Teresa Heinz-Kerry makes the same face that Mike Tyson does in the Nintendo game Mike Tyson’s Punch Out:

(Via Stan Shivell)

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Bill Whittle has come out of hibernation:

President Bush has already done much to re-program our mortal enemies’ assumptions about our determination to finish what we start, no matter the cost. Three dangerous enemies have fallen during his watch -- Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The first two were predicted [by the liberal left] to cause American streets to run red with blood as the Jihadists took their vengeance upon us. In the three years since 9/11, there have been no terrorist attacks on this country. That is a record to be proud of, and one that deserves the reward of my vote, at least. ...

Afghanistan did not go to the warlords. It went to the polls. There were not one million refugees. Iraq did not produce 10,000 US casualties in house-to-house fighting, nor did it splinter into 3-way civil war as so many predicted. In three months, Iraqis will also go to the polls, and they, by all accounts, will continue their widespread support for secular candidates and repudiation of the extremists that are fighting so hard to terrorize and dishearten them. But the Iraqis are not terrorized. They are signing on for their army and police forces in the face of great danger. We owe those brave men and women something better than "wrong war, wrong place and wrong time."

This is failure?

Not by my standards, it isn’t.

The transcript and translation of the new Osama bin Laden / Michael Moore video shows that Osama wants Bush out of power.  If public enemy number one is (transparently) trying to persuade Americans that Bush is a liar and that he handled 9/11 poorly, then for goodness’ sakes people, that means you should vote FOR Bush, not against him.  (Here is a hint: terrorists who attack your country are your ENEMIES, not your friends, and when they speak to you, they are trying to deceive you.)

Osama Bin Laden Tape Threatens U.S. States Not to Vote for Bush
By: Yigal Carmon*

The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired on Al-Jazeera [1] on Friday, October 29th included a specific threat to "each U.S. state," designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words "ay wilaya" (which means "each U.S. state") [2] to mean a "country" or "nation" other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: "Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security." The Islamist website Al-Qal’a explained what this sentence meant: "This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately. When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, ’Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,’ it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and those who fight for us, so that he doesn’t treat all American people as if they’re the same. This letter will have great implications inside the American society, part of which are connected to the American elections, and part of which are connected to what will come after the elections." [3] Another interesting aspect of the speech is the fact that while bin Laden made his specific threat to each U.S. state, he also offered an election deal to the American voters, attempting to influence the election by these means rather than influencing it through terrorist attacks. [4] This peace offer is a theme that follows up on his April speech directed to Europe, in which he offered a truce. [5] The Islamist website Al-Islah explains: "Some people ask ’what’s new in this tape?’ [The answer is that] this tape is the second of its kind, after the previous tape of the Sheikh [Osama bin Laden], in which he offered a truce to the Europeans a few months ago, and it is a completion of this move, and it brings together the complementary elements of politics and religion, political savvy and force, the sword and justice. The Sheikh reminds the West in this tape of the great Islamic civilization and pure Islamic religion, and of Islamic justice..." [6] 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. The following are the relevant excerpts from the speech; for the full excerpts visit the MEMRI TV Project at www.memritv.org: [7]

"Oh the American people, I address these words to you regarding the optimal manner of avoiding another Manhattan, and regarding the war, its causes, and its consequences. But before this, I say to you: Security is one of the important pillars of human life, and free men do not take their security lightly, contrary to Bush’s claim that we hate freedom. Let him explain why we did not attack Sweden, for example. Clearly, those who hate freedom have no pride, unlike the 19 [suicide hijackers of 9/11], may Allah have mercy on them. We have been fighting you because we are free men who do not remain silent in the face of injustice. We want to restore our [Islamic] nation’s freedom. Just as you violate our security, we violate yours.

"But I am amazed at you. Although we have entered the fourth year after the events of 9/11, Bush is still practicing distortion and deception against you and he is still concealing the true cause from you. Consequently, the motives for its reoccurrence still exist...

"We had no difficulty dealing with Bush and his administration, because it resembles the regimes in our [Arab] countries, half of which are ruled by the military, and the other half are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents with whom we have had a lot of experience. Among both types, there are many who are known for their conceit, arrogance, greed, and for taking money dishonestly.

"This resemblance began with the visit of Bush Sr. to the region. While some of our people were dazzled by the U.S. and hoped that these visits would influence our countries, it was he who was influenced by these monarchic and military regimes. He envied them for remaining in their positions for decades, while embezzling the nation’s public funds with no supervision whatsoever. He bequeathed tyranny and the suppression of liberties to his son and they called it the Patriot Act, under the pretext of the war on terrorism.

"Bush Sr. liked the idea of appointing [his] sons as state governors. Similarly, he did not neglect to import into Florida the expertise in falsifying [elections] from the leaders of this region in order to benefit from it in difficult moments.

"We agreed with the general commander Muhammad Atta, may Allah have mercy on him, that all operations should be carried out within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration would become aware. We never imagined that the Commander in Chief of the American armed forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens in the twin towers to face this great horror alone when they needed him most. It seemed to him that a girl’s story about her goat and its butting was more important than dealing with planes and their ’butting’ into skyscrapers. This allowed us three times the amount of time needed for the operations, Allah be praised.

"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al-Qa’ida. Your security is in your own hands, and any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

* Yigal Carmon is the President of MEMRI. [1] Al-Jazeera (Qatar), October 27, 2004. [2] "Wilaya" refers specifically to a U.S. state; it would never refer to an independent country. The term for such a country is "Dawla." [3] https://www.qal3ati.com/vb/showthread.php?t=115812 [4] To illustrate this principle, he uses Sweden as a model of a country that was never attacked by Al-Qa’ida. [5] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 695, April 15, 2004, "Osama Bin Laden Speech Offers Peace Treaty with Europe, Says Al-Qa’ida ’Will Persist in Fighting’ the U.S." http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP69504 [6] www.islahi.net/vboard/showthread.php?t=116432 [7] To view the full tape aired on Al-Jazeera or read the transcript, visit http://memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=312.

And some further debunking of LLL rhetoric from NRO:

[E]verything old is new again. Bush "lied" because he believed the same intelligence John Kerry believed. Bush "lied" even though John Edwards called the threat from Iraq "imminent" -- something Bush never did. No one bothers to ask how it could be possible that Bush lied. How could he have known there were no WMDs? No one bothers to wonder why Tony Blair isn’t a liar. Indeed, no one bothers to ask whether the Great Diplomat and Alliance Builder believes our oldest and truest allies Great Britain and Australia are lead by equally contemptible liars. Of course, they can’t be liars -- they are merely part of the coalition of the bribed. In John Kerry’s world, it’s a defense to say your oldest friends aren’t dishonest, they’re merely whores.

Oh, one more thing no one asks. How could Bush think he could pull this thing off? I mean, knowing as he did that there were no WMDs in Iraq, how could he invade the country and think no one would notice? And if he’s capable of lying to send Americans to their deaths for some nebulous petro-oedipal conspiracy no intelligent person has bothered to make even credible, why on earth didn’t he just plant some WMDs on the victim after the fact? If you’re willing to kill Americans for a lie, surely you’d be willing to plant some anthrax to keep your job.

And speaking of the victim, if it’s in fact true that Bush offered no rationale for the war other than WMDs, why shouldn’t we simply let Saddam out of his cage and put him back in office? We can even use some of the extra money from the Oil-for-Food program to compensate him for the damage to his palaces and prisons. Heck, if John Edwards weren’t busy, he could represent him.

The newest Cox and Forkum cartoon inspires me to write a little about voter motivations in this election.  I’m going to post the whole C&F cartoon and commentary in a few minutes, but briefly, it points out what is pretty obvious by now: virtually no one is voting for John F---ing Flipper Forbes Kerry in this election.  People are either voting for Bush, or against Bush; the decision has nothing to do with Kerry, and indeed many of the Bush-haters hate him so much that they don’t even care (and therefore haven’t taken the time to learn) what Kerry stands for.

For most Bush-haters, there seems to be one main reason they despise him: the Iraq war.  (Some people hate him because "he’s a moron" but since he graduated from an ivy-league university, managed to become president of the USA, and his IQ is higher than John Kerry’s, these haters are either wrong or they’re liars, and either way the argument is invalid.  Others hate Bush because of the economic situation in the US, but considering that Bush was handed the start of a recession by Clinton, that we are fighting a war, and that the economy is recovering (and was never doing THAT bad anyway), I think this too must be written off as invalid: it’s not Bush’s fault and it’s not as bad as some make it out to be.)

Now, the main complaint regarding the Iraq war is that since we haven’t found WMDs, Bush was wrong to go to war.  (Again, we can narrow the field a little more here: some people’s objection to the war is simply that all war is wrong; since such people are idealogues with no knowledge of history and no understanding of reality, their arguments are invalid.  Likewise, some believe that since Iraq didn’t blossom into a utopian paradise overnight after we invaded, Bush was wrong to go to war.  And again, such an expectation is utterly detached from reality and all the examples of history, so it’s not worth spending any time on; if the fact that we spent decades in Japan and Germany doesn’t make that obvious to you, then you are beyond hope.)

So, what’s left as the only rational objection to Bush-as-president is the idea that the war was wrong because we haven’t yet found WMDs.  There are a few different levels to this objection.

First, the "Bush lied" issue.  This can be dismissed as Bush-hater rhetoric since intelligence from the CIA, the UK, Germany, Egypt, and Syria all pointed to Saddam having / attempting to acquire WMDs.  It may be argued that those reports were wrong, but acting on faulty intelligence is not the same as lying.

Second, the oft-misquoted statement about the imminence of the threat.  Bush said that we need to act so that Saddam does not become an imminent threat.  The Bush-haters in the media and on the left in general love to quote this as "we need to act because Saddam is an imminent threat" but that is not what Bush said; that’s very different.  We know that Saddam used WMDs on his own people (the Kurds) and on the Kuwaitis, and everyone -- including Clinton and Kerry -- believed that Saddam still wanted to acquire WMDs.  Whether or not he still had WMDs at the time of the US invasion, Saddam continually violated UN resolutions and he could have become an imminent threat had we not invaded.  There is no longer any possibility of Saddam becoming a threat.

Third, WMDs were never the main reason for going to war.  Or rather, they were, but not in the way most Bush-haters think.  Saddam definitely had WMDs in the past, everyone agreed that he probably was trying to acquire more, and he supported terrorists (Palestinian suicide bombers, for example).  The main threat to us was not so much Saddam directly using WMD against us, but more that the rogue nation of Iraq would develop WMDs or WMD technology and pass it off to any of the Islamofacists who want to kill Americans.

It was important for us to try to get UN support for our action against Iraq, mainly because Tony Blair is a true ally of ours and he couldn’t go to war without a UN resolution or an "unreasonable veto" (which France eventually provided).  Our long-term goal in the War on Terror is the widespread reform of much of the Arab world, since they are largely utter failures (welfare states, etc) producing nothing of value to the world except the oil in their land which they have by pure luck.  They are utter failures because they are theocratic or dictatorial regimes which make no provisions for individual rights and provide no incentive for individual effort, but their America-hating leaders convince the people that the US and Israel are to blame for their collective failures.  Since their governments will not allow them to become successful and prosperous and free as individuals, and since in their current state many of these people become terrorists and want to kill us, our only choice is to force reform upon them.  Our ultimate goal is for them to become successful and prosperous and free -- so that they stop trying to kill us, not because we’re just really nice -- but they can’t get from here to there under their existing regimes.  However, since the UN includes representatives of many terror-sponsoring Arab states, we could not publicly state the destabilization of the Arab world as our goal and expect to get the UN support that the UK required.  Since the WMD issue was valid and likely to garner support, that had to take center stage.  But the widespread reform of much of the Arab world (plus N. Korea for the same reasons) is our long-term goal; Iraq was simply the most readily-available starting point for this process.

(That last paragraph should probably be split into about 4 paragraphs and be better-explained and reordered, but I’m too tired for that, and the election is only a day away.)

We know that not all Kerry voters are primarily voting against Bush; and we know some Bush voters would vote for Bush no matter what. But in my opinion this cartoon captures what is motivating the large majority of voters on both sides. For Bush voters, fighting terrorism is the priority; for Kerry voters, fighting Bush is the priority.

I voted for Bush last week. Regular readers know that I have little good to say about Kerry’s proposed policies. They also know that I’ve been critical of Bush’s halting, apologetic pursuit of the war on terror (our first cartoon on that subject was in November 2001).

But because Bush correctly identified state-sponsors of terrorism as a primary target, and then followed through with deposing two terror-sponsoring regimes, and because Kerry has offered no alternative except to pursue the war more multilaterally (that is, commit the same mistakes Bush has made but as a matter of principle), and worse still, because Kerry would treat terrorism as a fundamentally criminal enterprise rather than the war it is, Bush remains the only short-term hope of holding back if not stopping Islamist terrorists and theocrats who threaten American and her allies. If re-elected, it would remain to be seen if Bush would prosecute the war as it should be. But he’s the only candidate to come close to pursuing the correct course.

Two recent editorials do a much better job than I could of explaining why Bush should be supported with qualifications. The first is by TIA Daily’s Robert Tracinski: Anti-Bushites for Bush.

Kerry may not be the "perfect" candidate of the enemies of civilization -- but he is their candidate, nonetheless, and he must be defeated. Bush is far from being the perfect candidate for those who want a vigorous defense of civilization against murderous Islamic fanatics. But he is our candidate, such as he is, and he deserves our support. ...

September 11 demonstrated that it is necessary to topple and destroy the Middle Eastern regimes that use terrorism as a weapon against the West -- the principle behind the Bush Doctrine. The administration has applied that doctrine to two regimes, and they deserve credit for it. But even that is not enough, over the long term. Even if our leaders applied the Bush doctrine consistently (against Iran and Syria, for example) and backed it up with the maximum force available, that would still leave the question: then what? What would prevent the re-emergence of new terrorist regimes to replace the old ones?

The only long-term answer is that the Arab and Muslim worlds must be civilized. They must have imposed on them a better system of government, one that allows, for the first time in the Arab world, the material vibrancy of a relatively free economy and the spiritual vibrancy of the free exchange of ideas.  This would do exactly what the clashing examples of East Berlin and West Berlin did in the Cold War: it would provide an unanswerable demonstration of the benefits of a free society on one side, contrasted to misery and oppression on the other side. It is, in my view, the most important thing that can be done in the military and political realm to defeat the philosophy that animates Islamic terrorism. ...

The choice, in short, is this. George Bush is a candidate who stands for a vigorous projection of American power to reshape the political structure of the Middle East, destroying the political underpinnings of Islamic terrorism -- but whose execution of that goal is continually undercut by compromise and appeasement. John Kerry is a candidate who stands for American withdrawal and passivity -- for whom any expression of American strength would be an act of compromise and appeasement.

George W. Bush cannot be trusted to fight the war properly, but John Kerry can be trusted to retreat.

Also, from Harry Binswanger: Vote for President Bush.

The Bush doctrine, for all its timid, bumbling, and altruism-laced implementation, intends America to act, to use its military might offensively, even when half the world protests against it. Kerry’s "instincts" are to negotiate, conciliate, and retreat.

It has been clear from the beginning of this overly long campaign that Kerry’s fixation on "working with allies" does not represent a concern with any practical benefit to be attained but is an expression of his anti-American, anti-war views -- views essentially unchanged from his anti-Vietnam War days. Contrary to some of his more recent statements, Kerry does not think that Iraq in particular was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time": he thinks any military self-assertion by America is wrong.

I agree with both authors’ contention that Bush’s religiosity is a concern but not one that trumps the war.

Hopefully whoever wins Nov. 2 will do so by a wide margin. I, for one, do not want this presidential election to drag on like the last one.

I created a new website for my brother Brian and his family at disantes.com.  Go say hi!

I also have a few new photos of Cailin and Erin which are very cute.

In other news, we had our official family vote for president today at Nick’s birthday dinner.  The results were: 1 undecided, 14 votes for W, and 2 votes for Flipper.  Judging by the polls for the past few weeks and months, Tuesday’s election will be considerably closer than this.

If you work at a business that encourages men to look at your breasts, and it upsets you to have men look at your breasts, then you are a moron.

The suit also alleges harassment and "inappropriate touching."  Of course those things are wrong, but they don’t exist in a vacuum.  In this case the woman bears some of the blame and needs to take responsibility for her own choices.  When you dress in a way and work at a place that encourages men to lust after you, you have no right to be surprised when men lust after you.

Reading the comments about metadata in response to this post about F-spot, I was inspired to add search functionality to my photo collection.  So it’s done.  Well, the easy part is done -- the coding only took about two hours -- but the hard part will be tagging keywords onto all my already-existing photo sets.  In the future it’ll be much easier because it will be one set at a time.  For now, just a few of my sets are done.  Check it out.

As usual, Garrett’s latest photos are amazing.  Go see.

This guy could take out any iron chef.  Look at how he deals with banana nana nanas.