electorate truly understood how our taxes work, the Democrats would be toast. Until then, the class warfare rhetoric will always find an audience. "Look how much the Democrats care about us." Please.

We need the FairTax now. Can you imagine what these politicians would have to do to get your vote if there was no way to buy it?

This rocks.

Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly went at it on Fox. I wish I would have seen this live, but this transcrpt pretty much tells the story. They both got their shots in, but I'm pretty disappointed that Bill O'Reilly didn't bring up one simple point that shatters much of Moore's argument: Those "children" killed in Iraq VOLUNTEERED to join the military of their own free will. This crap about "would you send your children" isn't even a proper analogy, I'm surprised O'Reilly put up with it.

"'They're not patriots,' Moore said. 'They're hate-triots, and they believe in the politics of hate-triotism."

Can you say ass-clown? Michael Moore sure does a spot-on impression of one.

What CAN'T this guy do?