Review & Outlook, OnlineWSJ.com

 

According to the six-year narrative of the press and political class, the Bush Administration's counterterrorism policies fall somewhere between the Spanish Inquisition and the Ministry of Love in "1984." So it was something of a shock to read a remarkable front-page story in the New York Times yesterday, the abridged version being: Never mind.

 

In their 1,600-word dispatch "Next President Will Face Test on Detainees," reporters William Glaberson and Margot Williams discover that, gee whiz, many of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay really are dangerous terrorists. The Times reviewed "thousands of pages" of evidence that the government has so far made public and concludes that perhaps the reality is more complicated than the critics claim.

 

Lo and behold, detainees are implicated in such terror attacks as the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Those with "serious terrorism credentials" include al Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and the so-called "Dirty 30," Osama bin Laden's cadre of bodyguards. The Times didn't mention Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, though he's awaiting a war-crimes tribunal at Gitmo too.

 

Both Barack Obama and John McCain have pledged to put Guantanamo out of business, but, as the Times explains, "the review of the government's public files underscores the challenges of fulfilling that promise. The next president will have to contend with sobering intelligence claims against many of the remaining detainees." Now they tell us. Read article.

Anne Applebaum, WashingtonPost.com

 

Election Day, as always, is fraught with peril. Beware the seductiveness of opinion polls, which can mislead badly; beware the even greater attraction of exit polls, which have so often been wrong. Beware the too-early commentary, the too-swift judgment; and, above all, beware the hopeful, reassuring cliches that will be passed around today and tomorrow, giving false succor to winners and losers alike. Among the most dangerous:

 

The Republican Party will benefit from some time out of office. Not necessarily. Those Republicans who comfort themselves with this argument should remember the example of the British Conservative Party, which was ejected from power by Tony Blair in 1997 and spent the next decade tearing itself to shreds. Spared the time-consuming business of governing, the Tories had more time to argue with one another about basic principles and split themselves into warring factions. As a result, they have nominated one unelectable leader after another and have remained out of power.

 

The Democratic Party will become more thoughtful and responsible when in power. History tells a different story here, too: After decades in opposition, the Republicans took control of the House in 1994, vowing to reform Congress. For a while, they tried. Then they gave up. Read article.

Tom Smisek, RightSideNews.com

 

I am reading an interesting book; Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War by Aristotle A. Kallis. As a student of both marketing and the Second World War, this subject greatly interests me.

 

I quote from the first paragraph in the book, "What exactly is propaganda? Nowadays, the word usually associated with deception, lies and manipulation. And yet, propaganda did not always have such a clearly negative meaning. In the first decades of the twentieth century, it was deployed generically to indicate a systematic process of information management geared to promoting a particular goal and to guaranteeing a popular response as desired by the propagandist.

 

As such, propaganda remains a sub-genus of mass communication and persuasion, developed in the context of modernity to deal with two parallel developments: on the one hand, the increasing expansion and sophistication of the ‘public sphere' with its ever-growing thirst for information and opinion-forming; on the other hand, the exponential proliferation on available information, making it very difficult for the individual to identify, absorb and analyze the material."

 

Adolph Hitler understood the effectiveness of propaganda he said, "People can be lead like sheep". He implemented one of the most effective campaigns of it's day with Joseph Goebbels as his Propaganda Minister who used radio, press, cinema and theater to dominate the media. The principles of Goebbles Propaganda can be found at: wwwpsywarrior.com/Goebbels.html

 

Why are we addressing WWII Propaganda? Because we are experiencing the greatest example of modern day propaganda of our time. Read article.

 

Michael Ledeen, Pajamas Media.com

 

What makes me angriest: that there is no outcry against election fraud; that the media have become pure political instruments; that our “educational system” has produced an ignorant electorate.

 

Years and years ago, during Watergate, Barbara and I were living in Rome, and we had lots of journalist friends (I was then a correspondent for The New Republic, so…we saw lots of Italian journalists).

 

They were all openly jealous of America, because they saw American journalism as clearly superior to theirs.  American journalists reported, while they, the Italians, were doing politics. “We could bring down our entire Political Class,” they would say, “we all have information so devastating that no politician could survive,” but they didn’t publish it, because they didn’t see an acceptable alternative.

 

We would tell them that their job was not to make political decisions, but to report the news, and let the people decide. But they couldn’t; they were doing politics. And we felt superior, because American journalism, we thought, just reported the news and let the people decide.

 

Well, that’s over and done with now. Never before has the ignorance of the electorate been so intensely cultivated as in this election. Read article.

 

John R. Lott, Jr., NY Post.com

 

Would you like elections without secret ballots? To most Americans, the no tion is absurd. But, if Barack Obama becomes president, secret ballots seem destined to end for at least one type of election: union certifications.

 

The reasons for secret ballots are obvious. Not everyone feels comfortable making his or her political positions public; many would rather vote without fear of offending or angering someone else. Secret balloting essentially ended an old abuse, vote buying, in US elections.

 

Yet Obama promises to sign into law the so-called Employee Free Choice Act - which would end secret-ballot elections when it comes to unionization of workplaces. Read article.

 

Mark Stricherz, NRO.com

 

His best and worst demographics are notoriously difficult to predict accurately.

 

All the polls showed that Barack Obama would win. He was comfortably ahead of his chief rival. The RealClearPolitics average had him up by 8.3 percentage points. The result was foreordained. Only his margin of victory was in dispute.

 

Except that Obama didn’t win. He lost January’s New Hampshire primary by 2.6 percentage points.

 

Nobody should expect a repeat of that pollster’s fiasco tonight. Estimating turnout is more difficult in a primary than in a general election. Yet it is also true that even presidential polls are not oracles. Some polls get it wrong; and sometimes, polls get it really wrong.

 

Just scan the various surveys on RealClearPolitics or Pollster.com. Their results won’t all be correct. The ABC News/Washington Post daily tracking poll has Obama up by 11 percentage points. Rasmussen Reports has him up by six. Diageo/Hotline has him up by five.

 

By contrast, on the eve of Election Day four years ago, the pre-election polls’ findings were largely similar. CBS News had Bush ahead by 2. 1 percentage points; Harris had Bush up by 1; and Pew had Bush up by 3. Their results were also largely accurate. Bush ended up winning by 2.5 percentage points. (The exit polls, which consistently overstated Kerry’s support, were a different story.)

 

The polls will likely predict the winner this year, too. Obama is by all accounts the favorite. But, and this is essential to keep in mind, the polls might well be wrong. Read article.

 

John Rosenthal, Pajamas Media.com

 

Has the Obama campaign made a regular practice of accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions, as the research of Kenneth Timmerman suggests?

 

Well, if one is to judge by an article published last month by the Italian columnist Maria Laura Rodotà, in certain European circles such contributions would appear to be an open secret. Moreover, Rodotà’s account of being inundated by emails from the Obama campaign suggests that the campaign may not only have been accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions, but that it may have been soliciting them. Here is what Maria Laura Rodotà writes in her October 2 column in the major Italian daily Corriere della Sera [Italian link]:

 

Oh God. It’s my fault. And your fault. And also the fault of that friend of yours who gave her email to the Obama campaign. They have been writing us for a year, the Obama people — several times a day. They’ve sent us videos of Barack, they’ve responded to criticisms, they’ve laid down the party line, they’ve sold gadgets. They’ve invited us to interesting events like “Camp Obama” in California. … At the foot of each email, they’d ask for small contributions, even just five dollars — which won’t even get you breakfast here in downtown Milan. We never gave a cent. The cheapskates said, “You can’t do that,” they’d be foreign contributions; others sent donations from fake American addresses. Real or fake, live or online, you felt part of a community of like-minded persons, all normal and liberal. Read article.

 

 Hana Levi Julian, Arutz Sheva.com

 

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama privately expressed his support for a new Arab state within Israel's current borders, including eastern Jerusalem, during his meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah this summer.

 

According to a report published Tuesday in the Lebanese newspaper al-Ahbar, Obama told Abbas that he supports a PA state, and Arab "rights to east Jerusalem" as well. The sources said Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad "heard the best things they ever heard from an American president" during the meeting. However, said sources quoted in the report, the candidate asked them to keep his declaration a secret. Read article.

 

Tim Collie, NewsMax.com

 

Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama voted alongside former domestic terrorist William Ayers at Shoesmith Elementary School this morning, according to ABC News and other organizations.

 

Also voting at the same polling station: Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

 

Ayers, a former Weather Underground bomber who worked with Obama during his community organizing days, preceded the Democrat in voting by several minutes. Farrakhan also is expected to show up Tuesday morning to vote at the polling place. All three men claim their residency in the same area of Chicago’s South Side. Read article.

 

Paul R. Hollrah, NMJ.us

 

In a September 8, 2008 article titled, “The Culture War’s Decisive Battle has Begun,” Herbert E. Meyer describes, clearly and succinctly, the opposing sides in the culture war that has dominated American politics for decades.

 

He begins with the observation that, in every war, there is a decisive battle...a battle that does not end the war but which, from the perspective of history, is the moment at which one side’s ultimate victory – and the other side’s defeat – is sealed. He cites Gettysburg as the decisive battle of the Civil War and Midway as the decisive battle of World War II. And he is convinced that this year’s presidential election is shaping up to be the decisive battle of the Culture War.

 

Meyer explains, “On one side are the Traditionalists. We believe that church and State should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions."

 

He continues, “On the other side of this Culture War are the Left Wing Liberals. They are uncomfortable with our traditions, with the inevitable inequalities of our free-market economy, and with our military power. They dislike our values, our morality, and our unabashed displays of patriotism." Read article.

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