Happy Thanksgiving.

The pumpkin pies are out of the oven, the roasting hens are in the refrigerator awaiting the trip down home, the home-canned green beans are packed and ready to go. Hope everyone has a great holiday.

Just briefly:
--has this been the best November ever, or what? Bush, elected. Arafat, dead. Dead in France, yet. Rather, "retired" with extreme prejudice. And I'm going to add in the Powell resignation, Condi Rice's reassignment to State, and Porter Goss starting the ass-kicking housecleaning in the CIA as big dollops of sweet whipped cream on top.

--the flap over the marine capping the wounded terrorist: the Jacksonian in me can't believe we're even discussing this as a possible Bad Thing. I don't see the point of fighting with our hands tied. In the interest of forestalling potential idiocy: no, the Geneva convention doesn't apply.

--the murder of Theo Van Gogh: Bridget Johnson makes a good point in the WSJ, namely that the Hollywood left, which claims to feel the chill wind of oppression every time a red-stater doesn't buy a Dixie Chicks album, has been strangely silent on the actual brutal butchery of a filmmaker by an Islamic fanatic for expressing his views on the treatment of women under Islam. Being shot, butchered like an animal, and used as a mumblypeg board--that's what fanatical Islam has in store for the decadent forces of Hollywood, and that means you, Sean Penn, no matter how nuancy you may think you are.

--Oliver Stone is about to take it in the shorts, and I can't freakin' wait to see "Alexander". Casting Colin Farrell was bad enough; dying him blond and giving him that 80s Miles-and-Miles-O-Keefe 'do bespeaks a miscalculation on an epic scale. Angela and I will be at the Friday matinee somewhere in Louisville, cackling with evil glee and hurling Dots at the screen. (Just for Bern: "Let us pass; my people are jugglers." Yeah, that's exactly what I'm expecting.)

Incidentally.

In partial reference to the post below, calling the blue states the "reality-based" community is one of the funniest themes to come out of the post-election hysteria.

Malevolent stupidity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the magical blogstylings of Ken Layne. [Via the invaluable Protein Wisdom.]

Credit where due.

Nothing in John Kerry's campaign so became him as the concession speech*. Seriously, I appreciate him not trying to drag this out for weeks. Edwards, though...that guy's a real shithouse lawyer.

Second best news: the end of Daschole's career as Obstructionist in Chief.

*I swear I did not steal the paraphrase of this particular phrase from Charles Austin.

Quel surprise.

Election fraud in Chicago. Looks like they purged the Republicans off the rolls. I'm shocked.

[Via HogOnIce.]

The die is cast.

And so's my vote, at a quarter to seven this morning. They were lined up out the door in Springfield at 6:30. Now to plan my campaign of bitterness and recrimination for the next four years.

Call to arms.

Steve Graham analyzes Osama's latest video, then breaks out the Patrick Henry:

It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace, peace!" But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

If you can read that and still vote for Kerry with a clear conscience, may God have mercy on this country.

Fuck you, Uncle Walter.

From NRO, via Ace of Spades, this amazing claim by Walter Cronkite on Larry King last night regarding the latest OBL video:

CRONKITE: What we just heard. So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing. The advantage to the Republican side is to get rid of, as a principal subject of the campaigns right now, get rid of the whole problem of the al Qaqaa explosive dump. Right now, that, the last couple of days, has, I think, upset the Republican campaign.

If I may quote PJ O'Rourke, What the fuck? What the fuckin' fuck? Can Walter Cronkite possibly be suggesting that Carl Rove, ergo the White House, is in a position to manipulate Bin Laden at will? That they are, in fact, working together?

Ace is right. This is the kind of shit that leads to political violence. Like lining up all the current and former CBS anchors we can get our hands on and bitchslapping them until they cry like Nancy Kerrigan.

Sox win.

I feel like I just watched the moon landing all over again. Only, you know, if the astronauts were spritzing each other with champagne they kept it off-camera.

Feeling the pessimism.

VDH lays it all out:

We are presented with two radically different candidates with profound disagreements about how to conduct a historic worldwide war. We should remember that all our victorious past presidents were, at the moments of their crises, deeply unpopular precisely because they chose the difficult, long-term sacrifice for victory over the expedient and convenient pleas for accommodation (if not outright capitulation). We are faced with just such an option today: a choice between a president whose call for patience and sacrifice promises victory, and a pessimist stirring the people with the assurances that we should not have fought, and now cannot win, the present war in Iraq.

And there's really nothing more to say. Personally I think the country may have already crossed the line where it can no longer recognize what sacrifice is, much less accede to its necessity.

Is there no shameful act to which CBS will not stoop?

Via Ace of Spades, Drudge: CBS was planning to run the "missing explosives" story on election eve.

Now, admittedly, the use of past tense would seem to indicate the plan has been scuttled (though Ace seems to think the plans proceed apace; one would hope even CBS wouldn't push a story that's already been debunked by another network.) But according to the LA Times, the tip was handed to them last Wednesday. And they were planning to sit on it until the 31st. As revealing as that is about their political agenda, and their shamelessness in pursuing same, it also makes them look clownishly incompetent for not knowing the piece was being shopped elsewhere. I mean, come the hell on.

So anyway, Jon Stewart.

Kind of an asshole, apparently. I'm with James Bowman on this; Stewart wants to be able to spew bitter, vicious invective without being called on his opinions. I don't mind that he thinks Crossfire sucks (personally I just find it tedious, but then, I don't assume all programming is tailored to please me), or that he went on Crossfire just to tell its hosts that they suck--I mind him using "I'm just a comedian" as a shield from criticism. He wants his opinions taken seriously, but he doesn't want to be called on them, and I doubt he'd be terribly gracious to a guest who came on his show specifically to tell him he was "hurting America" by not being funny. Which he hasn't been since he realized he could use his position to stump for the dems.

My fortune cookie.

"A romantic mystery will soon add interest to your life."

Hey, great. "Maltese Falcon" must be on.

Hey, ARod.

Smooth move. No one will ever notice you swiping at Arroyo's arm while you're wearing those giant white Mickey Mouse gloves. Criminy.

God bless David Hasselhoff.

He just killed off rap, nearly single-handed*:

HASSELHOFF TURNS TO RAP Former BAYWATCH hunk-turned-London theatre star DAVID HASSELHOFF is turning his attentions to rap music in a bid to become a chart sensation. The actor, who is a pop superstar in Germany and Switzerland, has teamed up with rapper ICE-T in a bid to become an international music star. Ice-T says, "We are going to show a new side of him. The Hoff will surprise people with his rap skills."

"The Hoff". "Rap skills." Consider that shark jumped.

* Link not guaranteed against linkrot. Item found under "Music News" by Angela, who graciously shared.

Because Greg has to see this and my e-mails are getting bounced.

Share it with David: Fellowship 9/11. (I also liked the Fast Times at Hero High one.)

[Link via FAD.]

Dear Guardian: get stuffed.

My friend Sharon alerted me to the following LGF item: Guardian Tries to Influence US Election

In the spirit of the Declaration of Independence's pledge to show "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind", we have come up with a unique way for non-Americans to express your views on the policies and candidates in this election to some of the people best placed to decide its outcome. It's not quite a vote, but it's a chance to influence how a very important vote will be cast. Or, at the very least, make a new penpal.

It works like this. By typing your email address into the box on this page, you will receive the name and address of a voter in Clark County, Ohio. You may not have heard of it, but it's one of the most marginal areas in one of the most marginal states: at the last election, just 324 votes separated Democrats from Republicans. It's a place where a change of mind among just a few voters could make a real difference.

Writing to a Clark County voter is a chance to explain how US policies effect you personally, and the rest of the world more generally, and who you hope they will send to the White House. It may even persuade someone to use their vote at all.

Gentlemen of the Guardian, as a registered Clark County, OH, resident, let me advise you to re-think this plan. What's going to happen to some unfortunate if my name comes out of the hopper is that I'm going to post the return address on my blog and invite anyone who stops by to respond with the reasons why, in the immortal words of GW Bush, we don't give a shit what the Europeans think.

Dear John Lecarre'

[...]Probably no American president in all history has been so universally hated abroad as George W Bush:

And?

for his bullying unilateralism,

30+ country coalition.

his dismissal of international treaties,

Just the ones trying to wreck the US economic engine or subject US citizens to the whims of a faceless world bureaucracy.

his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures,

As one of the youngest countries in the world (albeit the oldest democracy), it would be unseemly for the US to take the world to raise. Let them see to their own aspirations.

his contempt for institutions of world government,

Oil for food. Srebrenica. Darfur. Yeah, I can see how you'd have a whole lot of anything other than contempt for "institutions of world government".

and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war

Check with your lawyer. S. Hussein was in violation of the cease-fire terms from the first Gulf War for twelve years, and in violation of numerous resolutions from your precious world body, the UN. I'm pretty sure that makes it legal.

- and now anarchy -

War is hell. The aftermath is messy. I hope you don't call yourself a realist.

upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship, but had no hand in 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction,

They should have mentioned that. Might have bought them some time.

and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the US in a dirty war against Iran.

Aside from the established record of aiding terrorists, which Bush specifically said was an outrage up with which we would no longer put. Abu Nidal ring any bells?

Is your president a great war leader because he allowed himself to be manipulated by a handful of deluded ideologues?

No, he's a great war leader because he didn't allow himself to be misdirected by a handful of deluded transnational utopian statist ideologues.

Is Tony Blair a great war leader because he committed Britain's troops, foreign policy and domestic security to the same hare-brained adventure?

No, he's a great war leader because he stood on principle even though it nearly cost him his base. As much as I despise his domestic policies, the man has grit.

You are voting in November. We will vote next year.

Yes, we're both democracies. How nice for us. And now Afghanistand is too! And soon Iraq. Isn't that nice?

Yet the outcome in both countries will in large part depend on the same question: how long can the lies last now that the truth has finally been told?

Ask John Kerry. His campaign seems to be unravelling like the sleeve of a cheap suit.

The Iraq war was planned long before 9/11. Osama provided the excuse.

Uh huh. And Debbie Gibson is pregnant with your two-headed love child.

Iraq paid the price. American kids paid the price. British kids paid the price. Our politicians lied to us.

There's the difference between us: I don't think of the military as a group of big-eyed children in need of milk and cookies.

While Bush was waging his father's war at your expense, he was also ruining your country. He made your rich richer and your poor and unemployed more numerous.

Wrong on both counts, actually.

He robbed your war veterans of their due and reduced your children's access to education. And he deprived more Americans than ever before of healthcare.

Meh. Vague and alarmist. To what, specifically, can you possibly be referring?

Now he's busy cooking the books, burying deficits and calling in contingency funds to fight a war that his advisers promised him he could light and put out like a candle.

I'm sorry, that's a ridiculous characterization, not only of the war and the leadup to war, but of the way the American government functions. No wonder your novels are impenetrable to me.

Meanwhile, your Patriot Act has swept aside constitutional and civil liberties which took brave Americans 200 years to secure, and were once the envy of a world that now looks on in horror, not just at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but at what you are doing to yourselves.

Look, idiot, I live here. Allow me to assure you McCain-Feingold and the Hatch act have done a fuck of a lot more to restrict my constitutional liberties than the PATRIOT act ever will. This kneejerk reaction to the word "patriot" has got to stop if you expect anyone over here who doesn't live in Berkeley to take your concerns seriously.

But please don't feel isolated from the Europe you twice saved.

Bit late to kiss up now.

Give us back the America we loved, and your friends will be waiting for you.

Ah, if only you loved us when we weren't on our knees.

And here in Britain, for as long as we have Tony Blair singing the same lies as George Bush, your nightmares will be ours.

"The British they cried and cursed Yorktown,
While the band played "The World's Turned Upside Down". -Jimmy Driftwood, "Soldier's Joy"

I display my famous compassion for dead people.

Jacques Derrida died last week. There was a brief period when I thought it quite possible that this nihilistic jackass had done serious damage to modern culture; now thinking of him just provokes a brief, instinctive snort of derision. It's just too bad he didn't have the decency to get taken out in a suitably post-modernist manner, like Lacan getting creamed by a laundry truck.

Town Hall debate, cont'd.

How dare John Kerry bring up intelligence when he can't be bothered to attend the meetings on the Senate intelligence committee, which is his ostensible job?