KERRY SAYS BUSH IS INTOLERANT on gay marriage, but also stresses that they have the same position on it. Hmm. Looks like a straddle to me.

A “PLAN” IS NOT A “LITANY OF COMPLAINTS:” First original line. So far this is the weakest debate of the three. That in part accounts for the glassy look in my eyes, though I’ve had that kind of a day anyway. . . .

UPDATE: Early-call specialist PoliPundit is already calling it for Bush: “In the first debate, Kerry’s harsh prosecutorial manner was effective. In the second, it was boring. In the third, it’s backfiring.”

Should you believe him? His track record is good, and Kerry’s protectionist trade talk is sure losing me.

JEEZ, HOW MANY LINES from the previous debates are being recycled here? All of them?

I’M BACK. Thanks for the kind wishes for the Insta-Dad. He’s doing quite well.

I won’t be live-blogging tonight — see the folks below, and Hugh Hewitt, who’ll have his trademark question/answer/evaluation matrix up, for that — but I’ll post a summary afterward, and, who knows, maybe a point or two during. And here’s a big list of livebloggers. I think that Daniel Drezner will be liveblogging, along with The Politburo, and LaShawn Barber has opened up a comment thread for your use.

UPDATE: And Ann Althouse announces that her liveblogging will be “au naturel,” which should surely drive up her traffic. . . .

And for those wondering if the mainstream media are in the tank, note that Kerry press releases are running on the Boston Globe site. (Via Ken Layne).

ANOTHER UPDATE: They’ll also be liveblogging it at the Nashville Scene’s blog, Blogville, where we get this insight: “just ninety minutes until the time when we never have to sit through a presidential debate for another four years! That alone is enough for celebration.”

Amen. Will either guy have the guts to issue a thank-you to the “several dozen people watching this instead of the baseball game?” Probably not.

SORRY FOR THE LIMITED BLOGGING: The Insta-Dad had aneurysm-repair surgery today. I just left him napping at the hospital, where he’s doing fine, while I drop into my office. (It wasn’t a near-death experience or anything, it’s been scheduled for a while, but it was a bit more involved than they planned).

I’ll try to be back for the debates, if possible, and maybe even sooner. But if I’m not, Ann Althouse and Stephen Green will be liveblogging as usual. And there’s lots of interesting stuff at The Volokh Conspiracy, so check them out. Plus, what I’ve called a “media Enron” before is starting to look a bit more that way. Back later.

MORE ON THE AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS AND THE WAR over at Tim Blair’s place, where John Howard weighs in.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 — Local insurgents in the city of Fallujah are turning against the foreign fighters who have been their allies in the rebellion that has held the U.S. military at bay in parts of Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland, according to Fallujah residents, insurgent leaders and Iraqi and U.S. officials. . . .

“If the Arabs will not leave willingly, we will make them leave by force,” said Jamal Adnan, a taxi driver who left his house in Fallujah’s Shurta neighborhood a month ago after the house next door was bombed by U.S. aircraft targeting foreign insurgents. . . . Several local leaders of the insurgency say they, too, want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.

Perhaps we can look forward to not merely a military victory, but an ideological one as well.

UPDATE: I guess these guys must be some of those “chickenhawks” I’ve been hearing about!

ANOTHER UPDATE: StrategyPage reports:

Although the details are secret, American and Iraqi troops are on the offensive against Sunni Arab and terrorist gangs. Over a year of effort in building up an intelligence network among the population has paid off. Even in the Sunni Arab areas, many people are fed up with the lawlessness and violence created where the gangs operate. So information comes in about who is who and is doing what. This provides more, and higher quality, targets for raids. The ground units usually surround houses or compounds at night and arrest people, and seize weapons, bomb making equipment and documents, without a shot being fired. Some 30 areas have been identified as occupied and influenced by various gangs. The process of clearing out these areas has apparently been underway for two weeks. Not a lot of publicity for this effort, as keeping the opposition guessing is a powerful weapon.

And scroll down for more interesting stuff.

MORE: Reader and frequent Insta-critic Jonathan Miller accuses me of painting a sunny picture of Iraq. [Well, it is sunny there! It’s in the desert! — Ed. “That was a metaphor, wasn’t it? Don’t you know what a metaphor is?”] He says I don’t link a lot of stories involving bad news. True enough — I figure since that stuff is plastered all over the TV networks and newspaper front pages at the least provocation, I don’t add a lot of value by repeating it. The good news, and stuff that bears on the strategic background, on the other hand, somehow seems to get a lot less attention. When bad news matters and is undercovered — which sometimes happens, if it requires actual understanding to appreciate — I do try to mention it, as with the CERP program, discussed here and here, among many other posts, or with regard to Zeyad’s war crimes reports — go here for a roundup and follow the links for earlier posts.

But, as I’ve said before, InstaPundit isn’t a news service. I’m not sure any blog is, with the possible exception of The Command Post. And even there, I think they see their mission as supplementary to the larger media world, and don’t regard themselves as a free-standing source of information. My sense regarding Iraq is that things are — despite the problems endlessly documented in the Big Media — moving along, and that it’s no more a hopeless quagmire than Afghanistan has turned out to be. I could be wrong, of course — I often am, about all sorts of things — but I think that anyone who wants to assess what’s going on in Iraq needs to do more than just “look at what’s on television,” as John Kerry suggests. I try to help provide a fuller picture than the TV folks, whose chief goal, it sometimes seems, is to help Kerry get elected.

ANOTHER UPDATE: MSgt. John Michael emails from Iraq:

No, it’s no Garden spot, but given that many of us are risking our lives for this bit of sand I think we’ve got a vested interest in making sure the truth is put forth in as bold terms as possible.

So given the number of returned troops, and especially the number who’ve left Active Duty and aren’t bound by any possible legal issues, why aren’t there a lot more ex-GI’s acting out in a fashion reminiscent of John Kerry ’71?

I know there is a handful among the hundreds of thousands, but lets face facts, the folks who were here aren’t sharing that MSM view of Iraq, nor are those here now. I think that preponderance should carry some weight.

Indeed.

THE BIG KERRY DISCHARGE STORY that Mickey Kaus was predicting last night is now out in print. I wonder if anyone will ask Kerry about this — and about why he won’t release his military records — at the debate?

UPDATE: This post from PoliPundit suggests that there’s less to this story than meets the eye. We’ll see. Well, maybe we’ll see, depending on whether anyone else looks at this stuff.

WELL, I SAID IT WAS AN HONOR just to be nominated! Congratulations, Dan!

GET OUT OF THE WHEELCHAIR AND WALK! John Edwards’ Ernest Angsley-like remarks have drawn a critical response from Bill Frist.

UPDATE: But Tom Maguire is excited: “Wow! That is going to save a huge amount on health care costs. . . . But how does it work, exactly? Somehow Kerry can make the lame man walk, and the blind man see, but what is involved? Do I have to get on a bus and go to Washington, or will Kerry tour the nation working his wonders?”

I HOPE THIS IS TRUE: A reader emails me a Stratfor analysis on Iraq strategy. I won’t reprint the whole thing, but here’s the key bit:

Whatever Kerry has had to say about Bush’s execution of the war in the past, he has made it clear that he will continue what Bush calls the “War on Terror” and that he will not abandon the war in Iraq.

This last is by far the most important thing to have emerged during the campaign from a geopolitical and strategic point of view. However much the candidates argue over who would be better at fighting the war, it has become clear that the war will go on regardless of who is elected or re-elected — and that that includes the Iraq campaign. Neither is promising a radical redefinition of the war. Each is claiming simply to be the more effective in executing the war.

Therefore, on this fundamental level, the election has become unimportant.

As I’ve noted repeatedly, I’m a single-issue voter. If I could be persuaded of this, I might be able to look at other things. I have to say, though, that I don’t have tremendous confidence in Kerry’s follow-through.

One other brief bit from a rather long analysis:

Since al Qaeda initiated the war, it is critically important to understand that it has completely failed to achieve its strategic goals. From a purely political standpoint, the war has thus far been a disaster for al Qaeda. At the same time, assuming that al Qaeda has not lost the ability to carry out operations, the United States has not yet secured the homeland from follow-on attack.

This seems right to me. As for the earlier part, well, I’d sure like to believe it.

UPDATE: It’s worth reading this piece on democracy in the mideast by Jackson Diehl, from today’s Washington Post, too. Sounds like “root causes” are being addressed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Many readers say that I shouldn’t rely on Stratfor. Fair enough — I haven’t followed their analyses, but those who say they have aren’t impressed. Meanwhile, reader Alexandre Leupin thinks their faith in Kerry is unjustified on the facts:

“As I’ve noted repeatedly, I’m a single-issue voter.”

I am too, in the sense that, if our security is not preserved, all the rest (freedom, prosperity, the rule of law, equality of women, etc) becomes meaningless.

I’d say I am a 1 1/2 issue voter, since I like the state confined to a reduced perimeter in my life. And here, W. Bush record is not good, he has tremendously expanded federal spending on domestic issues, excluding the needs of security and defense (understand that I would not object if he ratcheted defense spending up to 7% of GDP- the level at the heigth of the cold war – from the present 4%) . To me, on that point, Kerry would be only a bit worse.

Reading a lot about Kerry’s positions on defense (especially the piece in this sunday’s NYT magazine), I have come to the conclusion he is not a flip-flopper at all: since 1971, he is at his core, consistently, a pacifist, with a deep reluctance to projet US military might abroad and a hasty willigness to cut spending on defense. This comes without a doubt from his Vietnam experience. In other words, he is not fit to be commander-in-chief today, we are not in Vietnam anymore, Toto.

I’m afraid that’s how I see it too. I could be wrong of course — I’ve been wrong about Presidents, before, though usually in the direction of being disappointed, alas — but that’s how it looks to me.

TOM MAGUIRE HAS CRACKED BUSH’S CODE.

THE PAYPAL DONATION BUTTON was coming and going all weekend and into today, and some people have noticed. Paypal was having server problems — here’s the story from MSNBC. It seems to be OK now, but . . . .

BUSH WINS:

President George Bush won by almost 400 votes when University of Tennessee students took to the online polls Oct. 7 and 8 in the Student Government Association-sponsored mock elections.

The Bush/Cheney ticket received 1,015 votes to the Kerry/Edwards ticket receiving 643 votes. Students had the opportunity to vote for all candidates that will appear on the Tennessee ballot in the November elections.

A total of 1,721 students – 6.6 percent of the student body – voted in the election.

I rather doubt this can be extrapolated nationwide. But at least they haven’t succumbed to the climate of fear!

VICE SQUAD is a blog devoted to, well, vice.

MARK GLASER WONDERS if satellite radio and “podcasting” will bring about a renaissance in radio journalism. I hope so.

PERSPECTIVE, from The Belmont Club.

BROADEN YOUR BLOG HORIZONS: This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up.