GALLUP HAS BUSH UP BY SIX IN WISCONSIN

Gallup has George Bush leading John Kerry in the key blue state of Wisconsin by six points, 51-45, when matched head-to-head. When Nader is added into the mix, Bush extends his lead to eight points, 51-43. This polling took place between Oct 16-19, somewhat closer in than the Mason-Dixon polling and less of a weekend poll as well.

The demographics demonstrate a strong Bush surge with our neighbors to the East (head-to-head):

* Bush leads among men by 13 points and even edges Kerry among women, 48-47

* Bush leads in the 18-34 age bracket by seven, 52-45 (in the three-way, he leads by 10, 51-41) and 35-54 by 14. Kerry holds a five-point edge among seniors.

* Kerry leads substantially in Milwaukee (62-36), and edges Bush in the south by a single point (49-48), but everywhere else Bush leads by a wide margin, including the Milwaukee suburbs/exurbs (63-32).

* Bush leads all educational categories except post-graduate by margins outside the error range.

I think we can put Wisconsin in the Bush column along with Iowa, giving Bush an additional 17 electoral votes for November 2nd.

UPDATE: Gallup also has recent polling for Colorado that puts Bush ahead among likely voters by five points, 51-46, in a two-way race.

MASON-DIXON SHOWS BUSH TIED OR AHEAD IN BLUE STATES

Mason-Dixon released its most recent polling data in those battleground states that went for Gore in 2000, and the news looks bad for John Kerry. Bush either tied Kerry or went ahead in all of the states they polled. I included the ratio of Dems/GOP MD used in each state:

PA - Kerry, 46-45 (49/44)
MI - Kerry, 47-46 (38/36)
OR - Kerry, 47-46 (41/37)
WI - Tie, 45-45 (35/35)
IA - Bush, 49-43 (37/40)

This polling took place over the weekend, Oct 15-18, a time that usually favors Democrats. Mason-Dixon sampled 625 voters in each state and normalized by county and demographics, as they usually do. I think that MD may have undersampled the GOP in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and maybe overpolled them slightly in Iowa.

Interestingly, in all five states, Bush is viewed more favorably than Kerry, and his unfavorability numbers are lower than Kerry in all five. These are two separate numbers, as Neutral was given as a valid choice. In fact, Bush's Favorable ratings exceed his Unfavorable ratings outside the margin of error in three of the five states, while Kerry only does that in Oregon. [Updated: I think MS-NBC switched the labels between Unfavorable and Neutral on their website, and I originally carried the mistake into this post.]

No gender demographics were given, which would have been very interesting to read, but the news is bad enough for Kerry as it is. Losing Iowa -- and a six-point gap looks pretty significant less than two weeks before the election -- indicates that the entire Upper Midwest is ripe for a Bush win. The momentum in the battleground states appears to be going exclusively towards Bush. Expect Kerry and Edwards to play a lot of defense in these states over the next eleven days.

UPDATE: Kerry Spot has data on two more states than MS-NBC's report gave, showing Bush up by five in New Mexico (49-44) and two here in Minnesota (47-45). I haven't seen the data reported anywhere else or any of the internals, but if both hold for Bush, that should be a net gain of 15 more electoral votes, or 32 overall from former Gore states counting Iowa and Wisconsin (see above).

UPDATE II: Just to close the loop, here's the results in the Mason-Dixon red-state battleground polls:

CO - Bush 49-43
MO - Bush 49-44
NH - Bush 48-45
OH - Bush 46-45
NV - Bush 52-42
WV - Bush 49-44

New Hampshire and Ohio appear vulnerable at the moment, but Bush still shows an edge in both states. That represents 24 electoral votes in play from the GOP, still less than Bush claims in blue states where polls have him ahead.  Thursday, October 21, 2004

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JEWISH PRESS ENDORSES BUSH

America’s largest Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Press, endorses George W. Bush for President. (Hat tip: NY Nana.)

It was George W. Bush’s lot to have been elected president at a time when two defining developments were at work, fundamentally changing the world landscape. The European Union’s burgeoning determination to fill the international political void created by the collapse of the Soviet Union was one. And the unprecedented challenges presented by an international terror crusade on the move —underscored eight months into Mr. Bush’s presidency by 9/11 — was the other.

Both these developments required — and will continue to require — leadership not rooted in outdated geopolitical thinking; leadership cognizant of the reality that our ostensible friends do not necessarily share our interest in a strong United States and that our enemies do not risk as much as we do from confrontations gone seriously bad.

With this in mind, the choice Americans must make on November 2 should be an easy one. One can prattle about the significance of this or that difference between President Bush and Senator Kerry on the environment, Social Security, jobs, taxes and a whole slew of other domestic issues. But that avenue ineluctably ends up as a clash of partisan talking points about inherently insoluble problems. When it comes, however, to the war on terror — the overarching issue of our time — the choice of Mr. Bush over Mr. Kerry is a clear one from everything available in the public record. And for those with a special interest in Israel, the choice is even clearer.  Thursday, October 21, 2004

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KERRY'S VOODOO POLITICS 

www.chrenkoff.blogspot.com

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WHY THIS FLU CRISIS IS HAPPENING

Flu Shot Info...How the vaccine works:

Influenza vaccine is produced by growing the virus in eggs. The virus is killed and processed to create the vaccine, which is given by injection under the skin. The body then produces antibodies to the virus over the next two to four weeks.

If the immunized person then comes into contact with the influenza virus, the antibodies attack and kill the virus before it has a chance to cause infection.

The vaccine contains the 3 most likely strains to be active during the flu season.

Why the shortage?:

Almost half of the nation's flu vaccine will not be delivered this year.  Chiron, a major manufacturer of flu vaccine, will not be distributing any influenza vaccine this flu season.

Chiron was to make 46-48 million doses vaccine for the United States.

Chiron is a British company. Recently British health officials stopped Chiron from distributing and making the vaccine when inspectors found unsanitary conditions in the labs. Some lots of the vaccine were recalled and destroyed.

Why is our vaccine made in the UK and not the US?  The major pharmaceutical companies in the US provided almost 90% of the nations flu vaccine at one time. They did this despite a very low profit margin for the product. Basically, they were doing us a favor.

In the late 80's a man from North Carolina who had received the vaccine got the flu. The strain he caught was one of the strains in that years vaccine made by a US company.

What did he do? He sued and he won. He was awarded almost $5 million!

After that case was appealed and lost, most US pharmaceutical companies stopped making the vaccine. The liability out weighed the profit margin.

Since UK and Canadian laws prohibit such frivolous law suits UK and Canadian companies began selling the vaccine in the US. By the way...the lawyer that represented the man in the flu shot lawsuit was a young ambulance chaser by the name of John Edwards.

I rest my case.

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KERRY TEAM SLAMS REPORTS VP CHENEY HAD A FLU SHOT

Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign Wednesday slammed Vice President Dick Cheney, a heart patient, over reports he had a flu shot, despite a shortage of the vaccine.

The campaign complained that Treasury Secretary John Snow and Senate Majority leader Bill Frist also had jabs, despite Bush's advice that the young and healthy did not need to get an injection.

"Once again, the Bush administration proves that it is the 'do as we say, not as we do' White House," the campaign said in a statement issued in Pittsburgh where Kerry was campaigning.

"The very week that (health) secretary (Tommy) Thompson is telling Americans to keep calm, Dick Cheney, John Snow and Bill Frist are getting flu shots."

"It is unfortunate that the Bush administration failed to do the work necessary to ensure that all Americans, including those most at risk, had been able to get shots as well."

Cheney would fit into the government's definition of those most vulnerable to a looming influenza epidemic as he has a long history of heart disease.

Bush last week suggested in the final presidential debate that the young and healthy forgo the annual shot amid a shortage of vaccine that Kerry has blamed on the president's management of the health system.  Wednesday, October 20, 2004

www.drudgereport.com

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KERRY'S 20 YEAR RECORD OF ACHIEVEMENT IN THE SENATE

In the debates, President Bush said that John Kerry had written only five bills that became law. Senator Kerry said that 56 laws he had written (or co-written) had passed. President Bush was apparently wrong - there seem to be 11 that became law. Mr. Bush should correct the record.

In fact, there were 56 that passed in the Senate, but only 11 of them were actually passed by both houses of Congress and signed by a President.

Here are the only 11 bills ever passed with John Kerry's name on them:

99^th Congress: A concurrent resolution expressing solidarity with the Sakharov family

100th Congress: None

101st Congress: A joint resolution designating a week in Oct 1989 as "World Population Awareness week."

102nd Congress: Another joint resolution designating week in Oct 1999 as "World Population Awareness week." A joint resolution designating Nov 13, 1992 as "Vietnam Veterans Memorial 10th Anniversary Day." A Joint resolution designating September 18, 1192 as "National POW/MIA recognition day." A bill to authorize appropriations to carry out the National Sea Grant College Program Act.

103rd Congress: A bill to re-designate a federal Building as the "Frederick C. Murphy Federal Center." A bill to authorize appropriations for the Marine Mammal Protection act.

104th Congress: None

105th Congress: None

106th Congress: A bill to amend the Small Business Act with respect to the Women's business center program.

107th Congress: A bill to reauthorize the Small Business Technology Transfer program

108^th Congress: A bill to award a congressional gold medal to Jackie Robinson.

This is Senator Kerry’s total record of achievement in his 20 years in the U.S. Senate.

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FIRST LADY OUTCLASSES BILLIONAIREHEAD

Laura Bush Says Not Bothered by Heinz Kerry Remark.

NEW LONDON, N.H. (Reuters) - U.S. first lady Laura Bush on Thursday dismissed as unimportant a comment by the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that Mrs. Bush was someone who had not held a “real job.”

She played down a controversy that blew up over the remark and expressed sympathy for Teresa Heinz Kerry for having to handle the pressures of being on the campaign trail and answer reporters’ questions.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Mrs. Bush told reporters as she campaigned in the swing state of New Hampshire. “It was perfectly alright. She apologized and she didn’t even really need to apologize,” Mrs. Bush said.

“I know how tough it is. Actually, I know those trick questions, too,” she said.

THE RETURN OF AL GORE

It really is the do-anything/say-anything Democratic Party this year; in the latest Kerry campaign stunt, they’re sending Al Gore to Stump for Kerry in Florida.

Oct. 21, 2004 —As if the Florida recount of 2000 didn’t loom large enough in the minds of voters and politicians, ABC News has learned that former Vice President Al Gore will campaign for Sen. John Kerry this weekend in Florida. Kerry made the request of Gore, the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee, over the weekend in a telephone conversation, Democratic sources told ABC News.

Gore’s nail-biting 537-vote loss of the Sunshine State to President Bush led to recounts and legal battles and a Supreme Court decision that effectively handed the presidency to Bush. With partisans from both sides convinced the other side behaved dishonorably and tried to “steal” the election, both the Kerry and Bush campaigns have tried to conjure up ugly memories of that battle to mobilize voter turnout on Nov. 2.

Supporters of both candidates have already amassed sizable legal teams in case of close elections in any number of highly-competitive states (including Florida) with or without the combination of controversial voting methods like punch card ballots or electronic touch-screen voting.

The Kerry campaign has generally kept at arms’ length from Gore, who endorsed Kerry rival Howard Dean during the Democratic primaries and has made scathing comments about Bush and his administration that have gone beyond the kind of rhetoric Kerry has employed. On Monday at Georgetown University, Gore said Bush “is arrogantly out of touch with reality. He refuses to ever admit mistakes. Which means that so long as he is our president, we are doomed to repeat them.”

As of Thursday, Gore’s schedule was still being worked out, but it was believed he would be campaigning Sunday in a number of churches throughout Florida’s African-American community, where bitterness over the 2000 recount lingers amid new accusations against Republican election officials, ones many black leaders see as attempts to disenfranchise their community. For their part, Republicans suspect Democrats in numerous states — including Florida — of encouraging different types of voter fraud.  Thursday, October 21, 2004

www.littlegreenfootballs.com

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MIGHTY VOTER FRAUD FROM FLORIDA ACORNS GROW

The so-called nonpartisan voters assistance group, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), has generated suspicion for some time in conservative circles as a front-line player in leftist efforts to skew the vote. Now a former employee has filed charges against ACORN alleging that the organization deliberately set out to disrupt the Florida vote by illegally registering Democrats and suppressing Republican registrations:

Mac Stuart, of Opa-locka, has accused the organization, known as ACORN, of illegally copying voter registration applications and selling them to labor union groups, allowing people to sign petitions who were not registered voters and suppressing Republican voter registration applications. ...

Stuart, who was assistant director of voter registration for the group, was fired in early August after being accused of trying to cash a paycheck that wasn't his. In the lawsuit, he claims he was fired only days after voicing his concerns about ACORN practices at a group meeting in late July.

You can look at this one of two ways. Either Stuart is a disgruntled, terminated employee looking for revenge, or he is a whistleblower who got smeared when he attempted to stop crimes from being committed. Either could be true. However, if Stuart really did try to fraudulently cash a check, I doubt that he would be bringing the case to court, since apparently he avoided being charged for theft or forgery from the incident. ACORN could always say that it preferred to let the matter drop quietly, but if Stuart did violate the law, the presumption would be that his motivation for keeping it quiet would be much stronger.

Combine this with other irregularities, such as the NAACP representative paying for bogus Ohio registrations with crack cocaine, and I'd tend to suspect that the ACORN does not fall far from the tree. Floridians should take this into consideration when deciding which party truly represents their values. Remember what Hugh Hewitt says -- if it's not close, they can't cheat.  Thursday, October 21, 2004

www.captainsquartersblog.com

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Reader William Holl alerted us to this unbelievable interview of former President Jimmy Carter by Chris Matthews on Hardball. Given that Matthews once worked for Carter, one might have expected the interview to be "Softball." In fact, it can only be described as "Screwball." It's hard to say who's nuttier, Carter or Matthews. Here are a few highlights, with my editorial comments:

MATTHEWS: [A]s an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force. Do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?

CARTER: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War more than any other war until recently has been the most bloody war we’ve fought.

Combat deaths, Revolutionary War: 4,435. Combat deaths, Civil War: 184,594. Combat deaths: World War II: 292,131. Combat deaths, Iraq war: 793.

I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war. Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial’s really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a non-violent way.

India became independent in 1947.

CARTER: Well, I think almost any reasonable person who knew history would say that you can’t go into an alien environment and force by rule of arms by forcing the people to adopt a strange concept and also when we were so destructive in going into Iraq with tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed and now it’s still, up until this moment now many months later there is still a great deal of animosity toward American troops and there is no doubt that American troops’ presence is stimulating additional violence.

1) Of course you can go into an "alien environment" and force people to adopt a "strange concept," which is Carter's weird way of describing democracy. See, e.g., Germany and Japan. 2) Only the most fanatically anti-American propagandists (like Carter) make the absurd claim that there were "tens of thousands" of civilians killed. 3) The presence of American troops is preventing Islamist terrorists from murdering vast numbers of innocent Iraqis.

MATTHEWS: [W]as it possible that if the President or his secretary of state could have reached Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein could have explained to the President no matter what we think of him and his tyranny over there that he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction or was it a case where are people because of ideological reasons simply wanted to take over that country and they were using WMD as an excuse. Do you think there was any way to have avoided that war if people were of good heart and mind?

CARTER: I don’t think with President Bush and Vice President Cheney and other leaders in Washington that would – that small cadre of deeply committed people – that it was possible for that war to be avoided because quite early in the process, long before the United Nations had exhausted its effort to reveal that there were no weapons of mass destruction there. I think the Bush administration had decided to go to war.

So the war could have been avoided by a phone call from the oh-so-reasonable Saddam, if only the Bush administration hadn't been "deeply committed" to war. The problem was that Bush and his advisers were not "of good heart and mind." Incredible.

CARTER: Well, I have always been religious, of course, from—but I was very careful never to mix the church and state. I would have foregone any sort of effort by, say (AUDIO GAP) to give me overt support just because of my religion.

And when I was in office, I was very careful to separate completely any religious commitment of mine and assuring of favoritism or preference to Christianity or my own faith.

Since then, not because I blame it on President Bush, but there has been a melding, as you know, in this country of the Republican Party and the—and the Christian right-wing fervent believers.

MATTHEWS: Right.

CARTER: I don’t criticize either one of them, but I think that’s an obvious fact. And that has brought about a closer intermixing, or overlapping, of religion and government that our forefathers certainly have deplored and which has never been the case until the last 25 years.

No reference to John Kerry preaching "sermons" every Sunday before congreations waving Kerry/Edwards signs.

MATTHEWS: It does seem to me that there’s an almost—an odd coalition out there of people who are Christian conservatives and people who are very pro-Israeli and—and the way the president has used that in terms of his support for his foreign policy and his reelection. Have you noticed that?

Do you understand this? I don't. Matthews thinks a "coalition" between "Christian conservatives" and "people who are very pro-Israel" is "odd." This appears to proceed from some dark bigotry on Matthews' part.

CARTER: Well, one of the deepest commitments I ever made in public life and private life since then for 25 years or more has been to bring peace to the Israelis and peace and justice, as well, to their immediate neighbors. I devoted a large portion of my administration to that and formed a treaty between Israel and Egypt, not a word of which has ever been violated.

And every president...

MATTHEWS: You got a lot of credit for that, didn’t you, Mr. President?

CARTER: Well, I did...

MATTHEWS: I’m just kidding. I don’t think you did get enough.

CARTER: Not enough.

MATTHEWS: I mean, you brought together Israel with its most threatening strategic enemy...

CARTER: Well, you don’t ever—you don’t ever get enough credit when you do something nice like that.

Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Israel/Egypt peace accord.

CARTER: [E]very president since Eisenhower, I’d say, including me and including George Bush Sr. and including Bill Clinton, have made every effort to bring peace to Israel and justice and peace to their neighbors...

MATTHEWS: Right.

CARTER: ... until the last three and a half years. And now everybody knows that looks at it objectively that this effort has been totally abandoned. There is no effort now being made to negotiate or to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Has Carter heard about the Intifada? Is he aware that Palestinian terrorists are trying to destroy Israel by killing all of its citizens? Does he know about the Oslo accords, and their collapse in the face of repeated mass murder? He is like a fly preserved in amber. But the fly has a better excuse.

There is much more. Read it, if you can stand it. The real moral of the story is that Chris Matthews is every bit as much out of touch as Jimmy Carter.  Wednesday, October 20, 2004

www.powerlineblog.com

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THE DAVID PROJECT

At a history class, a professor mockingly tells a female Jewish student she cannot possibly have ancestral ties to Israel because her eyes are green.

During a lecture, a professor of Arab politics refuses to answer a question from an Israeli student and military veteran but instead asks the student, “How many Palestinians have you killed?”

At a student meeting on the topic of divestment from Israel, a Jewish student is singled out as responsible for death of Palestinian Arabs.

Those scenes are described by current and former students interviewed for an underground documentary that is causing a frisson of concern to ripple through the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University, where the incidents took place.

The film, about anti-Israel sentiment at the school, has not yet been released to the public, but it has been screened for a number of top officials of Columbia, and talk of its impact is spreading rapidly on a campus where some students have complained of anti-Israel bias among faculty members.

“The movie is shocking,” one Columbia senior, Ariel Beery, said.

“It is shocking to see blatant use of racial stereotypes by professors and intimidation tactics by professors in order to push a distinct ideological line on the curriculum,” Mr. Beery, who was interviewed for the film, said.

The film is the creation of the David Project, a 2-year-old group based in Boston that advocates for Israel and is led by the founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group, Charles Jacobs. The David Project, which is refusing to make the film public, has screened it for Barnard College’s president, Judith Shapiro, and Columbia’s provost, Alan Brinkley, according to sources.

Neither Ms. Shapiro nor Mr. Brinkley would return calls seeking comment about the film, though at a meeting in Washington this week with women active in Jewish charitable work the Barnard president is said to have spoken of how emotionally affected she was by the film.

With versions at 11 minutes and 25 minutes in playing time, the film consists of interviews with several students who contend that they have felt threatened academically for expressing a pro-Israel point of view in classrooms.

One of the scholars discussed most in the film, according to a person who has seen the film, is Joseph Massad, a non-tenured professor of modern Arab politics, who is teaching a course about Middle East nationalism this fall. Mr. Massad, a professor at Columbia’s department of Middle East and Asian languages and cultures, has likened Israel to Nazi Germany and has said Israel doesn’t have the right to exist as a Jewish state.

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STOP THEM!

The mullahs of the Islamic Republic have, at several times, shown their thirst for carnage in the past 25 years of ruling over Iran . They have a long history of plotting suicide attacks and waging wars internationally and silencing any opposing voice domestically. Having brutalized the Iranian nation all throughout these years, having kept most of the people under the poverty line, one shouldn't be astonished on how these "men of Allah" have had absolutely no problem finding recruits and sending poor souls after the so-called promised paradise through shedding the blood of other humans. If you are an Iranian, it wouldn't be very strange for you to have at least one dear and near lost at the bloody hands of these shopkeepers of religion. The infamousness of the Shiite clerics of Iran is not a new story to be told over again, as they are already known to the world as the "bad guys".

The reason for writing this article is, however, not retelling the same old story, but an untold one, I am sure you haven't heard yet.

Almost a month ago the Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's appointed judge in the province of "Mazandaran", in the South of the Caspian sea , sentenced "Atefeh Rajabi" a 16-year-old girl to death for committing adultery. The poor girl, deprived of even the very basic motherly love, was hanged in the public before the dismayed eyes of a people who have long forgotten that they were no more living than "Atefeh" was now. Just before she was hanged, "Atefeh" had willed everything she possessed to the poor girls like herself. A short time later, it was revealed that the Islamic judge and a few of his men had raped this little girl before hanging her.

The tragedy of "Atefeh" was still inflicting its heavy and painful burden on the Iranians' conscience that a report came out proclaiming that another girl, 13-year-old "Zheela", was sentenced to "stoning to death" by another Islamic judge in the city of "Marivan", Western Iran. This poor child is sentenced to death because she has been impregnated by her 15-year-old brother.

I am deeply astounded by the level of some of your politicians' credulity speaking of peace and a "better tomorrow" while they see that Islamic fundamentalism is literally marring the fresh minds of future parents of our world. Can't they see what is happening to "Zheela"? Couldn't they see what happened in "Beslan"? Can't they see us? Having been brought up in an "Islamiorated" society where seeing coffins and wild mobs in our streets was an everyday experience I don't really know how many years should pass before we will be able to gain our mental health back.

If the world cannot save little "Zheela" from these brutal Islamic militants, then how could your politicians speak of disarming them from their nuclear weapons?

Saving her is undoubtedly the right thing to do.

Let us not forget that "It may not always be easy, convenient, or politically correct to stand for truth and right, but it is the right thing to do - Always."  Tuesday, October 19, 2004 

- Koorosh Afshar is a pseudonym for a university student in Tehran , his name has been changed for his protection.

http://iranvajahan.net

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JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULDN'T GET ANY UGLIER...

The Village Voice goes for the throat on its website. Does it remind you of something? Shame on them.  Wednesday, October 20, 2004

www.rogerlsimon.com