SO FAR, no explosions on the Mt. St. Helens webcam. But Forest for the Trees will be volcano-blogging from 40 miles away, just in case anything happens.

DEBATE PREDICTION: Unless Kerry melts into a puddle on the floor, the media spin will be that he did well and helped his campaign. This is for two reasons. One is, as Newsweek’ Evan Thomas remarked, that the press “wants Kerry to win.”

The other, of course, is that they want the race to remain interesting — which is to say, a race — for another month, and it’ll be hard to do that if everybody’s pronouncing Kerry doomed after tonight.

UPDATE: Expectations-lowering here, but these comments may go just a bit too far in that direction:

“People keep analyzing these things as a great opportunity for Kerry—his last opportunity to define himself,” said Democratic operative Chris Lehane. “But usually what happens is that someone makes a mistake, and that ends up defining the debates, which end up defining the last four weeks of the campaign.” Mr. Lehane should know: He was Al Gore’s press secretary in 2000.

Wasn’t Al Gore orange for one of the debates, too?

MORE: Hey, the debate’s still many hours away, but the DNC is inviting people to declare it a Kerry victory ahead of time. It’s double-reverse Laphamization, or something.

AN IRAQI WOMAN TO BRITAIN’S LABOR PARTY — DON’T ABANDON IRAQ:

The woman who helped swing the vote at the Labour conference over pulling troops out of Iraq today accused party members of naivety about the situation in the country.

Shanaz Rashid – whose husband is a minister in the interim Iraqi government – was earlier given a standing ovation when she made an emotional appeal not to pull troops out.

Close to tears, she told party activists that many friends had perished under Saddam Hussein and she had kissed the ground with joy on arriving back at Baghdad after the war.

She praised the Prime Minister for “standing up” to Saddam and liberating the country.

“Yes, there have been difficulties. Yes, there have been mistakes perhaps many mistakes. No, you did not find weapons of mass destruction.

“But for the great majority of Iraqis WMD was never the issue. We don’t understand the criticism of your Prime Minister. All we wanted was to be free.”

She added: “I appeal to you all … to help us build a new democratic federal Iraq that would respect the lives of human beings.”

Asked later if she considered Labour members naive about the situation for Iraqis, she said: “Yes I do think so. They don’t know the reality of their lives. . . . If they are concerned about the Iraqi children they should not be asking the British Government to leave them alone at the mercy of others.”

Blair won with 80% of the vote.

UPDATE: Sorry, the 80% is wrong. “The call for Mr Blair to set an early date for withdrawing the troops was defeated by 86% to 14%.”

DAVID HALBERSTAM ON RATHERGATE:

“What they did was very stupid,” Halberstam said. “But they have been heading in that direction for a long time. I’ve always been critical of this whole business of star journalism, where you have a big anchor coming on air and acting as a prosecutor with someone else’s reporting. In many instances over the years on that program the reports have been lightly or poorly sourced and the reporting suffers as a result. Dan Rather right now is the principal anchor of the Evening News, but he is also the program’s main reporter. Then he’s the anchor of 48 Hours. On top of that he’s the star of 60 Minutes II. That’s just too much for one person and it leads to the kind of sloppiness in their reporting that just happened.

“In general, the last couple of years have not been very good ones for the media,” Halberstam added. “There has been too much corporate control, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the broadcast networks eventually got out of the news business. They’ve been moving to get out of it for years anyway.”

Interesting. It’s occurred to me that Halberstam’s book, The Reckoning, about the decline of the American automobile industry, sheds a bit of light on what’s going on with Big Journalism now. (Via Bill Hobbs, who has further thoughts.)

UPDATE: Some thoughts on the draft from a serviceman in Iraq.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The New York Post: “Dan does it again.”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader sends me a copy of this email he sent to the anti-draft crusaders interviewed by Rather:

Our 22 year old son is a US Marine, SpOps. His Btn just returned from the al Anbar region of Iraq. They have the unfortunate distinction of having taken the most casualties of any Coalition unit in Iraq (33 KIA 200+ WIA, sent home). However, they – in the proud tradition of US Marines, and specifically the 7th Marine Regiment – killed over 3,000 of the enemy bringing peace to the region o which they were assigned. They took on an area where there was murderous errorist activity on a daily basis and today, it’s as safe as most of Philly.

I can guarantee you, because I had this conversation with Josh and with his comrades-in-arms, they DO NOT WANT conscripted kids with them. At home, hey are the finest men this country has to offer. Polite, generous and even lightly patriotic. At work they are the worst enemy of people who attack the S. They are committed to what they do. They don’t need whining, snotty children linging to mommy’s apron who they would have to babysit.

So, please contact Rep. Rangel and the other Democrats who put forth this egislation. Tell them to withdraw it – not that it has a snowball’s chance in Baghdad of passing anyway. And please, don’t fear for your sons. My son and his friends, WILLINGLY sleeping in holes in the sand and eating MRE’s will make sure you and your sons can all sleep well in your soft beds after a quiet dinner.

Michael Becker
Phoenix, AZ
very proud father of LCpl Josh. The best man we know…

Nice email.

MORE: Another:

I am writing in furtherance of the comments made by Michael Becker, father of the Marine who just returned from Iraq.

My son, Michael, is a 22 Marine Corporal. On 9/11 he was a sophomore in college. We live in Northern NJ, about 15 miles from ground zero. Michael called home and said that he had to do something about 9/11, so he left college and joined the Marines.

I am an attorney and my wife is a teacher. Our oldest son is a graduate of New York University Law School and an associate at a major NYC law firm. Michael was doing fine in college and did not ‘have to join the Marines”. He joined as a calling.

Michael has been in the Corp. for for almost 3 years and has not yet had an assignment overseas. That is about to change. He is presently assigned to the 15th MEU in Camp Pendelton. They will be deployed sometime on or before December 6th. We do not know where they are going, but we expect that Iraq is part of the plan.

Michael and all of his Marine buddies can’t wait to go. That is why they signed up. In fact, someone is his company made a mistake. They entire company was threatened that if mistakes continued, there would be a punishment. That
punishment was that they would not go to Iraq. That is correct, if they mess up, they will not go to Iraq. This is very upsetting to them.

The Marines do not want conscripts. Every one of these guys or gals will have his (or her) life on the line depending on the Marines around them. They do not want people who have to be forced to be there. Every one of them is prepared to give their all for the other Marines, their family and their country. They do not need anyone there who does not feel the same way.

People who do not know military families just don’t understand. Maybe some day they will finally realize how much we all owe to LCpl Josh Becker, my son Cpl Michael Wishnia, and thousand of Marines and soldiers.

Bernard Wishnia
Livingston, NJ

Another interesting email.

THERE’S A PRE-DEBATE DEBATE between Michele Catalano and Neal Pollack.

WOMEN VOTERS AND THE VANISHING GENDER GAP: Thoughts here and here.

NIPPLEGATE UPDATE: Eric Olsen has thoughts on Janet Jackson’s breast.

ROGER SIMON WONDERS if attacks in Baghdad are timed to influence coverage of the debates tonight. I think that’s quite likely.

IN THE MAIL: John Steele Gordon’s An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power. It looks quite interesting.

I’m getting a lot of books in the mail these days, and it surprises me how good a job the publishers do of sending me things that I actually want to read.

INDCJOURNAL interviews CBS reporters about their rather dubious draft-reinstatement story (based on debunked hoax emails) that was mentioned below.

Best bit, from producer Linda Karas: “The truth of the e-mails were absolutely irrelevant to the piece, because all the story said was that people were worried. It’s a story about human beings that are afraid of the draft. We did not say that this (e-mail) was true, it’s just circulating. We are not verifying the e-mail.”

And people accuse bloggers of trading in rumor?

UPDATE: In a related matter the folks at CrushKerry are telling Congressional Republicans to back off of RatherGate. “We Don’t Want (Or Need) Your Help.”

KERRY AND THE SOUTH: I’m writing a weekly column for The Guardian between now and the election, and the first one is up.

AT LEAST THEY’RE NOT CALLING THEM ANKLE BITERS, or going on about pajamas. But the Iranian mullarchy is calling Iranian bloggers CIA tools.

If only the CIA had its act together that well. . . .

More on the murky goings-on in Iran here.

By the way, follow the “ankle biters” link above to read a response from Steven Levy, and my reply.

NEWS FROM SAMARRA AND NAJAF: Tim Chavez notes some unreported successes. Well, now they’re reported, at least in the Nashville Tennessean.

UPDATE: See this post, as reporters who were in Iraq dispute some of Chavez’s reports.

IT’S BLOGGERIFIC! This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up, featuring a vast number of posts from a vast number of blogs. Statistically, quite a few of ’em are likely to be better than this one, so check them out!

MOVEON VS. GALLUP: The Mystery Pollster weighs in.

MORE THOUGHTS ON VOTING MACHINES AND FRAUD: “People vote, machines don’t.”

HERE’S A LINK TO THE MT. ST. HELENS WEBCAM: At the moment, the clouds are just clouds.

HERE’S MORE on how CBS was snookered by bogus documents again, along with a link to this FactCheck.org debunking.

CBS: Desperately in need of pajamas. Apparently their ankles haven’t been bitten enough to inspire thoroughness and honesty, yet.

UPDATE: Interestingly, this Kerry position on compulsory national service doesn’t get much attention.

WHERE DID ALL THE JOBS GO? NOWHERE. Daniel Drezner writes about outsourcing in today’s New York Times.

ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT VOTER FRAUD, and lots of Bush supporters have been emailing me stories and anecdotes in support of the notion that the Democrats will be “emptying the cemeteries” to ensure that there are plenty of dead people voting for Kerry.

I’ve tended to scoff at these reports — a certain amount of fraud is inevitable, and there are all sorts of reasons for people to make a big deal of the prospects in advance. (Though for a contrary argument, read this.) But having driven by the cemetery pictured at right, I’m beginning to wonder if the dead-people-for-Kerry vote might not be bigger than I thought. . . .

UPDATE: Several readers think I’m underplaying the importance of voter fraud, and one notes that John Fund has a new book out on voter fraud. (More here: “the level of suspicion has grown so dramatically that it threatens to undermine our political system.”) I’m all for positive voter ID, secure voting technologies, and so on. I just hope that the election isn’t close enough for this to matter.

Anyway, Bill Hobbs is all over this topic if you’re interested.

SPACESHIP ONE had some control problems and rolled, forcing an early engine shutdown. But CNN and Fox are reporting that it reached the requisite altitude for a successful X-Prize mission. It’s scheduled for reentry shortly.

UPDATE: A successful flight, and a safe landing. Woohoo!

NPR PRAISES BLOGS AND ISSUES A CORRECTION:

First, we must acknowledge that the blogs have truly arrived. It is hard for journalists who have led a sheltered life without public accountability to acknowledge that those days are over. . . .

There’s then an acknowledgment that their “swing voter” wasn’t quite as swinging as advertised

“We should have known about his political contributions and we should have been tougher when we set out to do this story. We’ll ask him those questions on the air when he comes on the program this week.” Feeney adds that they quizzed Ridley intensively prior to the first interview. He was open about his previous voting record (he has voted for both parties) and that he is now a registered independent. The donations, it seems, never came up.

Part of the problem is describing Ridley as a “swing-voter” — a term that means someone who is waiting to be persuaded, according to NPR’s political editor, Ken Rudin. Ridley has made up his mind enough to give money to political causes in the past. Perhaps a more accurate term (Morning Edition’s gadfly? fence-sitter? wry observer?) might have been coined for the occasion.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty is less impressed with NPR’s admission: “Ladies and gentleman, in the long and varied history of lame excuses and spin, this may just be the lamest.” You’ve got to walk before you can run, Jim.

I’M GUESSING THAT FahrenHype 9/11 won’t get as much attention as Michael Moore’s film.

But if you’re in Los Angeles tomorrow or Sunday, you’ll be able to see this film about Michael Moore at the Writers Guild Thursday night, or at the Liberty Film Festival on Sunday.

UPDATE: Review here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael McFatters reports:

I asked my local Blockbuster last night if they were getting it in on Oct. 5 and the guy didn’t know what I was talking about. But he looked it up anyway and once we had settled on a spelling of Fahrenheit it was quickly revealed that they are in fact recieving two copies. Seeing as how it will be shelved next to Moore’s agitprop I don’t think it will need an enormous advertising budget to attract attention. And word of mouth spreads fast on stuff like this so I’m very encouraged.

Interesting.

DON’T GET COCKY: Howard Kurtz thinks that Republicans are getting overconfident. And Salon’s Farhad Manjoo — who’s been betting on Bush in the Iowa Electronic Markets — now thinks that Bush is overvalued there. (“I think the IEM is overvaluing Bush shares, maybe by a little and possibly by a lot. I’ve arranged my portfolio accordingly.”) Is this right? Beats me.

UPDATE: Reader Karl Bade emails: “Howard Kurtz is ostensibly a media critic. But today’s column reads like a memo to what the Note calls ‘the Gang of 500,’ the message of which is: it is crucial that the media’s post-debate spin favor Kerry.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on the futures market here, saying that Manjoo is right.

IN THE MAIL: Michael Novak’s The Universal Hunger For Liberty: Why the Clash of Civilizations Is Not Inevitable. A very positive take on interaction between the West and the Islamic world.