Debate first impressions: No knock out blows; neither candidate outshone the other. Both seemed comfortingly nervous. It's oddly reassuring to know the big guys feel the same pressures we would. You could see Mr. Kerry's hands tremble as he gestured, and the President's voice had that curious upward inflection he gets when he's not sure he's persuading you.

Mr. Bush was more likable and (eventually) relaxed, Mr. Kerry more stern and serious. The President presented the more optimistic, positive ideas, Senator Kerry was more negative and critical.

Ultimately, I think President Bush's message resonated more with the average american: "The best way to protect this country is to stay on the offensive." Mr. Kerry offered a critique, asserted he could do better, but never spelled out a compelling vision of how.

Neither candidate was stellar, but if I had to pick a winner it would have to be Mr. Bush -- not by much -- for a more cogent anti-terrorism strategy and winning personal style.

Recent earthquakes deep inside Mt. Saint Helens indicate it's getting ready to blow, scientists say. But not as badly as the 1980 eruption.

House action to put 9/11 Commission advice into effect is stalled over immigration issues. Which are important, since it's only a matter of time before our porous borders are used against us (We just barely stopped Ahmed Ressam, the Millenium Bomb Plotter, you'll recall). But look, Congresspersons, reforming our obviously broken intelligence system is too urgent to get hung up on side issues. Take most of the loaf, and come back to border fortification later.

The prosaically named Space Ship One, which became the first private manned spaceship earlier this summer, will attempt to claim the $10 million dollar Ansari X-Prize starting today. To do that, you have to carry three humans (or a pilot and the equivalent weight of two humans) 62.1 miles high twice in two weeks.

Watch the webcast here and get all the latest info there.

Emboldened by all this, Virgin Airways announced yesterday that if you're rich enough, you'll be able to do the same thing in 2007.

"Ransom Payments Seen Fuelling Iraq's Hostage Crisis" says this story from Reuters. Duh!

With that valuable knowledge under their ammunition belts (as well as the lessons they derived from such stalwart nations as the Philippines and Spain), I doubt we'll see a slackening in sacred kidnappings and holy beheadings any time soon.

As we head into debating season, Gallup reaffirms (Pew, Zogby, and Harris -- liberal-slanted polls all -- to the contrary) that President Bush holds a 52% to 44% lead among likely voters, 54% to 41% among registered voters. 54% approve of the job he's doing, and 47% declare they are "certain" to vote for Mr. Bush -- versus 37% who are that commited to Mr. Kerry.

Note to Mr. Bush's staff: Please take the lesson of the first Reagan/Mondale debate to heart and don't over-rehearse the man:

"Reagan rambled and seemed weary in his first debate with Mondale, raising questions about his age, 73. He said later he wasn't tired, 'I was overtrained.'

"I just had more facts and figures poured at me for weeks before than anyone could possibly sort out and use," he said. Reagan said he avoided that in the second debate, when he got off his memorable line to the question of whether his age would affect his second-term performance. 'I will not make age an issue," he said. "I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.'

"Reagan claimed that wasn't practiced, either. 'That really was off the top of my head,' he said."

Let Bush be Bush, and he'll triumph every time; the plastic and manufactured can't compare to the honest and real.

The problem with Mr. Kerry is that he has always wanted to be President, and will morph into just about anything to get there. To paraphrase a comment the actor Peter Sellers made about himself years ago, Mr. Kerry has become so many characters that he's lost the real 'him.'

More likely, the 'real him' is that rich-boy windsurfing off Nantucket -- the one he tries to conceal on the campaign trail. It's not so much that he's lost sight of himself as that he needs to keep himself out of sight.

President Bush -- armies of critics to the contrary -- is what he is, like it or not. He hasn't always wanted to be President. Heaven knows, for much of his life he didn't know what he wanted to be! He has that healthy attitude toward the Presidency held by Reagan, Truman, and Lincoln -- that he and the office are separate entities; that he just happens to have the privilege of occupying that office for awhile; that it is not he that's important or great, but the Presidency itself.

In 2000, at least, Mr. Bush said he would be just as happy whether the people elected him or sent him back to his ranch. It is common knowledge that he feels "called" to be President at this time -- not as an entitlement, but as a duty. His actions over the last three years, resolutely doing what he had to do no matter what, bear that out.

Quite frankly, it is the Gnomon's view that no one who wants to be President should be given the job. It should always be reserved for those who run because they have to, not because they want to -- out of duty, rather than desire. Our best Presidents, from Washington on down, have come from those ranks.

Determined to bolster Senator Kerry's talking point that President Bush is a screw up, the press spun a sentence fragment by Colin Powell as negatively as they could: Situation in Iraq 'Getting Worse' blared the AP.

Here's what he really said: "It's getting worse. And the reason it's getting worse is that they are determined to disrupt the election. They do not want the Iraqi people to vote for their own leaders in a free, democratic election. And because it's getting worse, we will have to increase our efforts to defeat it, not walk away and pray and hope for something else to happen"

And that, if we recall, is precisely what Mr. Bush and others in his administration have been saying would happen all along. Come to think of it, didn't he warn us from the beginning that this whole Terror War might take a while?

Sumner Redstone, Chairman of Viacom, has endorsed President Bush for President, says the Wall Street Journal.  "Republican values are good for Viacom," is his POV.  Can't deny that.

The irony here is that Viacom owns CBS which owns Dan Rather who just tried a grandstand play to bring down the same Mr. Bush "for the country's own good."

 

CBS radio and other media spun them as "the middle-class tax-cuts with bipartisan support," but let's name names: It was the Bush Tax Cuts that were extended overwhelmingly by the House and Senate yestersay.

It was the Bush Tax Cuts that were approved even by such caustic democrat partisans as Tom Daschle and Charles Rangel -- though they carped as they did it.

And quite frankly it was the Bush Tax Cuts that jumpstarted the economy and have it growing steadily now, despite the shock of 9/11.

No wonder Mr. Bush leads nationally (even in the CBS poll!) and in crucial states like Florida and Ohio -- though the press wants to spin those as "slight" leads.

Even "Futures Market" bettors are now favoring Mr. Bush to win. Nothing important there, says the media.

In completely unconnected news: Public confidence in the media is at a 30-year low.

Senator Kerry decided scaring the old folks with incendiary talk about Mr. Bush taking their Social Security away wasn't enough. So he told the oldsters of West Palm Beach that the President will probably draft their grandkids into the military, too!

This even though, as the Palm Beach Post dutifully noted, "Bush has never suggested he call a draft and Pentagon officials have not said one is needed."

In point of fact, reinstating the draft has been pushed by democrats, not the President.

What? Tuberculosis still kills 2 million people a year?? When we have the power to be rid of it for good? That's inexcusable in the 21st century.

One of the Gnomon's favorites back in our hippy days, Cat Stevens, was turned back at the border yesterday because he's listed on the government's Advanced Passenger Information System watch list. Mr. Stevens, who changed his name to Yusuf Islam ("Joe Islam") sometime back, was on a plane from London to Washington DC that was diverted because of him to Bangor, Maine.

Surely the writer of Peace Train doesn't pose a threat to national security! Another sign of how times have changed.

Note to Mr. Islam: Dude, catch bull at four and go back to Buddha and the chocolate box.

We're as tired of the Dan Rather Fake Documents scandal as everybody else (except Dan Rather ), so let's sum up and let it go:

This USA Today story makes clear -- more by describing him than by anything he says -- that the ex-National Guard official that concocted (as he did, cover stories to the contrary) the Fake Documents is is an emotionally damaged, raving anti-Bush loony.

Dan Rather, himself admittedly odd at times, is a veteran journalist of long standing. Mr. Rather originally said the source of his Fake Documents was credible and unimpeachable. The first instinct of a professional journalist is (allegedly) to make sure their sources are trustworthy. Are we supposed to believe that a journalist with such experience would be taken in by someone with such an obvious ax to grind?

No, that is absurd.

Mr. Rather, it is obvious now, knowingly publicized Fake Documents in an attempt to bring down George Bush "for our own good." It is conceivable (to put the best face on it) that he may have just plunged ahead "for the good of the country," aware of the doubts expressed by forensic specialists and the documents' dubious provenance, but hoping that they were genuine. And even if they weren't real, surely they must be correct. There is a higher truth than mere accuracy, after all.

If that is what happened, he will no doubt have many fellow anti-Bush cultists that applaud him for his patriotic intentions. Michael Moore will be first among them, followed by Terry McAuliffe.

Frankly though, The Gnomon believes Mr. Rather was fully aware that his documents were fake -- and used them anyway. Why? Perhaps because behind the mask of journalistic objectivity, he too is a raving anti-Bush partisan, cut from the same cloth as Bill Burkett, Michael Moore, and MoveOn.org. Perhaps also, he hoped to cap his long and declining career by taking down a President and saving the country.

Stonewalling Nixon-like against revealing who gave him the papers, he may have thought that the inertia of CBS credibility alone would convince (or silence) all doubters -- as it was in the old days.

Well, these are not the old days.

Finally, Mr. Rather admits the long-obvious.

 

What an astonishing photograph -- if you know what you're looking at. That red blob to the southwest may well be the first planet ever photographed orbiting another star. Astronomers arent quite sure. It could also be an object known as a "brown dwarf," essentially a star that never started working. It's orbiting another brown dwarf named 2M1207.

But whatever it is, precisely, it is truly amazing to look at.

Up till now, we've detected dozens of extra-solar worlds, but only indirectly -- by inferring their existence from the way their gravity makes their "sun" jiggle. Now we're looking at one face-to-face.

This one, if it is indeed a planet, is too big for anything we'd recognize as life to dwell there. But this picture means that eventually we'll have photos of earth-sized worlds around other stars.

Perhaps they'll even be blue.

"I find it shocking that some people are surprised by the fact that it is a long and difficult conflict."

-- Senator Jon Kyl (R) Arizona, on Iraq

Oliver North, just back from his umpteenth imbeded trip to Iraq for Fox News, says Mr. Kerry and his media surrogates are misled (charitable word) about what's happening now in Iraq.

Here's a story that won't get much play (in any positive way, at least) in the popular press. The Hill is reporting that ethics charges filed against House Majority Leader Tom Delay by whiney Democrat Chris Bell will be dismissed.

Bell lost his primary and won't be up for reelection November 2nd thanks to last year's rolicking Texas redistricting adventures. So, with characteristic good grace, the first-term congressman filed a sorehead ethics complaint against Tom Delay charging him with all forms of political malversation.

Bell and his complaint will both be leaving Congress soon.

Nancy Kwan is an incredibly talented actress and an important film pioneer. Best known for her first two roles in The World of Suzie Wong and Flower Drum Song (where she sang the famous I Adore Being a Girl), she was one of the first asian actors to become truly popular in American film. As such she became a role-model for countless other performers of asian descent.

She even achieved the difficult feat of crossing over into non-asian roles, playing an Italian acrobat in The Main Attraction and a proper british secretary in The Wild Affair.

There is now a campaign to get Nancy Kwan a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and The Gnomon is all for it. There are just seven stars for asian actors at present, only one -- Anna May Wong's -- for a female. Nancy Kwan should be the eighth. For information on the campaign for Nancy Kwan's star, email star@nancy-kwan.com.

CNS News tipped us off to an intriguing quote from Bill Burkett, the ex-National Guard officer and anti-Bush rant-monger now suspected of giving Dan Rather the infamous Fake Documents. In one of his many tirades for the fringe-liberal Online Journal, this one dated August 25, 2004, Burkett rambled on and on about how President Bush is a liar, etc. etc.

How does he know? Well, lots of eccentric ways, but here's the interesting snippet:

"George W. Bush, you may be the president [sic]. But I know that you lied. I know from your files that we have now reassembled, the fact that you did not fulfill your oath, taken when you were commissioned to 'obey the orders of the officers appointed over you'. I know that you not only lied to the American people in 1994, but have lied consistently since then. Mr. Bush, not every serviceman except you is incompetent. When you failed to show up as ordered for duty, they simply recorded the truth..."

"Reassembled??" Why, whatever could that mean?

ABC News reports that Colonel Walter Staudt -- the gentleman Dan Rather's Fake Documents said was pressuring George W. Bush's commander to "sugarcoat" Bush's record -- declares he did nothing of the kind. Because he didn't need to.

"He was highly qualified," says Staudt. "He passed all the scrutiny and tests he was given."

And what's more, "He [Bush] didn't use political influence to get into the Air National Guard... No one called me about taking George Bush into the Air National Guard. It was my decision. I swore him in. I never heard anything from anybody.

"I asked him, 'Why do you want to be a fighter pilot?' " Staudt recalled. "He said, 'Because my daddy was one.' He was a well-educated, bright-eyed young man, just the kind of guy we were looking for.

"He presented himself well. I'd say he was in the upper 10 percent or 5 percent or whatever we ever talked to about going to pilot training. We were pretty particular because when he came back [from training], we had to fly with him."

Full Disclosure: Colonel Staudt says he plans to vote for Mr. Bush in November. Of course, unlike partisan democrats like Marion Knox, Ben Barnes, and Fake Document-maker Bill Burkett, this disqualifies Colonel Staudt for a slot on 60 Minutes II.

Opinion polls are either becoming more and more biased, or (more likely) the public is becoming more aware of biases they've always had. The press, of course, trumpets only the polls that promote thier preconceived agendas. Yesterday, two generally left-leaning polls that alleged Senator Kerry was gaining on President Bush were rapturously publicized by a relieved media.

Today, Gallup -- the poll politicians on both sides respect as most accurate -- shows Mr. Bush with a solid lead by every measure.

In a day when TV anchors forge (or, ahem, promote documents they probably know are forged) National Guard documents to skew the election for our own good, this should surprise no one.

UPDATE: The New York Times finds this all very confusing...

In case you're wondering, climatologists say this year's onslaught of Florida hurricanes is not due to "Global Warming."  It's just the way hurricanes are.

 

Most people don't realize we lost 11 nuclear bombs in various plane crashes and other accidents during the Cold War. A retired Air Force Lt. Colonel now believes he's found the one off Savannah, Georgia.

The Fake National Guard Documents have now been traced to a Kinko's fax machine just down the road from the home of raging anti-Bush demagogue Bill Burkett.

Meanwhile Instapundit Glenn Reynolds reports that ABC reports that CBS didn't report that Marian Knox (secretary to Mr. Bush's commanding officer who supposedly wrote the Fake Documents) is a democrat. She had to admit -- on 60 Minutes II, no less -- that they're Fake Documents, but she insists they're still accurate (!!).

UPDATE: Strangely, the story referred to above is no longer to be found on the ABC site -- or at least it's been hidden away on a backpage somewhere.

Well, gee... that was certainly news.

"We know the documents are real, but you poor fools refuse to trust us -- so we'll try to make it clear to your tiny, unenlightened minds. Then maybe you'll see it our way and vote for Kerry!"

Now it's sheduled for 5:00 pm ET...

CNS is reporting that CBS will issue a "clarification" on the fake document scandal. Postponed once, it's now scheduled for 3:30 pm ET.

Senator Kerry became exercised yesterday because a chart that's only appeared in the Medicare Trust Fund Report three times wasn't there this year. To him, it "proves" once again that Mr. Bush is a lying liar -- as is the common wisdom among the cognoscenti of the left.

Whatever the explanation, Medicare administrator Dr. Mark McClellan says Mr. Kerry is missing the point. The chart pictures how much of each Social Security check your average recipient will spend on Medicare premiums -- a percentage that will grow under the new Medicare revisions. But at the same time, the out-of-pocket costs of oldsters will decrease. According to Dr. McClellan, "The result is seniors are paying a lot less on out-of-pocket costs overall."

Obviously, the real solution is to curb the forces driving medical costs up, one of which is lawsuits by guys like John Edwards. A little conflict of interest on this issue in the Kerry camp, perhaps? Mr. Bush has already proposed reforms in this area.

After no doubt checking to make sure his memory is correct, Mr. Bush says, no, he did not disobey a direct order from his National Guard commander -- as CBS's fake documents assert he did.

Does Dan Rather's fake document fiasco sound the "Old Media's" death-knell?  CK Rairden at the Washington Dispatch thinks so.

 

With the number one movie this weekend based on a vapid, violent video game about shooting as many zombies as you can, a little pop-psychology would suggest the nation still yearns to vicariously (and always successfully) battle the forces of barbarian chaos that threaten the real world. Or, perhaps we're looking for a reality where good and evil are more clear-cut -- where, for instance, those who hold themselves up as paragons of virtue don't violate their marriage vows in peculiar ways.

Then again, maybe we just subconciously want Mr. Kerry's zombie-like speaking style to go away.

No, we are not going to forget.

Just a thought (which will strike you positively or negatively depending on your orientation): Mr. Kerry's protests against the Iraq War and a Texas President give away who the "Real Kerry" is. He is the same smug, strident Viet-Nam War protester he was in 1971 -- only writ a bit larger this time.

As it was then, his experience with battle is only valuable as it gives credibility to his critique. I think there is great potential for some armchair pop-psychology here!

I suppose we should address this, since it's all the rage.

Mr. Kerry and his acolytes in the press finally did the expected thing by bringing up President Bush's National Guard service yet again. Now it turns out the documents dredged up to great fanfare by CBS (from the "secret files" of one of Mr. Bush's now-dead commanders, the story goes) may well be fake. Newsweek editor Evan Thomas already confessed on Inside Washington that most of the media is rooting for Kerry, but this is a little too obvious.

To me, the real story is: What took Kerry et. al. so long? Remember the lightspeed responses by Clinton's famous "War Room?" This campaign's response-time is as lackluster as their candidate's speaking style!

The whinning about Mr. Bush's service was well-answered, point by point, in this article by William Campenni, a retired Colonel who was in the Air National Guard when the President was.

NASA's Genesis probe, a product of the hopefully-now-defunct "faster, better, cheaper" era of '90's space exploration, failed to regurgitate its parachute today and wound up in a crater on the Utah desert floor.

After collecting never-before-examined solar wind particles for three years, the intrepid space probe was supposed to be snagged by Hollywood stunt pilots while hurtling out of the sky at six feet per second because even lightly touching down would ruin the samples.

Who came up with this idea anyway??

At least it wasn't the stunt pilot's fault; they were ready to do their stuff, having plenty of experience from Dante's Peak and Batman IV. It was just the parachute system -- the same one that deployed without fail or foul up on every American manned space mission (and several early spy satellites that were also captured in mid-air, incidentally) from Ham the chimp through the last Apollo! How could you mess that up?

Well, they'd better figure it out fast because in 2006 the Stardust mission is coming home to the same Utah desert in exactly the same way.

USA Today, of all people, has a fine article today explaining the latest ways your PC can be hijacked for diabolical purposes and what you can do about it.

The info contained therein will be common knowledge to the experienced computer geek, but for most people it may be the first they've heard of it.

Allow us to recommend our favorite anti-virus program, spyware shield, and firewall -- all of them free, incidentally. And all to be found, along with many other proven and tested freeware programs, at one of the most useful sites on the Web: Pricelessware.org. (Note: Incidentally, The Gnomon has no stake at all in Pricelessware.org other than that we download the software listed there all the time).

As well, the Department of Homeland Security recommends you start using something other than the ubiquitous Microsoft Internet Explorer (or at least turn off the IE features that open such wide security holes). Geeks in-the-know recommend FireFox, the free, easy-to-use, nice-to-look-at, open-source browser from Mozilla.org -- on which I am writing this post right now!

Gargantuan filmmaker Michael Moore wants to get his alleged documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 on TV before the November elections, nobly pulling out of the Oscar race for that movie genre.

Allow me to suggest the SciFi Channel.

The Christian Science Monitor holds out the prospect that Senator Kerry's staff shake up (which he denies happened) will energize his campaign. But it doesn't seem too likely to us. Mr. Bush was gaining in the polls even before the GOP Convention, and still got a post-convention bounce according to Gallup, Rasmussen, and even Time and Newsweek. Mr. Kerry received his fabled "negative bounce" after his best chance to present himself to the country and has not recovered at all.

Barring a major, epoch-making event, The Gnomon predicts he won't -- though the margins will narrow, particularly in the poorly-done Time and Newsweek opinion samples.

Senator Kerry is a spent force.

"When it comes to diplomacy, it looks like John Kerry should stick to windsurfing."

-- Vice-President Cheney, yesterday at a campaign-stop in Iowa

The Presidential election is now in the homestretch, and Gnomon is back on the air.