Free Republic

Maybe I'm getting old. I've been covering politics for 53 years, and that's just since John Kerry's convention speech. I'm sick of this election, even before the Democratic Party's chad-diviners have managed to extend it to mid-December. These are serious times and the senator is not a serious man. And so we have a campaign that has a sharper position on Mary Cheney's lesbianism and the deficiencies of Laura Bush's curriculum vitae than on the central question of the age. There are legitimate differences of opinion about the war, but they don't include Kerry's silly debater's points. On the one...

Mark Steyn says that three years after 9/11 the West remains in denial over Islamic terrorism ‘He is sedated,’ said Bill Clinton’s heart surgeon on Tuesday. ‘But he is arousable.’ I’ve never doubted it. That seems as appropriate a thought as any with which to consider the state of the new war three years on. Like former President Clinton, much of the West is sedated. But is it arousable? On the eve of this week’s anniversary, hundreds of children were murdered in their schoolhouse by terrorists. Terrible. But even more terrible was the reaction of what passes for the civilised...

John Kerry is too strange to be president. I don't mean "strange" in the way of his predecessor. Al Gore, the first Android-American to run for president, was weird. But Kerry's strangeness is of an entirely different order.For purposes of comparison, go back a couple of months to that fevered few weeks when Michael Moore, bigshot Democrats and the media were hounding Bush over his allegedly spotty attendance in the Texas Air National Guard during the early Seventies. The point is, even if it were true, it fits the Bush narrative: he was a lackadaisical son of privilege who goofed...

It was interesting to see Ben Affleck emerge as the Hollywood mascot of the Democratic Convention. The week reminded me of Ben's movie Pearl Harbor: wall-to-wall evocative military imagery, a cast of thousands, superb production values, but a huge gaping hole where the star performance was supposed to be. On TV the other night, young Mr Affleck offered a pearl of wisdom to Mr Kerry and his consultants: "You have to enervate the base," the Hollywood heartthrob advised solemnly. If it's enervating the base you're after, John F Kerry would seem to be the perfect candidate. On Thursday, for his...

There's a bumper sticker I see on a lot of Vermont cars these days: "BE PATRIOTIC – VOTE GEORGE BUSH OUT". The trouble is you can't vote Bush out, you have to vote the other fellow in. And convention week marks the point when Americans begin to get to know the challenger the way they know the incumbent. I find it hard to believe that getting to know John F Kerry can possibly work to his advantage. He was in Wisconsin the other day, pretending to be a regular guy, and was asked what kind of hunting he preferred. "I'd...

I SEE the next decade's "Never again" story is here. Just as we all agreed the 1994 Rwandan genocide should never be allowed to happen again, so - in a year or two - we'll all be agreed that another 2004 Sudanese genocide should never be allowed to happen again. But right now it is happening, and you can't help wondering where all the great humanitarians are. Alas, Sudan doesn't seem to have much appeal to them, lacking as it does the crucial Bush angle and affording little opportunity for use of words such as "neocons" and "Halliburton". In the...

Well, the week went pretty much as I predicted seven days ago: BUSH LIED!! Not. BLAIR LIED!!! Not. But it turns out JOE WILSON LIED! PEOPLE DIED. Of embarrassment mostly. At least I'm assuming that's why the New York Times, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, PBS drone Bill Moyers and all the other media bigwigs Joseph C. Wilson IV suckered have fallen silent on the subject of the white knight of integrity they've previously given the hold-the-front-page treatment, too. And what about John F. Kerry? Joe Wilson campaigned with Kerry in at least six states, and claims to have helped with the...

I have created a public register of "bump lists" here on Free Republic. I define a bump list as a name listed in the "To" field used to index articles. Free Republic Bump List Register

Mark Steyn says the President’s chances of victory improve every time John Kerry appears on television New Hampshire There was an interesting headline in the International Herald Tribune the other day: ‘Front-Runner Is Leading In Presidential Race.’ It turned out to be an analysis of the Indonesian election, but I think the general principle applies over here as well. It seems safe to say the front-runner is leading in the US presidential race and that, if the front-runner can maintain that lead up to and including election day, he’s likely to win The only point of disagreement is over who’s...

In other words, the British Government did learn that Saddam Hussein did seek significant quantities of uranium from Africa......

A couple of years back, I mentioned the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and received a flurry of lively e-mails. It was Valentine's Day 1989, you'll recall, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his extraterritorial summary judgment on a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims were marching through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed. A reader in Bradford recalled asking a West Yorkshire officer on the street that day why the various "Muslim community leaders" weren't being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said they'd been told to "play it cool". The calls for...

How do you feel about uranium from Niger?  That’s how I began a Spectator column on July 19th 2003 when Niger and “Bush’s LIE!!!!!!!” about it was supposedly the biggest issue of the day. One year later,  a British inquiry, led by Lord Butler, into pre-war intelligence has concluded that — whaddayaknow? — MI6 were justified in claiming Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger. Strange how, one by one, the “BUSH LIES!!!!!” turn out to be factually accurate. The obvious conclusion is that the “anti-war movement” is not so much anti-war as in denial. It denies that there is...

How do you like this new Bell Canada 411 Dial-And-Win 75¢ instant lotto game? It’s great fun. You simply dial 411, pay your 75¢ fee, name the person you want and then see if it’s one of the lucky numbers they have listed. “Celine Dion’s personal line? I’m sorry, we have no such listing. Better luck next time!” On the other hand, for 75¢, you could get my number. I asked Bell Canada for an unlisted one and they said sure, no problem. But, with that waspish sense of humour for which they’re renowned, they then stuck it in the...

'We've got better vision. We've got better ideas. We've got real plans. And we've got better hair," said John Kerry, introducing his running mate. The Kerry-Edwards vision, ideas, etc don't look so good in the cold light of day, but John Edwards's hair does. I can personally vouch for his beautiful layered nape, having spent much of New Hampshire primary season looking at the back of his tanned neck on chilly winter mornings. He likes to campaign in the round, so all winter, in Legion halls and diners, the advance men rearranged the furniture and then the pretty-boy Southerner would...

This past week these pages have been filled with daily meditations on the British embrace of loserdom - Boris Johnson, James Delingpole, our friends in the leader pen opposite. I'm not sure I'd pass Norman Tebbit's cricket test myself, but, if I did, I'd be as upset as the rest of the Telegraph types at Accrington Stanley losing in straight sets or Annabel Croft blowing the penalty shoot-out. Hard to take, year in, year out. None the less, it seems to me this morbid obsession with the national loser fetish obscured the really big British defeat - to Iran, in...

Excited about "Fahrenheit 9/11?" It's the Palme d'Or-winning and doubtless soon to be Oscar-winning "documentary" from average blue-collar multimillionaire Michael Moore. I saw it last weekend with an audience composed wholly of informed, intelligent sophisticates. I knew they were informed, intelligent sophisticates because they howled with laughter at every joke about what a bozo Bush is. They split their sides during the patriotic ballad -- eagles soaring, etc. -- composed and sung by John Ashcroft, the famously sinister attorney general. Moore reveals -- and if you feel that knowing the plot would spoil the movie, please skip to the next...

America has succeeded in Iraq, says Mark Steyn, but the war on terror can still be lost at home New Hampshire ‘Let freedom reign!’ scribbled President Bush in the corner of the briefest of hand-written notes from his national security adviser: ‘Mr President, ‘Iraq is sovereign. Letter was passed from Bremer at 10.26 a.m. Iraq time — Condi.’ And that was it. No ostrich feathers, no Princess Alexandra, no tea on the lawn at Government House. After 15 months of running Iraq, the Americans are out. Sure, they’ve got a lot of troops there, but they’ve got a lot of...

It is a sad fact that, whatever its merits in other respects, Irish independence has been a disaster for Irish drama. Since casting off the shackles of their English oppressor, the auld sod’s playwrights have been mired in a mawkish parochialism from which they seem barely able to lift their eyes to the broader horizon before slumping back to the comforting emerald glow of stage Irishness. This can be very lucrative, of course, but it owes more to Tin Pan Alley’s synthetic shamrock ballads of a century ago (“Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?”, etc.) than to any living dramatic...

"Europe and America," said President George W. Bush in Ireland on Saturday, "are linked by the ties of family, friendship, and common struggle and common values." Bush seems to have quite a common struggle articulating what those common values are. In Prague in 2002, he told fellow NATO members, "We share common values — the common values of freedom, human rights, and democracy." In a post-communist world, these are vague, unobjectionable generalities. It's when you try to flesh them out that it all gets more complicated. Here's another way to look at it: America, almost in inverse proportion to its...

Excited about Fahrenheit 9/11? It's the Palme d'Or-winning and soon-to-be Oscar-winning documentary from average blue-collar multi-millionaire Michael Moore, and it opens in Britain next week. I saw it over the weekend on my side of the Atlantic, with an audience comprised wholly of informed, intelligent sophisticates. I knew they were informed, intelligent sophisticates because they howled with laughter at every joke about what a bozo Bush is. They split their sides during the patriotic ballad – eagles soaring, etc – composed and sung by John Ashcroft, the famously sinister US Attorney-General. Moore reveals – and if you feel that knowing...