A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Guantanamo Revelation - According to the six-year narrative of the press and political class, the Bush Administration's counterterrorism policies fall somewhere between the Spanish Inquisition and the Ministry of Love in "1984." So it was something of a shock to read a remarkable front-page story in the New York Times yesterday, the abridged version being: Never mind. (READ MORE)
Next Up, Croatia? - If anyone is looking for a diversion from the U.S. election this week, may we suggest EU enlargement. This always touchy subject will pop up again tomorrow when Brussels reviews its expansion strategy. The European Commission is expected to announce that Croatia is on track to finish accession negotiations next year and join the union in 2011, and that progress in other countries, including Turkey and Serbia, has been slow in the past 12 months. (READ MORE)
Hugo Chávez's Bag Man - A federal jury in Miami yesterday convicted Venezuelan Franklin Duran of acting illegally on behalf of his government inside the U.S. If there were any lingering doubts about the danger that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez presents to democracy in the Western Hemisphere, this verdict puts them to rest. (READ MORE)
Polls Show Obama With Clear Advantage - Democrat Barack Obama, seeking a history-making victory in a presidential campaign that has captivated the country as few others ever have, maintained a clear advantage over Republican John McCain yesterday as the two made final appeals in battleground states and readied massive get-out-the-vote... (READ MORE)
Guantanamo Jury Sentences Bin Laden Aide to Life Term - An al-Qaeda propagandist who promised endless war against the United States was sentenced to life in prison yesterday, after his conviction at Guantanamo Bay on 35 counts of solicitation to commit murder, providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy. (READ MORE)
As China's Losses Mount, Confidence Turns to Fear - SHENZHEN, China -- When Chong Yik Toy Co. went bankrupt, the bosses fled without meeting their payroll and angry workers took to the streets in protest. Less than 72 hours later, the local government came to the rescue. (READ MORE)
Catholics probe aid directed to ACORN - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has hired forensic accounting specialists to investigate more than $1 million in church funding to voter-registration group ACORN, fearing the money may have been spent in partisan or fraudulent ways that could jeopardize the church's tax-exempt status. (READ MORE)
Campaigns send lawyers to watch polls - It's not quite "one man, one vote, one lawyer" this election year, but it's pretty close. Platoons of legal experts have converged on the nation's so-called swing states, ready to litigate if and when voting irregularities manifest themselves in Tuesday's presidential balloting. (READ MORE)
Voters hit polls in battleground Virginia - The state's more than 5 million registered voters are expected to extend Democrats' recent dominance in statewide elections by sending former Gov. Mark Warner to the Senate - giving the party control of the chamber's two seats for the first time since 1970. (READ MORE)
Justice keeps watch on fraud - Accusations of voter fraud and voter intimidation began surfacing weeks ago and with opening of the polls Tuesday morning, it is now up to the Justice Department to ensure that neither takes place. "The Department of Justice will do all it can to help ensure that elections run as smoothly as possible ... (READ MORE)
FBI asked questions on Rezko land deal - A former Illinois real estate specialist says FBI agents have questioned him about a Chicago property that had been bought by convicted felon Tony Rezko's wife and later sold to the couple's next-door neighbor, Sen. Barack Obama. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Bret Stephens: From 9/11 to 11/4 How soon we forget - Dec. 7 was once a significant date on the American calendar. But sometime in the past 20 years it faded almost entirely out of view. Partly this was generational and partly it was historical, as the end of the Cold War drew a line under the era that began with the day of infamy. And partly it was a matter of indifference and neglect. With that in mind, here's a forecast for tonight's result: Starting around the time the returns from Pennsylvania and Virginia are announced, 9/11 becomes another Dec. 7. On Sept. 12, 2001, few people would have doubted that the attacks of the day before "changed everything." And for the next seven years it was so, as nearly every major event in American life was in some sense a consequence of 9/11. The list includes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Guantanamo and warrantless wiretaps; diplomatic relations with allies and international public perceptions of the U.S.: (READ MORE)
Fred Barnes: We Could Be In for a Lurch to the Left - There's an old saying that politics in America is played between the 40 yard lines. What this means, for those unfamiliar with football, is that we're a centrist country, never straying very far to the left or the right in elections or national policies. This has been true for decades. It probably won't be after today's election. For the first time since the 1960s, liberal Democrats are dominant. They are all but certain to have a lopsided majority in the House, and either a filibuster-proof Senate or something close to it. If Barack Obama wins the presidency today, they'll have an ideological ally in the White House. A sharp lurch to the left and enactment of a liberal agenda, or major parts of it, are all but inevitable. The centrist limits in earlier eras of Democratic control are gone. In the short run, Democrats may be constrained by the weak economy and a large budget deficit. (READ MORE)
William McGurn: A Social Democrat Confronts Globalization - In the war on terror, the Australian government led by John Howard was one of America's closest allies. If Barack Obama is elected today, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd may be positioned to play a similar role -- but this time vis-à-vis the global marketplace. Here down under, the Democratic nominee for president enjoys European-level approval ratings, with polls showing that nearly three out of four Australians are hoping for an Obama victory. This sentiment has led to a spate of stories trying to figure out just what an Obama win would mean for Australia. Given that Sen. Obama has barely mentioned our antipodal ally in his speeches and policy statements, that's not an easy thing to do. But if the question is flipped, we have a far more interesting proposition: What might Australia and its Labor Party government mean for an Obama administration? (READ MORE)
Andrew B. Wilson: Five Myths About the Great Depression - The current financial crisis has revived powerful misconceptions about the Great Depression. Those who misinterpret the past are all too likely to repeat the exact same mistakes that made the Great Depression so deep and devastating. Here are five interrelated and durable myths about the 1929-39 Depression: - Herbert Hoover, elected president in 1928, was a doctrinaire, laissez-faire, look-the-other way Republican who clung to the idea that markets were basically self-correcting. The truth is more illuminating. Far from a free-market idealist, Hoover was an ardent believer in government intervention to support incomes and employment. This is critical to understanding the origins of the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt didn't reverse course upon moving into the White House in 1933; he went further down the path that Hoover had blazed over the previous four years. That was the path to disaster. (READ MORE)
Stephen Schwarz: Some Lessons of the Financial Crisis - We are in the middle of the worst financial crisis in recent memory. Vast efforts are being made to extricate us from it, but there is little focus on preventing the next one. Rather than wait, there are things we can do now to avoid another crisis, or at least cushion the blow when it comes. I have seven principles that should underlie any system of global financial regulation and monitoring: First, we need to finalize a common set of accounting principles across borders. In global markets, you cannot have global institutions abiding by differing standards of accounting and disclosure simply because they are headquartered in different countries. Second, the financial regulatory regimes in the world's major markets need to be structured along broadly the same lines. Each country needs a finance minister at the political level, a central bank and one single financial services regulator with a very broad mandate. (READ MORE)
John Fund: Milwaukee Puts a Vote-Fraud Cop Out of Business - Last week Mike Sandvick, head of the Milwaukee Police Department's five-man Special Investigative Unit, was told by superiors not to send anyone to polling places on Election Day. He was also told his unit -- which wrote the book on how fraud could subvert the vote in his hometown -- would be disbanded. "We know what to look for," he told me, "and that scares some people." In disgust, Mr. Sandvick plans to retire. (A police spokeswoman claims the unit isn't being disbanded and that any changes to the unit "aren't significant.") In February, Mr. Sandvick's unit released a 67-page report on what it called an "illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of (the 2004) election in the state of Wisconsin" -- a swing state whose last two presidential races were decided by less than 12,000 votes. The report found that between 4,600 and 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. (READ MORE)
Dennis Prager: Will Americans Really Vote to Fundamentally Transform America? - Today, Americans decide on whether, in the words of Barack Obama last week, to fundamentally transform the United States of America. That is really what this election is about, even though most of those voting for Barack Obama do not want to fundamentally transform America. That is Barack Obamas and the Democratic Partys agenda. Why then are so many people likely to vote for the U.S. senator from Illinois? They all have their reasons. But aside from those who hold left-wing views, relatively few want America fundamentally transformed. This can be seen by analyzing the largest groups voting for Barack Obama: 1. People who vote Democrat no matter who the nominee is. These are dyed-in-the-wool Democrats -- people who usually want more government in their lives, want bigger and stronger unions, dont trust Republicans, and/or have voted Democrat all their lives. (READ MORE)
Cal Thomas: Media Meltdown - More than the economy has melted down. What remains of big media credibility has also liquefied and won't recover anytime soon, if it ever does. Don't take my word for it. The ombudsman for The Washington Post acknowledges that conservatives have a point when they claim an imbalance in coverage of Barack Obama and John McCain. In her Nov. 2 column, Deborah Howell writes, "...it's true that The Post, as well as much of the national news media, has written more stories and more favorable stories about Barack Obama than John McCain. Editors have their reasons for this, but conservatives are right that they often don't see their views reflected enough in the news pages." What might be "their reasons"? There is only one answer: Too many journalists have been in the tank for Obama and wanted to see him elected president. Some Post reporters "complained to me that suggestions for issues coverage have been turned aside" in favor of horse-race coverage: (READ MORE)
Thomas Sowell: A "Sound" Economy? - The truest thing that Senator John McCain said during this election campaign is what got him into the most trouble: "The economy is sound." "Sound" does not mean bullet-proof. Nor does it mean that everything is going wonderfully at the moment or that nothing needs to be done. You may be as sick as a dog from having eaten the wrong thing. But that does not mean that you need to have your arm amputated or to receive massive doses of morphine. In other words, your body may be perfectly sound-- and radical medical treatment can do more lasting damage than your temporary suffering will. The political left has always known how to exploit temporary economic problems to create lasting institutions reflecting their ideology. The "progressives" did that during the brief time that America was involved in the First World War, less than a year and a half. (READ MORE)
Lawrence Kudlow: Voters think Obama's the Ronald Reagan tax-cutter of the 2008 election - Obama wins this election as the Ronald Reagan tax-cutter? His tax plans are severely flawed and his campaign narrative to support them is all wrong. And yet a recent Rasmussen poll shows that 31 percent of voters believe Obama is the real tax cutter, while only 11 percent choose McCain. Believe it or not, Obama seems to have swiped the tax-cut issue from the Republican party. How can this be? Well, for almost two years Obama has talked about cutting taxes for 95 percent of the people. McCain has no such record. And even though McCain has launched a strong Joe the Plumber investor-class tax-cutting surge in the last days of the campaign, it may not be enough to significantly impact Tuesday’s voting results. This is bad news since Obama has some pretty strange views on taxes. Just look at his recent explanation for the decline in third-quarter GDP. (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: Professor Brags About Stealing GOP Signs - A St. Olaf visiting professor bragged about stealing John McCain signs from his GOP neighbors and described it as a thrilling act of political defiance for a highly-trafficked liberal blog. “Yanking out the signs and running like a scared rabbit back to my idling car was one of the single-most exhilarating and empowering political acts that I have ever done,” wrote Phil Busse in an essay titled “Confessions of a Lawn Sign Stealer” for the Huffington Post. Busse is teaching a class on media studies this semester at St. Olaf and is currently director for the Northwest Institute for Social Change. He unsuccessfully ran for the mayor in Portland, Oregon in 2004. Busse said he realized he committed a crime and expected to be charged with misdemeanor theft of trespassing in the piece. He then proceeded to discuss in great detail how he committed one of the crimes. (READ MORE)
Wesley Pruden: Taking everything on blind faith - This election will be remembered as the campaign that ignited a religious revival. Never have so many atheists, skeptics, agnostics, secularists, heretics, freethinkers and rationalists hit the sawdust trail to imbibe so much on blind faith, and to make it their religion. Eat your heart out, Billy Graham. The Hyde Park messiah's flock makes up a weird and unlikely congregation, ranging from the true believers on the left yearning for the Kool-Aid moment to mainstream white voters eager to shut their eyes, spin around twice, cross their hearts and hope to die, squeeze a rabbit's hind foot, throw the ivories over a shoulder, and audaciously hope for the best. The most disappointed may be the Kool-Aid fans, who expect to be out of Iraq by Friday noon. (READ MORE)
Ace of Spades: Eddie Adams Jr (R - Florida) Injured in Apparent Arson Sabotage, Media Completely Silent [jdub] - Eddie Adams is running against incumbent Kathy Castor for FL CD-11, parts of Tampa, the Southbay, Bradeton, and a chunk of south St. Petersburg. It's a light blue district demographically and electorally, but it is in play. It went for Bush in 2000, for example. Well, someone decided that hanging effigies didn't go far enough, so (apparently) they affixed a mattress to the underside of Adams' SUV, where it caught fire, which then spread to the vehicle interior. Adams was hospitalized for the resulting burns and is continuing his campaign. Did I mention he's black? Yep, sure is. And yet, noone carried this, that I'm aware of, except for local AM 820. Not the Tampa Tribune. Not the (Pulitzer-winning!) St. Pete Times. Not the local broadcast news outlets. Nada. (READ MORE)
Dafydd: A Different Kind of Unity - As the country collectively gets ready to point a gun barrel into the roof of its mouth and pull the trigger, it’s interesting to reflect that for most of the two years that Barack Obama has been running for president, his main theme is that he is the kind of guy who can bring us all together in love and unity. Increasingly it is becoming clear that the Obama formula for unity is to silence those who disagree with him as much as possible -- or else to make sure that those on a soapbox aren’t able to shout their messages very far. It never was particularly believable to begin with, given that roughly half of the country is going to object to a straight socialistic program that isn’t really different in any signficant degree from the left-wing programs that the Demcoratic party has been banging the drum on for many decades. (READ MORE)
Atlas: WE ARE ALL HITLER NOW - Jihad against one of the warriors of the West. Geert Wilders, the rare breed of man, that dares to tell it like it is. I can't see Wilders with that fascist stache .... although it could be kinda avant garde. Seriously, they will take each one of us down, one by one. I stand with Wilders. Ayn Rand remarked in the book Atlas Shrugged, "I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about don't exist. That this book has been written--and published--is my proof that they do." Yeah, and so its Wilders. Dutch 10-12 year-olds learn in school: Wilders is Hitler, Wilders has no respect for people that look different. “Dutch youths will learn next week in school that Geert Wilders is to be compared to Adolf Hitler. They will receive nationally-distributed class material that states ‘Geert Wilders’ film Fitna and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf are based upon one-sided points-of-view. Fortunately, there are also other books and plays that -on the contrary- show respect for people with other ideas or faiths or that look different.’” (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: The joker’s wild - Five writers imagine the day after somebody wins the election. Some imagine an Obama victory, others a McCain win. One writer imagined that neither did, not really. “I thought I was the only one, but later, on the news, they’d reported I wasn’t, that thousands of us had turned in blank ballots, unable, finally, to cast a vote for a world whose rules we didn’t know.” But the world is unlikely to stop after the elections. Prospect Magazine describes the continuing momentum for a “league of democracies”, an idea primarily associated with John McCain but with some support in the Obama camp. On the day after elections, whoever wins, the regular to and fro of policy debate will continue, some of it with support on both sides of the aisle. “The provenance of any proposal is no reason for its adoption—or rejection—but I would note that Madeleine Albright was an advocate of an alliance of democracies in the 1990s, and since 9/11 its principal authors have been Ivo Daalder, a senior adviser to Barack Obama, James Lindsay, a former NSC official in the Clinton administration, the Republican nominee for the presidency, John McCain and one of his senior advisers, Robert Kagan. This bipartisan support may be simply a function of different conceptions of the same concept, but it is indicative at least of the broad interest in such an idea in the US.” (READ MORE)
Big Dog: Time To Rally The Troops - McCain/Palin Victory - Well, we have come down to the end of what seems like an eternal campaign season and tomorrow Americans (and some illegals as well as dead people and a few cartoon characters) will vote for a new person to run this country. This is the rally call for all to get out and vote for John McCain. The poll numbers are now close because no pollster wants to look stupid on election day but the media and the pollsters have been misleading people all along. The race is close and it will likely come down to the wire tomorrow with several key battleground states playing a pivotal role in the process. The one and only thing that will determine the outcome of this election is voter turn out. If all the people who have conservative values as well as those who believe Obama is not the right man for the job turn out, there is no way John McCain can lose. The media will try to discourage you. (READ MORE)
Dr. Sanity: WIN OR LOSE, THE LEFT WILL REMAIN DYSFUNCTIONAL - The beginning of the 21st century will surely be looked back on as a golden age of paranoia. The headlines of today fairly ooze with the delusions and vast conspiracies dreamed of in the mind of the paranoid left. If we go back a little we can find reams of material to document this process, but let's look at a few. There has been a series of bizarre conspiracy theories emanating from anxious leftists in the last 8 years as they attempt to keep the holes in their ideology plugged; thus preventing any reality from washing over them or flooding their cognitive processes. Every time a leak in that ideological dike appears, the paranoid brand chewing gum is brought out to stop it up. The TNG memos were a clever plot by Karl Rove. The Bush Administration was behind 9/11; Katrina was allowed to destroy New Orleans because Bush hates blacks. George Bush is about to impose a theocracy on the unsuspecting U.S. (READ MORE)
Bill Whittle: ASTEROID! - Inescapable cataclysm! Total destruction! Nowhere to hide! Make peace with your God! Prepare yourselves, sayeth the news. This thing is coming and you can’t stop it. You’ve seen the numbers. Banks of supercomputers refining to the eighth significant figure the precise moment of impact; the location down to a half mile. The giant Obamaroid bearing down on us: unstoppable by mere puny earthlings; a rock the size of Ireland, immutable, inevitable, crushing and final. Run all you want; you’ll just die tired. This is it. The end of all we hold dear. And what advice do we hear from political science advisors, our best and brightest stalwarts rallied to stave off this disaster? What say these wise men in white coats, men that spend decades in labs, dissecting every trend and poll, crunching numbers and assaying intentions to the milligram? What help might we look to them for? Ah! Some instructions! Something at last, some hope to cling to! Let me just check the official printout here… (READ MORE)
Chicago Boyz: Why isn’t Detroit a Paradise? - One really has to ask the obvious question: If Obama’s economic policies work so well, why isn’t Detroit a paradise? In 1950, America produced 51% of the GNP for the entire world. Of that production, roughly 70% took place in the eight states surrounding the Great Lakes: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. The productive capability of this small area of earth staggers the imagination. Virtually everything that rebuilt the industrial bases of Europe and Japan came from those eight states. Cars, planes, electronics, machine tools, consumer goods, generators, concrete - any conceivable item manufactured by industrial humanity poured out this tiny region and enriched the world. The region shone with widespread prosperity. People migrated from the South and West to work in these Herculean engines of industry. The wealth, power and economic dominance of the region at the time cannot be overstated. (READ MORE)
Chuck: I'm Your Worst Nightmare. I am a BAD Republican. - I like big cars, big cigars and naturally big racks. I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some mid-level governmental functionary with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies. I don't care about appearing compassionate. I think having with guns doesn't make you a killer. I believe its called the Boy Scouts for a reason. I think I'm better than the homeless. I smell better, look better and act better, anyway. I am not the real Slim Shady, so I think that I’m gonna stay seated right here in this damn comfy chair. I don't think being a minority makes you noble or victimized. I don't care if you call me a racist, a homophobe or a misogynist. I am not tolerant of others because they are different. I know that no matter how big Jennifer Lopez’s ass gets, I’ll still want to see it. (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: None So Blind - Tomorrow is election day and I thought it might be interesting to post a small snippet of a discussion with an Obama supporter. The Obama supporter in question is a relative, a daily reader of the New York Times and regular viewer of Network and Cable News (MS-NBC, CNN especially.) This person would have to be considered, in conventional terms, a very well informed voter. I have worked very hard not to respond to political discussions with (liberal) family and friends over the last several years. George W. Bush, to too many, is an evil incompetent, controlled by Cheney, and a willing dupe of the radical right wing. Dissenting views are not welcomed and refuting the bill of particulars against him is wasted energy. He is guilty and that is that. During the present campaign, on the rare occasion I have been sucked into a discussion (debate? argument?), things invariably deteriorate after just a few minutes; this weekend's discussion was no exception. My 15 year old son instigated: (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: BBSOB - I’ve worked for a lot of great Americans in my time, and a couple of buttheads too. We’ve got our very own bell curve in naval aviation, but the tail is pretty thin on the left, and a little fatter on the right. Our average is pretty damned good. Beats most people’s best. Best CO I ever worked for was Turk Green. Turk came to us from Springfield, Missouri. Carried the accents of his youth into the fleet, and loved playing the role of the down home country boy. It was disarming and charming and some people who ought to have known better sometimes took him for granted. He did it on purpose, I think - he had a mind like a laser scalpel - and of those who wrote him off as just another farm boy from Podunksville, many were left burning in his wake. He never hung a man. Just gave him the rope. (READ MORE)
Cassandra: The Official VC Election Day Exit Poll - Forget the networks. They always get it wrong. For unabashedly partisan and in your face Election Day snark delivered without those rigorous layers of editorial fact checking and control that distinguish professional journalists from the blog mob, you people know where to come: Vote as your conscience directs but whatever else you do today, please vote. It is your civic duty and one of the great privileges of living in a free and prosperous nation. However much our political process may wear upon our jangled nerves, it is notable that in America we settle our differences, at the worst, with harsh words rather than with bullets, with knives, or with our fists. This is the hallmark of a civilized nation; for as that playground rhyme we learned as children reminds us, words may bruise our egos and ruffle a few feathers but they leave no lasting physical damage. Words cannot truly harm us unless we choose to nurse a grievance long after the contest is concluded. (READ MORE)
J. D. Pendry: This is my country… - Happy Election Day Eve. I have gone into self-imposed media blackout. I have grown tired of pollsters, pundits and political strategists. I have voted. The bottom line up front is that I cannot do more than that. The outcome is not in my hands nor is it in any mortal’s. That is how I see it. If you have not voted, forget the blasted polls, do not listen to the media leaking exit poll information and calling the election one way or the other. Instead of taking in all of that, just go vote. I take my obligation to vote personally and seriously. I hope you do the same. I turned 56 years old not so long ago. Twenty-eight of those years were spent in the United States Army. The people I served half of my life with in the Army are special people. They were my extended family then and now. When I cast my vote, I weigh my choice heavily in their favor. (READ MORE)
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