BUT WHAT WAS UP WITH ALL THOSE VOTES FOR PAT BUCHANAN IN BALKH? Congratulations to Hamid Karzai on his recent election to the presidency of Afghanistan. It just goes to show that with some pluck, courage, and the backing of powerful friends, one can accomplish anything. And in nine days, we'll repeat the demonstration!

A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE. I see that Mike Reiss' "Hard Drinkin' Lincoln" is available on web pay-per-view. Trust me, if you need a respite from political October madness, this is the shit. All the episodes are good, but I most highly recommend "The Un-Civil War," in which Lincoln dances around Robert E. Lee chanting "Looooo-ser!" and delivers a stunning rendition of "Dixie" which ends, "You're in graves/with no slaves/Atlanta Braves/really suck!" For proponents of balance, each episode ends with Lincoln being shot by John Wilkes Booth.

THE SEPARATION OF BALLPARK AND STATE. From (where else?) The Corner, the voice of Satan channelled in this case by Den Mother KJL:

Nick Schulz says: "The 'Stros are going to win tonight, on the back of Roger Clemens, who never led the BoSox to glory but did help the Yanks win the World Series. That means Clemens pitches game 3 of their matchup with the Red Sox (winning, natch), and wins game 7 for the Astros -- a Texas team beating a Mass. team right before the election -- and Red Sox nation heads into winter seething at what Clemens did to them -- first with the Yanks, now with the Astros. It's much much sweeter this way!"

Of course, this was written before Clemens tried to prove what an hombre he is by throwing a fastball to Albert Pujols (though, to be fair, maybe Clemens was trying to bean him, and slipped), thus blowing the series for the 'Stros.

Now, I know The Corner is a secure facility with psychiatric nurses on 24-hour guard to see that the contagion does not spread, but it still disgusts me that any American would sully the National Pastime with political bullshit. What kind of example does this set for our children? Can there be no public space where we can collectively give this shit a rest?

Let us lay down the partisan cudgels for a moment and become, not Democrats and Republicans, but fans of the Fuckin' Awesome Hippie Warrior Hell Yeah Stomp Your Hayseed Butts Let's Get Drunk and Riot Red Sox versus Tougher Than You Fucking Long-Hair Sissies Our Reliever is Crazy and Will Beat You with Two Broken Hands and Then Eat Your Heart Cardinals. (Or vice-versa!)

It's bad enough I got right-wing snobs trying to convince me not to laugh at Jon Stewart because nihilism isn't funny. Jesus Christ. Is everything politics for these people? How sad.

SHORTER CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: A vote for Kerry is a vote for a new Holocaust.

(A slightly longer Shorter Krauthammer might read, "I'm totally out of my fucking mind, but I keep beating back the psychiatric inquiries of my editors by accusing other people of being totally out of their fucking minds, and because I'm a shrink they get scared and back off." But I could use that for just about any of Krauthammer's recent columns.)

SHORTER JIM LILEKS. When my wife got canned I howled like a stuck pig, but now I realize it is the destiny of mothers to stay home with their kid for the first six months of its life and whatever intervals of joblessness arise thereafter. This is God's plan; that's why He fires women. Why can't you hippies understand that? Now here's an anecdote about Nazis. You're just like them. Hey, look at this egg.

WHO'S YOUR DADDY? As a Mets fan, I always have a warm personal interest in the Yankees' defeat. The past few years have been rather enjoyable in that regard, but this year's added taste of humiliation ("Greatest Collapse in Baseball History" bawls the New York Post) makes a nice garnish.

Don't get me wrong. I respect the players, especially the most underrated catcher in the majors and the best Yankee shortstop of all time. And though George Steinbrenner is a major hate-object, old age (and perhaps the melancholy knowledge that soon the Devil will come to enforce his contract) has been keeping the bastard's previously insufferable profile mercifully low.

But the fans! Again, don't get me wrong. I know Yankee fans whose loyalty dates back to the Ralph Houk era, and they are noble and knowledgeable connoisseurs of the game and the team. But, especially in the post-season, mostly you get young and youngish chest-thumpers bellowing about destiny and 26 rings, then vomiting on Third Avenue.

Bomber fandom cuts across several demographic groups -- the bodega guys round my way are mostly Yankee fans, and so are many of the mousse-haired, suspender-and-pinstripes yuppie dipshits one sees at wood-panelled drinking establishments midtown, sipping $7 pints and hiding their bald spots under a Yankee cap. But they all have one ignoble thing in common; they can neither win nor lose with grace.

Earlier in this series, their cry was "Who's Your Daddy?" (I heard one local newsreader/hair model say it twice in one sports report.) It should be noted that this plays upon a rare self-deprecating remark made by Boston's Pedro Martinez after the Yankees beat him up earlier this year. Pedro in this instance showed a little class and even rueful honesty, and it is telling that the Yankee fans responded with a giant-foam-fingered froth of bad sportsmanship.

Sore losers are obnoxious, but a sore winner is worse, so I am glad that it falls to the Yankee fans to play the former rather than the latter role.

OCTOBER CLASSICISM. Well, I just saw the Astros use a pitcher to pinch-hit, and the second consecutive walk-off homer of the series. And I only caught the last two (extra) innings. I don't have time to watch the Sox-Yankees game and that's just as well, because I don't think my heart could stand it.

Much else is malformed in modern American life, but post-season baseball is a blessing.

DON'T BE SELF-HATIN'. If you like to read political tea leaves, you can check these out: back in March the irrepressible Pejman was bragging that Jews were leaving the Democrats in droves, and "needless to say, the prospect that Bush may get one-third or more of the Jewish vote in the election must terrify John Kerry in particular."

A lot of that sort of thing has been popping up over the years: how traditional constituencies are being totally demolished, usually to the Republicans' advantage. I think it all has something to do with the internet. (Did you know that in the future there will be no stores?)

Nonetheless there are always those who feel that even the Wave of the Future needs a fluffer, and such like have made much of Kerry's failure to mention Israel in his Convention address, seeing in it a stark reversal not just of electioneering protocol, but also of the Democratic Party's historic commitment to our only (non-occupied-by-us) ally in the Middle East. Some of these folks even claim that Israel needs Bush to be reelected, that in fact "Israel is believed to be the only nation in the world wanting Bush to win." (If we will not be for Bush, who will be for us?)

Well, this watershed, like so many others, seems to have been overestimated at best ("Kerry... is gaining support among Jewish voters as growing numbers disapprove of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq" -- Washington Post).

What happens to a dream deferred? In the past week Volokh's David Bernstein had not one but two posts wondering why Jews have forsaken Republicans in their hour of need. (His conclusion, taken from a colleague, is that "most Jews are and have actually rationally ignorant about politics and related social issues [sic].")

Well, it's been fun, but after the election, I suspect Republican race-based commentary will go back to its traditional tone and manner.

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH. FOX News has the goods on Kerry: "Kerry Shows Fondness for Quotations." Coming soon: "Kerry Reads Books, Uses Words of More than One Syllable Correctly."

TWO WEEKS NOTICE. Well, we're in the home stretch, boys and girls, and while the blogospheric pressure is predictably intense, for the most part it's pressing on old, long-dead nerves. At redstate they're fretting about the traditional Democratic push for black votes ("race-baiting"), cheering endorsements (in this case that of proven vote-getter Pat Buchanan), and sifting poll results obsessively. At Atrios they're fretting about October Surprises, cheering non-endorsements, and sifting boycott results obsessively.

Meanwhile Bush and Kerry are rampaging through the swing states and trying not to lose their voices or what I'm sure each perceives to be his lead.

Who knows what's in store, but this stage of the endgame seems familiar enough to me that I can hardly get riled by it. That may change, but I hope it doesn't. Operatives are operating feverishly, and God go with ours; somewhere out there voters are being recruited by the barrelful and warned to watch for dirty tricks. But I wouldn't be surprised or displeased if the campaign news remained as content-free as it is feverish (Candidate A ratchets up the rhetoric! Candidate B comes back swinging!) all the way up till election night, at which point all hell, I am sure, will break loose. Till then there is plenty else to do, and plenty of late post-season baseball to lull me to sleep.

INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MISERY. Having told us last week about his command of the Queen's English, James Lileks now tells us he could find Patience and Prudence and the whole damn NYPL under ten feet -- no! ten stories -- of arctic ice.

Next week he shall tell us how, armed only with a Swiss Army Knife and a jar of Marmite, he can craft a rationale for war with Iran.

FUCK YEAH. Enjoyed Team America tonight. It's a little long on puppet blood for my taste -- though you can never have enough puppet vomit, and in this regard Team America does not disappoint. I also liked Kim Il Jong's "giant pandas," and the song about how missing your true love sucks almost as much as Jerry Bruckheimer's Pearl Harbor. Favorite line: "We're guarrrrds." "Guarrrrds." "Guarrrrrds."

Sorry, nothing here about how the film inaccurately portrays Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin, or how its very existence will weaken America, or how some guy has a movie that answers Team America point by point, using some of the same puppets, which I found quite striking. That would just be stupid.

HOW TO TELL KERRY'S AHEAD, PART 2. Along with the usual fake letters, etc,.
we are seeing more clinical psychosis at National Review Online:

I just took my two-year-old on a drive down the Post Road in Connecticut to see the cows at Stew Leonard's. At a red light, we pulled alongside a mini-van festooned with Lefty bumper stickers. One right under the other appeared the following three: "Jesus was a LIBERAL"; "Commit Random Acts of KINDNESS": and "My Choice: ABORT BUSH". I know trial lawyers are supposed to figure they can reason with anyone, but I admit to being stumped here. Edward, however, soon squeeled: "Light green, Daddy GOOO!" He's got the right idea: Don't bother!

Yes, Andy McCarthy was driving in Connecticut and saw a bumper sticker that encouraged him to commit random acts of kindness, and it so harshed his mellow (or, more properly, harshed his harsh) that he needed to project inconceivably subtle linguistic gifts upon his toddler (assuming he is actually a toddler, and not mentally retarded) to extricate his blown mind from the situation.

I'm not saying they're cute, exactly, but they are sorta funny when their circuits are smoking.

THE POST-3/19 WORLD. Maybe we Democrats are evil. I see Kerry is suggesting that Bush's reelection will lead to a draft. Well, yes, I expect it will; Iraq is badly fucked, and to get it unfucked will require a large, continuing military commitment. As the neos have already got Iran and/or Syria lined up for invasion, that'll require more enlistments than even our shitty economy can deliver.

But I gotta say, Kerry's playing it cagey. The Republicans are understandably averse to even mentioning the issue, and in that context it makes political sense for Kerry to warn America of an impending Bush draft. But as far as I can find, Kerry hasn't explicitly ruled out a draft himself. His running mate has promised there'll be no draft on Kerry's behalf, but that's not the same thing; we won't being hearing much from Vice-President Edwards in any case, much less when the lottery balls start rolling.

Being a realist, I guardedly endorse this obfuscation. Bush has done enough damage, and is capable of so much worse, that his ouster is a priority. But Kerry's assertion that we've broken Iraq and are obliged to fix it strongly implies that our obligation will require steps that few of us want to face. I give the Democratic candidate sufficient credit to take him at his word -- but not at his non-word.

And even if he were to say the word, I wouldn't take it too seriously. For all the talk of the post-9/11 world, we are primarily living in the post-3/19 world -- the invasion of Iraq has actually supplanted the World Trade Center attacks as the engine of our foreign policy. We have squandered the decent opinion of mankind, and even fucked up our longstanding commitment to our own troops, in this crazy-ass war with a 9/11 non-combatant. The resulting ruin to ourselves and others is massive, and the reconstuction will require much. I hope Kerry wins, and I also hope to hell that he knows what he's doing.

RIMSHOT, PLEASE. Despite what the President suggested on Wednesday, the Bush Administration now says it can't bring Canadian flu vaccine into the U.S.

The official reason is FDA regulations, but I hear it's because Bush was afraid American consumers might find the Canadian vaccine too affordable.

UPDATE. The estimable Winning Argument suggests Bush's culpability in the vaccine shortfall. Nolo contendre. I report, you decide, heh indeed.

HOW TO TELL KERRY'S AHEAD: You see this sort of thing (a Roger L. "The L is for Conservative" Simon joint):

Today's news that some Kerry operatives plan on launching a "preemptive strike," charging the other side with voter intimidation even when it doesn't exist, is scarcely amazing. [Where do they think they are? Afghanistan?-ed.>] But it is indicative of a larger mindset. Not surprisingly, now that I've gotten into the blogging game and a few people read this site, I've begun to meet more of the genus operativus politicus. They have their own cynical slang and refer to the two parties as "the dumb party" (repubs) and "the evil party" (dems). Amazingly, I have heard this shorthand from both sides...

The words "preemptive strike" here are connected to a broken link -- but seems to refer to this article with this image in support.

The jpg allegedly shows a page from the Dems' Colorado Election Day Manual, stating that "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a 'pre-emptive strike' (particularly well-suited to states in which these techniques have been tried in the past)." The Dems' methods include issuing press releases "reviewing Republican tactics used in the past in your area or state" and "quoting party/minority/civil rights leadership as denouncing tactics that discourage people from voting."

So the Democrats are trying to pre-empt voting fraud and campaign fraud, employing unobjectionable tactics toward preventing illegal activities of which Republicans, let's face it, have shown themselves capable in recent years.

Drudge headlines this "DNC Election Manual: Charge Voter Intimidation, Even If None Exists." Maybe Simon just read that far.

And from this bogus Drudge item Simon launches a true anecdotal howler. I swear to you folks, in all my years of hanging out with Democrats, I have never heard anyone refer to our common faction as the Evil Party, or speak of our close, personal relationship with the Dark Lord, even at the baby-killing parties and marriage-desanctifying events where we regularly meet to quaff a few goblets of Christian blood. In fact, mostly I have heard grumbling about how pliantly our leaders let the Republicans roll them over, year after wimp-ass year.

Only, just maybe, not this year.

Which is why, after a string of Democratic defeats and chants of "flip-flop" and general Mallard-Fillmoresque characterizations of Democrats as hapless losers, we are now portrayed as thugees silently slitting the throats of our enemies under cover of darkness.

Compliment accepted.

THE WELL OF LOUTISHNESS. The bullshit derby was settled early today. Lynne Cheney is outraged that John Kerry called her daughter a... a... a lesbian! And the fact that she is a lesbian, an out lesbian at that, is no excuse:

The candidates were asked if they believe homosexuality is a choice, and President Bush did not mention Mary Cheney. Then Kerry said, "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."

Lynne Cheney issued her post-debate rebuke to a cheering crowd outside Pittsburgh. "The only thing I can conclude is he is not a good man. I'm speaking as a mom," she said. "What a cheap and tawdry political trick."

Sounds like she would find any mention of her daughter's lesbianism shameful, doesn't it? Wonder how she feels about bumping pussies. I imagine the thought balloon above Big Mama's head as she made this statement was crowded with grainy sapphic imagery (which part of Mama resisted while part of her tried to take notes for her next novel.)

Most revealing, of course, is that Mama Cheney, rather than Mary Cheney, made this statement. Don't you think the GOP immediately started leaning on Mary to step forward and denounce Kerry? (She may yet do so; Bush Sr.'s buddies at Langely have some powerful mind-altering drugs.) What a perfect Republican moment it would be: the most prominent political lesbian since Eleanor Roosevelt denouncing the more pro-gay candidate! Mouth-breathers around the countries, theretofore vaguely troubled by their own bigotry, would cry, "Shoot, even the fags don' lahk 'em!" and resolve to vote for the little squinty feller.

Yet so far not a peep from Mary. Do you suppose maybe she's less disturbed to be Kerry's positive example than to be her mother's object of shame and secretiveness?

Meanwhile Republican operatives are pitching their counter-intuitive how-dare-he. The Ole Perfesser even decrees Mama's characterization of Kerry as not-a-good-man to be "the emerging consensus." Consensus, he says! This no doubt comes from a highly scientific poll Perfesser Reynolds done took him 'round the cracker barrel down ta Jed's Notions & Dry Goods. "Hell no, Perfesser, we shore don' lahk thet Kerry fella none. He Frenchified! You goan raht that down in yer com-puter? Say, Perfesser, snap yer suspenders fo' us agin? (slapping knee) Hee hee! Looks jes' lahk Matlock when he does it!"

JUST A PEEK. I don't have time to stay for the whole thing, but from the abortion, health care, and social security questions, the candidates seem to be protecting their respective non-leads. Kerry's advantage is that he has plans -- plans that can only be vaguely stated here, and maybe anywhere, but the message is that he can hit the ground running. His disadvantage is the same as Bush's advantage: that, over the last twenty-odd years, Americans became suspicious of government plans, which are traditionally associated with Democrats. Bush's disadvantage is that he has plans.

Tactically, I think it's bright of Bush to attack Kerry on immigrant amnesty, given the porousness of our borders in the past four years, and it was bright of Kerry to open his response on an entirely different topic before crowding the immigration part of his answer into a plan-filled finish.

I don't like Kerry calling me "America" all the time. (It's bad enough he can see me through this telescreen!) I would like to hear him say no to a draft, which he skillfully refuses to do.

I wonder who told Bush that a good answer to the question about stop-loss was to say that he met soldiers who were pleased to be in Iraq.

Oh hell, I stayed longer than I meant to.

A LITTLE TINFOIL NEVER HURT ANYONE. The Poor Man has a good read on vote fraud, featuring tsuredzuregusa's suspicions regarding the FBI-empowered confiscation of Indymedia servers in England -- he suggests a connection to Indymedia's erstwhile tormentor Diebold, a company best know for its vote-conversion machines.

The connection is a bit of a stretch, admittedly. The Feds may have done this for just about any reason -- barring, of course, those suggested, in his usual obfuscating spirit, by the Ole Perfesser. (Also, I must inform TPM regarding its correlated item on registration fraud that the dodge in which street-corner operatives of Party A cheerfully accept, then discard, registration forms submitted by prospective members of Party B is about as old as the Maiden's Dropped Hanky. In other words, it may be evil but it is too well-known and widespread to qualify as cabalistic activity.)

On the other hand, it is always good to track the movements of our worst malefactors, especially when those movements, or their motivations, appear to run very close together over an extended period of time. Let us be attentive but not obsessive. There is a fine line between paranoia and enlightened mistrustfulness, and it has mostly to do with the presence or absence of color-coded charts.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES. The FCC is fining Fox Broadcasting $7,000 per participating station -- over a million dollars in toto -- for some raunchy bachelor/bachelorette parties shown on its "Married by America" reality show.

According to the FCC's 29-page(!) report on the incident, the Commission judges indecency by two criteria: "[it] must describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities... Second, the broadcast must be patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium." Fox thought its pixelation policy protected it on the first count, but the FCC demurs: "Even with Fox’s editing, the episode includes scenes in which party-goers lick whipped cream from strippers’ bodies in a sexually suggestive manner. Another scene features a man on all fours in his underwear as two female strippers playfully spank him. Although the episode electronically obscures any nudity, the sexual nature of the scenes is inescapable..."

A fair cop. But in Fox's defense, the FCC never fully addresses the "community standards" part of the test. (Maybe the Republican-dominated Commission did this on purpose to enhance their old pal Rupert Murdoch's grounds for appeal.)

The FCC has a broad bailiwick here, having previously decided that the "community" is really an idealized single figure: "[our] criterion is that of an average broadcast listener and, with respect to Commission decisions, does not encompass any particular geographic area."

Even if we accept this standard, I must say that if the Commissioners think the "average broadcast listener" -- or viewer, in this case -- can be offended by some pixelated porn, I would suggest that they don't watch nearly as much TV as their office would seem to demand.

While "Married by America" sounds gamey, I don't see how it could be worse than the premiere episode I recently viewed of "Boston Legal," which, like all David E. Kelley shows, regards human sexuality from the perspective of a retarded, priapic teenager. The episode featured a man walking around with no pants or underwear, an affair between William Shatner and the trophy wife of a geriatric client, and James Spader announcing "You had sex," as loudly and alacritously as if he had just found an Easter egg, in a room full of smirking lawyers.

As Kelley's general success shows, the "average broadcast viewer" eats this stuff up. While no genitals were exposed nor copulative acts simulated, the viewer was allowed to know that something nasty was going on -- something dark and corrupt and impossible to reveal -- something known to a depressing number of our fellow citizens as sex.

I left "Boston Legal" feeling besmirched. Now, if you know the kind of life I've led, you might question my sincerity, but let me say that it is not the sexual nature of the material that repels me, but the leering attitude. Let CBS run "The Teabaggers" in prime time, and so long as the behaviors on display are forthrightly sexual, and not embellished with pop-eyed voyeurs, mocking trombone wah-wahs, or hackneyed depictions of passion taken directly from Herbal Essences Shampoo commercials, I would be happy to see the show pumped into day-care centers nationwide.

But that's not going to happen anytime soon, so when producers scrounge for new thrills to offer viewers, these will be of the dank, half-concealed sort that incites "censorship" controversies and grainy ass-shots on the small screen. Actual sexiness will be absent, but some sense of transgression will steam off the product and the smell will keep the couch potatoes firmly planted.

Contrary to what the preachers say, the TV folk are not engaged in a full-on assault on American Values; theirs is more a skulking, schoolboy approach, which is not only enabled but reenforced by the hapless playground monitors of the FCC, who seem to know they are here to keep the lid on but loosely, so that both they and the industrious offenders they prosecute will, when the fireworks are over, never find themselves removed from their comfortable positions.

Meanwhile the ordinary American, after an after-dinner bout of Internet Porn surfing and the equally thrilling effort of concealing it from the spouse, will join the family in front of the Boob Tube, and together they will switch dreamily between shows starring people they admire, and shows starring people they would like to fuck.