*Take McQ’s advice and put down your drink before you read this.
*It’s not too late to read Jane Galt’s hilarious blogging of the second debate (“K[e]rry: I was there when the budget was balanced! Me: I was there when the World Trade Center site was cleaned up! I claim full credit!” “Memo to Mr Kerry: Pro-life voters don’t want you to respect them–they want you to not spend their tax dollars on abortions!”)
*Smash on Kerry and the anniversary of the USS Cole bombing: “My problem with Kerry isn�t that he sees Iraq as a diversion from the War on Terror, but rather that he sees the War on Terror as a diversion from his domestic agenda.”
*Hitchens on Saddam’s nuclear program (“Of course, we could always have left Iraq alone, and brought nearer the day when the charming Qusai could have called for Dr. Obeidi and said: ‘That barrel of yours. It’s time to dig it up.'”)
*Matt Welch, who disdained the whole Swift Boat story, nonetheless rips the media for not diving into the merits of the story earlier.
*More on the Swift Vets’ latest campaign, including the words of Medal of Honor winner Bud Day (“Shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, Maj. Day suffered numerous injuries, managed to escape from his prison, walked for two weeks through the jungle eating live frogs before he was recaptured.” More here).
*A Boston Globe columnist casually accuses Bush of being a murderer (via Allah).
*Bill Frist rips John Edwards for giving false hope by saying “If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again” (Link via the Corner).
*Nader challenges Michael Moore to a debate.
*Mark Steyn thought Kerry sounded awful when he looked at the debate audience and declared that he, Bush and Charlie Gibson were the only ones in the hall who made $200,000:
[H]ow can you tell by looking at people that they earn under 200 grand? And, even if you can, is it such a great idea to let ’em know they look like working stiffs and chain-store schlubs? But, when you’ve married two heiresses, it’s kinda hard to tell where the losers with mere six-figure incomes begin: it’s like the 97-year-old who calls the guys in late-middle age “sonny”. In America, quite a few fairly regular families earn 200 grand and an awful lot more families hope to be in that bracket one day. And, more importantly, the sheer condescension of assuming that the room divides into the colossi of the politico-media ruling class and everyone else sums up everything that’s wrong with the modern Democratic Party.
I had the same reaction – when Kerry said that there was a guy over his shoulder, older guy in a decent suit, balding, grey hair and glasses – he certainly looked to me like the type who could easily be a doctor, lawyer, businessman type. There were a couple of others who, even just on appearance, could easily have been the same, and as Steyn points out that’s still just picking by the stereotypes.