Richard Bennett

I think the big question on this election day is how many fraudulent votes will be cast. By all appearances, the Democratic Party is hinging a lot of its final strategy on getting out the vote again, and again, and again. We’ve all heard the stories about the counties in Ohio where the number of registered voters exceeds the adult population and precincts in Philadelphia where voter registration exceeds the total population, about voter information packets returned in the tens of thousands marked “no such address” and “deceased”. Democrats are using the courts to block poll watchers from seeing voter IDs, claiming “minority harassment” and urging activists to allege intimidation where there is none.

Our voting system has next to no protection against large-scale fraud, and we can be sure the media aren’t going to back off their militantly pro-Kerry stance at the last minute and report this story accurately, so it’s likely that this election will be stolen if the actual vote is close. Some Democrat activists are already bragging about the magnitude of the fraud, putting it at two percent or higher. The only hope for election integrity this time around is large enough Republican turnout to thwart these tactics, and legislation over the next four years to prevent its happening again.

While I don’t like John Kerry and the campaign he’s run based on misinformation, flip-floppery, and disgusting personal attacks on the President, the Vice-President, and their families, the damage that he’ll do to the country with his coy policies is much less than the damage his party is going to do by destroying the integrity of our voting process. I don’t expect Democrats to wise up to this, however, because so many are still burning about the last election.

2000 seems like last week, and this campaign like it’s gone on forever. I hope when it’s over we can get at least a brief break from the campaigning and politicking for a little real life.

Powerline has the story on a Clinton judge’s Sunday night ruling enabling Democrats to steal Ohio. It’s on, folks: they’ll stop at nothing to steal this election.

MEMRI says that Osama made specific threats against states that vote for Bush tomorrow according this this from Begging to Differ:

In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: “Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security.”

The Islamist website Al-Qal’a explained what this sentence meant: “This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately. When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, ‘Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,’ it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy.

This couldn’t be more clear: Osama wants Kerry to win.

UPDATE: For more, see Kausfiles.

Here’s where the election stands, as well as anybody knows:

Yasser Arafat is joined in enthusiastically endorsing John Kerry by one of his brothers-in-arms:

Addressing the American people, bin Laden says in the video: “Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic candidate John) Kerry or (US President George W.) Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands ….”

In what could be read as a bizarre endorsement of Bush’s Democratic challenger John Kerry, bin Laden, addressing the American people, said “best way to avoid another disaster” was to avoid provoking Arab anger. “Liberals do not neglect their security, contradicting Bush, who says that we hate freedom,” bin Laden said.

If he hoped to influence the US elections, the ploy could backfire. Kerry, whom Bush has attempted to paint as soft on terrorism, is unlikely to benefit from what appears to be praise from bin Laden.

Mr. Laden echoes the sentiments of Michael Moore and John Kerry throughout the tape, lambasting the president for sitting through the My Pet Goat story before misleading the American people.

I tend to believe that this endorsement is going to backfire for the bin Laden/Moore/Kerry axis.

Blogs for Bush speculates that bin Laden must be one of the “world leaders” who want Kerry to win.

From Best of the Web Today, the official Al Qaeda endorsement of John Kerry:

“No, my fellow countrymen you are guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. You are as guilty as Bush and Cheney. You’re as guilty as Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and Powell,” he says in what he calls his message to America. “After decades of American tyranny and oppression, now it’s your turn to die. Allah willing, the streets of America will run red with blood matching drop for drop the blood of America’s victims.”

Any questions?

Washington Post puts the Al QaQaa story in context:

“There is something truly absurd about focusing on 377 tons of rather ordinary explosives, regardless of what actually happened at al Qaqaa,” Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an assessment yesterday. “The munitions at al Qaqaa were at most around 0.06 percent of the total.”

Do you want a president who can’t tell the important issues from the unimportant ones? I don’t.

See Roger Simon and Jeff Goldstein for more on this non-story

Thomas P.M. Barnett explains it all:

I know the temptation of appealing to people’s fears during difficult times. I also know of the challenge of the challenger in getting a frightened public to get rid of a powerful leader during uncertain times. But the Dems have made two fatefully bad choices in this election by choosing to focus on tactics (kill terrorists) and operations (defend America) instead of real strategy (beat the enemy to the finish line). They have selected downer subjects, where Kerry’s sophisticated understanding of things actually works against him, leaving Bush to exploit the high ground, where his simplistic-yet-very-sincere delivery works like a charm.

And this guy’s a Democrat.

H/t the Shark.

Megan McArdle offers a thoughtful analysis of the presidential candidates and concludes that Bush is the lesser evil. If you’re into that kind of thing, go check it out. Here’s a teaser:

What about Kerry? He’s been on the wrong side of pretty much every foriegn policy issue he addressed before he began running for president, from nuclear freeze to the first Iraq war. He’s been a borderline incompetent as a senator. I like Joe Biden, who is advising him on foreign policy, but that’s about all he has going for him. His votes since 9/11 have been so coldly opportunistic that I, the ultimate political cynic, actually feel a little tinge of disgust. So though liberals keep telling me that 9/11 changed everything, I have no way of knowing whether they changed John Kerry. Columns telling me to listen to what he’s saying elicit only a hollow laugh, since John Kerry has already made it abundantly clear that he’ll say pretty much anything to get elected. Not that this is exactly surprising behaviour in a politician.

Does it matter? There’s a pretty compelling argument to be made that the Bush administration has screwed up so badly that it’s practically impossible that the Kerry team could be worse. I have two problems with this argument. The first is that the people who’ve been making it to me mostly hated Bush before Iraq, before 9/11, and indeed before he got the Republican Party’s 2000 nomination. Bush could have been running the greatest foreign policy since Machiavelli, and they would still be arguing for me to take Kerry’s prospects on blind faith. And second, I’m not sure it’s true. Pulling out of Iraq would be worse than leaving a blundering administration there, and as Mickey Kaus said of The Economist’s Kerry endorsement “it’s always a shaky moment in these non-peacenik endorsements when the writer tries to convince himself or herself that Kerry won’t bail out on Iraq prematurely, isn’t it? (Kerry has been ‘forthright about the need to win in Iraq,’ but do you trust him and if so why? Because Andrew Sullivan’s blogging will keep him honest?)” Still, the administration has screwed up in some major ways, leaving me wrestling with the question: how bad could Kerry be?

In the end, it comes down to how much risk the candidates will take. The Democratic policy on foriegn policy risk has been pretty much the same since McGovern: they won’t take any. They bug out at the first sign of casualties, and go in only when the foe is so tiny that we can smash them without committing ground troops.

The Republicans take risk. Bush took on a lot of it — and with it, the possibility that something could go wrong.

For me, the question is pretty simple: Kerry’s a pussy, Bush isn’t. I support Bush.

Bush cousin John Ellis sums it up:

Our enemies will brace for four more years of hell if Bush is re-elected. They will celebrate if Senator Kerry wins.

Here’s to four more years of hell.

Amen.