Presidential Race ctd 4

1. John Kerry's real record as anti-war activist (weeklystandard)
2. Election integrity at stake (george will, wapo)
3. Lawrence O'Donnell loses it on Scarborough (indcjournal)
4. Double votes taint Florida, records show (orlandosentinel)
5. Kerry’s Dilemma: Or, how to lose an election. (victor davis hanson, nationalreview)
6. Two Visions, Two Styles in One Race to the Finish For better or worse, stump speeches give way to ad-libs as he reaches out to the uncommitted: Citing former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's 2003 warning about low troop levels in Iraq, Kerry stumblingly described how the military commander spoke "to Congress and the American people through the Congress." Then, after he larded an extended passage on his healthcare proposals with long, tortured minutes of eye-glazing figures, Kerry arrived at a climactic applause line.In his prepared text, Kerry was supposed to snipe at the president's stance on healthcare by mocking his advice to Americans: "Don't get sick."Instead, he blurted out: "And don't get sick, just pray, stand up and hope — wait — whatever. We are all left wondering and hoping — that's it."Only the instant prompting of campaign staffers, clapping furiously around the room, sparked enough applause to rescue the candidate from dead air. (latimes)
7. If Bush loses, the winner won't be Kerry: it will be Zarqawi : Understandably exasperated by the feeble multilateralism that had permitted genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s and hampered effective war in Kosovo, he did not see that determined unilateralism requires more, not less diplomacy. And whereas some conservative leaders resonate internationally (Margaret Thatcher was the patron saint of taxi drivers in six continents), George W Bush doesn't travel, literally or metaphorically.
   But he has got the big idea. There is a global problem with Islamism. There is a problem of alliances between bad states and terror organisations that reach beyond state boundaries. There is an almost universal rottenness in the politics of the Arab world. There is an atrocious weakness or, as the UN oil-for-food scandal shows, worse than weakness, in many of the Western nations and international organisations that are supposed to help guarantee our security. And it is the duty of the most powerful nation on earth to do something about it.
   The only big free country that has retained the untrammelled capacity to decide for itself has been decisive. The greatest terrorist hope about America - that it was not serious - has gone. And a huge, partly covert programme has begun to catch our foes and make us safer. It tempts fate to say it, but it is not mere chance that neither Britain nor America has suffered terrorist attack since 2001. (charles moore, telegraph uk)
8. Guardian advocates assassination of Bush (Charlie Brooker, Guardian UK)

Other

• The President's Brain: Karl Rove (mark steyn, telegraph)
• Blood donor has mad-cow disease (iht)