[Victoria Delsoul]

The deep emotional bond so many of us formed with the president back then is Bush's strongest weapon in this election, and OBL has just revived it. The real October Surprise turned out not to be OBL's capture (sorry, Teresa!) but OBL's resilience. I have a feeling that this will tip the election decisively toward the incumbent.

I thought about the same thing as soon as I heard the tape. Osama wants Kerry elected and looks like he's been taking lessons from Michael Moore's movie. While Kerry and the Rats think this will help Kerry, in fact the opposite effect is taking place. We don't like to be threatened - AND we don't like to be threatened by a murdering terrorist, so this plays into GW's hands. This is the real October surprise!

[Alberta's Child]

This is quite a strange story. As someone else has pointed out on another thread today, the biggest surprise is not that OBL is alive and well, but that he's been able to produce a remarkably well-made, professional-looking video message like this.