The Command Post is running this report that the Kerry campaign bus stopped at a Wendy's where a group of Marines were eating lunch. Spotting them, Kerry walked over to shake their hands. The men were polite—all "yes, Sir," "no, Sir"—but made it clear to reporters afterward that they were Bush supporters and didn't appreciate Kerry's imposition on their time and attention.

What a surprise.

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This is an amazing essay, by a writer for Esquire who despises George W. Bush but nonetheless forces himself to examine the war in Iraq as objectively as possible. It's one of the ballsiest things I've read in a long time ("most ovarian," perhaps, for those of us on the distaff side of the gender line—but this essay has nothing to do with sex).

I've seen it excerpted on other blogs, but I'm not going to do that because it just has to be read in its entirety. Everyone should read it, not just as an example of how a person might find Bush offputting and yet think the war has merit, but as one realization of what we all aspire to: a continual re-examining our beliefs. A determination to find our intellectual blinders—whatever they might be—and to take them off.

Via I Love Jet Noise.

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From L.A.'s Music Recycler:

WANTED: homeless drummer with drug problem, ego, etc.

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Via Dean, the updated oaths for all five branches of the military (yes, they included the Coast Guard). Ooo rah.

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I'll be going to Siggraph, the big computer graphics convention, again this year at the beginning of August, while my husband's away in the midwest researching his book. I don't happen to know jack about computer graphics; I'm just going for the parties and the movie (a film comprising all the latest promotional shorts and special-effects work in the industry; it's the highlight of the show, especially for slackers like me who are just there to glom off of others' brilliance).

It'll be much cheaper to go this year, since it'll be in L.A. I'll be my own Blogger's Alley.

They asked for a job title for my I.D. badge. I wrote Woman-About-Town.

"That makes sense," Attila the Hub commented. "You are sort of a cyber bon vivant."

In years past the rule for parties was this: if you could successfully forge your own invitations to a particular event, you were welcome there. That is, you have to have a good eye in this field, so if you were able to make the "look" of the fake invite convincing enough, the hosts always called it fair.

Now I don't have to forge any invites at all, since I'll be the guest of the Scanning King, who gets invited to everything. Probably I'll just hang out with his wife: we'll be the ones in the corner drinking and dishing. You'll know we had too much if we start composing poetry on the spot and loudly reciting it to innocent passers-by.

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Francis Crick died on Wednesday. I'm still miffed about the Rosalind Franklin thing, but this isn't the day to get into that.*

I once lived with someone who lived with someone who shared a Nobel Prize with Dr. Crick in 1962. Figure that one out.

And at this moment I cannot remember who it was who had that dream about the double-helix—as I recall, it was monkeys dancing in two helical shapes. Somehow I think it was Crick, but I could well be wrong. Professor Purkinje, let me know. Or maybe I'll call my mom, who knows all this stuff.

Hat tip: James.

* I mean, what was the Nobel Committee thinking?—Franklin had been dead for four years when Watson and Crick were awarded the prize for figuring out the structure of DNA. If her cancer was indeed caused by her research, she died so they could get the prize—and so we could improve . . . well, everything. Wouldn't you think she deserves a Nobel footnote or something? Maybe a technical award, like those Oscars for computer programmers that aren't quite statuettes, but are more like plaques. No one on the Nobel Committee has called me for help with this. Not one. I sense a conspiracy. Someone alert Michael Moore.

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Okay. I take it all back. It's okay to send him money after all, if you really must.

Sullivan on Teresa Heinz Kerry:

Do her words matter? Probably not. But I have a couple of serious worries. THK is the classic hyper-rich liberal female. Like many absurdly wealthy people, she is not used to actually engaging people as equals. Few speak back to her. She is also unused to real debate. She has never run for office, and although her philanthropic record is stellar and deeply admirable, her political ideas are half-baked and run completely counter to the centrist message this convention has been so shrewdly sending out. So how did she get away with such a spot? I fear that she got what she wanted merely because she insisted; and that her insistence is enough to get her anything she wants. That is not a good omen for a future Kerry administration. We already endured one unelected condescender as co-president for eight years. But mercifully, Hillary Rodham Clinton is now a legitimate politician, elected in her own right, as all democratic leaders ought to be. THK is another matter.

It's hard not to like her. I'd love to have dinner with her. I'm sure she's a wonderful spouse, great mother, and peerless philanthropist. But she is now officially a liability for Kerry's campaign. And the campaign let it happen. If Kerry's advisers want to win, they'd better tell her to quiet down and take a backseat to the man who is actually running for office. And if she won't, someone, somewhere, is going to have to tell her to shove it.

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Via Photon Courier comes this amazing article by Per Ahlmark, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden. Money quote:

The images many Europeans hold of America and Israel create the political climate for some very ugly bias. You have the Great Satan and the Small Satan. America wants to dominate the world—exactly the allegations made in traditional anti-Semitic rhetoric about the Jews. Indeed, modern anti-Zionist rhetoric portrays Israel's goal as domination of the whole Middle East. Such ideas are reflected in opinions polls in which Europeans claim that Israel and the US are the true dangers to world peace.

Ian Buruma, the British writer, claims that this European rage against America and Israel has to do with guilt and fear. The two world wars led to such catastrophic carnage that "never again" was interpreted as "welfare at home, non-intervention abroad." The problem with this concept is that it could only survive under the protection of American might.

Extreme anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are actually merging. The so-called peace poster "Hitler Had Two Sons: Bush and Sharon," displayed in European anti-war rallies, combines trivialization of Nazism with demonization of both the victims of Nazism and those who defeated Nazism.

Much of this grows from a subconscious European guilt related to the Holocaust. Now the Holocaust's victims—and their children and grandchildren—are supposedly doing to others what was done to them. By equating the murderer and the victim, we wash our hands.

This pattern of anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism returns again and again. "The ugly Israeli" and "the ugly American" seem to be of the same family. "The ugly Jew" becomes the instrumental part of this defamation when so-called neoconservatives are blamed both for American militarism and Israeli brutalities and then selectively named: Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams, Kristol, etc. This is a new version of the old myth that Jews rule the US.

Earlier this year, the editor of Die Zeit, Josef Joffe, put his finger on the issue: like Jews, Americans are said to be selfish and arrogant. Like Jews, they are in thrall to a fundamentalist religion that renders them self-righteous and dangerous. Like Jews, Americans are money-grabbing capitalists, for whom the highest value is the cash nexus. "America and Israel are the outsiders—just as Jews have been all the way into the 21st century," Joffe says.

The links between anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Americanism are all too real. Unless Europe's leaders roundly condemn this unholy triple alliance, it will poison Middle East politics and transatlantic relations alike.

That was amazing. I was beginning to wonder if any Europeans really got it—at least, outside the UK.

RTWT.

Posted by: Attila at 01:28 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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gives us another campaign update:

Smoked a fatty with a clatch of Willy Nelson roadies during an early afternoon sound check, and I’m happy to report that there really are two Americas.  There must be.  Because weed of this quality doesn’t come from any America I know of, that’s for damn sure.

Off to find me some snacking chips.  Or maybe a Mallow Pie.  Developing…

update:  Time for a nap.

There's more where that came from. Go. Now.

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I guess they went with John Kerry.

That's not what I would have done.

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Make sure you really go read it, too. But here's a taste:

Let me be the first to say this about KerryÂ’s speech: I liked it better in the original French. This of course is a predictable twist on the remark about BuchananÂ’s stemwinder in Â’92, famously described by some wag as sounding better in the original German. Hugh has been talking a lot this week about the Michael Moore factor at the convention, and whether his . . . peculiar remarks taint the party. Probably not. It wonÂ’t get reported in the dino media. If Pat Buchanan had said the Democrats woke up at 11 AM every day and tried to figure out how to screw white people today, I think that would get press. Moore says the Republicans wake at six and figure out how to screw minorities, and itÂ’s ha ha colorful commentary from the merry prankster, and besides, Ann Coulter said some awful things, and besides, Pat Buchanan was a politician who actually got votes in the GOP primaries.

The last point is true, and relevant; it was made by a Democrat guest on Hewitt’s show. But it shows how things have changed. What makes a greater impact – getting some old flinty cranks in Vermont to pull the lever for you, or putting out a movie in every multiplex that practically accuses Bush of supplying box cutters to the 9/11 hijackers? Moore is a new-media politician, and just because he doesn’t stand for office doesn’t mean he’s not as much of a political operative as the people who prowl the hustings and grimace their way through a New England flap-jack photo-op. And spare me the Ann Coulter parallels. The day Ann Coulter shows up in the presidential box with a former POTUS, like Moore showed up with Jimmy Carter, we can talk.

I was at both conventions in 1992, and the GOP version was a dispirited affair. Clinton had sparkle, the big mo, and a foundering economy to hammer; Bush was your father’s Oldsmobile. “Change” was the mantra. After 12 years we needed “Change,” whatever that might be, and the sax-blowin’ shades-wearin’ hubba-double-Bubba ticket had a fresh cachet the Bush team could not match. The Buchanan speech was a disaster – and not just for its effect on the swingers. I remember sitting in a bar the night of the speech with a portly squat guy covered in GOP buttons, listening to his lament. “This isn’t my party,” he said. “Okay maybe he has a point here, or another point there, but that speech – that’s not my party.”

If Moore introduced Kerry and gave a typical speech – “The Republicans have hate for breakfast!” – how many delegates would later lament that their party had become something they no longer recognized? Don’t know. Just asking. But I do know that the 96 convention had a different attitude towards the nominees than I sense from the 04 DNC convention. Bush 41 never really fired up the troops. But in 96 people liked Dole. They knew in their bones he was going to crater, and they knew that the Dole on the stump was a dull version of the real thing. Bob Dole was smart, peppery, funny as hell (really) and lacking in that ponderous self-importance that settles into a Senator’s heart. He was really a good guy. And he was going to lose. Ah well.

I don’t sense the same affection for Kerry. I also don’t think it matters. Right now I have a browser window open to Fark, and a T-shirt ad shows Bush’s face with the logo “American Psycho.” What else do you need to know? As Teddy Kennedy said in his convention speech: “The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush.” It’s really quite simple, isn’t it? We live in a manufactured climate of fear ginned up by war-crazed neocon overlords. There is no threat. The only thing we have to fear is Bush, who sits as we speak in the Oval Office sucking the marrow from Whoopi’s shin-bones.

If so, I wonder why anyone agreed to the stringent security policies that characterize this yearÂ’s conventions. Why the bomb-sniffing dogs? Why the snipers? Why the metal detectors, the invasive inspection of bags? Is it all an elaborate defense against Bush crashing the party and setting off a bomb belt, shouting God is Great, yÂ’all!

No, theyÂ’re fearful of something else.

Damned if I know what, though. Damned if I know.

I really must make that man's blog a daily stop. He's such a damned good writer. Also, if I suck up to him enough he might get me onto the Hugh Hewitt show and I'll get famous; then this might turn into a steady job.

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I'll bet I'm not the only person out there who wonders what Christopher Cross's middle name is. I mean, the site has "XXX" in it. LegalXXX: the legal part is clear, the XXX less so, until we find out what that middle name is. I'll bet it's Christian; that would make the most sense.

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The consensus seems to be that no one wants to subsidize Andrew Sullivan's bandwith costs, which apparently are higher than those of any mere mortal.

Therefore, Laurence is popularizing a program to give our money to bloggers other than Andrew Sullivan.

1. When Andrew Sullivan begs for money, don't give him any.

2. Give money to a blogger other than Andrew Sullivan.

3. Post on your weblog that you're not giving money to Andrew Sullivan and that you're giving to some other blogger.

4. OPTIONAL: Write Andrew Sullivan and tell him you're thought about it and given your money to someone other than him.

My best thought is Ith, who suddenly has to move and now has to come up with first and last month's rent—along with replacing some of those durable goods she was sharing with her family members, and now can't as they all scatter in different directions.

She doesn't have a tip jar, so you'll have to actually wrap some cash in a thick piece of paper, and send it to her "disguised." Or do something equally ingenious.

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The time has come to write about Annie Jacobsen, "Terror in the Skies," and Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles. As most of you know, Jacobsen wrote a harrowing account of a flight in late June that appeared to reveal serious lapses in our airline security and in-flight protocols.

The original article is here; Jacobsen's follow-up is here. No, Women's Wall Street is not associated with The Wall Street Journal, and if you presumed it was I want you off my site. Now. Go. Away.

The main contenders here are Michelle Malkin (ably assisted by Spoons) and Donald Sensing (aided and abetted by The Commissar). Malkin feels that this was a sobering account of serious security breaches. Reverend Sensing feels it was a non-story (or, as he puts it later, a "shaggy dog story").

And they both have points. But they each get off the rails at various times, and:

1) Full disclosure: my sister is a half-Syrian musician. My father gave her blonde hair, but still—if you mess with her, I will mess with you, and I won't give it a second thought. Know that.

2) Annie J. is on a hair-trigger from the beginning of the flight (and the article). But the way she got there is interesting, and I think a lot of her fear can be laid at the feet of the airlines, airport security, and the Air Marshals. More on this later.

3) I believe the 14 Syrians on this flight were real musicians—not terrorists—but I still think "Terror in the Skies" is instructive. Sensing (post #3):

Do I think Islamofacsist terrorists would like to hijack an American airliner and either blow it up or use it as a terror weapon? Of course I think so. But that's a generality to which anyone can agree. The hard case is whether Annie's flight specifically was either a near-hijacking or was being cased for terrorist's future purposes. And on that question no certain answer can be given . . .

No. The Jacobsen article was a first-person account about the fears experienced on a flight by a woman who had reasons for grave concern (no second screening of passengers at the gate in Detroit, even after they had been to the airline restaurants; flight attendents failing to keep passengers from congregating by the cockpit door; an apparent lack of monitoring of the situation in the restrooms [later proved to be unfounded, as the restrooms were apparently checked by Air Marshalls throughout the flight for any bomb-making materials]).

Because of the way the Jacobsen article was written, it's easy to come away feeling that if this one instance was not some sort of probe by terrorists (and I don't believe it was), there is nothing to be learned from it. But there is. Jacobsen was simply being a good journalist, telling us what details she noticed in her hyper-alert state, and which details the FBI asked her about the most later (e.g., the McDonald's bag, which was in fact taken into one of the lavatories). She is being honest about her fears and state of mind, but also trying to give us as much detail as possible, so that we might evaluate her subjective experience as objectively as we can. She's been unjustly vilified for this.

4) My understanding of the ritual prayers required of Muslims is that they wash their hands before praying, and that the prayers must be done at certain times of day. This is shit we should know; it would ease our minds a bit, reduce the "terror" we feel. (See some of the commenters on the snarky Slate entry, especially the ones who aren't slinging around silly charges of "racism.")

5) It is apparently the norm for Middle Easterners (and some Mediterranean people) to congregate in the aisles and otherwise "misbehave" while they are flying, so there are certainly cultural differences at play ("par-taaaay," remarks one commenter at Little Green Footballs; she is married to a Syrian). Another woman, an Israeli, writes:

everyone here seems to find standing in the aisles, and hanging out in the aisles on the plane weird behaviour... well, you need to see my fellow Israelis flying ... especially on holiday flights form tel Aviv To Istanbul. or Cyprus... in a word .. pandemonium.
i love my country men, and I'm proud of my country , but, darn, we Israelis are ppains in the assess in the sky.we have mega shplikas on planes.. the minute the plane is up in the air, everyone gets up, goes and blabs in the aisles, invades the food and drinks, sit on the doors, blocks the aisles, flirts , compares travel itineraries, find out your buddy from the army is 5 rows back and so you stand together in front of the sweradessess galley blabbing for 3 hours...and basically act as if its party time.
el al stewardess can handle it... but i flew on an english charter last year from tel Aviv to London, when the steward almost started crying.. we were that bad.

She also explains that excellent airport security is a "great equalizer," and that once you've been through that security, "you are kosher." Which brings us back to one of Annie Jacobsen's main points—that she cannot quite bring herself to trust the way we handle pre-boarding security in the USA, given the magnitude of the 9/11 failure and the failure to check people once more at the gate before they get on the plane. (Would it be that hard to get a metal knife from a restaurant by the gate and sharpen it discreetly before bringing it aboard? No.)

But,

6) The flight attendents should have told everyone on Flight 327 to sit down. When in Rome . . . one commenter has remarked that the flight crew was lax because they knew Federal Marshalls were on board. This is a scary idea.

7) Some commenters on Slate actually suggested that for Annie to go up to one of these "suspicious" Syrians and smile, recalling their earlier cordial moment, was culturally insensitive on her part, and would have been perceived as a come-on by the guy in the goatee. I'm having trouble understanding how returning a smile from someone when you are a guest in their country is a big thing to ask. The PC crowd from Slate helpfully suggests that Jacobsen should have had her husband do this, which ignores two pertinent facts: a) Annie herself was the person who had the earlier exchange with Mr. Goatee; and b) it shouldn't be that hard for someone—even a dirty, ignorant, can't-help-it Middle Easterner to pretend women are people, too. Think to yourself, "this is a person. Only without a penis." (Had Ms. Jacobsen been in the Middle East, it's fine to flop the logic and expect her to conform to cultural norms. As it was, all parties were in the West, where women are people.)

Am I still not getting through to you? What if a Jim Crow-era Southerner were in a Northern city in the 1950s, and he needed information from a black clerk at a store. Would it be the responsibility of the clerk to swap places with a white clerk, so as to make the Southerner feel more comfortable, or would the onus be on the immigrant from Jim Crow land to get over his prejudices and relate to the black person as a human being? Some things are not just culturally relative, and the humanity of all persons is one of them.

One of Jacobsen's pivotal points was that airport security here in the U.S. of A ain't quite what it is in Europe, and that fact hardly reassures us when we try to give our own authorities the benefit of a doubt. That is, if Detroit had required that everyone pass through security again before boarding the plane, the article "Terror in the Skies" probably wouldn't have been written.

9) Another of Jacobsen's major points was that no one seemed to be minding the store once the plane was in the sky. Of course, we now know that flight attendents have been instructed to tell passengers to stay in their seats and not form lines for the loo. Again—had this policy gone into effect one day earlier, no "Terror in the Skies." And no blogstorm, either.

At no point does "Sensible" Donald Sensing discuss the fact that both the airlines and the Air Marshalls aboard the plane allowed groups of Syrians to congregate outside the cockpit door. Nor does he seriously address the issue of there being no second screening of passengers at the gate, preferring to assume that once passengers are screened, that's it—anything they have with them is assumed to be okay (even the McDonald's bag, where it's a silly claim for him to make: the McDonald's bag was clearly acquired after the passengers were screened).

10) So far the mainstream media isn't covering it, but there have been reports of "probing" by jihadists, and—for anyone who hasn't read it—there is this report by James Woods of a possible pre-9/11 trial run. And:

11) I personally don't believe bin Laden—or any of his colleagues—have given up on the idea of making airplanes go boom. Operation Bojinka was foiled in '95, and the 9/11 plot was half-foiled (in that only two of the intended targets got hit). Keep in mind that certain targets can capture the terrorist imagination: the World Trade Center apparently did, to the point that after one set of jihadists tried to bring it down in '93 another went ahead and did it in '01. Logic suggests that AQ will concentrate on a ground attack, but I don't think they work entirely on logic. They will hit us again in the skies, probably by making planes blow up in midair, Operatioin Bojinka-style.

12) I haven't been able to independently corroborate the claim that there is a Federal "only two of any given ethnicity per airplane" rule on questioning passengers. (But the Norman Mineta memos were clearly designed to intimidate the airlines. Also, see Patterico's thoughts on the effects of the lawsuits brought by the ACLU, and this Front Page article on how the ACLU is undermining security.)

13) Neither have I been able to verify Clinton Taylor's theory in this NRO article that the band might well have been Nour Mehana, "the Syrian Wayne Newton," and a handful of backup musicians.

14) To try to get news from KFI Los Angeles is just crazy, and this account of the Flight 327 incident is ludicrous; the supposed Federal Marshalls involved will neither identify themselves, nor describe what Annie was doing that was supposedly so dangerous. I would discount this entirely unless these "sources" are willing to go on-record, and explain the discrepancies between their account and Jacobsen's. Or at least be specific in their criticisms of her actions. So far as we know, all she did was sit in her seat, fret about the safety of her family, and attempt to exchange a smile with a Syrian. (The link I've given for the KFI story is a Google cache, since they apparently don't have permalinks for KFI news items. Totally bogus.)

15) Annie Jacobsen's biggest blind spot is her apparent assumption that if you don't see the government doing something in a big, obvious way, it isn't being done. That can, of course, be a dangerous attitude. But it's not hard to see where she got it. And the opposite attitude, "it's fine, we're safe. The Feds have it under control" is more dangerous.

16) I don't think Annie is a racist. Hell, I don't think Arabs are a race.

Now be safe. And don't try to take those knitting needles on the plane.

UPDATE: Some fact-checker I am. It's "Jacobsen," not "Jacobson." But for your Googling pleasure, here it is—wrong: Annie Jacobson, Annie Jacobson, Annie Jacobson, Annie Jacobson, Annie Jacobson, Annie Jacobson.

Annie Jacobson. Hey—I was digging the traffic.

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Dean has an interesting question on his site, and a strong challenge to American conservatives and libertarians, should Kerry be elected President:

How many of you will have the patriotism to say, "I disagree with many of his policy directions, I do not think he is conducting our foreign policy in the right way, but I will do my best to get behind him and support him until elections come around next time?"

I'm genuinely curious. For that is the stance I intend to take. I will refuse to call him traitor, loser, liar, incompetent. He will be my President, my Commander In Chief, the Chief Executive of a great nation, elected by the will of a majority of the electors in these 50 great united States. So even if he does things I disagree with in conducting foreign policy, I will say, "I respectfully disagree with the President's directions, but I will do my best to express my dissent respectfully and hope that I am mistaken and that he has made the proper decisions after all."

My version of the Esmay Pledge contains the caveat reiterated by many of his commenters: I'll keep my criticisms respectful, but if he lies to the country as its Commander-in-Chief I will call him on that.

Anything less would be unpatriotic.

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Via Mikal comes this fabulous link to a group of libertarian/conservative goths (some of whom, by their spelling, reside outside the U.S.).

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BoifromTroy, guest-blogging over at Wonkette's digs, reports breathlessly (in that timeless Wonkette style) that Ted Kennedy isn't too drunk just yet:

Blogger Off the Fence reported that at one point last night at the MA delegation party, Kennedy did not have a drink in his hand!

We thought about trying to reach the senior Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but he couldn't be reached for comment because he was refilling his boot flask.

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Ahoy, Maties.

This AP story gives us a summary of the map as it now stands:

BOSTON - John Kerry narrowly trails President Bush in the battle for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, as he makes his case at the Democratic National Convention this week to topple the Republican incumbent.

With three months remaining in a volatile campaign, Kerry has 14 states and the District of Columbia in his column for 193 electoral votes. Bush has 25 states for 217 votes, according to an Associated Press analysis of state polls as well as interviews with strategists across the country.

"It's a tough, tough map. I think it's going to be a close race," said Democratic strategist Tad Devine, who helped plot Al Gore's state-by-state strategy in 2000 and plays the same role for Kerry.

"But looking back four years, we're much stronger now. I think we're going into this convention in great shape," he said.

Both candidates are short of the magic 270 electoral votes. The margin of victory will come from:

* TOSSUPS — Bush and Kerry are running even in 11 states with a combined 128 electoral votes. Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan and West Virginia are the toughest battlegrounds. Two other tossups, Pennsylvania and Oregon, could soon move to Kerry's column.

* LEAN KERRY — Maine, Minnesota and Washington (a combined 25 electoral votes) favor Kerry over Bush by a few percentage points. Gore carried them in 2000.

* LEAN BUSH — North Carolina, Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, Virginia, Arkansas and Missouri (a combined 73 electoral votes) give Bush modest leads. He won all seven in 2000.

All total, 21 states are in play. Some will bounce between "lean" to "tossup" throughout the campaign.

But there's this to consider:

Four years ago, Bush won 30 states and their 271 electoral votes — one more than needed. Gore, who won the popular vote, claimed 20 states plus the District of Columbia for 267 electoral votes.

Since then, reapportionment added electoral votes to states with population gains and took them from states losing people. The result: Bush's states are now worth 278 electoral votes and Gore's are worth just 260.

Which is one reason that, in my optimistic moments, I envision a landslide for Bush. Though we'll see about that.

I do not, for the record, believe Florida is in play. Not with the panhandle turning out in force: that's tens of thousands of votes. No. Florida will go to the GOP.

And then, there's the Pennsylvania factor:

Of the states won by Gore, Pennsylvania is by far Bush's top target. The president has spent millions of dollars in the state on commercials and has visited it more than any other contested state — 30 trips since his inauguration.

For Kerry, losing Pennsylvania would create a virtually insurmountable electoral vote gap.

On the other hand, I don't believe California is in play at all—Arnold, Nixon and Reagan notwithstanding, the Bay Area and LA will probably keep this one in Kerry's column. But I'm still going to vote my little heart out. Of course, if I'm wrong Kerry might as well take his dollies and go home.

Hat tip: Newsfeed.

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One rainy day in a Washington, D.C. park, the Commissar, Bill (of InDC) and Jeff Goldstein (of Protein Wisdom; you'll have to go there to see his picture, since it doesn't show up in the post) got together to observe a gathering of anti-war protesters. The result? Moonbats in the Mist, an homage to a dying American species.

Go; read; look.

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La Shawn talks about what it's like to be Black in America, with no knowledge of where your family came from in Africa—no records, nothing.

It's an interesting question, how much this stuff matters to us. How much meaning it has. How much meaning we give it.

Do you have a family tree? Does it enrich your life? How far back does it go?

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