Why Republicans cannot root for Kerry

Paul at Wizbang confessed to having a small part of him rooting for a Kerry victory. Why? Because it would ultimately help the Republican party. Why? Kerry is a pompous a*s, a liberal nutter and a polarizing figure who would drive swing voters into the arms of Republican representatives once Kerry's policies began running the country into the ground.

I think this line of thinking is stupid, and I explained that in my comment to the Wizbangers (see link above). Here is the comment in full:

Quite honestly, your analysis is completely preposterous on so many levels that I would overflow your comment limit if I tried to address it all.

Most notable among the flaws in your argument is the implied notion that Republicans are Republicans first, Americans second. If I have the choice between screwing the country or screwing the party, the party takes the hit. Period. Four years of Kerry will be catastrophically bad for the country regardless of the efforts by Bill Owens or Rudy Giuliani in 2009-2017 to turn the situation around.

Second most notable is your preposterous reversal of cause and effect: Carter did not get us Reagan; Reagan was the man he was before NIXON won in 1968, never mind Carter's election in 1976. Carter's personal malaise that he inflicted upon the country may have helped the COUNTRY realize it needed someone else, but the nation did not have a choice to pick Reagan in '76 (after he lost to Ford).

Really, this is a conceptual thread akin to wondering whether Bush secretly welcomed the bin Laden tape's appearance. It is unworthy conjecture of a type that has achieved prominence and some respectability since Clinton's Wag-The-Dog presidency. That does not make it right or legitimate. My party or my country? Forget the party, the country must succeed.

Comments & endorsement roundup

Here's a brief roundup of recent comments and endorsements you should be aware of regarding the 2004 Presidential race.

First, the always notable Mark Steyn shows how the justifications for voting Kerry fall flat. Here's an excerpt:

if America had followed the positions advocated by John Kerry, there would have been no Reagan arms build-up, and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact would have lingered on, and their clients in Grenada would have destabilized the rest of the Caribbean, and Latin America would not have been democratized, and Saddam Hussein would still be in power and still controlling Kuwait. Kerry's lovebirds at the Washington Post et al. are dreaming of a transformation in their unlovely swain that would be at odds not just with his last three decades but with his last three weeks.

Next, check out Jeff Jacoby's comment on Kerry's lack of character.

Charles Krauthammer on Friday called Kerry on the carpet for implying that one of the most successful military campaigns in the history of war, the US overthrow of the Taliban that freed > 20,000,000 Afghanis and directly led to both an ELECTION and RIGHTS for women, was somehow a failure.

Today, George Will did what he famously refused to do in 1992: he endorsed President Bush's re-election. [In '92 Will chose neither and declared he'd write in for Jack Kemp -- a conservative favorite at the time.]

And the NY Daily News surprised today by endorsing the re-election of the President. This is noteworthy because the News and the NY Post tend to take opposite views on most political issues (other than support for Israel). The News' perspective is eminently reasonable for a newspaper whose demographic tends to be NYC ethnics and working class -- our families and our country must be protected. Kerry won't do that; Bush will. Here are excerpts from the editorial:

The News endorsed Clinton and Gore in the three races beginning with 1992, each time judging their domestic agendas in the best interests of the American people. But it is no longer Sept. 10th. The world has changed. And nowhere has it been more tragically altered than in New York. And nowhere are the stakes higher.

As the preeminent symbol of America, this city remains Ground Zero, primary target of Islamic radicals. How best to win the war against terror so the country and its leading city emerge from jeopardy is the overriding concern in the election. The News believes Bush offers the stronger hope in this urgent regard.

* * *
Bush's move into Iraq exemplifies a commitment to stay on the offensive against terror, and to do so militarily where necessary and feasible, as was the case in Iraq. The message has been clearly heard in capitals around the world. That's why strongman Moammar Khadafy relinquished Libya's WMD program, and it's why a nuclear black market operating out of Pakistan has been shut down.

* * *
Returning Bush to office is the wise course, The News believes, despite our sharp disagreement with his domestic policies. Those pale in comparison with the overarching challenge of securing the nation and preserving New York's vital way of life.

Noteworthy comparison

What's the difference between the women of Hollywood and the women of Afghanistan? Click the link to find out.

Iraqis for Bush

(This is from the Opinion Journal which is subscriber only hence the long excerpt)

Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor for the New Republic (no friend of Bush) writes:

We know what John Kerry thinks of Iraq. But what does Iraq think of him?

[T]he overwhelming majority of Iraqis don't care who wins our election. Their concerns run closer to home--especially how to stay alive. There's an exception, however: the thousands of academics, lawyers, rights advocates and other educated elites leading the effort to create a new Iraq--nearly all of whom have hitched their fortunes to our own and nearly all of whom hope that President Bush wins. (emphasis mine)

Liberal Iraqis repeat the same question: Will the U.S. leave? These, after all, are the Iraqis building institutions, occupying key positions in ministries, and cooperating openly with the U.S. And they're the Iraqis with the most to lose in the event John Kerry makes good on his pledge to "bring the troops home where they belong."

This prospect, once unimaginable, has become very real in Iraq. The fear of abandonment has transformed meetings between Iraqi and U.S. officials, until recently arenas for grievance, into forums for the expression of solidarity. Leading Iraqis stayed up late into the night to watch the presidential debates. "Sophisticated Iraqis are listening closely," Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak Al-Rubaie says in a telephone interview. "Any discussion of withdrawal worries them." Echoing this, Manhel al-Safi, who recently left his post as an aide in the prime minister's office for a job in the Foreign Ministry, says, "There's a level of fear--people in the government are afraid the Americans will leave Iraq." He adds a personal plea to Sen. Kerry: "Mr. Senator, destruction is easy; building takes a long time."

As far as Iraqi elites are concerned, President Bush brought democracy to a land that knew only dictatorship. From Sen. Kerry, however, they hear no commitment to build a liberal state or, for that matter, any state. What they hear instead is a presidential aspirant who complains about "opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in the United States of America," even as his campaign aides dismiss Iraq's prime minister as an American "puppet."
Not surprisingly, surveys by the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies find that, whereas Mr. Bush garners the most support in the Kurdish north and from Iraq's well-educated urban elites, Mr. Kerry draws his strongest support from what the Center's Sadoun al-Dulame calls Iraq's "hottest places"--hotbeds of resistance to the U.S. A poll taken earlier this month in Baghdad, for example, finds that while President Bush would win a higher tally in New Baghdad's Christian precincts, Sen. Kerry carries Sadr City hands down.

Leaving aside that speechifying about a U.S. withdrawal culminates in what Mr. Rubaie describes as "a huge moral boost to the terrorists": How does Sen. Kerry intend to work alongside the pro-U.S. Iraqis he denigrates at every turn? This is a practical as well as a moral question. By advancing the fiction that there's no such thing as bringing the troops home too soon and nothing to justify an adequate level of expenditure in Iraq, he's already signaled his willingness to forfeit America's obligation to rebuild the country it turned inside out. And he offers this as heightened moral awareness.

But if John Kerry, who famously demanded that the U.S. "stop this blind commitment to a dictatorial regime" in Vietnam, imagines history repeating itself in Iraq, he really ought to visit the place. Having passed through eight time zones and one looking glass, what he will find is not the reactionary playground of his fantasies, but a country where thousands of idealistic young men and women go to work each day in the hope of creating a democratic society. One of them, Mustafa Al-Khadimiy, who risks his life cataloging the depredations Saddam Hussein inflicted, has this to say: "The terrorists want to destroy everything and we're dying every day. If we're going to have democracy, the Americans cannot leave." Alas, he won't be voting on Tuesday.

More NYTrogate information -- UPDATED

Let's try to get this record set straight.

First, read Cliff May's piece on the REAL scandal in the missing HMX/RDX affair.

Next, read this WaPo editorial that hedges all bets, unlike the Times' screaming headlines, and also notes the motives of IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei.

Then, go across town and view this editorial by the Washington Times.

Finally, don't miss Ralph Peters' dissection of the NYT reports.

Finally, check out this ABC News story that indicates that only 3 tons of RDX were at the al Qaqaa site at the time of the US invasion AND that the UN inspector seals on the HMX materials were easily circumvented.

Osama for Kerry !!!

Osama bin Laden, on a tape released by Al-Jazeera, attacks Bush. In a statement clearly designed to affect the election Bin Laden apparently said that "9/11 would have been less severe had Bush been more alert..."

I'll guarantee two things right here:

1. The Kerry campaign WILL try to exploit this

2. We are NOT the Spanish...

developing...(to borrow from Drudge)

How Kerry will harm Israel

Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs is a must-read. Yesterday he posted a large part of Martin Peretz's New Republic (subscription req'd) article on how Kerry is likely to treat Israel, how Kerry would be obsequious toward the UN and how Kerry fundamentally misunderstands the world. Peretz was a huge supporter of Al Gore and an adviser to the Gore campaign in 2000. Here are some excerpts:

The United Nations is bloated and corrupt, and its putrescence extends to the secretary-general’s very family and his inner office. Were its headquarters located in Lagos or Beijing, it would disappear because no one would come.

But, of course, the United Nations is located in New York City, where it is planning a multibillion-dollar physical rehabilitation and expansion. It instinctively grasps where its make-believe destiny lies. Yet, intrinsically and practically, it is following the path of the League of Nations . . . And, in a sense, the U.N.’s culpability is even greater, since it often has a presence in the countries where [] killings take place. As hundreds of thousands of noncombatants are slaughtered, the United Nations watches on the ground and dithers in New York while its diplomats dine out on their importance at the city’s elegant salons and eateries.

Of course, there is one place where the United Nations does act reflexively and quickly: Israel. Hardly a week goes by that the secretary-general or one of his flunkies does not severely reproach Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s democratically elected government. You can pass a sweeping resolution condemning Israel anytime, anywhere at the United Nations (except in the Security Council, where the United States has a veto). Indeed, much of the U.N.’s public business concerns the supposed depredations of the Jewish state—given the numerical prowess of Arab and Muslim states in the organization and its agencies. But, listening to Kerry talk about the United Nations, you would not think its very routines are at all problematic. (And, since he has so much esteem for the United Nations and the “world community,” who can be sure that Kerry would employ the “permanent member” veto power on Israel’s behalf?)

* * *
Now, another Kerry eminence, Zbigniew Brzezinski, habitually cavalier about Israel’s perils, has put out a hash of tattered ideas that include bringing European and Muslim troops to Iraq—and perhaps even persuading Iran to foreclose its nuclear option and ending U.S. isolation in the struggle against Islamist terrorism. All that, and just by leaving Israel in the lurch. Kerry’s longtime foreign policy aide, Nancy Stetson, has been heard pooh-poohing his vague “only politics” assurances that he won’t do something like that. . .

. . . Kerry himself is in denial. He is in denial about the United Nations. He is in denial about the Australian election that returned to office for an unprecedented fourth term its prime minister who has been, with his country, a pillar of the Iraq coalition. He is in denial about Japan, whose government, unlike Germany’s and France’s, does not carp at the United States. He is in denial about Afghanistan, where, for the first time in history, men and women, riding on donkeys and walking barefoot across great distances, have exercised the right to choose those who govern them. He is in denial about Iraq itself.

The pictures don't lie

Frank J. of IMAO has diagrammed why he's voting for Bush. His analysis is so easy to follow, even the liberals could understand . . .

ABC's video? No, check the photos re: WMD

ABC reported last night that the WMD from the Al-Qaqaa (no laughing) site in Iraq may have been removed after Coalition troops arrived. That's implausible due to the sheer manpower that would have to be employed to remove 380 tons of the HMX/RDX, etc. Plus, the labels that ABC saw on the containers at al-Qaqaa are potentially misleading. Explanations for the labels are here, where the Wizbangers explain that the HazMat classification numbers for HMX and RDX do not match the numbers on the containers in the report, and here.

Similarly, a former IAEA weapons inspector, interviewed by Paula Zahn, said the labels are not definitive: "Well, the materials at that site or the materials that I saw in the video are not necessarily the HMX, which is the high explosive used in a nuclear implosion device." (HT: Wizbang). The reporter for the ABC affiliate who did the report that ABC's footage comes from is not even sure he was at al-Qaqaa. More analysis at Powerline.

What seems more reliable are the satellite photos described in the WaTimes article linked in the title of this post. Those show that convoys trucked WMD and HazMat out of Iraq before the Coalition attacked. Why? Because they were analyzed by Defense Department officials and have been part of an ongoing investigation by the DoD's Inspector General, and are not the product of journos who have no expertise or background regarding the information. Meanwhile, the Colonel commanding the second brigade of the Third Infantry Division (which captured al-Qaqaa) rubbished the notion that nearly 760,000 pounds of explosives were transported out of al-Qaqaa after the troops arrived.

Simply said, the major networks and major newspapers are desperately latching on to anything that will discredit the Iraq invasion and the President. The MSM's October Surprise attack against Bush, therefore, continues.

Forgiven -- UPDATE

It appears that some Bostonians and fellow travelers may be leaning on Schilling. Seems Schilling is backtracking. I don't buy the not medically cleared excuse for a second -- Schilling could be Governor tomorrow if there was an election.

********************************

Curt Schilling for his part in wresting a World Series championship away from the Yanks in 2001 and reversing the curse in 2004.

After delivering on a World Series win like he promised, Schilling didn't go to Disneyland but instead is campaigning with President Bush in the battleground state of New Hampshire.

Red Sox pitching ace Curt Schilling will accompany President George W. Bush to his campaign stops in Manchester and Portsmouth on Friday.

The Union Leader has learned Schilling will appear with Bush at rallies at the Verizon Wireless Arena and at the Pease International Tradeport.

This man has got his priorities straight.

MAN BITES DOG ALERT!

This is worth a WOW!

The largest newspaper in Europe, by circulation, is BILD in Germany. That would be the Germany of Francophilic appeasers, Eurowimpiness, Hamburg terror cells, Oil-for-Food fraud support, virulent left-wing media and a PM who ran for and won re-election on an anti-Bush platform two years ago.

And BILD has ENDORSED President Bush's re-election. Here is the actual endorsement, but it's in German so if you nein sprecken zie Deutsch, click the link in the title for translation of the key points. Two of the most notable are ones that justify the Germans sitting on their collective rears as American blood is spilled to keep the world safe: Under Bush, the US will continue to bear the financial, military and casualty burden in the fight against terrorism; and Bush knows Europe is militarily weak, so he won't ask them for help.

Check it out.

Out like suckas

A relatively brief World Series breakdown because this Series was such a colossal arse-whipping and so skill-deprived that it deserves little more. Here are my notes:

First, I think the Cards' flop is the worst roll-over by any team since I've been a baseball fan starting in 1977. The second-worst is the A's flopathon against the Reds in '90 both because the Reds crushed the A's AND because the A's had won 12 more games that season. There have been overmatched teams in previous World Series: the '98 Padres were completely outgunned and gave the Yanks trouble in three of the four games; the '76 Yanks were outclassed, but at least most of those games were tight for 7+ innings; and in each of the two worst offensive performances in World Series memory, the '63 Yanks loss to the Dodgers and '66 Dodgers loss to the Orioles, two of the games were tight one-run affairs. In all of postseason baseball, only the '63 Yanks, '66 Dodgers, '89 Giants and '04 Cards have never led in the WS. In 35 seasons of divisional play only the '70 Pirates, '81 Royals, '81 A's, '84 Royals, '97 Astros, '98 Rangers, and '00 Braves never had the lead (after completion of an inning) in divisional or LCS series (all in 3/5 series, not 4/7).

But no team has been both completely overmatched by the opponent's hitting AND simultaneously unable to hit a lick to this degree. And worse yet, the Cards did not have a pop-gun offense like this season's Padres -- they were the top scoring team in the NL. The Cards looked downright heartless (except Pujols and Walker) and gutless.

Second, the Tankees have to be kicking themselves even harder after watching the Sawx' whitewash. The Skanks would not have won in four, but they would have won in 5 or 6 because Mooooooooooooose is still top-flight, Lieber is better than anyone the Cards have and El Duque tends to baffle hitters who've never seen him before, especially righty power hitters. By the way, no more knocking the Moooooooooooose for his postseason performances -- three starts and he was good enough for three wins, once his offense betrayed him, once his manager frakked up the game.

Third, there have been few managers who have been as attuned to the pulse of their team as Francona was this postseason. He did a fantastic job managing, like Scioscia in '02, McKeon in '03 and Torre in '96.

Fourth, compare the relative success of the managers in the playoffs who managed every game like the last game of the season and those who didn't: Francona led his team back from 0-3 down to the AL title and won the WS; Garner led a shoddy and depleted Houston team to within a game of the WS exceeding all expectations; Torre's Stanks fell short; LaRussa's mountain men were clobbered and he never could stop the bleeding. Why do Torre and LaRussa manage during the season like every game is a must-win and then baby their players even a slight bit in the postseason? Baffling.

Fifth, considering all he meant for his team in the postseason, it was appropriate that the final out came to Keith Foulke's hands on Renteria's weak-snot bouncer to the box to end a dismal Series.

Now, on to college hoops and the Hot Stove League. I'll keep tabs on both.

One reason to like Curt Schilling

One reason for even the Monk and I to like Schilling:

Boston pitcher Curt Schilling, interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," said, "Tell everybody to vote. And vote Bush next week."

Saddam the Terrorist

This site says it all. And with pictures for you pointy-head liberals who can't be bothered to have facts penetrate your crania.

The only negative: the link to the Laurie Mylroie article in the NY Sun at the bottom is subscriber-only.

HT: INDC Journal.

Kerry hemorrhaging the black vote?

Ann Coulter is often a bit too strident for me but she is also often dead on point and sarcastically very funny. Her piece (click title) skewers Kerry and the Democratic party for taking for granted the black vote and giving nothing in return other than canards about disenfranchisement:

Kerry claims Republicans disenfranchised 1 million black voters in Florida in 2000, but neglects to mention that after extensive and expensive hearings, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission failed to name a single one of them. Can you name just one out of that "million," Sen. Kerry?...[I]n 2000, blacks composed 11 percent of registered voters in Florida, but made up 17 percent of those who actually voted. If that's how Republicans "suppress" the black vote, blacks are better off when Republicans attack them than when Democrats pretend to be nice to them.

and jobs:

[D]emocrats offer black voters loads and loads of meaningless abstractions that will have absolutely no effect on their lives. "Jobs," for example. (Just not any of the important jobs in a Kerry administration.) Democrats' extravagant claims about creating "jobs" are as credible as their claims that they will allow the wheelchair-bound to walk. Among the jobs that are currently not available to Americans are these being performed in China under a free-trade bill voted for by John Kerry. (New campaign slogan: "John Kerry: Betraying America Since 1971.")

The Russians did it

Information on how the "missing" Iraq explosives became missing -- hint: it predates the arrival of the US army.

Excerpts:

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," [John] Shaw [deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security] said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."

* * *
Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.

* * *
A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA. The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.

"The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.

In other words, John Kerry's demagoguing of this issue is pure crap, and the NY Times story from Monday was merely an effort to smack Pres. Bush with an October Surprise.

The Red Sox Nation Just Got Smaller

As much as it pains a Yankee true believer to say so - Boston deserved to win after climbing out of the abyss and dismissing the Cards.

Harvey Araton has an excellent piece (click title) though on how the Red Sox Nation just got smaller.

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

Lileks 2, Sullivan 0

A few months ago, James Lileks fisked Andrew Sullivan to shreds about Sullivan's proposal to increase gasoline taxes in the US.

Today, Lileks eviscerates Sullivan's long-foreseen (but not long-awaited) endorsement of Kerry. It's really like shooting fish in a barrel because Sullivan's thought process in his piece is so moonbat-stupid it beggars belief that 18 months ago Sullivan actually had some clarity of thought.

Here is Lileks' best counterpoints (Sullivan in yellow, Lileks in aqua):

I want this war to be as bipartisan as the cold war, to bring both parties to the supreme task in front of us, to offer differing tactics and arguments and personnel in pursuit of the same cause.

"Bipartisan as the cold war?" At the start, perhaps, but not after Vietnam. Not after Nixon. The cold war was no longer us v. them, good v. evil, but us v. the future, clueless patriotism v. post-nationalist utopia. It wasn't a difference of "tactics and arguments," but a difference of perspectives and objectives. Rewind the calendar to the 80s; there were two different approaches to the Soviet threat:

Coexistance, whereby we sign pieces of paper that outlaw six classes of missiles, permit development of three others, lay out frameworks for future talks on reducing expansion of experimental tests for another class, accept Soviet client states in our neighbodhood, and oh, we exchange circuses and ballet troops. Peace!

Up Yours, Ivan, whereby we push back against any attempt to plant the hammer and sickle in our hemisphere, fund those who resist your imperialism, match you rocket-for-rocket in Europe’s front yard and spent eleventy billion dollars on stuff you can neither invent nor afford. War!

* * *

[Kerry] knows that if he lets his guard down and if terrorists strike or succeed anywhere, he runs the risk of discrediting the Democrats as a party of national security for a generation.

Is it instructive to note which side Sen. Kerry instinctively inhabited in the 80s? Apparently not. Because now he knows that if terrorists strike, he runs the risk of discrediting his party. Got that? Runs the risk. Of discrediting his party. Of all that the theats he might face, apparently that's the one that seals the deal. Look: The guy voted against the first Gulf War. What else do you need to know? UN thumbs up, global test, allies coming out the wazoo, and he voted no. Because that’s who he is. There are lots of Democrats with hard-core pro-defense no-nonsense smite-the-fascist records. He ain't one of them.

Lileks gets it. Sullivan's lost it.

Impressed by his own resume

There is probably no manager or coach in a major sport who is more overrated than Tony LaRussa.

Go through the history:

LaRussa is 4-4 in LCS play (3-1 AL, 1-3 NL). His AL teams were all good (99-104 wins), only one played an equally good opponent ('83 White Sox) and it lost. His NL teams were favored in 2000 and 2002 against the wild card entry, and lost in 5 both times. In '96, his Cards coughed up a 3-1 lead by losing games 5-7 by a combined score of 32-1.

Worse yet is LaRussa's World Series record: he is the only manager to lose two World Series to an opponent that had at least 10 fewer wins than his team. In '88, the 104-win A's lost to the no-hit pop-gun 94-win Dodgers 4-1; in '90 the 103-win A's tied the 1974 Dodgers for the second biggest upset loss in the live-ball era when the A's were swatted 4-0 by the 91-win Reds. Unlike the '74 Dodgers (four one-run games in a five-game series), the A's were stomped pretty well: 22-8 aggregate loss. This year, it's worse: the Cards are in-line to become the third team since 1961 to never lead in the World Series ('66 Dodgers, '89 Giants).

And LaRussa makes odd choices: playing So Taguchi over John Mabry in a hitter's ballpark? Bunting down 0-4?

LaRussa was a major innovator in baseball by utilizing his whole bullpen, situational substituting like a madman, matchup switching, etc. Indeed, his thought process has become much of "the Book" that managers work by. That's why it is ironic to see managers who violate "the Book" succeed: Terry Francona's managing against the Yanks by working Foulke like Goose Gossage (7th inning-on); Phil Garner using Brad Lidge in the 7th; Torre's use of Rivera from 1998-2001. In the future in the playoffs, managers are likely to mimic Garner and Francona, who themselves mimicked Torre, who derived his extended use of the closer from Billy Martin, among others (check out how Sparky Lyle was used in the '77 ALCS).

Now consider some other "overrated" coaches and managers, baseball first:

Bobby Cox? This season cements his legacy as a great manager by coaxing 96 wins out of a mediocre team. The Braves went from nothing to powerhouse under his watch and have maintained their excellence for over a decade despite constant turnover. Has he been outmanaged in the playoffs? Certainly: the '96 World Series and '98 NLCS immediately come to mind; but other times his teams have been outgunned in short series ('99 WS, '01 NLCS, '03 NLDS). He's a Hall-of-Famer for good reason.

Joe Torre? Only Yankee haters would say he's overrated and I'm giving a scintilla of credence to their thought processes by mentioning him, but the notion is ridiculous and must be discredited. Torre took that group of midlevel misfits to a World Series in '96 and tooled Cox; he presided over the best post-WWII in baseball history where only one player (David Wells) had a career year; he guided the '99 Yanks to a dominant playoff run in a season where two of his pitchers had their WORST years (Clemens, Pettitte) and 4 WS in 5 years in the three-tier playoff system is currently an accomplishment for the ages. The fact that the Yanks won 101 games this year with no starter winning more than 14, Moooooooooose and Brown hurt, Contreras useless and Vazquez in the tank speaks volumes.

Pat Riley: Riles not only guided the Showtime Lakers, but took those ragged Knicks teams to within a couple of Starks jumpers of a title and he built the Heat into a contending team. His act wore thin, but his coaching was good.

LaRussa would give his hair to have the resumes these men do. He should not be accorded the accolades they've earned.

___

Three other quick observations pending the RedSawx wrapping this thing up.

First, since the three-tier playoff system began in 1995, the World Series team that finished its LCS first (by calendar date) has won 8 of 9 World Series, a RedSux wrap would make it 9/10. The outlier -- the '00 Yanks who clinched a day after the Mess and won the '00 Series in 5. Usually this has had little effect, but in '03 the Yanks' rotation was thrown off more than the Marlins' and in '97 the Indians were also thrown off more than the Fish.

Second, since the three-tier playoff system began in '95, the team with the best record in baseball has won ONCE -- the '98 Yanks. Of the other nine teams with the best record, only four even made the WS = '95 Indians, '99 Braves, '03 Yanks (tied with Atlanta) and '04 Cards. Those teams are 4-15 in their games pending the outcome of tonight's game.

Third, is the Curse really a Curse of the Bambino? This article indicates that the Curse of the Bambino is a happy fiction stemming from an anti-Semitic smear campaign against Harry Frazee by one of baseball's premier historians who failed to discover Frazee wasn't a Jew.

One other Jew gets it

I've banged this drum on why Jews are stupid to vote Democrat over and over and over again. I've also harped on Kerry's weak, wimpy, limp, flaccid, dovish world outlook.

I was a Northeastern Jew (now Southwestern), but I thank the PaMonk for preventing me from ever becoming a liberal.

Now, Meryl Yourish (link in title) gives a flicker of hope that some of the Northeastern liberal Jews understand what is at stake in this election and will actually make the right choice. Here's the core of her statement:

We are at war now; I don't want a president who will wait until we are attacked in order to respond. I want the targeted assassinations of terrorists. I want the continued isolation of terrorist nations like Syria and Iran. I want dictators like Muammar Ghadafy to be sweating for their lives and careers. I want someone who is committed to trying to plant the seed of democracy in the Middle East, not someone who thinks that is an impossibility.

Sounds like Natan Sharansky's and Benjamin Netanyahu's playbook for the Middle East, and with good reason. The same war Israel fights daily against Muslim terrorism is the same one that the US has been forced to wage. Good to see that someone up East gets it.

Democratic voting

NY Times = in the tank for Kerry

Here's the basic story: Mohammed El-Baradei is the chief of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, and is in his second four-year term. He is useless: Pakistan and NoKorea both went nuclear on his watch. The IAEA also will not pressure Iran (although that's not the way to prevent it from going nuclear) but seeks to pressure Israel. In other words, the IAEA is the typical anti-Semitic, anti-Western, ineffective UN agency.

El-Baradei wants a third term after his current one ends in 2005. The US officially is opposed because it prefers limiting agency heads to two terms. The US is REALLY opposed because El-Baradei is a useless git.

Last week, El-Baradei leaked both a letter he wrote to the current Iraqi leadership demanding that it account for certain stockpiles of HMX and RDX explosives totalling 380 tons that had been stored at the Al-QaQaa (don't laugh) military base and the Iraqi response that the materiel was not in Iraq. The IAEA had inspected the facility in March 2003, shortly before the US invasion.

That information was blared across the front page of the NY Times with the clear implication that the munitions were taken from Al-Qaqaa after the US invasion of Iraq -- i.e., the US negligently allowed the explosives to be smuggled out from Iraq. One problem: that implication is false, although that hasn't prevented the Times and the Kerry campaign from touting the story.

First, NBC reported that the Third Infantry Division secured and investigated al-Qaqaa and did not find the explosives. Second, contemporary reports on CBS and Fox noted that weapons inspectors and US forces found thousands of boxes with vials of powders that seemed to be explosive precursors. But storing 760,000 pounds of the stuff in small boxes with only three vials each in them would take a lot of room -- being generous, each box contains an ounce (total) of the powder and 760,000 pounds is equivalent to 12,160,000 ounces. The reports show that the inspectors found "thousands" of boxes. Even if that means 100,000 boxes, that's less than 1% of the powder explosives that REMAINED at al-Qaqaa when the US forces arrived there.

Second, the time, effort and manpower it would take for insurgents to smuggle 380 tons of explosives out from the US-guarded al-Qaqaa facility is tremendous.

Third, the IAEA did not even know if the RDX material remained at al-Qaqaa even at the time of its March 2003 inspection. As noted on NBC:

Three months earlier, during an inspection of the Al Qaqaa compound, the International Atomic Energy Agency secured and sealed 350 metric tons of HMX and RDX. Then in March, shortly before the war began, the I.A.E.A. conducted another inspection and found that the HMX stockpile was still intact and still under seal. But inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound.

The NBC News quote comes from here, courtesy Belmont Club.

So in March 2003, the IAEA inspectors were not allowed to verify the presence of explosives that they knew were stored at al-Qaqaa.

What's worse is that Charles Duelfer (head of the Iraq Survey Group) was a member of the UN inspection team in Iraq in 1995 and here's what the IAEA knew and did (from the article linked in title):

The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations' atomic watchdog to remove tons of explosives that have since been declared missing.

Mr. Duelfer said he was rebuffed at the time by the Vienna-based agency because its officials were not convinced the presence of the HMX, RDX, and PETN explosives was directly related to Saddam Hussein's programs to amass weapons of mass destruction.

So now, when you see the NY Times interview the wrong commander about its erroneous initial story and its editors decry the lax protection by the troops to secure WMD, realize that the Times is so far in the tank for Kerry that it makes Andrew Sullivan look moderate.

No wonder there's so little coverage of Kerry the commie stooge.

The Man Who Would Be King

John Kerry is a highly intelligent, incredibly principled Senator who has put his life on the line for his country. Senator Kerry received three Purple Hearts for wounds suffered on a tour of duty in Vietnam as well as a Silver Star. His disillusionment with that conflict and how it was run led him to speak out against the war at the head of the Vietnam Veteran's Against War. He has served the state of Massachusetts as Senator since 1985, is a champion of liberal causes and is running for President.

This is the picture that the Kerry campaign wants Americans to see. However, upon closer inspection it's a picture reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's handsome but depraved Dorian Grey.

It starts with the one blemish that cannot be airbrushed away: Why has the great majority of men with whom he served who have remained silent for 30 years aggressively opposing his candidacy?

Soldiers who have served and faced hostile fire together tend to form a special lasting bond - the best descriptor, perhaps, is 'a band of brothers'. This was evident in 1996 when Kerry was fighting for his political life. Several of his erstwhile mates came out strongly to defend him when his service came into question. Yet today these same men are vigorously opposing his candidacy. WHY?

[Let's assume that you don't buy into the theory that they, in the winter of their lives, are now paid lackeys of Karl Rove. If so, I am stunned you are reading TKM. Welcome.]

Kerry overcame Dean by a) veering right and b) basing his candidacy on his service in Vietnam which would make him, ostensibly, electable. But exposing his Vietnam service to sunlight may have been a fatal mistake. Even though his slander in front of the Fulbright committee and radical antiwar stance has been well known what came to light in 2004 was the circumstances under which he received his Purple Hearts and Silver Star. These were so odious that combined with his VVAW actions his old comrades could no longer bide their anger and formed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. How could any honorable soldier treat medals given for injuries that were little more than paper cuts, probably self-inflicted and won through false battle reports and lobbying but with loathing and odium?

WHY does a man like John Kerry,
- who lied about widespread atrocities in Vietnam,
- who illegally met with representatives of the Vietcong and North Vietnam in 1971
- who was as responsible as any for painting the picture of the Vietnam veteran as a vicious rapist and murderer
- who owns one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate (www.adaaction.org)
- who championed normalization of relations with Vietnam and is held in high regard by that Communist government
- who famously threw his medals away
volunteer to fight in Vietnam at all?

The answer is that Kerry is as ambitious as he is duplicitous. How does a radical anti-war liberal who aspirations for high political office burnish his resume so as to become acceptable to the general public?

Serving his country in Vietnam would give him instant, lasting credibility.

Now the real picture begins to shine through. Kerry volunteered for Swift Boat duty ONLY because they were coastal patrol boats and considered an easy billet. To his consternation, soon after he volunteered the Swift Boat mission changed to something much more risky. He discovered how to game the system getting four medals in record time and used the three Purple Heart rule to go home where promptly joins the VVAW and viciously slanders his fellow soldiers and sailors accusing them of widespread rape, murder and atrocities reminiscent of Genghis Khan.

Hardly the conduct expected of a soldier towards his band of brothers.

Kerry failed to win a seat in the House in his first election but his Vietnam 'experience' served him well in his race for the Senate in 1984 and he used it as a bludgeon during a decisive debate with Bill Weld in 1996.

John Kerry has exploited the BIG LIE in extraordinary fashion--winning four terms in the Senate. He is excellent at using facile, unverifiable little lies throughout his campaign; e.g., "I met a soldier who said we need you there...", "Foreign leaders support my election..." are two examples that come immediately to mind.

Some little while ago I was asked who I would choose if faced only with a decision between Bill Clinton and John Kerry. I was speechless. The choice is clear now. Bill Clinton is a venal, pandering addict but he didn't betray his band of brothers.

Dog bites man alert: Media prefers Kerry

From the "No sh*t!" file comes this article in Editor & Publisher. Here's the lede:

A new study for the non-partisan Project for Excellence in Journalism suggests that in the first two weeks of October, during the period of the presidential debates, George W. Bush received much more unfavorable coverage from some media than Sen. John Kerry.

The article deems the study "hardly representative of the industry as a whole" because the PfE examined coverage in only four newspapers and two cable TV channels: the NY Times, WaPo, Miami Herald and Columbus Dispatch, plus CNN and Fox News. That's true, as far as it goes. But the study is actually well-targeted: (1) the Times and the WaPo are THE establishment newspapers and they set the tone for print media throughout the country, (2) the Herald and Dispatch are the largest and most influential newspapers in the two key swing states of Florida and Ohio, so press coverage slants in those states are relevant. Total tally = more than twice the negative press for the President.

In the final accounting, 59% of stories that were mainly about Bush told a mainly negative story, while 25% of Kerry stories played out that way. One in three stories about Kerry were positive, one in seven for Bush.

Not unexpected. But still not right.

HT: El Capitan.

New Jersey in a dead heat

President George W. Bush has closed a four-point gap with Democratic challenger John Kerry and the two candidates are locked in a 46 - 46 percent tie among New Jersey likely voters, with 2 percent for independent candidate Ralph Nader, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Six percent remain undecided.

Hope Rove has an emergency GOTV operation planned. NJ's 15 electoral votes have generally been considered in the bank for Kerry though his lead has steadily eroded. According to the RealClearPolitics count (234 safe or leaning) if NJ swings to Bush he will only have to win Florida in the battleground states to get to the magic 270.

Kerry = Anti-American agitator

Joshua Muravchik on Kerry's absolute refusal to apologize for his VVAW membership, meeting with Vietnam Commies in Paris, undermining the US military on his return from Vietnam, and worse, his campaign's lies and obfuscations about his activities. These activities are a lot worse than what the MSM has reported. As Muravchik notes:

America had gotten so far off track that we needed a "revolution" to recapture our founding principles, Kerry said, while also suggesting that our enemies were more in tune with those principles. Ho Chi Minh, he declared, was "the George Washington of Vietnam" who was trying "to install the same provisions into the government of Vietnam" that appeared in the U.S. Constitution.

This attitude underlay his trips to meet with the Communist delegations in Paris. Although he accused American leaders of lying, he returned from Paris to endorse the Viet Cong's "peace plan" as if the pronouncements of Communist leaders deserved to be taken at face value. The Viet Cong's foreign minister, Madame Binh, had told him, he said, that "if the United States were to set a date for withdrawal, the prisoners of war would be returned." The fact that she said so, he suggested, proved that President Nixon was lying: "I think this negates very clearly the argument of the president that we have to maintain a presence in Vietnam, to use as a negotiating block for the return of those prisoners. The setting of a date will accomplish that."

Today, Kerry and his surrogates make it sound as if his meetings with Communist officials were motivated by concern for American POWs. But this stands history on its head. Disregarding entirely the Geneva convention in their treatment of American prisoners, the Communists used the POWs as hostages, pressing America to capitulate in order to get its men back.

In addition, the infamous VVAW 1971 meeting in Kansas City where the group contemplated using terrorist acts and attempting to assassinate pro-war Senators was unforgettable, except in Kerry's public denials that he attended (since disproven by the FBI) and his denial that he remembers what occurred. As Muravchik explains:

The FBI files, however, don't just reflect Kerry's presence. They show a raucous two-day debate, changing venue midstream when someone announced excitedly that the meeting hall was bugged. The highlight of the gathering was a bitter running battle between Kerry and Hubbard, the two former friends and co-leaders. The brouhaha culminated with Hubbard pulling down his pants to show his scars and Kerry finally resigning from the organization which he had so famously led. Participants interviewed by reporters--including Kerry supporters--scoff at Kerry's claim to have forgotten his starring role at this climactic event.

Read it all.

Stolen Honor

Above is a link to the movie Stolen Honor, about Kerry's antiwar agitation after he came back from Vietnam. This is an ad describing the movie. The video itself is about 45 minutes long.

Blood for Oil

I started reading Bill Buckley at a tender age at the cusp of the Reagan Revolution. (Watched Firing Line too, with a dictionary on my lap). The old man has still got it.

[I don't completely agree with him but he does have a beautiful riposte for the No-Blood-for-Oil drivel.]

What needs to be said about oil is that it IS worth fighting for. We would all agree that air and water are necessities. Without them life instantly ends. Without oil, life does not end, but life radically changes.
...
If one contemplates oil as simply an agent of energy, the idea becomes instantly clearer. Every advance by mankind against the material duress of life is most easily expressed in terms of energy spared...[m]uch of it is created by oil and gas. What is it that a people are willing to fight for? The security of home and hearth come first, and that is achieved mostly by weaponry; but weapons that seek to have their effects beyond the range of a cartridge of gunpowder do so, on battleships and airplanes, by the propellant force of oil.

If you are willing to die in order to protect your local hospital, then you must be willing to die for oil, because without electricity, your hospital won't take you beyond a surgeon's scalpel, and a surgeon is helpless without illumination, which is provided (in many places) by oil.

To say that we must not fight for oil is utter cant. To fight for oil is to fight in order to maintain such sovereignty as we exercise over the natural world. Socialism plus electricity, Lenin said at the outset of the Soviet revolution, would usher in the ideal state. He was wrong about socialism but not about electricity. Electricity gives us whatever leverage we have over nature.

To flit on airily about an unwillingness to fight for oil suggests an indifference to the alleviation of poverty at the next level after bread and water.
...
Oddly, those who speak so lightly about oil are often the most reluctant to explore seriously alternatives to it. In the history of discovery, only one such has materialized, which is nuclear power. Although nuclear power proceeds inconspicuously to light most of the lamps in France and promises to do as much in China, a mix of superstition and Luddism stands in the way of developing the nuclear alternative here.

Meanwhile, we must get on with oil, and the reserves of it are diminishing, and such great storehouses of oil as exist are mostly in the Middle East. The idea that our effort in Iraq is motivated by lust for its oil fields is easily dispelled by asking who is today profiting from such oil as is being produced in Iraq? The answer is: the Iraqis.

HT: Instapundit

Quick Sports hits

The Monk is a big sports fan, not just Yankees but college hoops, NFL, college football and occasionally the sport formerly known as hockey. That's why The Monk joined his college newspaper on day one of school and told his editor later that year that The Monk wanted his job (which I eventually got). So here are a couple of quick thoughts:

1) The firing of Ron Zook at Florida is the end of a bad story that started with the hiring of Ron Zook. In 1991, Zook was the defensive coordinator of #4 Florida in its bowl game against #18 Notre Dame, a team that had been spanked in its penultimate regular season meeting with Penn State 35-13, had a suspect passing game, and had been inconsistent on offense at times. ND whomped the Gator defense for 39 points in a 39-28 upset. Zook was demoted on Spurrier's staff. Zook later became an NFL coach, and a defensive coordinator for the Saints. He got demoted there too to special teams coordinator. In other words, Zook was demoted because his charges failed. Florida hired him, the next day websites dedicated to sacking him cropped up. At 20-13 in 2.5 seasons and getting creamed in the recruiting wars by FSU, Miami and now Georgia, Zook had to go. Next up, the Florida AD who hired him.

2) When I was a kid, Channel 9 in NYC would run the Penn State highlights show at 8 pm Monday nights during football season, then my dad would watch Monday Night Football. Thus, I became a Penn State fan. I agonized with the team, celebrated its big wins (48-14 at Pitt in '81; the '83 Sugar Bowl; the '87 Fiesta Bowl; the '92 Fiesta Bowl 5 TD in 8 minutes explosion, and more) and now I'm at a loss. Primarily because that is the weekly result for this team -- loss after loss after loss. Between poor recruiting and poor coaching, Penn State is not what it was. Everyone in the Northeast likes Paterno, but it's time to take emeritus status.

3) Lastly for today, read Tom Verducci on the World Series. He's probably the best national baseball writer even including Gammons and he writes entirely too little. ESPN needs to poach him from SI.

Excellent G-file today

Jonah Goldberg hit Nexis over the weekend to find out what Kerry said about terrorism before 9-11-01. Why? Kerry has publicly stated that 9-11-01 did not change his worldview. Therefore, we need to know what he said, thought, proposed and did about the terrorist threats to the US during the Clinton Administration and before.

Answer: nothing.

Two excerpts:

Now, look, I know that Nexis-search sleuthing is not perfect. I am sure I'm missing some press release or staff-written letter to the editor or speech he gave to the Amherst Rotary Club. But if you know how these things work, you know how revealing this is. John Kerry says he hasn't changed from the 1990s, and in the 1990s he didn't [care] about any of this stuff. And during the 1980s, he was as dovish as you can get, fighting Ronald Reagan's foreign policy at every turn and even calling Reagan's tenure a period of "moral darkness." And in the 1970s he was calling American soldiers war criminals and fighting for a nuclear freeze.

When John Kerry says 9/11 merely confirmed what he'd been warning about for years, he makes it sound like he was some Churchillian figure standing alone against the dark and gathering storm, when the reality is far closer to an image of him as a back-bencher snoozing behind the pages of a newspaper as Churchill thundered alone.

* * *
It's hard to shake the impression that so many "pro-war" writers want to punish George W. Bush for his mistakes by voting for Kerry. How childish. The choice isn't between punishing Bush or rewarding him: It's between electing a president who understands the fight we're in and one who denies we even need to be in one. Despite Kerry's newfound convictions about the need to "destroy" and "kill" terrorists, there's little reason to believe he understands what this war is about. Bush says Kerry has a "September 10th" worldview. He's right, of course. Kerry himself admits that he has a September 10th worldview. That would be fine, if Kerry's worldview on September 10th wasn't so awful.

Read it all.

Jewish Democrats: Why?

Joel Engel discusses the virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Israel ideologies that infect the modern Democratic party and how the Democrats don't care about either. Here's hoping the MaMonk and New York City reads the article linked above -- it is excellent.

Some excerpts:

. . . since the birth of Israel, American Jews have faced accusations that they care more about the well-being of their ancient homeland than of their home. Well, barring some unforeseen circumstance, the canard of dual loyalty should be retired forever on November 2, 2004. On that Tuesday, Election Day, up to 80 percent of American Jews will pull the lever for John Kerry, thereby proving that they not only do not care about Israel's well-being, but that they don't mind making common cause with people who wish them ill. Or worse.

* * *
. . . the far left has been able to hijack college campuses that used to be seedbeds of civil rights activism--much of it famously led and organized by liberal Jews. Now, under the politically correct cover of Palestinian rights, Jews find themselves lumped in with religious Christians as acceptable objects of revulsion, leaving squishy-left Steinbergs and Goldbergs to wonder what's happening as antiwar, anti-Bush demonstrations rapidly morph into anti-Israel, anti-Jew hatefests. San Francisco State, Duke, Berkeley, and Columbia (whose growing anti-Semitism in the classroom is now the subject of a short film) are only a few of the many schools where Jews have glimpsed the mob mentality of Kristallnacht.

* * *
In their worldview, words are more important than outcomes, especially when those words are uttered by Democrats. Thus, Bill Clinton's can't-we-all-just-get-along peacemaking that relied on the exaltation of Arafat is far preferable to George W. Bush's support for the terror-reducing fence and insistence on new Palestinian leadership--though the former caused the deaths of a thousand innocent Israelis, and the latter has saved innocents on both sides and brought closer the possibility of Palestinians giving up terrorism entirely--which will, of course, bring peace. Instead, Jews circulate angry emails about the lack of Jews in the president's cabinet, as if Clinton's Jewish Agriculture secretary somehow canceled out the shame of Yasser Arafat's permanent White House parking space.

* * *
"F*** the Jews," Republican James Baker snapped during Bush 41's reign more than a decade ago. "They didn't vote for us anyway."

Right he was. And if only 20 percent of them vote for Bush 43, American Jews won't need James Baker--they'll have done it to themselves.

For a supposedly smart people, we can be awfully stupid.

Kerry to "put more pressure on Israel, Syria & Saudi Arabia"

Richard Holbrooke, a top Kerry foreign policy adviser and a frontrunner to run State if Kerry wins, told Bill O'Reilly Friday that in order to improve the situation in the Middle East: "He [Kerry] has said already he would start intense talks with the allies . . . and he would reach out to the moderate Arab states. He'd put more pressure on Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia above all." [emphasis mine]

Charles Krauthammer is sounding positively prophetic.

HT: LGF

New York Times writing for Kerry...again...UPDATE

UPDATE: An NBCNews unit, embedded with US troops on 10 April 2003, a day after the liberation of Iraq, arrived at the Al Qaqaa complex and discovered the explosives were already GONE.

NBCNEWS Jim Miklaszewski quoted one official: "Recent disagreements between the administration and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency makes this announcement appear highly political."

Not surprisingly, the New York Times is SILENT this morning about the NBC News report.

HT: LGF


The New York Times lead article today on page A1 reads "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq". It goes on at length to explain how 380 odd tons of dangerous high explosive disappeared from a huge armament holding facility outside of Baghdad. With impeccable timing the Kerry campaign pounced with the Senator calling it "a great blunder". (I noted with interest that CBS' 60 minutes collaborated on the story -- is Mary Mapes at it again?)

What the estimable Times article fails to mention is that Saddam secreted an estimated TWO MILLION tons of ammunition in Iraq of which 400,000 tons are under coalition control or has been destroyed.

Captain's Quarters has an excellent piece fisking the Times. Specifically, it points out that the amount in question is 0.02% of what is believed to be in Iraq. That's two one-hundredths of one percent. Also while the material disappeared after the last IAEA inspection there is no indication of when it actually disappeared - whether the area was even yet under coalition control.

MORE GOOD NEWS

Andrew Sullivan is tiresome because he sees only awful horrendous news from Iraq. Why? Because he's tuned into the MSM, which also only sees awful horrendous news from Iraq. Why? Because the MSM doesn't go outside the confines of Baghdad and Zarqawi and his henchmen can play the media like violins. But there's good news aplenty as Artie Chrenkoff shows for the 13th time (click title).

If reporters went outside Sadr City, they might find Iraq to be . . . familiar on some levels. See this series from Annie Sweeney of the Chicago Sun-Times, and photographer John Sall.

Answer the blasted questions

None of these 22 questions posed by INTREPID INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER(tm) Bob Woodward (click title) are tricky, traps or designed to (of all things) screw up a Democratic presidential nominee.

So why won't Kerry answer them?

Neal Boortz buys the bridge

Shame on Neal Boortz for two stupidities this morning: first, predicting that Kerry will win (check NRO's The Corner for background state coverage -- NRO's unflinching honesty has had DEMOCRATS quoting The Corner when Cornerites were complaining about Bush's debate performances). Second, for basing that stupid conclusion on the "intensity of the white-hot hatred for George Bush coming from Kerry supporters and the left." Boortz is forgetting TWO big factors that mitigate his conclusion: (1) blacks are both more likely to vote for Bush and LESS LIKELY to turn out for Kerry compared to their overwhelming turnout for Clinton, Clinton and Gore; (2) the 2002 turn out the vote campaign by Republicans was extremely well-run such that it helped Republicans regain the Senate. See the always-sharp John Fund for details.

Smarten up Neal, stop giving aid and comfort to Jimmy Carter II.

John Kerry = LIAR

Joel Mowbray offers the exclusive linked above: John Kerry completely lied during the second presidential debate. Here is the Kerry assertion in reference to the October 2002 Security Council resolution to give Saddam one last last chance:

I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable.

Here is the result of the Washington Times investigation: at least four members of the Security Council state that they never met (either by ambassador or staff) with Kerry.

Now from the article is the rub:

After conversations with ambassadors from five members of the Security Council in 2002 and calls to all the missions of the countries then on the panel, The Times was only able to confirm directly that Mr. Kerry had met with representatives of France, Singapore and Cameroon.

What to do now that they're caught in the lie? Here is the Kerry campaign reaction:

When reached for comment last week, an official with the Kerry campaign stood by the candidate's previous claims that he had met with the entire Security Council.  But after being told late yesterday of the results of The Times investigation, the Kerry campaign issued a statement that read in part, "It was a closed meeting and a private discussion."

* * *
The statement did not repeat Mr. Kerry's claims of a lengthy meeting with the entire 15-member Security Council, instead saying the candidate "met with a group of representatives of countries sitting on the Security Council."

Busted.

Steyn with your breakfast

Mark Steyn skewers Kerry yet again. This is from his Chicago Sun-Times column (linked above):

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.

* * *
I want Bush to win on Election Day because he's committed to this war and, as the novelist and Internet maestro Roger L. Simon says, "the more committed we are to it, the shorter it will be.'' The longer it gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their shriveled post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe.

Steyn draws parallels between Kerry's approach to the war on terror and his healthcare plan to show how both are Europhilic delusions.

After that, read Steyn's profile of Karl Rove.

Quick World Series notes

Ask Wongdoer -- I said Sawx in five over whomever after they beat the Skanks and I'll stick with that, but where was that pile of beer league rejects who couldn't catch a beachball last week? Yuck.

BTW, I think that an 11-9 game 1 is ridiculous. Pitching? Fielding? Anyone?

My initial read is that the Cards are in trouble throughout this series because the only type of pitcher who can consistently beat the Sawx is a pitcher with a plus-fastball and who can jam their fatboys. Moooooooose fit the bill, as did Clemens, and Pettitte; Matt Morris from a few years ago (2001 NLDS variety) could fit the bill. But the array of soft-tossers and retreads the Cards are going to trot out to the mound (Williams, Wasdin, Marquis) do not fit the bill against a top AL lineup.

Kerry is dumb

So says Steve Sailer who proves that Bush likely has a higher than Kerry and that Kerry's IQ, if indeed it is higher than Bush's, is not much higher at all. In other words, they're intellectually comparable. So however stupid you think Bush is (and if you didn't crack 1200 on your SAT, shut up because Bush did), Kerry's at least equally dumb or worse.

UPDATE: The New York Times has picked up on Sailer's research and conclusions.

Sharks and wolves, eagles and ostriches

The latest candidate ads are inhuman. That is, they are metaphors using animal images: Bush's latest ad shows wolves silently hunting in a forest and decries Kerry's vote to slash intel funding after 9-11-01; Kerry's shows an eagle and ostrich -- the eagle soaring high seeing the vista, the ostrich with its head in the sand.

Kerry's ad is too easily reversible -- the implication they want you to believe is that Kerry is seeing the big picture, Bush has his head in the sand. Cute, but Kerry had his head in the sand for the whole Cold War, the whole Clinton Presidency and even today wants to treat terrorism as a law enforcement/nuisance issue. So the ad's effectiveness is weak. Quite honestly, the few Kerry and leftist 527 ads I've seen (non-swing state voter) have generally been pretty poor.

Bush's ad has some right-wingers salivating at its potentially devastating impact because they harken back to the bear-in-the-woods ad from 1984 that supposedly worked so well for Reagan. That's dopey -- I don't think that 1984 nostalgia will work because too few people will remember it, especially not voters aged 18-37 who couldn't vote in '84. And I agree with Jonah Goldberg that sharks in the water (without lasers) would have been better than wolves -- the big greys in the ad look healthy and fluffy (not scraggly and feral) so they're like oversized huskies and seem like big ole doggies. Voters in states threatened by wolves (like ranchers in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas) are breaking 60-35 for Bush anyway. Hopefully the Kerry-voted-to-defenestrate-our-intelligence line will work better than the imagery.

The ALCS in a nutshell

HA! The Guardian gives up

The Guardian caves! The liberal newspaper has ended its "Operation Clark County" attempt to bombard Ohio voters in that swing county with letters from Britain. I noted this idiocy here.

Now The Guardian wouldn't say how it wanted its letter-writers to influence the Clark County voters, but The Guardian's own politics (left-wing to far-left-wing) and some of the pompous socialist dopes it enlisted to write (John LeCarre -- English author taking French name for nom de plume, like that would wash in rural US; Antonina Fraser -- left-wing anti-Israel "intellectual") to the Ohio voters make it obvious what The Guardian's intentions were.

Cheers to the Ohioans for their reaction:

The cancellation of the project came 24 hours after the first of some 14,000 letters from Guardian readers began arriving in Clark County. The missives led to widespread complaints about foreign interference in a US election.

It also prompted a surge of indignant local voters calling the county's Republican party offering to volunteer for Mr Bush.

Worse yet, the first known recipient (a Kerry supporter) threw her letter away because she thought it was from terrorists (yeah, a bit paranoid).

Ha ha ha, liberal pointyhead dopes, hoisted on own petard. Great stuff.

The Jewish Press endorses President Bush

The Jewish Press, America's Largest Independent Jewish Weekly Newspaper, endorsed George W. Bush for President on Wednesday.

Excerpts:

It was George W. Bush’s lot to have been elected president at a time when two defining developments were at work, fundamentally changing the world landscape. The European Union’s burgeoning determination to fill the international political void created by the collapse of the Soviet Union was one. And the unprecedented challenges presented by an international terror crusade on the move —underscored eight months into Mr. Bush’s presidency by 9/11 — was the other.

Both these developments required — and will continue to require — leadership not rooted in outdated geopolitical thinking; leadership cognizant of the reality that our ostensible friends do not necessarily share our interest in a strong United States and that our enemies do not risk as much as we do from confrontations gone seriously bad.

With this in mind, the choice Americans must make on November 2 should be an easy one. One can prattle about the significance of this or that difference between President Bush and Senator Kerry on the environment, Social Security, jobs, taxes and a whole slew of other domestic issues. But that avenue ineluctably ends up as a clash of partisan talking points about inherently insoluble problems. When it comes, however, to the war on terror — the overarching issue of our time — the choice of Mr. Bush over Mr. Kerry is a clear one from everything available in the public record. And for those with a special interest in Israel, the choice is even clearer. (emphasis mine)

* * *
As if anticipating future critics who would not grasp that the lack of traditional threats did not matter, or who would find it politically and economically convenient to shrug off seemingly non-imminent danger, [Pres. Bush] underscore[d] the new reality, summarizing what came to be labeled the Bush doctrine of preemption: "We’ll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer...."

And, almost presciently, he added, "But some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will."

In sharp contrast, Senator Kerry seems to see the state of the world much more statically, certainly not in terms of a holy war launched against America. As has been widely noted, when asked recently by a New York Times Magazine interviewer what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he responded, "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life."

* * *
In a speech critical of President Bush’s war against terror, Senator Kerry pledged to "fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history."

If the contrast isn't clear to the general public, the Jewish Press makes it clear to those who are pro-Israel:

Viscerally, the president draws no distinction between international terror and terror directed against Israel. And indeed, the Bush administration has consistently acknowledged Israel’s broad right to defend itself against terror, even in the face of claims at the UN that it has overreacted to attacks by Palestinian terrorists.

Moreover, in addition to linking Israel’s response to the Intifada with the global war against terror, President Bush groundbreakingly declared that, respecting U.S. policy, there would be no Palestinian "right of return," since it would mean the end of a Jewish state in Israel, and that Israel had a legitimate claim to substantial portions of the West Bank.

On the other hand, Senator Kerry has spoken of former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James Baker — both blatantly anti-Israel — as his choice for emissaries to the Middle East. He has also retained as advisers many of Bill Clinton’s discredited Oslo architects and others who have urged moral equivalence between the murder of Israeli women and children and Israel’s reaction to terror.

Nor can we forget that Mr. Kerry told an audience at an Anti-Defamation League dinner that he wanted to be an "honest broker" in the Middle East, despite all the political baggage that phrase has assumed and as if there were a moral equivalence between Israel and Palestinian terrorists. Or that Mr. Kerry told an Arab group that the Israeli defense wall — which has sharply curtailed the murder of Israelis — was an "impediment" to peace in the region and was "provocative and counterproductive."

Senator Kerry also called Yasir Arafat a "statesman" and a "role model." He has said that we must "look to Chairman Arafat to exert much greater leadership."
* * *

All things considered, we all will be better off with George W. Bush as president for the next four years.

HT: LGF.

UN official: Iraq elections on track

AP: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Preparations for the crucial January election are "on track" and the absence of international observers due to the country's tenuous security should not detract from the vote's credibility, the top U.N. electoral expert here said.

I don't expect the MSM or Kerry to mention this - it wouldn't go with the focus-group derived theme of 'mess' they are peddling.

How Kerry would screw Israel

A must-read editorial by Charles Krauthammer. His analysis: Kerry wants to "rejoin the community of nations" so badly that he will gladly meet that "community" mindset on the one issue where the US (and Australia, pace John Howard) is morally right, and the international community is morally wrong time and time again -- Israel.

You want to appease the "international community"? Sacrifice Israel. Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of "peace." Apply relentless pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian leadership that has proved (at Camp David in 2000) it will never make peace.

If you are a Jew who professes to be pro-Israel and you vote for John Kerry, you are betraying your support of Israel, period.

Baseball cred: The Key Monk on the ALCS

Here is a compilation of our commentary on the ALCS disaster, now known as TheGreatestComebackInSportsHistoryTM in Boston and either TheBiggestChokeJobEver or YouGottaBeF*ckinKiddingMe in New York. Unlike a regular blogging, this will go in actual chronological order instead of the blog-norm reverse chronolog.

Last Tuesday, we wondered what would happen and how things would transpire in Baseball Armageddon. I ran down the best and worst (new addition now) from the Torre Years here.

After Game 1, a harbinger of things to come, I breathed a BIG sigh of relief after Rivera's heroics. And I was pleased with Game 2 as well. Wongdoer went to Game 2 and had some positive takes.

Game 3 was a complete snafu for the RedSawx, even though Brown failed his first Clemens moment, and I tried to restrain any joy because I knew trouble could crop up.

Indeed, this Cassandra-esque prediction I made after Game 4 proved all too prophetic.

After Game 5, I ripped Torre a new one, with good reason.

The loss in Game 6 confirmed my suspicions. Even Wongdoer began to realize doom awaited. And doom came last night -- the real end to the Curse, and potentially the end of the Yankee dynasty.

Read through, enjoy if you're a Sawx fan, despair if you bleed pinstripes. Remember you heard this here first: without a major reshuffling of the rotation, the Yanks are dead in the water until 2006.

Thank the trial lawyers for the flu vaccine shortage

According to the Kerry partisans it's George Bush's fault and the Johns have a plan. The truth is that only four firms are left in the US that make vaccines and none of them make the flu variety. When Chiron PLC of the UK found that its vaccine was contaminated 47% of the US supply disappeared overnight. Why are there so few US firms in the vaccine business?

Here is an excellent article from the Weekly Standard that puts the blame much closer to John Edwards than George Bush.

What do the polls mean?

US News' political history guru Michael Barone discusses the national polling trend and how it currently favors the President, in contrast to conventional wisdom (a phrase renowned for 50% accuracy!) that says late voter decisions favor the challenger. Barone notes the media bias for Kerry (75+ stories on Joseph Wilson and Richard Clarke's false claims in the NY Times, WaPo and major network newscasts, less than 10 on those claims after they were conclusively contradicted) and comes up with this explanation:

Bush's most effective opposition this year has come not from Kerry and the Democrats but from Old Media, the New York Times and the news pages of the Washington Post, along with the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. Old Media gave very heavy coverage to stories that tended to hurt Bush—violence in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the false charges of Richard Clarke and Joseph Wilson, etc. And during the first eight months of the year Bush did a poor job of making his case.

Then, suddenly, that case was made with maximum effectiveness at the Republican National Convention in New York—by John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani, by Zell Miller and Arnold Schwarzenegger, by Laura Bush and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush himself. Bush was able to get his message out unmediated by Old Media. (Fox News Channel had more viewers during the Republican National Convention than any of the old-line broadcast networks.) The message was simple: We need this president to protect the nation.

Anti-Semite U.

Why it's hard to be a Jew at Columbia U. Click the link.

Whose head will roll?

I'm blogging this with eight innings done and the Yanks about to be finish off the biggest choke in playoff history. In this game, give BIG props to Derek Lowe for coming back on TWO DAYS rest and squashing the Yanks for 6 innings and hang the goat horns on Kevin Brown who got ten outs in two starts and allowed eight earned runs; Tom Gordon, who hacked up the lead in game 5; and Mariano Rivera, who was three outs away from a sweep and nine pitches later had let the Sawx back in the Series.

So it's time to take some stock of this weird season and the failures in this series to determine, now that the Curse is broken, what the Yanks will do next.

(1) Go through the rotation: Mussina, Brown, Vazquez, Contreras, Lieber = that was what the team started with and they ended with Mussina, Lieber, Brown, Hernandez, Vazquez, with Brown off his game, Hernandez a weakened replacement, and Vazquez losing his ability. Expect Vazquez to be traded, the Yanks to make a play for Randy Johnson, the Yanks to make an offer to Lieber (they have a team option for $8M but I'd try to give him 2 years and $12M) and the Yanks to try to get Carl Pavano. Other possibilities: they may make a play (via trade) for Barry Zito. What they SHOULD do is develop Brad Halsey -- a smooth lefty who has rocketed up the Yanks' farm system and who is deadly against lefties. Unfortunately, there won't be any takers for Brown, who the Yanks will have to pay $15M next year.

(2) Go through the bullpen: Gordon and Quantrill are both signed through next year, but either can be trade bait b/c of his postseason performance; Sturtze should be re-signed but Heredia will be scrapped. Next year, the Yanks will need much more rest for Rivera and whoever is his prime set-up man.

(3) Go through the coaches: Willie Randolph will probably be managing elsewhere next year, most likely with the Mets; Don Mattingly is questionable -- he needed to calm his hitters and smarten up their approach in those extra inning games; and Mel Stottlemyre is likely to be non-tendered. I've been on Mel's case for years because the Yanks aren't developing young pitchers, but what's worse is this group (except Moose and Embree) didn't have the same tenacity and fire that the RedSawx exhibited -- the same tenacity that the Clemens/Pettitte/Moose/Wells quad had last year.

(4) Go through the management: just how untouchable is Torre? He has two years and nearly $13M left on his contract so it would cost a lot to fire him. But this colossal failure dictates that a head or two must roll, and Torre made some of the worst calls of his postseason managerial career (see here and here). The fact that the Yanks were three outs away when Rivera honked in game 4, six outs away when Gordon honked in game 5, got burned by a bad bounce on the Clark double in game 5, blah blah blah . . . none of that matters. The key to this series is that Francona had an answer for Rivera -- freeze the status quo in the 7th or 8th with the RedSox close-out crew (Timlin/Embree/Foulke) and let the fatboys have a chance to come back before Rivera comes in or keep the game within a run because the Sawx knew they could get one off Mo.

But unfortunately the fall guy for this will definitely be Brian Cashman. Cash is perpetually on the Boss' shite list and that's wrong -- Cash has made numerous shrewd moves that helped the '98-'00 teams win their titles (two words: David Justice) and aided the '01-'03 teams whilst the Boss threw money at every big name free agent hitter he could (Giambi, Sheffield). Cash understood that the team needs character guys. There's no real coincidence that the Yanks' rise from the pits in '93 to the heights in '96 and beyond fit with the arrival of Paul O'Neill in the Bronx. Cash will fall, and that will be the Yanks' loss.

Look for more later because I'll be compiling my baseball blogging from the playoffs. Some of it was actually pretty good.

Does Theresa Heinz think before she speaks?

Tuhrayza put her foot in it again. Here's her answer to the question of whether she'd be different from Laura Bush as First Lady (emphasis added):

A: Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job — I mean, since she's been grown up. So her experience and her validation comes from important things, but different things. And I'm older, and my validation of what I do and what I believe and my experience is a little bit bigger — because I'm older, and I've had different experiences. And it's not a criticism of her. It's just, you know, what life is about.

This is just flat stupid. Anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to politics knows that Mrs. Bush had a career as a teacher and librarian before her husband went into politics. Indeed, Mrs. Bush has an M.L.S. (master of library science) degree. THK has been on the campaign trail with Longface for almost a year, she should know this basic fact (and her staff should know it too) and avoid saying anything too stupid. Meanwhile, what has THK done other than marry a rich businessman who became a Senator, get named to his charitable foundations and inherit everything he had after his tragic plane crash?


UPDATE: Her Royal Highness smartened up. Here is her statement, courtesy The Kerry Spot:

"I had forgotten that Mrs. Bush had worked as a school teacher and librarian, and there couldn't be a more important job than teaching our children. As someone who has been both a full time mom and full time in workforce, I know we all have valuable experiences that shape who we are. I appreciate and honor Mrs. Bush's service to the country as First Lady, and am sincerely sorry I had not remembered her important work in the past."

Does John Kerry listen to himself?

This is absolutely amazing. John Kerry believes that it is better for US troops to die for a mission that has international support, regardless of its connection to US interest, than to protect the US from terrorism. What other spin can you put on this:

Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, "If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no."

There is no question that Clinton did the right thing in ultimately lifting the arms embargo to Bosnia in the early 90s. But saying that the US should spend the blood of its sons and daughters on a UN mission, under the UN's command (which has been proven to have been a colossal failure in Bosnia and now in Kosovo -- Bosnia only improved after NATO started bombing the sh-t out of the Serbs) is just plain senseless. That Kerry could fetishize the UN to the point that he can justify sending American soldiers to their deaths for an undefined UN mission but cannot pull the trigger in favor of the US defending itself (pre-emptively or not) from terrorist states is startling. This just further proves Kerry is not qualified to be commander-in-chief.

HT: Beldar.

UPDATE: And if John Kerry listens to himself, or anyone else, check out how Kerry, Edwards, the press and the Republicans all damn Kerry's ability to be president in this quote compilation.

The giant sucking sound near the Harlem River

In the top of the second inning in game 5, I emailed Wongdoer and said that the RedSux would win in 7. Pedro was ok, the Yanks' hitters looked off, and the Ratden was electric -- just the way it had not been from innings 6-8 in game 4. The Yanks were THREE OUTS AWAY in game 4 and they've honked their way into a do or die situation with a shell of a starter toeing the rubber tonight, regardless of whether that's Brown (90% likely) or Vazquez. Some comments, and some history:

(1) Last year game 4 was postponed for a day for rain. Thus, instead of being four days after game 1 as scheduled, game 4 was five days later. When that happened, Torre switched Mooooooooooooose (the Yanks' game 1 starter) and Wells to have Mooooooooooooose pitch game 4, now on four days' rest, in an attempt to put a stranglehold on the '03 ALCS with the Yanks up 2-1. It didn't work because Wakefield was great, Mooooooooooooooose merely good. But the kill 'em now thought process is what's missing this year. Three days later, Mooooooooooooooooose had two days' rest and enough gas to pitch three strong innings and bail Clemens a-s out of trouble in game 7. Mooooooooooooooose's performance, and Giambi's two dingers, were the two most important factors in putting the Yanks in a position to mount a comeback in the 8th.

This year, with an opportunity to kill the Sawx in four and to pitch Moooooooooooooooooooose on regular four days' rest after rain had pushed games 3-5 back a day, Torre opted to have Moooooooooooooose pitch game 5 on five days' rest. Three problems: (a) a shaky El Duque, who did little to win game 4; (b) Torre pulled Mooooooooooooose too early in game 5 despite the extra rest and the bullpen honked; (c) now we have another all-hands-on-deck game 7 and Mooooooooose had only one day to recuperate if he is needed . . .

(2) The Yankee hitters have no clue anymore. How else to explain Matsui's first-pitch pop with 1st and 2nd, none out in the 4th? How does Tony Clark take that FAT 88 mph right-down-the-pipe 2-0 pitch from Foulke in the bottom of the ninth? That pitch had three-run bomb (and Tony F---ing Clark to Bawstin fans) written all over it.

(3) That 3-0 series lead was the worst thing to happen to the Yanks in this series. They became complacent while Francona (who has done a GREAT job in games 4-6) instilled the pulloutallstops ethic in his team.

(4) I cannot understand how Foulke baffles Yankees hitters so much when he had only a decent season in general. Foulke is not a hard thrower -- 91-92 tops. The Yanks can't hit him but other, lesser, teams certainly can and did.

(5) Give Schilling tremendous credit. He did not have his "A" game and still kept the Yanks quiet for 7. Unlike the RedSawx who worked counts against Lieber, the Yanks' hitters failed to work Schilling hard at all just as they failed to do so against Josh Beckett last year in Game 6. Lieber pitched well again and only got bit on the butt with that cheap 325' homer by Bellhorn; then again, the Yanks have lived off those in the past (see: game 3, 1999 WS).

(6) APB for: Sheffield, Matsui. They've done squat in the last 2+ games. An Arod re-emergence would also be nice.

(7) Imagine how bad this series would be for the Yanks if Damon were hitting and Manny had RBI.