The Pendragon's Hall

John Kerry is remaining desperate. One would think, with a week to go, if he was so confident of victory, he would try to take the high ground. But no, he has chosen to manufacture a story of mishandling in Iraq and continue to spatter the President with the mud of his own creation. This idea of missing nuclear weapons (first of all, I thought there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq) is absolutely bogus. According to earlier reports, US troops entered the area from which the weapons "went missing" the day after Bagdhad fell and found no weapons. This was the big news at the time--no weapons of mass destruction found. Now suddenly the weapons Saddam first said he didn't have and then said he was destroying are supposedly missing. No wonder Kerry identifies with Saddam so well--they both flip-flop!

The story is untrue although you won't find that in the mainstream media. But even if it was, under a President Gore (or, perish the thought, a President Kerry) we would certainly know where these weapon caches, if they ever existed, were: in the hands of Saddam Hussein's henchmen ready for deployment against Iran, Kuwait, Israel, the US, Great Britain or any other ally of freedom in the world. Vote for true protection on next Tuesday: Vote for George W. Bush.

The AIM sign-on screen starkly declared moments ago, "Breaking News: Bush: 'I'm the Best Candidate to Protect America.'" The first question that springs to my mind is, "Why is that breaking news?" It seems self-evident to me since he is the candidate who has protected America since 9/11. Kerry's wild accusation that Bush has put the country at "greater risk" because of Iraq has no basis in fact but only in surmise. Kerry wants to believe, or at least wants voters to believe, that he is the better candidate to protect America and so he pretends we're in greater danger now than on September 10th. How he must be praying for (or whatever it is Kerry does when he wants something, oh yeah, gets his wife to buy it) another terrorist attack to prove him right. Every day that goes by that in which Americans pursue their daily lives without the disruption of a horrific terror attack is one more day that John Kerry has to face reality: America is safer because of the strategy put in place by George W. Bush after 9/11.

Jimbo Carter is also having trouble accepting the reality of life in post-9/11 America. He continues to try and command the moral high ground, which seems somewhat difficult given his spectacular flop of a presidency in which he not only plunged America into double-digit recession which it took Ronald Reagan eight years to get us out of but surrendered every remaining available country to communism. The only question burning in my mind is, how on earth can anyone possibly listen to this man?

Just eight days left till the election...Zogby still gives Bush a slight edge as does polling among likely voters, both of which proved accurate in 2000. Sorry, Senator Kerry. Better luck bending and breaking rules.

Oh, this is a good one! In the midst of worries that this election will turn out like the last one, except hopefully with a victory for the leftist, the media in Canada (Canada!) is urging John Kerry "not to repeat the mistakes of Al Gore." If they defined his mistake as running for president in the first place I might agree with them, but apparently his mistake was not politicizing it soon enough. Gore, it would seem, "watched as Bush seized strategic high ground"--an amazing claim considering it was Gore who made the decision to litigate and ignored a much nobler man's earlier decision to accept defeat rather than tear the country apart (except the Left doesn't like Richard Nixon so they won't tell you this). I'm really not worried about the outcome of this election...if it were any ordinary election. But the Democrats seem hellbent for leather on changing the rules to suit their desired outcome. John Kerry's campaign has announced it is prepared to "declare victory" at the first opportunity and then sue to protect that claim. It is just as we feared...lawyers being involved in a United States election is an ill wind that blows no good.

In the movie "Remember the Titans" there is a scene where corrupt officials are calling penalties on the Titans to try and make them lose the game despite their superior playing. The coach of the Titans yells to the refs: "Let the boys play!" That's what I wish I could yell at the DNC: "Let the people say!" In previous elections, polling among likely voters was trusted as accurate polling. Now that the polling among likely voters shows Bush still up eight points, despite their best efforts, Democrats are saying that you have to take other factors into consideration: thus giving Kerry a supposed 2-3 point edge over Bush. It's this kind of change-the-rules-till-I-win system that worries me. If the people had their choice, even if they chose Kerry, it would be worth it. But Kerry knows he would never, ever, be the choice of the American people and so he's arranging things to thwart their will and become president anyway. Hopefully two weeks from now, Bush will have won a landslide that nobody, not even the courts, can contest, and the true sovereign of the United States will have shown the French-looking candidate where to get off.

We are now under two weeks until the most important election since the Civil War will take place. I am not panicking but simply reminding my readers of the utter magnitude of this selection of president. This is not a Let's-try-this-for-four-years-and-see-how-we-like-it. This is the election that I believe will decide the fate of our country. Everyone who strongly supports a candidate in any election tries to paint this picture I know but I've never felt this way before, not even in 2000 when I strongly preferred Bush over Gore. One person (not even an American) told me, "It would be like the last good country of the world falling if Kerry is elected." Indeed it would. It would mean the end of standing against evil and calling it what it is. It would mean a return to the Clinton-era of trying to stamp out terrorism with law enforcement and impeded law enforcement at that. It would mean opening ourselves to further attack and exploitation. Yes, I know President Bush can't say that because he's supposed to sound presidential (whatever that sounds like) but it is the truth. It was the Clinton administration's eight years of cutting defense spending and raising taxes through the roof while ignoring legitimate claims of intelligence and defense systems that led like night into day to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And the mess they left the government in due to last minute vandalism and incessantly bad record-keeping made it impossible to sort out in time to prevent the attacks. This is what a Kerry presidency would do. These are people who have no love for their country, no desire to make it better, they only desire their own power and the destruction of democratic liberty in a wave of peacenik socialist countries and terrorist-infested dictatorships. The future of the free world hangs in the balance of this election. Do we really want to take a stand for freedom or do we want to remain free in name only? Do we want to, like the Israelites of old, ask to be "like all the nations around us"? I believe we will know for sure two weeks from today.

Yesterday I attended a crowded performance of David Hare's "Stuff Happens" at the National Theatre here in London. Not by choice, let me assure you: watching a left-wing Brit (and Brits are completely left-wing) sully the reputation of the greatest president in my memory wasn't my idea of a good time. But we went with our drama class in order to see the effect drama can have on the Great Unwashed when it comes to forming opinions. I know that it can. That's what scares me.

"Stuff Happens" was very well produced so that gaudy background sets didn't interfere with the agenda the playwrite was trying to get across and the performance is quite seamless. There, my praise ends however. In the US, by this time, someone would have noticed that Hare misquotes Bush, Cheney and others during supposedly "historical" press conferences, putting words in their mouth and trimming out others to make them look absurd. By this time, there would be a web page pointing out these inconsistencies and falsehoods and a growing number of people would be condemning the play as well as praising it, and no playwrite likes that. Here in Britain, truth matters less than being entertained at other people's expense (a most cynical and arrogant group of people) so that hasn't happened yet. At least to my knowledge. Hare also projects left-wing wishy-washiness onto political figures he doesn't like; thus, in one of his "imagined" scenes, Dick Cheney suggests angrily that Bush should throw Tony Blair to the dogs and go it alone, even without the British. This complete misrepresentation of American public figures is only able to be swallowed if one has accepted the rest of the misrepresentation that Hare has done. By that time in the play, Cheney has been made to look completely disagreeable and irrational. But Cheney has been at the forefront in defending Blair and our other allies in Iraq and it does not make sense that in private he would urge their being abandoned. Nor would Bush consider the idea. There's a lot you could say about George W. Bush, but he is not disloyal--if a person has been loyal to him (whether that person is Vladimir Putin, Dick Cheney or Tony Blair) he will be unfailingly loyal to that person and that's something that rings through anyone who really knows him. But that doesn't matter. Hare is out to caricature and this is all he cares about.

Further, Hare continues to use the sick leftwing ploy to paint Bush as two mutually-exclusive things--a manipulative leader who orchestrates everything the way he wants it and pushes Blair and others around and the mindless puppet of Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney. But you can't have it both ways. He either is or he isn't intelligent; he either is or he isn't a puppet. And if he is a puppet, you can't blame him for what happens; and if he is manipulative, you cannot say he's not intelligent. But that doesn't matter in Hare-world where history can be trimmed to advance one's agenda. In the US, he would be challenged (not censored); in the UK he will not be either censored or challenged.

The frontline news: Senator Mark Dayton (D-Minn) has closed his Washington offices due to a terror alert which he says has forced him to the decision to "protect the lives" of his staffers. He of course would not give details of the briefing from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn).

All I have to say is, now who's feeding public worry?

Being in London this election year I of course must needs vote by absentee ballot. I was very excited of course when it came because this is the first time I have voted for a president, being one year too young in 2000. It will probably come as no shock to any who have read this blog before that it was quite easy for me to decide. This year I decided to be a faithful Republican and voted the party line straight across, the first time I think I have done that since becoming eligible to vote. But there was no doubt in my mind who to vote for in the presidential slot. George W. Bush has led this country spectactularly over the last four years despite being handed a war that should have been fought earlier and a recession that its creator just managed to avoid. He is my choice, first and last, for President of the United States.

So far, so good. The week is going as I predicted. Vice President Dick Cheney gave the little "appointee" from North Carolina a taste of what it's like to play with the big boys last night and Edwards came away looking like a fool. Those who watched the debates didn't need the poll to tell them Cheney won, although that is a nice confirmation. Several times throughout the debate, Cheney referred to Edwards' record of not being present to vote on bills in the Senate and when Edwards was offered to rebuttal, he winced, I mean visibly winced like someone socked him below the belt and stuttered over his first few words. The final gravedigging is beginning. Friday night Bush and Kerry face off again, this time in a setting where John Kerry must do what he has shown himself incapable of doing...relate to real people with real problems. I still think that by the end of this week, the Democratic ticket will be consigned to the dustbin of history where they should have been the whole time.

The first presidential debate is over and supposedly Kerry won. I stayed up to watch it and I thought that Bush was not as impressive as he might have been. My main thought was, "Need he be so damned gentlemanly as all that?" Had he gone in for the kill, Kerry would have been knocked out of the race last night. I believe next week will be the tell-all statement. By the end of next week, I really believe Kerry and Edwards will be seated on the ash-heap of political history. Even BBC admitted that Bush won on substance if not on style. The President spoke firmly and courageously on the issues, while Senator Kerry flip-flopped on the issues right before the camera. I am and remain optimistic.

So the first debate has come and gone and not surprisingly the networks are calling it for Kerry. To be fair, Bush wasn't as impressive as he sometimes is and could have been. Kerry was his usual boring self. The debate was rather a sleeper in my opinion. Neither candidate said anything of consequence. I'm not too worried about Kerry's apparent victory. Bush gave up the first debate last time too and this time around he has a big enough lead that he can afford it. The VP debate will be a lot of fun as we'll finally get to see Dick Cheney chew that painty-waist up and spit him out in little pieces.