I caught the last few minutes of the debate between president George W Bush and Senator John Kerry and it looked like I had expected it to: Bush on the ropes from sheer exhaustion after doing something for more than 45 minutes straight. I don’t understand how his advisors could agree to 90-minute debates.

Not that I think Bush really hurt his re-election chances much since Kerry kept reminding everyone that he won’t even blow his nose before creating an international alliance for the occassion. I just don’t trust him to pull the trigger when the trigger needs to be pulled. His debating skills, honed by 20 years in the world’s most self-important discussion club, just can’t convince me otherwise.

The debate format worked very well, and I think it’s actually superior to the more free-wheeling debates that are typically preferred outside the U.S. Such debates tend to degenerate into the candidates hectoring each other about “unanswered questions”.

Sofia Nerbrand tänker till om det amerikanska presidentvalet:

Det är i stort sett bara Per Ahlmark som nyligen dristat sig till att häda i en DN-kolumn: Han skulle - om han vore amerikansk medborgare - rösta för den sittande presidenten. Om jag hade varit amerikan skulle jag inte ha lagt min röst på budgetunderskott och förbud mot homoäktenskap, men som europé påverkas man mer av den amerikanska utrikespolitiken.

Det är med andra ord fortfarande i stort sett bara Per Ahlmark på den svenska mediascenen som skulle rösta på den sittande presidenten. Djärvt av dig att sticka ut nacken, Nerbrand!

Awsome tidbit in today’s police blotter in the Boston Herald:

It was quite a bash at 45 Selkirk St. Friday night, but the antics of some 100 toga-clad partygoers got 10 underage female hosts arrested and resulted in the seizure of four kegs of beer.

It seems the 10 ladies were charging admission to the party complete with beer and an “ice luge” in the basement in which hard liquor was poured down a crevice in a slab of ice into the mouth of the person below.

Police said the trouble began when a group of Boston College basketball players tried to get in without paying. (Why does this not surprise us?)

“Insisting that their status as Boston College basketball players was good enough for entry, they forced the issue and the people at the party refused their attempt to crash the party and a ruckus ensued,” the cops noted.

When officers responded to send everyone on their way, they found the apartment oozing with beer and the basement moist with water and booze from the ice luge.

10 underage co-eds in toga throwing a keg party? Yes, baby!

It reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me about a keg party that he and some of his buddies organized while going to college in Providence, R.I., several years ago. They, too, charged for admission and were gleefully counting their money when two of the city’s finest showed up. After the cops discovered ten kegs, all but one empty, scattered around the house they informed the party hosts that “Mister Cianci doesn’t like it when the city doesn’t get its tax revenue” (Cianci being the legendary Buddy Cianci, then the mayor of Providence, but now incarcerated in a federal prison). The cops cared nothing about the fact that practically everybody at the party was underage. The organizers got away with paying a fine (though a real, actual fine, as opposed to a cash tips to the officers).

Conservatives of the immigration-restrictionist persuasion have long warned president George W Bush about the political risks - never mind the security ones - of allowing the border to Mexico to remain open to illegal aliens. We have seen many a signs that our Arab-Muslim enemies have attempted to penetrate our borders to recruit terrorists and carry out attacks. Here’s yet another one, as reported by Washington Times: “Al Qaeda seeks tie to local gangs”.

Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a key al Qaeda cell leader for whom the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward, was spotted in July in Honduras meeting with leaders of El Salvador’s notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang, which immigration officials said has smuggled hundreds of Central and South Americans — mostly gang members — into the United States.

…

The Salvadoran gang, known to law enforcement authorities as MS-13 because many members identify themselves with tattoos of the number 13, is thought to have established a major smuggling center in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas, from where it has arranged to bring illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico into the United States.

Bill O’Reilly’s interview with president George W. Bush once again confirmed that the president simply doesn’t care about guarding the border. The reason is obvious: Corporate America likes its labor cheap, and illegal alien Mexicans are just that. So the president trotted out his old lame-o “family values don’t stop at the border” mantra. Neither does Mexico, apparently.

But all of that is old hat. What was eye-popping was how casually the president acknowledged that the illegal aliens depress wages. In interior Mexico, Dubya explained, a Mexican makes 50 cents an hour. In America he can make $5. So there’s just no way to keep the hordes of uneducated Mexicans out.

Somebody might want to point out to the King of Crawford that minimum wage in the U.S. is actually $5.15. Apart from that, at five bucks an hour, you’re going to be eligble for just about every form of public assistance there is, including free health care. Bush’s immigration policy not only endangers Americans, it also expands poverty. As they say in the Guinness commercials: Brilliant!

Latino supremacist writer Gregory Rodriguez is mad at the “Pouty White People“, the white Anglo Californians who are mostly downbeat about the Golden State’s prospects. 57% of the Anglos believe California is going to be a worse place to live in 20 years from now, according to a recent poll from Public Policy Institute of California. That figure is 49% among blacks, 39% among Latinos, and 34% among Asians.

Rodriguez doesn’t much like the Anglos’ dour assessment. To him the Anglos are an aristocracy with a dated vision of California as a place where anyone can enjoy the American Dream of easily acheived middle-class living. The newcomers harbor no such hopes. To them, California is just another noisy, polluted, and traffic-snarled corner of the world, albeit one with higher wages and better health care (conveniently paid for by the loathsome “aristocrats”). The Anglos, who for many years have been but a shrinking minority of California’s population, know what has been lost and fear that even more will be. The newcomers only know what they have left behind. Compared to a profoundly failed state such as Mexico, America’s laughingstock, California cum Mexifornia, looks pretty good.

Tellingly, Rodriguez offers no reason for why Anglo Californians should feel differently about their state’s future. Indeed, his parting shot is a kind of “screw you” pronouncemet:

“California’s crumbling infrastructure can be rebuilt, and its broken education system can be repaired. But that’s not going to happen until we re-create the social contract that built postwar California. That contract must be founded on a shared vision of the future. If Anglo California is not willing to provide one, then at the very least it should make way for those who do.”

Well, Rodriguez, they are, as they have been for years. California will soon be all yours. Happy trails.

Kul är han:

“Man har redan lyckats få republikanska politiker att göra det olagligt att använda lokala skattenmedel för att bygga ut bredband…Står det om bredband i bibeln kanske? I så fall, varför behöver USA en sådan nymodighet?”

“Biblioteken här i USA har blivit vad kyrkorna var i DDR före murens fall. ”

“Det finns fysiker, nobelpristagare och fredsaktivister som bor i sydstaterna. Men det finns också, tyvärr, en stor majoritet av mycket okunniga människor som är utomordentligt rädda för omvärlden. De är vår tids Boer. ”

“Den amerikanska kristna högern är en de mest motbjudande folkgrupperna i hela USA. Rasistisk, våldsbenägen, skenhelig, dogmatisk, korrupt, ohederlig. Har jag utelämad något adjektiv? ”

“Den amerikanska militären skulle kunna stoppa kriget men liksom den tyska militären under andra världkriget så har man inte den moraliska dimension som behövs för att fatta sådana beslut.”

“Vi kan stå inför en historisk revolution i USA där ett helt land vänder högerut och överger de moderna liberala poltiska idealen för att anamma en närmast Talibansk strikt dogmatisk religiös högerkultur. Något liknande Khomeinis seger i Iran.”

“Stora testosterone-fyllda ledare från Khomeni till Bush till Sharon, Saddam, Arafat och Muqtada el Sadr som försöker tvinga sina våldsläror på människor som helst av allt vill bli lämnade i fred och leva sina egna liv. ”

“På måndag kan mina grannar gå ner till den lokala vapenaffären här och köpa kulsprutor, automatkarbiner och Uzis nog att utrusta hela den Irakiska motståndsrörelsen.”

“Trots Bush-entusiasternas försök att ifrågasätta Bush-dokumenten som nyligen distribuerades av Vita Huset så visar det sig nu att de inte bara äkta…”

Slowly but surely more and more Republicans are coming to understand what perhaps even George W Bush and Karl Rove know: They are never going to reap a plurality of the Hispanic vote. National Review’s editor Rich Lowry is the latest right-wing scribe to realize what conservative provocateur Steve Sailer has been arguing for years, namely that a growing bloc of Hispanc voters means smaller chances for the Republicans to win elections. All to many centrist and Big Business style Republicans, former NFL-quarterback Jack Kemp foremost among them, delude themselves into thinking that Latinos are “in play”, even though Hispanics routinely cast 2/3 of their votes for Democrats.

Republicans need to wake up and smell the Aztec coffee.

Global staffing giant Manpower released its employment outlook survey for the fourth quarter on September 14th. Its prediction: More sluggish job growth. Ouch.

According to manpower’s survey, 28% of U.S. employers plan to increase hiring while 7% are planning on trimming their payrolls. The net employment outlook, percentage of employers hiring minus the percentage of employers cutting back, is 21%, slightly less than what Manpower forecast for the second and third quarters (22% and 24%, respectively).

That’s pretty scary, since actual hiring in the second and third quarters was disappointing. If Manpower’s survey is to be believed, there’s no reason to expect the labor market to improve much, if at all, over the next few months.

Den flitige libertanske bloggaren Dick Erixon har en tendens att ägna mer uppmärksamhet åt var en artikel publiceras än åt vem som skrivit den. Ett skönt exempel är hur han den 23:e september skrev:

“New York Metro menar att kvinnorna runt president Bush vinner valet åt honom.”

Med “New York Metro” menar Erixon, måhända omedvetet, Naomi Wolf, den makalöst meningslösa feministen (se hennes bok “Skönhetsmyten” som ett typexempel på den tramsfeminism som nådde sin amerikanska höjdpunkt under tidigt 1990-tal men som fortfarande skvalpar omkring i Sverige) som ser sig själv som en stjärna kring vilken universum kretsar.

Wolf menar att Bush låtit den skickliga Karen Hughes “manipulera” framställningen av kvinnorna som omger president George W Bush, främst förstås hans fru Laura, och på så sätt kunnat urgröpa demokraternas traditionella övertag bland kvinnor.

Vad som har hänt är i själva verket att gifta vita kvinnor i allt större utsträckning stöder republikanerna. Någon liknande trend finns inte bland svarta och hispaniska kvinnor eller bland ensamstående vita kvinnor. De gifta vita kvinnornas dragning åt höger beror antagligen på ett antal faktorer. Dels är gruppen självvald: Bland gifta kvinnor torde de med en konservativ läggning vara överrepresenterade. Utöver det torde gifta kvinnor vara mindre imponerade över demokraternas entusiasm inför de Hollywood-typer och musikbranschnissar som prackar på amerikanska ungdomar alltmer vulgära livsstilar. De gifta vita kvinnornas sidbyte handlar inte som Wolf tror om Oprahfierade republikaner utan om att vita mödrar ser att USA - “vår familj” som demokratiske Georgia-senatorn Zell Miller uttryckte det på republikanernas partikonvent i New York - är hotat av blodtörstiga jihadister. Demokraternas presidentkandidat John Kerry lovar att snacka snack som främsta sätt att skydda amerikanarna medan Bush lovar att sätta dit terroristerna, “dead or alive”.

Men allt sån’t går spårlöst förbi Wolf som är upptagen med att studera färgnyanser och kameravinklar.