Delusions of Adequacy

... without Adult Swim.

At least TV Land has its nightly Cheers double-header.

Wretchard thinks Usama's new tape is nothing less than a surrender:

It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech. He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.

I certainly hope so; and it would put the lie to the natterers who insist that by killing thousands of his foot-soldiers and capturing or vaporizing his closest lieutenants, we are naively playing into Usama's shrewd Master Plan. But be that as it may, I doubt we'll be hearing the President say "Mission accomplished" anytime soon.

The whole Al-Qaqaa story has gone non-linear. I can no longer be bothered to care about it. Not that I ever did, much, anyway. 380 tons of RDX and HMX? Missing? Oh, in Iraq. I thought it was somewhere that kind of thing shouldn't be expected. 380 tons of explosives missing in New York City? Uh-oh. 380 tons of explosives missing in Charlottesville, Virginia? Wow. 380 tons of explosives missing near Baghdad? Oh, is that all?

Suppose the worst of what Kerry says is true, and that President Bush impetuously and cavalierly ignored his duty to personally secure every bomb, missile, RPG, and Roman candle in Iraq, so that he could engage in such reckless fratboy tomfoolery as pushing through economic recovery acts, meeting with important-like foreign officials, and signing legislation to help protect children from abduction, and that this abdication of all responsibility led to the terrorists of the world obtaining a new supply of plastic explosives -- weapons so fearsome, so devastating in their effects, that Herman Kahn was known to curl into the fetal position and clutch his Teddy bear to his chest whenever he heard them mentioned. This would leave us with a monumentally important question, one potentially affecting generations of Americans yet ungotten and unborn:

So flippin' what?

Iraq had hundreds of thousands of tons of this stuff and stuff like it, and Hussein was an avid supporter of Palestinian terror in Israel -- if we were worried about Hussein's RDX and HMX ending up in terrorist hands, we hardly could have done anything better than to invade. And as Power Line's Hindrocket points out, with something like 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives destroyed in Iraq, we're seeing a success rate of 99.9%. Not many people in the world would see this success rate, in such a hostile environment and working against so many intractable obstacles, as anything short of astonishing -- no one but nitwits and John Kerry's media shills. But I repeat myself.

Oh, yes, I know. Kerry's really saying that it was Bush's fault because he didn't send enough troops to fight the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever. As if Kerry would have handled the situation any better. If Kerry had been in charge, Saddam would still have those explosives -- and he'd be doling them out to homicide bombers on the West Bank, along with $25,000 checks to the families they leave behind. (A radio ad I wouldn't be surprised to hear on some Palestinian station: "Planning to enter the company of the houris while sending the infidel monkey-pigs to everlasting torment? Let Hussein and Sons handle the arrangements.") John Kerry's 20-year record speaks for itself, as do his own words when he speaks candidly of passing a "global test": he is a September 10th man in the world of September 12th. His policies, if implemented, would turn us away from the path of proactive engagement Bush has set us on and return us to the status quo ante of treating terrorism as a law-enforcement problem; a return, in short, to the policies that utterly failed to stem the tide of terrorism in the twenty years between the ascension of radical, militant Islam and the fall of the World Trade Center.

Some would welcome this. I would find it intolerable. Thus my support of George W. Bush.

Laura Ingraham is subbing for Joe Scarborough tonight on MSNBC.

Laura Ingraham is tearing Sam Harris, author of a new anti-religious book, up one side and down the other. She is articulate and impassioned and devastating in her critique. And I'm sitting here watching her powerhouse rhetorical performance and I'm thinking, grrrowr.

Y'know... the liberals have Jennifer Anniston and Kate Moss and any number of other good-looking actresses and singers. But these are women who prove that whole "open your mouth and remove all doubt" thing; when they show up at your party, your party's average IQ drops to room temperature. Brainy liberal women, by contrast -- Susan Estrich, for example, or Bella Abzug -- tend to look as if they've drunk a full gallon of Ugly-Aid. No, if you want the complete package -- looks and smarts -- you pretty much have to go conservative.

Of course, neither Laura Ingraham (who may be married, for all I know) nor Ann Coulter (who may also be) nor former MTV VJ Kennedy (who it would surprise me no end to find out she's married) is ever going to know I exist, and that's fine. I'm not a teenager anymore and I don't harbor crushes on media figures. (No, really.) What I'd like to see, at some point in the not-too-distant future, is a non-famous, non-remote version of these women, a down-to-earth regular conservative girl woman who could overlook my myriad flaws of personality and physiognomy and... well, you know.

And I'm sure my mother would like to see that happen, too.

Via Instapundit, this report from a Minnesota ABC station that had a camera crew at the facility in mid-April, a week after the 101st arrived and two weeks after 3ID's arrival (under fire, and having read David Zucchino's excellent Thunder Run, I find it hard to believe anybody in the 3rd was doing anything but scrambling for cover and returning fire during the first week of April). This crew

may have been just a door away from materials that could be used to detonate nuclear weapons. The evidence is in videotape shot by Reporter Dean Staley and Photographer Joe Caffrey at or near the Al Qaqaa munitions facility.

Interesting what the report does not mention: whether the bunkers they taped actually were the ones containing the missing explosive, or whether the crew ever saw the explosives or were only shown the sealed bunker doors. If the latter, then we still don't have conclusive proof of anything, because of the bunkers' ventilation shafts, which IAEA documents showed could be used to remove the bunkers' contents without breaking seals. See the ABC News link in the post below.

However the story plays out, I hope for some finality soon on what actually happened at Al Qaqaa. I also hope for some finality on the correct spelling of Al Qaqaa.

UPDATE: Kerry Spot at NRO has this analysis of the actual report, which I've not seen. Apparently, this doesn't even come close to getting Kerry out of the hot water in which he eagerly immersed himself a couple of days ago.

I may have a heart attack and die from not-surprised.

Check out the comparison of ABC and Reuters headlines at the bottom of the Kerry Spot link. Interesting.

Still no closure on the spelling question, though.

Things are moving too fast for any one person to keep up with them. No matter the outcome of the election, we should all be grateful for the blogosphere -- whatever its warts -- for focusing the talents and attention of so many extraordinary people, on both sides, on the maneuvers and outright attempts at subversion of the election.

I'm thinking primarily of CBS, which followed its Rathergate fiasco with this latest brouhaha about plastic explosives (the Deadliest Weapons Known to Man! Catastrophe in a clay brick! The land will be uninhabitable for 10,000 years!), both naked attempts to destroy George W. Bush, and both blown away by the laser-guided bunker-buster of the blogosphere. (Not including myself, of course. I know my role: as a parasite living off the efforts of my betters.)

This morning, via Instapundit sub Ann Althouse, this ABC News story that the amount of missing explosives may have been... well... just slightly overstated.

By about 374 tons.

The report also points out that the bunkers containing the explosives had ventilation slats that could easily have been removed without compromising the IAEA's "Passed By Inspector 12" seals, rendering them useless. Given that the 3rd Infantry Division didn't find them, nor the 101st Airborne, on their respective marches to Baghdad, there's now literally no way to know whether the bunkers had been cleared out prior to March 2003.

And in a story that may shed light on why we haven't found the weapons of mass destruction that everybody knew Saddam had prior to the invasion, the Washington Times reports that Russian special forces troops helped move the missing explosives, along with a bunch of other nastiness supplied to the Hussein regime by Russia and her satellites, to Syria in the months leading up to the war.

If this is true... and I admit it's a big if... but if it's true, it means the people from whom John Kerry would seek approval for any future preemptive action against threats to the US are actively involved in arming and supporting our enemies.

1. Half-Life 2
2. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Platinum Series Extended Edition DVD
3. John Kerry's concession speech

I want to blog about the phony explosives story that was supposed to destroy Bush's chances for re-election -- until NBC, of all people, torpedoed the plan, but not before the Kerry campaign spent time and money assembling a campaign ad excoriating Bush for, among other things, not personally standing guard over the Al Qa Qaa facility with an M-16, and also for being a mean bad stupid little funny-looking man.

I want to blog about it, but I'm not sure I can summon the outrage.

Outrage, I summon and bind thee.

Nothing. Fortunately, others have done the heavy lifting for me -- as always -- so I'll settle for some links. YOU SHOULD FOLLOW AND READ THESE, especially if you think there's anything to this 380-tons of crap:

The Belmont Club puts things in perspective.
The Mudville Gazette makes a good point.
The Daily Recycler has video of the Miklaszewski report on NBC.
The Kerry Spot at National Review On-line always has good stuff, and has a great deal about this. So does The Corner at the same place.
Power Line is must-reading. Particularly here.
Frank at IMAO wants to declare jihad on CBS News and the NYT. Be sure to check out Bush's new radio ad while you're there. And thank God for IMAO.
The Truth Laid Bear asks "If the explosives were looted, why haven't they been used?" TTLB's excellent summary and round-up is here.
And last but certainly not least, another Belmont Club post.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll be outraged. Tonight, I'm too bombed tired.

Hat tips to all of the above, which are so cross-linked that going to one sort of leads to the others.

UPDATE: Belmont Club has this analysis of newly resurfaced news that the 3rd Infantry Division had searched the Al Qa Qaa site upon its arrival in the area in early April, nearly a week before the 101st Airborne units previously reported to have found nothing (as it turns out, they were basically using the place as a RON site). Via InstaPundit, which also reports 3ID's findings.

The Washington Times is reporting that John Kerry's claim -- made as recently as the second presidential debate -- to have met with "the entire security council" for "a couple of hours" before voting to authorize the use of force to disarm Iraq in October of 2002, is as false as Joan Rivers's face.

Four of the five members of the security council at that time that Joel Mowbray was able to contact directly report they never had any contact with Kerry. And though Kerry did meet with a few foreign dignitaries, the only ones Mowbray could confirm were Cameroon, Singapore, and France -- all contributors of mighty legions in the fight against global terrorism. No? Okay, all of them ardent supporters of freedom and the defeat of the terrorists. Right? No? Okay, but at least these foreign leaders support Kerry, right?

All right, so Kerry lied again. Big deal. It isn't even the biggest whopper he's told -- he did at least meet with some of the council members, right? That makes what he said somewhat true. Say he met with all of them that Mowbray was unable to reach for comment... plus one of the ones that he did... that's still 11 out of 15, right? That makes it, what, let's see, 73.3% true. Why am I getting all wound up about a mere 26.7% lie?

I knew Halliburton was evil, but I didn't know they were, you know, EVIL.

Just listen to this.

From IMAO.

Via Power Line, this report of Democratic voter intimidation in Florida.

One woman who voted early in Boca Raton, at the Southwest County Regional Library, complained that as she stood in line, two men behind her were "trashing our president," Fletcher said, declining to identify the woman. She tried to ignore them. Then the man touched her arm and said, "Who are you voting for?"

"I said, `I don't think that's an appropriate question,'" the woman said she responded.

"Uh oh! We have a Bush supporter here," screamed the man behind her.

For the 2 1/2 hours she had to wait in line, she was heckled by the man. As they neared the voting room, someone in the rear of the line yelled, "I sure hope everyone here is voting for Kerry!" she reported.

That's when the man behind her held his hand over her head and screamed, "We have a Republican right here!" There were "boos and jeers" from the crowd.

"I felt intimidated, harassed and threatened!" the woman wrote in her complaint to the Republican Party.

Elaine Fandino complained to the Republican Party that she took her mother to vote on South Military Trail in Palm Beach County and was confronted by 25 people supporting John Kerry for president. The crowd was "very angry and used foul language," she reported. She said the man next to her said, "Where's my shotgun?"

"Where's my shotgun?"!

In 2000, one of Al Gore's tactics in his attempt to steal the election was to disenfranchise military voters.

We weren't at war back then... or at least, we didn't realize we were.

We are at war now, against one of the gravest threats we've ever faced, and our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are engaged in some of the most brutal combat our armed forces have ever seen, to keep us safe and free.

To attempt to disenfranchise them is surely the lowest form of scum-sucking political malice ever devised. Yet it's exactly what some Democrats are attempting to do.

You see, the military vote goes heavily in favor of Republicans. That looks to be true even this year, when many reservists are away from home for their twelfth, thirteenth, or eighteenth consecutive month. So to suppress their votes is to keep votes from Bush.

This year, many service personnel overseas are having trouble getting their absentee ballots on time. Through no fault of their own, their ballots are arriving too late for them to vote by their respective deadlines. Steps taken to correct the situation -- deadline extensions, Federal write-in ballots to replace unreceived absentee ballots -- have come under fire from Pennsylvannia governor Ed Rendell, who should be impeached, run out of town on a rail, and put in the stocks for ever conceiving such a thoroughly disgusting exercise in partisan vote manipulation.

This election is going to be like the last one, unless one of the candidates wins by such a huge margin that any challenge is clearly unfeasible. If you're already tired of the campaign, buck up; it's ugly, and it's about to get a lot uglier.

You can now view the movie John Kerry doesn't want you to see: Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, posted in its entirety for free.

It's very low-res, but it's a nice free way to see the film, now that Kerry's cronies have managed to suppress its showing on TV. (And where were the Republican intimidation operatives when all those ultra-lib rockers were having their bash-Bush concert on the Sundance Channel? I'm getting a little disillusioned with my comrades in the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.)

Via LGF.

For the sake of the thousands of people he and his buddy Che Guevara murdered when they first came to power in 1960... for the sake of the thousands more he's imprisoned unjustly... for the sake of the dissidents who were jailed after they spoke out against him, at Jimmy Carter's urging... for all the political enemies he's tortured and the people he's enslaved to an outdated and barren ideology, and his own cult of personality...

... I hope it hurts.

Kerry has claimed that most of our nation's policemen endorse him. Not so fast, says Fraternal Order of Police president Chuck Canterbury.

"As the elected leader of the largest organization representing America's Federal, State and local law enforcement officers, I believe it's important to point out yet again that we do not support his candidacy for President," Canterbury said. "And to be perfectly frank, the groups which do support him actually share the same membership rolls and, taken together, probably comprise less than one-quarter of our nation's police officers."

Canterbury further noted that unlike the organizations which Senator Kerry touts, F.O.P. members as a whole decided that the Fraternal Order of Police would endorse the reelection of President George W. Bush. They based their decision, he said, on the record of the Bush Administration in supporting America's first responders-including helping to secure passage earlier this year of H.R. 218, the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act, the organization's top legislative priority. Bush also successfully fought to greatly enhance the benefits for the families of officers killed in the line of duty.

"While Kerry was flying around the country campaigning and leaving the actual work of the nation to his colleagues in the Senate, the President was out there working on our behalf," Canterbury said. "Senators Kerry and Edwards have missed so many crucial votes this Congress that I was beginning to believe there were only 98 members of the U.S. Senate."

..."Given the facts, I would greatly appreciate it if Senator Kerry would refrain from making similar whimsical assertions regarding his support from the law enforcement community," Canterbury said. "The real majority of my fellow officers are standing behind President Bush, because he has been there for us."

Via Little Green Footballs.

A page that would be in the DNC handbook, if they were honest about it:

Step 1: Commit massive voter fraud.

Step 2: Republicans will attempt to get fraudulent registrations thrown out.

Step 3: When Step 2 happens, accuse Republicans of suppressing the vote.

For Step 3, it helps greatly to be operating under the air-support of liberal mainstream media who will ignore what happened in Step 1, or better yet, report only Republican "malfeasance." (Note: this report is from the same people who brought you forged documents only a couple of weeks ago.)

All this (except for the link in Step 3) is via Bill Hobbs's round-up of voter fraud stories (hat tip: La Shawn Barber's Corner).

Today's Bleat contains good stuff about the whole Mary Cheney thing that erupted yesterday.

My take on it: I wasn't really offended until Liz Edwards weighed in (sorry) on the matter, opining that Lynn and Dick Cheney's taking of exception over having their daughter dragged into the campaign by their political opponents indicates that they're somehow ashamed of her. This statement exhibits exactly the level of class I expect from the overindulged wife of an ambulance-chaser.

Kerry claims he was trying to say something positive. I'd almost believe he was telling the truth, if his lips weren't moving. You want to say something positive about your opponent's running mate? Try saying something positive that isn't a back-handed slap against what you perceive as your opponent's intolerance. To put it another way: Kerry thought he could drive a wedge between Bush and his most religiously-conservative supporters by bringing up Mary Cheney's sexuality. Otherwise, he would never have attempted to say something "positive" about Republicans. Why would he? In that arena, in the debate, in the campaign for President of the United States, why say anything positive about the opposition? As James Carville so eloquently says, "When your opponent is drowning, throw the sonuvabitch an anchor." If Kerry didn't think he was throwing Bush an anchor, he would've kept his mouth shut, and that would've been a welcome relief.

Lil' Johnny Edwards defends his boss by pointing out that the Cheneys themselves had referenced Mary's orientation in the course of their campaigning. Well, yes, they did. Thing is, though, she's their daughter, not Kerry's. And don't let Dick Cheney's gracious answer to you during the VP debate fool you, youngling Edwards: it was just as inappropriate for you to bring it up then as it was for Kerry on Wednesday night. She's not your family, and it's none of your business, and if the Cheneys want to talk about their daughter, they can, with no reciprocal obligation on your part to do anything except keep your piehole shut. It's their family. You don't have Thanksgiving dinner in the Cheney household.

UPDATE: Pat Cadell, former Democratic strategist and frequent guest on FNC programs, was just on Hannity and Colmes saying that Kerry's reference to the VP's daughter was aimed at African-American voters, who tend to be liberal except on the issue of homosexuality. At the end of the segment, he also mentioned Christian conservatives who are supposed to be outraged by the Cheneys' audacity to allow their daughter to continue drawing breath.

... but I love her because she is bitter, and because she says stuff like this:

Imagine President John Kerry at the Berlin Wall. "Mr. Gorbachev ... I challenge you to get to an emotional place where you can imagine a different kind of non-wall reality, that fully respects the 'wallness' of your current reality, yet takes us on a spiritual journey in which ..."

And this:

As if it means something, Kerry keeps vowing: "I will never stop at anything to hunt down and kill the terrorists." But he will stop at the Iraqi border. Or if the French and Germans aren't on board. Or we don't have United Nations approval. Or it would require investigating a Muslim under the Patriot Act.

Via Little Green Footballs, a Drudge report that the DNC is urging a "pre-emptive strike" against voter intimidation, in places where there is none.

Innuendo isn't exactly lying, is it? No, not exactly...

By the way, I wonder how many felons and dead people will be voting for Kerry this year?

It seemed to me, in the midst of watching it, that Bush was winning hands-down. He did this mainly by holding his own on turf considered to be strongly favorable to Kerry, and getting some good shots in while remaining presidential. His biggest gaffe, I think -- excluding moments when he said things that turn out not to be quite so true as one would hope -- was making that sideways reference to the CBS Rathergate fiasco, then saying "Never mind." This was reported on NPR this morning as befuddlement, rather than a roundabout (and, to most voters -- or at least most NPR correspondents -- obscure to the point of opaque) joke.

I still think Bush did far better than expected, and did not lose the debate. I'm not so sure, in the glaring light of day -- strike that, it's overcast here, and I haven't seen any glaring light since I turned on my lamp this morning -- that he won it. It was, as a British SAS observer at a GSG-9 takedown of some terrorists back in the 70's remarked, a close-run thing. (Yes, similar things were said of Waterloo. But the SAS/GSG-9 reference is a little more topical.)

If only Bush could give one more speech before the election to a crowd of supporters, and have it broadcast on national TV, he could sew this thing up.

Less than three weeks till Election Day.

As Tom Petty says, the waiting is the hardest part.

I'm tempted to liveblog the debate...

...nah.

I said somewhere below that if Republicans were targeting Democratic campaign offices for vandalism or attacks, it would be all over the news.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Unacceptable. Reprehensible. Cowardly and bereft of any shred of decency, the extremists of both sides present an intolerable threat to political discourse in this nation.

It must stop, no matter who's doing it to whom.

Having finally obtained high-speed Internet access in my apartment, I am now able to blog without mooching the resources of others.

Of course, now that I have the means, I don't have the time.

Not that I had the time before.

Tonight, I need to be writing the pre-test/post-test for my classes -- a single document with a modular structure that will allow me to change it for the things we cover in the course of a class. I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't required; I hate teaching to tests. But it can't be helped. Testing is the wave of the future... or at least it will be until we get some numbers showing how much worse-off students are whose teachers were required to administer standardized end-of-course tests to them, tests which define and constrain the instruction that can or will happen in the classroom.

Of course, if it turns out the kids aren't worse off, it'll be pretty hard to come up with those numbers.

Nah, it'll be easy.

Speaking of easy: I've managed to pick up one of those web virus thingies that resets my homepage to its creators' "search page." I divine that this is nothing more than a honeypot for me to enter credit card numbers into, so I will not be using it.

However...

The virus/trojan/adware is so heinously fiendish, so bizarrely twisted, so downright annoying that not only will it reset my homepage no matter how many times I set it to Google, it always pops itself back up. And this is the really freaky part:

It won't let me go to the Microsoft Update pages.

Every time I try to dl SP2, I get redirected to the "search page." It doesn't want me patching those wonderful security holes in Windows XP, I guess.

It does the same when I try to go to Slashdot.

Anybody have any suggestions?

I'm going home to Virginia for an extended week-end, so there probably won't be anymore posts until Wednesday. After this break, I should have more reliable Internet access, so blogging may be heavier later in the fall, approaching the election.

This morning on Morning Edition, Nina Totenberg tut-tutted the Bush campaign for kicking out people who show up for rallies bearing Kerry-Edwards paraphernalia. But still nothing on that show about the violence against Republican campaign offices.

Meanwhile, CNN.com has this Robert Novak piece on the Kerry operative who disrupted the premiere of the film Stolen Honor. Turns out he'd served time for manslaughter.

Via Instapundit, Stanley Kurtz's round-up on the Climate of Fear.

Now, I would never say that this sort of behavior is typical of Democrats or approved by the Democratic Party. (Well, okay, maybe the Party, but not its individual members.) What is truly frightening about these acts -- and what would be truly frightening about them even if it were Republicans attacking Democrats -- is the extent to which hatred of the opposition has enabled politically active people to do literally anything to win. When the enemy is subhuman, monstrous, evil -- as Bush-haters undeniably view him -- then any action taken to defeat him is not only permissible but necessary. And given the rhetoric we've heard in the last two years, from ANSWER to Ted Kennedy's bloviations to Michael Moore's preposterous fictions to the Democratic National Convention, it was only a matter of time before Bush's avowed enemies would stoop to violence.

Of course, we've seen violence in elections before. But it's usually been in other people's elections. During our lifetimes, for the most part, elections in the US have been civic activities civilly pursued. We've watched election violence from afar, in places like Panama and Haiti. We expect armed thugs to try to influence elections in third-world sewers. Now we may be seeing the (re)emergence of the same phenomenon here in the US.

Bush-haters not scary enough for you? Then picture this:

Kerry wins the elections and pulls our troops from Iraq (whether immediately or further down the road makes little difference). Terrorists, who had been biding their time from the moment the last vote was cast in the US, launch massive attacks, in the vacuum created by the US pullout, against the interim government or whatever has replaced it. Iraq falls apart and truly becomes a new breeding and training ground for international terrorism once again. In the US, millions denounce Kerry as a "traitor of democracy" for abandoning Iraq. And with millions thinking of Kerry as a traitor, the elections of 2008 become the most violent in US history -- only this time, it's Kerry-haters as the aggressors.

We have to stop this violence. And the only way to stop it is to expose it to the light of public scrutiny. Nina Totenberg does our democracy no service by giving people more reason to hate Bush, without also examining the consequences of that hate.

I seldom watch the "major" network newscasts anymore, and I'm not always coherent when I'm listening to Morning Edition on NPR, so this news may have slipped by me somehow. Maybe it received tons of coverage yesterday and this morning and I'm just not aware of it. But it wasn't until I watched last night's Scarborough Country on MSNBC that I had heard of these AFL-CIO thugs attacking the Republican HQ in Orlando, Florida.

And it wasn't until I started checking blogs this morning that I heard of the shooting up of the Republican party offices in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Or the storming of another Republican office in West Allis, Wisconsin.

Nothing about it last night on All Things Considered. Nothing about it this morning on Morning Edition. I guess a bunch of puppets mocking the war on terrorism is more important than a few silly incidences of real political terrorism in our own country.

I leave it to you to imagine what media coverage of these events would be like if Republicans were shooting up Democrats.

EDIT for credit: Most of this stuff is direct from Instapundit, who also has a link to Professor Bainbridge's round-up of these vile attacks.

Seriously, think how gangs of armed teen-aged Republicans going around burning signs and spray-painting swastikas on people's lawns would be covered in the media. Kristalnacht, anyone?

But the worst part of all this is what it portends for the future. We all need to come to our senses, fast.

Especially the Bush-haters.

Last night's debate between Kerry and Bush was as painful a political experience as I've had lately. I've read the comments and blogs saying it wasn't that bad, or even that Bush scored a resounding victory... but my friends, let's not deceive ourselves, lest we awaken to the words "President-elect John Kerry" on 3 November.

Kerry lied, of course he lied; he can't open his mouth without a wad of lies falling out like wriggling serpents. That doesn't mean he didn't look strong and presidential while doing it, and that's what counts. And yes, Bush responded with integrity, conviction, and truth. And he looked angry and put-upon while doing it.

And in the calculus of television campaigning, that means Kerry -- strong, presidential, nice -- beat Bush hands down.

The reasons will be debated and dissected by people far more insightful and experienced than I. I merely want to stress: Let's not kid ourselves about how it went. Kerry may not have won last night, but neither did Bush... and nothing less is even remotely acceptable.

Extremely busy week= no posting. Despite this, the growth of the Alliance of God blogroll has promoted this ickle blog to Marauding Marsupial. I was all happy to be a warm-blooded creature at last that I forgot that Adorable Little Rodents are also mammals, so I was less happy. Then I noticed this clever pouch I've developed on my abdomen, and I was happy again.

First meeting of the Chess Club yesterday. A blast was had by all. I suffered my first ever defeat when playing against a student; an eighth-grader named Jonathan turned a couple of the worst blunders I've ever committed into an insuperable advantage. I flatter myself by saying that if I hadn't had thirty kids asking me questions and tromping past my desk I wouldn't have been so distracted that I committed those errors, but the fact remains he handed me my head on a platter. I resigned after he took my queen and one of my rooks. Perhaps he would've made a terrible blunder and I might have forced a draw... but the way he was playing, and the way I was playing, I doubt it extremely.

Our next game, I was cleaning Jonathan's clock when the bell rang. "We drew," Jonathan announced... whereupon I showed him how far ahead of him I was in material and position. (I had control of the center, had traded him my bishops for his rooks, and was about to push my queen into a hole in his pawn structure to really start tearing up jack.) "But we're out of time, so we draw," Jonathan said... a bit too smugly for my liking.

Next time, kid. Next time.