House Intel Chief: Al-Qaeda is Shi'ite

Does this concern anyone? [H/T: The Belmont Club]:

The dialogue went like this:
Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?
“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about
predominately?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.
He couldn’t have been
more wrong.
Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al
Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

Wow! The guy that will run the house Intel committee fundamentally misunderstand the most prominent enemy of his country (and of the West). So, just in case you think this gap in understanding is a partisan matter, consider Trent Lott, incoming Republican Minority Whip:

Trent Lott, the veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, said only last September that “It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people.”

“Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion?” wondered Lott, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after a meeting with Bush.

“Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?

“They all look the same to me,” Lott said.

We're in lots of trouble if this is the quality of people the U.S. electorate want leading them in a war whilst they discard someone of Rick Santorum's calibre:

Our growing challenge, however, is that Iran is not alone in its rhetoric, intent or capacity to threaten the security of the U.S. It is important for Americans to know that the threat is more complex, and has grown more complex.The enemy that has to be named is greater than Islamic Fascism.

Many Americans are sleepwalking, just as they did before the world wars of the last century. They pretend it is not happening, that it all has to do with the errors
of a single American administration, even of a single American president. Some even pretend that it will all go away if only the Democrat Party-including my opponent who did not even know the name of the former Iranian president whose presence kicked up a firestorm a few weeks ago by coming to America-is elected in November.

How do they propose to save us from these people? By negotiating at the United Nations? By removing U.N. Ambassador John Bolton office? By relocating American forces from Iraq to Okinawa? By abandoning the Iraqi people to Iranian and Syrian slaughter and domination? By engaging in more direct talks with a nuclear North Korea?

America Alone: Within and Without

In his recent book, America Alone: the end of the world as we know it, Steyn argues that "Europe is almost certainly a goner. The future, if the West has one, belongs to America Alone."

Unfortunately, America is also alone, einsam or lonely within. This loneliness is a product of its abandonment of God and his Moral Law. America was nurtured in this Moral Law. This was its anchor during its spectacular rise into an unrivaled - now and in antiquity - superpower. It has abandoned It. It has abandoned America.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn prophesied this in a lecture at Harvard in the late 1970s:

This debilitating dream [of the West] of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.

Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

Just over a year later, the US was attacked, it appeased, and its lack of moral fortitude revealed, its hollow anthropologic centre bared for all to see.

Skipping forward to the present....

In an article discussing reasons for the GOP's shock defeat in Election 06, John McIntyre points to an precipitous decline in the belief of Americans that they are in a War with a stubborn and crafty enemy:

A final, underappreciated dynamic of this year's midterms is what I have called "the fading 9/11 effect." The country's focus and concern over terrorism was a crucial factor that powered Republican gains in '02 and '04 as well as President Bush's own reelection. But five years of success in preventing terrorist attacks have bred complacency among the American public. The country simply doesn't take the threat as seriously when Bush pounds the table and insists we are at war with an enemy that is coming after us relentlessly. That is why the carefully orchestrated votes on detainee rights and NSA wire-tapping did not have the same electoral success they would have had 2-4 years ago.

In a similar vein and context, Thomas Sowell laments the passing of American will:

No amount of security precautions can protect us from all the thousands of ways in which terrorists can strike at times and places of their own choosing -- and eventually strike with nuclear weapons. Our only hope is to get advance information from those we capture as to where other terrorists are and how they operate.

Squeamishness about how this is done is not a sign of higher morality but of irresponsibility in the face of mortal dangers.

Mark Steyn quotes Niall Ferguson as saying that America is "...the world's first superpower with ADHD.

He is of course referring to the tendency of the United States short attention spans and snappish impatience for results:

...America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV. It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.

He reinforces this idea in America Alone in a section called "Fighting Vainly the Old Ennui" by quoting Niall Ferguson as saying that the US is the "...clay feet of the colossus..." . Steyn continues with the following worrying sequence of thoughts:

In Vietnam, it took 50,000 deaths to drive the giant away; maybe in the Middle East, it will only take 5,000. And maybe in the next war the giant will give up after 500, or 50, or not bother at all. Our enemies have made a bet - that the West in general and the United States in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span.

War historian and scholar, Victor Davis Hanson, in only September 2006, posited that the leadership of the USA is in the capable hands of the President and that he would not succumb to a bout of majority sympathy:

The truth is that war is a constant ying and yang, of challenge and response, the side winning that reacts the more quickly to change and commits the fewer mistakes—and keeps its head. So far, by any historical standard of casualties lost, the ambition of the mission (Iraq is 7,000 miles and the home of the ancient caliphate), and success gained, this war is hardly a debacle and surely can be won. But it would have been lost years ago, had George Bush once, just once, listened to his litany of critics (pull out, postpone the elections, post a timetable, go to the UN, more troops still, invade Iran or Syria, trisect the country) watched the polls, or in depression at the venom, given in. We need to take a breath and remember that.

However, this certainty has recently waned with his consideration of Bush's constitution of the "Baker Commission":

For all the present gloom, if Bush hangs tough and gets Iraq stabilized, does not appease North Korea and Iran, and sees movement in the Middle East toward more reform, then in 10 years he will be seen as a rarely successful American President.

Fortunately, President Bush is looking elsewhere for strategic advice:

The Bush administration is conducting its own review of strategy and tactics in Iraq in parallel with an examination of U.S. policy by an independent panel, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said.

The work, involving the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and the White House National Security Council, has been going on ``fairly discretely'' for weeks, Hadley said aboard Air Force One as President George W. Bush traveled to an economic conference in Asia.

The Brontosaurus is being kept on life support by a President who is himself ill.

Update: The WaPo has reliably published a leak of the results of the President's alternate advice mechanism:

The Pentagon's closely guarded review of how to improve the situation in Iraq has outlined three basic options: Send in more troops, shrink the force but stay longer, or pull out, according to senior defense officials.

Lefties blame Elbridge Gerry, RIP

Over at the New Republic, the Editors have published a statement to the effect that Elbridge Gerry, the chap who developed the Congressional Redistricting Plan, is to blame for their predicted lacklustre performance at the US polls.

First they claim that the much vaunted 30 to 50 seat sweep of the House by the Democrats will not emerge:

Democrats have run up double-digit advantages on major issues from Iraq to the economy. When voters are presented with a generic congressional ballot, Democrats win 53-39. But there's simply no way that this will translate.

Then instead of looking at the facts, they elucidate a conspiracy, a right-wing conspiracy. And who is to blame? Elbridge Gerry (RIP) of course, a dead Republican (but not really). You see, Gerry developed the Congressional redistricting scheme:

When voters are presented with a generic congressional ballot, Democrats win 53-39. But there's simply no way that this will translate. Virginia, Missouri, and Tennessee, for instance, are hosting three of the nation's tightest Senate races. But travel a step down the ballot, and you will find only one close contest in those states' combined 29 house races. The entire state of California has only two somewhat tight contests--and it wouldn't even have those, except for a pair of GOP incumbents' associations with Jack Abramoff.

All this is the legacy of our least favorite Founding Father, Elbridge Gerry, and the formula for rigging congressional elections that bears his name. Not that it's all Gerry's fault. The redistricting plan he signed in 1812--and the hundreds that have followed--merely exploited a massive flaw in our electoral system.

Yesterday, I claimed that the TNR is one of the few sane lefty collectives out there. This performance should lead us all to start doubting that.

Also interesting what one finds when trawling the feverswamp. Date stamped 4 November 2006:

So, at best (for the pukes), the polls are actually ACCURATE. At worst, they're underestimating our intensity...In summary, Hugh Hewitt is a f**king moron.

Deeerr. Got that?

For the nutters, my prediction from last night still holds: GOP narrowly lose House, retain Senate with slimmer margin. This prediction based on facts, not wishful thinking.

Sunday Ruined

Looks like some of our sane lefty comrades have had there wonderful weekend ruined by some bad polls:

John Judis and I have been e-mailing about the alarming Pew poll that came out today. It reflects the same trends captured by that earlier Washington Post/ABC poll, except that the trends are, gulp, even more pronounced. Worse, the folks at Pew have graciously posted their cross-tabs, which makes it nearly impossible to rationalize the lousy results. As John points out, the fact that Democrats' 15-point advantage among white women last month has turned into a 2-point disadvantage today is incredibly ominous.

Had they listened to Hugh Hewitt's predictions, they would have been steeling themselves for the inevitable GOTV backlash:

There's plenty of reasons why the GOP should not be deterred by the numbers of many polls, and plenty of reasons why Dems have to fear another bit of secret sauce and echo-chamber-induced premature celebrations.

Unfortunately, neither TradeSports:

or Prediction Markets see much chance in the GOP retaining control of the House.

My guess is that the GOP will lose control of House by slim margin and maintain control of Senate.
UPDATE: Wrong on both counts.

Sexy Ford

This is the entirety of a letter that I wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald editor several days ago (it was not published):

Dear Editor,

I am disappointed by the lack of balance and accuracy in Michael Gawenda’s article “Senate fight about race a strain on southern comfort” (26 October 2006).

The Republican National Committee has produced and aired an ad depicting the Democratic challenger for a Tennessean Senate seat, Harold Ford, as someone who is in bed with the pornography industry (excuse the pun) and who is seduced by a white porn star. Gawenda’s notes that this sort of political advertising would “...shock even Australia’s seasoned political apparatchiks.”

Gawenda notes that the election is about “character”. Precisely. This is what the ad tries to address. The ad, among other things, mocks Ford’s policy position on the legal rights of illegal combatants in the War on Terror, his high tax policies and his dislike of US second amendment rights to possess firearms.

According to Gawenda, Ford is “handsome and charismatic” and wears “smart suits and two-colour shirts”. I suppose these are Gawenda’s benchmarks for “character”. On this basis, should we consider Ken Lay as an exemplar?

In an article about race and US politics, I also find it startling that Gawenda’s journalistic piece fails to report the “dirty tricks” perpetrated by the Democrats, particularly because of Gawenda’s extensive experience at covering US politics. A case in point is a Democratic TV ad funded by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee portraying a black Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia as a minstrel and referring to him as “Sambo”.

For the record, both ads were withdrawn. But Gawenda does not report that either.

So I was reading "The Inquirer" section of The Australian this morning. Geoff Elliott had almost one entire broadsheet page dedicated to covering the supposed racist smear against Harold Ford Jnr (can't find it online). This article again failed to mention the dirty racist smears being perpetrated by the Democrats in Election '06. It also failed to mention that the ad has been pulled or that the RNC (contrary to my implication above) has no control over the ad.

I'm not going to complain about the balance of Elliott's piece as it is not reporting, but opinion. But I would have thought that factual accuracy would still be a necessity. The World News/Opinion sections of the Australian need some serious looking over. First Chulov's significant errors and shifting accounts, now Elliotts mistakes.

Its good to see the Editorial teams of both major Australian newspapers up to the task of acting as Gatekeepers.

GOP fighting back

The POTUS and SecDef have come out swinging in the last couple days.

POTUS highlighted the enormous domestic battle that needs to be done in order to win the War on Islamofascism:

It's interesting, here in America, I ran into a kid the other day who used to work here and he goes to a famous law school, and he said, the problem, Mr. President, is people don't believe we're at war. I not only believe we're at war, I know we're at war. My biggest issue that I think about all the time is the next attack on America, because I am fully aware that there are people out there that would like nothing more than to have another spectacular moment by killing the American people.

And they're coming. And we've got to do everything we can to stop them. That's why I believe we ought to listen to their phone calls, obviously on a limited basis, one coming out of the country, and why I know we need to interrogate these people. That's why we need the Patriot Act. That's why we need to be on the offense all the time.

The SecDef on setting benchmarks for the Iraqis:

Now, you're looking for some sort of a guillotine to come flowing down if some date isn't met. That is not what this is about. This is complicated stuff. It's difficult. We're looking out into the future. No one can predict the future with absolute certainty.

So you ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult, that honorable people are working on these things together; there isn't any daylight between them. They will be discussing this and discussing that; they may have a change here or a change there, but it will get worked out. And the value of it, in my view, is that you are, in effect, establishing priorities.

The net sum total is the following (courtesy TradeSports):

Barring any other October Surprises, the GOP is tracking well to either lose the House narrowly or maintain a slim majority.

UPDATE: The GOP also has bigger coffers for the home stretch.

ABC Feels, AT Facts

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has a web article on the how Michael J Fox is being "hounded" by conservatives in the U.S. with respect to his political ad on stem cell research. However, I haven't noticed a prominent piece on the claims being made by Michael J Fox in his ad. Instead, they cover this ad with the following touchy-feely:

In a heart-wrenching TV commercial, the once fresh-faced Canadian-born star writhes and twitches, struggling to hold his head still to look into camera.

Controversy has been stirred as a result of conservative talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, claiming that Fox was faking while the ad was being recorded. He has since apologised. Needless to say, this sort of commentary is unhelpful.

However, this sort of commentary by a gynecologist and obstetrician published by the American Thinker is educational and does a much better demolition job of Fox's claims on embryonic stem cell research. For instance:

The plain fact is that embryonic stem cell research is proving to be a bust. There are currently 72 therapies showing human benefits using adult stem cells and zero using embryonic stem cells. Scientifically-minded readers can review this medical journal article on the status of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell therapies are already being advertised and promoted while no such treatments are even remotely in prospect for embryonic stem cell research.

Read it all if the facts interest you. The ABC isn't interested in facts.

Update: The ABC story is largely sourced from AFP. Interestingly, the ABC excerpt snips the scant factual critique contained in the AFP article:

Limbaugh's fellow conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity told ABC's Good Morning America Wednesday Fox was fair game.

The actor, who also starred in political drama "Spin City" had "a right to speak up, but he also has a right to be criticised," Hannity said.

"What's unfortunate and deceiving about the ad is that this is about the federal funding of embryonic stem cells," Hannity said, arguing members of Congress had no jurisdiction over the issue.

House Intel Chief: Al-Qaeda is Shi'ite

Does this concern anyone? [H/T: The Belmont Club]:

The dialogue went like this:
Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?
“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about
predominately?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.
He couldn’t have been
more wrong.
Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al
Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

Wow! The guy that will run the house Intel committee fundamentally misunderstand the most prominent enemy of his country (and of the West). So, just in case you think this gap in understanding is a partisan matter, consider Trent Lott, incoming Republican Minority Whip:

Trent Lott, the veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, said only last September that “It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people.”

“Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion?” wondered Lott, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after a meeting with Bush.

“Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?

“They all look the same to me,” Lott said.

We're in lots of trouble if this is the quality of people the U.S. electorate want leading them in a war whilst they discard someone of Rick Santorum's calibre:

Our growing challenge, however, is that Iran is not alone in its rhetoric, intent or capacity to threaten the security of the U.S. It is important for Americans to know that the threat is more complex, and has grown more complex.The enemy that has to be named is greater than Islamic Fascism.

Many Americans are sleepwalking, just as they did before the world wars of the last century. They pretend it is not happening, that it all has to do with the errors
of a single American administration, even of a single American president. Some even pretend that it will all go away if only the Democrat Party-including my opponent who did not even know the name of the former Iranian president whose presence kicked up a firestorm a few weeks ago by coming to America-is elected in November.

How do they propose to save us from these people? By negotiating at the United Nations? By removing U.N. Ambassador John Bolton office? By relocating American forces from Iraq to Okinawa? By abandoning the Iraqi people to Iranian and Syrian slaughter and domination? By engaging in more direct talks with a nuclear North Korea?

America Alone: Within and Without

In his recent book, America Alone: the end of the world as we know it, Steyn argues that "Europe is almost certainly a goner. The future, if the West has one, belongs to America Alone."

Unfortunately, America is also alone, einsam or lonely within. This loneliness is a product of its abandonment of God and his Moral Law. America was nurtured in this Moral Law. This was its anchor during its spectacular rise into an unrivaled - now and in antiquity - superpower. It has abandoned It. It has abandoned America.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn prophesied this in a lecture at Harvard in the late 1970s:

This debilitating dream [of the West] of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.

Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

Just over a year later, the US was attacked, it appeased, and its lack of moral fortitude revealed, its hollow anthropologic centre bared for all to see.

Skipping forward to the present....

In an article discussing reasons for the GOP's shock defeat in Election 06, John McIntyre points to an precipitous decline in the belief of Americans that they are in a War with a stubborn and crafty enemy:

A final, underappreciated dynamic of this year's midterms is what I have called "the fading 9/11 effect." The country's focus and concern over terrorism was a crucial factor that powered Republican gains in '02 and '04 as well as President Bush's own reelection. But five years of success in preventing terrorist attacks have bred complacency among the American public. The country simply doesn't take the threat as seriously when Bush pounds the table and insists we are at war with an enemy that is coming after us relentlessly. That is why the carefully orchestrated votes on detainee rights and NSA wire-tapping did not have the same electoral success they would have had 2-4 years ago.

In a similar vein and context, Thomas Sowell laments the passing of American will:

No amount of security precautions can protect us from all the thousands of ways in which terrorists can strike at times and places of their own choosing -- and eventually strike with nuclear weapons. Our only hope is to get advance information from those we capture as to where other terrorists are and how they operate.

Squeamishness about how this is done is not a sign of higher morality but of irresponsibility in the face of mortal dangers.

Mark Steyn quotes Niall Ferguson as saying that America is "...the world's first superpower with ADHD.

He is of course referring to the tendency of the United States short attention spans and snappish impatience for results:

...America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV. It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.

He reinforces this idea in America Alone in a section called "Fighting Vainly the Old Ennui" by quoting Niall Ferguson as saying that the US is the "...clay feet of the colossus..." . Steyn continues with the following worrying sequence of thoughts:

In Vietnam, it took 50,000 deaths to drive the giant away; maybe in the Middle East, it will only take 5,000. And maybe in the next war the giant will give up after 500, or 50, or not bother at all. Our enemies have made a bet - that the West in general and the United States in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span.

War historian and scholar, Victor Davis Hanson, in only September 2006, posited that the leadership of the USA is in the capable hands of the President and that he would not succumb to a bout of majority sympathy:

The truth is that war is a constant ying and yang, of challenge and response, the side winning that reacts the more quickly to change and commits the fewer mistakes—and keeps its head. So far, by any historical standard of casualties lost, the ambition of the mission (Iraq is 7,000 miles and the home of the ancient caliphate), and success gained, this war is hardly a debacle and surely can be won. But it would have been lost years ago, had George Bush once, just once, listened to his litany of critics (pull out, postpone the elections, post a timetable, go to the UN, more troops still, invade Iran or Syria, trisect the country) watched the polls, or in depression at the venom, given in. We need to take a breath and remember that.

However, this certainty has recently waned with his consideration of Bush's constitution of the "Baker Commission":

For all the present gloom, if Bush hangs tough and gets Iraq stabilized, does not appease North Korea and Iran, and sees movement in the Middle East toward more reform, then in 10 years he will be seen as a rarely successful American President.

Fortunately, President Bush is looking elsewhere for strategic advice:

The Bush administration is conducting its own review of strategy and tactics in Iraq in parallel with an examination of U.S. policy by an independent panel, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said.

The work, involving the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and the White House National Security Council, has been going on ``fairly discretely'' for weeks, Hadley said aboard Air Force One as President George W. Bush traveled to an economic conference in Asia.

The Brontosaurus is being kept on life support by a President who is himself ill.

Update: The WaPo has reliably published a leak of the results of the President's alternate advice mechanism:

The Pentagon's closely guarded review of how to improve the situation in Iraq has outlined three basic options: Send in more troops, shrink the force but stay longer, or pull out, according to senior defense officials.

Lefties blame Elbridge Gerry, RIP

Over at the New Republic, the Editors have published a statement to the effect that Elbridge Gerry, the chap who developed the Congressional Redistricting Plan, is to blame for their predicted lacklustre performance at the US polls.

First they claim that the much vaunted 30 to 50 seat sweep of the House by the Democrats will not emerge:

Democrats have run up double-digit advantages on major issues from Iraq to the economy. When voters are presented with a generic congressional ballot, Democrats win 53-39. But there's simply no way that this will translate.

Then instead of looking at the facts, they elucidate a conspiracy, a right-wing conspiracy. And who is to blame? Elbridge Gerry (RIP) of course, a dead Republican (but not really). You see, Gerry developed the Congressional redistricting scheme:

When voters are presented with a generic congressional ballot, Democrats win 53-39. But there's simply no way that this will translate. Virginia, Missouri, and Tennessee, for instance, are hosting three of the nation's tightest Senate races. But travel a step down the ballot, and you will find only one close contest in those states' combined 29 house races. The entire state of California has only two somewhat tight contests--and it wouldn't even have those, except for a pair of GOP incumbents' associations with Jack Abramoff.

All this is the legacy of our least favorite Founding Father, Elbridge Gerry, and the formula for rigging congressional elections that bears his name. Not that it's all Gerry's fault. The redistricting plan he signed in 1812--and the hundreds that have followed--merely exploited a massive flaw in our electoral system.

Yesterday, I claimed that the TNR is one of the few sane lefty collectives out there. This performance should lead us all to start doubting that.

Also interesting what one finds when trawling the feverswamp. Date stamped 4 November 2006:

So, at best (for the pukes), the polls are actually ACCURATE. At worst, they're underestimating our intensity...In summary, Hugh Hewitt is a f**king moron.

Deeerr. Got that?

For the nutters, my prediction from last night still holds: GOP narrowly lose House, retain Senate with slimmer margin. This prediction based on facts, not wishful thinking.

Sunday Ruined

Looks like some of our sane lefty comrades have had there wonderful weekend ruined by some bad polls:

John Judis and I have been e-mailing about the alarming Pew poll that came out today. It reflects the same trends captured by that earlier Washington Post/ABC poll, except that the trends are, gulp, even more pronounced. Worse, the folks at Pew have graciously posted their cross-tabs, which makes it nearly impossible to rationalize the lousy results. As John points out, the fact that Democrats' 15-point advantage among white women last month has turned into a 2-point disadvantage today is incredibly ominous.

Had they listened to Hugh Hewitt's predictions, they would have been steeling themselves for the inevitable GOTV backlash:

There's plenty of reasons why the GOP should not be deterred by the numbers of many polls, and plenty of reasons why Dems have to fear another bit of secret sauce and echo-chamber-induced premature celebrations.

Unfortunately, neither TradeSports:

or Prediction Markets see much chance in the GOP retaining control of the House.

My guess is that the GOP will lose control of House by slim margin and maintain control of Senate.
UPDATE: Wrong on both counts.

Sexy Ford

This is the entirety of a letter that I wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald editor several days ago (it was not published):

Dear Editor,

I am disappointed by the lack of balance and accuracy in Michael Gawenda’s article “Senate fight about race a strain on southern comfort” (26 October 2006).

The Republican National Committee has produced and aired an ad depicting the Democratic challenger for a Tennessean Senate seat, Harold Ford, as someone who is in bed with the pornography industry (excuse the pun) and who is seduced by a white porn star. Gawenda’s notes that this sort of political advertising would “...shock even Australia’s seasoned political apparatchiks.”

Gawenda notes that the election is about “character”. Precisely. This is what the ad tries to address. The ad, among other things, mocks Ford’s policy position on the legal rights of illegal combatants in the War on Terror, his high tax policies and his dislike of US second amendment rights to possess firearms.

According to Gawenda, Ford is “handsome and charismatic” and wears “smart suits and two-colour shirts”. I suppose these are Gawenda’s benchmarks for “character”. On this basis, should we consider Ken Lay as an exemplar?

In an article about race and US politics, I also find it startling that Gawenda’s journalistic piece fails to report the “dirty tricks” perpetrated by the Democrats, particularly because of Gawenda’s extensive experience at covering US politics. A case in point is a Democratic TV ad funded by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee portraying a black Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia as a minstrel and referring to him as “Sambo”.

For the record, both ads were withdrawn. But Gawenda does not report that either.

So I was reading "The Inquirer" section of The Australian this morning. Geoff Elliott had almost one entire broadsheet page dedicated to covering the supposed racist smear against Harold Ford Jnr (can't find it online). This article again failed to mention the dirty racist smears being perpetrated by the Democrats in Election '06. It also failed to mention that the ad has been pulled or that the RNC (contrary to my implication above) has no control over the ad.

I'm not going to complain about the balance of Elliott's piece as it is not reporting, but opinion. But I would have thought that factual accuracy would still be a necessity. The World News/Opinion sections of the Australian need some serious looking over. First Chulov's significant errors and shifting accounts, now Elliotts mistakes.

Its good to see the Editorial teams of both major Australian newspapers up to the task of acting as Gatekeepers.

GOP fighting back

The POTUS and SecDef have come out swinging in the last couple days.

POTUS highlighted the enormous domestic battle that needs to be done in order to win the War on Islamofascism:

It's interesting, here in America, I ran into a kid the other day who used to work here and he goes to a famous law school, and he said, the problem, Mr. President, is people don't believe we're at war. I not only believe we're at war, I know we're at war. My biggest issue that I think about all the time is the next attack on America, because I am fully aware that there are people out there that would like nothing more than to have another spectacular moment by killing the American people.

And they're coming. And we've got to do everything we can to stop them. That's why I believe we ought to listen to their phone calls, obviously on a limited basis, one coming out of the country, and why I know we need to interrogate these people. That's why we need the Patriot Act. That's why we need to be on the offense all the time.

The SecDef on setting benchmarks for the Iraqis:

Now, you're looking for some sort of a guillotine to come flowing down if some date isn't met. That is not what this is about. This is complicated stuff. It's difficult. We're looking out into the future. No one can predict the future with absolute certainty.

So you ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult, that honorable people are working on these things together; there isn't any daylight between them. They will be discussing this and discussing that; they may have a change here or a change there, but it will get worked out. And the value of it, in my view, is that you are, in effect, establishing priorities.

The net sum total is the following (courtesy TradeSports):

Barring any other October Surprises, the GOP is tracking well to either lose the House narrowly or maintain a slim majority.

UPDATE: The GOP also has bigger coffers for the home stretch.

ABC Feels, AT Facts

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has a web article on the how Michael J Fox is being "hounded" by conservatives in the U.S. with respect to his political ad on stem cell research. However, I haven't noticed a prominent piece on the claims being made by Michael J Fox in his ad. Instead, they cover this ad with the following touchy-feely:

In a heart-wrenching TV commercial, the once fresh-faced Canadian-born star writhes and twitches, struggling to hold his head still to look into camera.

Controversy has been stirred as a result of conservative talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, claiming that Fox was faking while the ad was being recorded. He has since apologised. Needless to say, this sort of commentary is unhelpful.

However, this sort of commentary by a gynecologist and obstetrician published by the American Thinker is educational and does a much better demolition job of Fox's claims on embryonic stem cell research. For instance:

The plain fact is that embryonic stem cell research is proving to be a bust. There are currently 72 therapies showing human benefits using adult stem cells and zero using embryonic stem cells. Scientifically-minded readers can review this medical journal article on the status of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell therapies are already being advertised and promoted while no such treatments are even remotely in prospect for embryonic stem cell research.

Read it all if the facts interest you. The ABC isn't interested in facts.

Update: The ABC story is largely sourced from AFP. Interestingly, the ABC excerpt snips the scant factual critique contained in the AFP article:

Limbaugh's fellow conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity told ABC's Good Morning America Wednesday Fox was fair game.

The actor, who also starred in political drama "Spin City" had "a right to speak up, but he also has a right to be criticised," Hannity said.

"What's unfortunate and deceiving about the ad is that this is about the federal funding of embryonic stem cells," Hannity said, arguing members of Congress had no jurisdiction over the issue.