CARNIVAL OF THE LIBERATED: This week’s Iraqi blog roundup is up.

JOHN LEO looks at journalism at The New York Times.

EVERYBODY KEEPS SENDING ME THIS JOHN EDWARDS VIDEO FROM SLATE. I’m not quite sure why people see it as such a big deal, but you can look at it and judge for yourself.

INTERESTING OPED: “Blogs can help democracy, especially in partisan times.”

THE BIGGEST AD BUY OF THE CAMPAIGN: (Via PoliPundit.) You can see the ad online here, if you’re interested.

TOMMY FRANKS CONTRASTS BUSH AND KERRY on the terror war. It’s worth reading this together with the Jim Dunnigan piece linked below.

SPANISH BLOGGER BARCEPUNDIT has surveillance video from the Madrid bombings. As he says, not gory, but very disturbing.

MY ANALYSIS OF bumper-sticker aesthetics from last month is echoed by people with more credentials here. I still think the Kerry-Edwards logo is a winner, though some experts disagree.

UPDATE: Jeez, everybody’s a critic. Reader Barbara Grogan emails:

Why are you wasting space on the bumper-sticker gap?

If the election is lost, the pro-war Blogosphere will deserve some blame. You have not been filling in the spaces left by the weak rhetorical style of President Bush. What are these spaces? [1] the role of Iran as Middle East terrorist puppet master since 1979; [2] the consequences of Kerry’s pacifying of elites rather than pushing forward with new Middle East democracies; [3] the enfranchisement of the European laissez-faire attitude toward terrorism as the
approach least suited to combating it; [4] the consequences of being liked in the world, rather than feared or respected.

Please link to themes like these, and leave the bumper-sticker jive to less worthy sites.

I do support Bush over Kerry, but I don’t see getting Bush reelected as my job. If it were, he’d be several percent higher in the polls. Sorry. If you want that, go to BlogsforBush or something. Heck, I don’t even see blogging as my job.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Gabe Posey emails:

People relying on you to get Bush reelected is like people relying on Lileks to give Minnesota a normal political atmosphere. Sure, you might contribute, but the situation just is what it is.

Yeah, that’s how I see it. I think my influence is overstated by both fans and critics.

HERE’S MORE on the flu vaccine shortage.

UPDATE: Andrew Lloyd, meanwhile, thinks he’s figured out why Chiron is getting a pass on the whole thing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here from Chris Kanis.

INTERESTING INTERVIEW with new Economics Nobelist Edward Prescott:

Prescott, speaking from Minnesota, where he advises the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, described Kerry’s plan to roll back tax cuts for top wage-earners as counterproductive.

“The idea that you can increase taxes and stimulate the economy is pretty damn stupid,” he said.

Bush’s campaign on Monday released a letter signed by Prescott and five other Nobel laureates critical of Kerry’s proposal to roll back tax reductions for families earning $200,000 or more.

In The Republic interview, he said such a policy would discourage people from working.

“It’s easy to get over $200,000 in income with two wage earners in a household,” Prescott said. “We want those highly educated, talented people to work.”

Prescott also gave Bush the nod on another controversial campaign issue, dismissing Kerry’s claims that outsourcing of jobs is damaging the economy. . . . Prescott also backed the idea, espoused by Bush, to reform Social Security by allowing some workers to place a portion of their payroll taxes into private savings accounts.

I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten more attention.

DID KERRY CHANGE AFTER 9/11? Not that I can see. Thoughts on that here, and on Kerry’s own remarks on the subject here.

SOME READERS WANT a followup commentary on John Birmingham’s alternate-history novel Weapons of Choice, which I mentioned I was taking on the plane with me last week. I enjoyed it very much, though I wouldn’t put it in the absolute top rank of such novels. It’s not quite Harry Turtledove — though Turtledove makes a cameo.

The most interesting bit is the culture clash between the folks from our time and the folks from the World War II era. It’s a good reminder of just how much things have changed. And they really have changed — just read the passage from Jack McCall’s World War II history quoted here for an example.

WANT HEALTH CARE BLOGGING? Check out this week’s Grand Rounds, where health care professionals blog about . . . health care!

Note in particular this post by Sydney Smith, comparing Kerry’s national health care plan to Tennessee’s “TennCare.” Take it from me, TennCare is nothing we want to emulate on a national level.

JIM DUNNIGAN WRITES ON “AL QAEDA WITHOUT AL QAEDA:”

Al Qaeda no longer exists. Al Qaeda means “the base” in Arabic. It’s an accurate name for an organization that sought to replace the Cold War era terrorist sanctuaries and support services that made possible the first wave of Arab terrorism in the 1960s and 70s. Back then, the Soviet Union established training camps, and university level instruction, for Arabs wishing to commit terrorist acts in the West. The Soviets also provided sanctuary. In addition, the Soviets helped Arab nations, like Syria and Iraq, establish terrorist training camps, and provided advice on how to support terrorism without getting caught by the victims. For about ten years, Al Qaeda replaced the former Soviet terrorism support. But now, without a sanctuary to operate from, “the base” is no more. . . .

Al Qaeda was always feared for the loose relationship the many small Islamic terrorist groups, spread all over the planet, had with each other. What made these many groups (mostly composed of eager amateurs) really dangerous was their access to professional terrorists via al Qaeda. The eager amateurs no longer have an easy to find base. In fact, since September 11, 2001, the police have been more successful at finding these terrorists, than the terrorists have been in finding the many bits of al Qaeda out there. The base is no longer the base.

The end of Soviet support was a major blow to terrorism, which was nowhere near as much an authentic and spontaneous phenomenon as many have believed, or pretended. I hope that this will play out the same way.

DEBATING KERRY AND BUSH SPACE POLICY: A report from Jeff Foust.

JAMES JOYNER: “While a five percent recidivism rate is better than we get from our criminal justice system, it’s rather poor for a counter-terrorism program.” (Via Stephen Green.)

LT SMASH has a roundup of blog commentary on Team America.

JIM LINDGREN thinks that Kerry is closer to a win than most pundits do. Meanwhile, Nick Schulz writes:

That this election may be as close as the last is a stunning fact. How can two elections that have been nothing alike produce such a comparable result? How could two campaign seasons that focused on such radically different issues leave the electorate just as evenly divided?

It’s as if people’s political loyalties have more to do with self-image than with the issues.

CHRIS SUELLENTROP NOTES a dubious Kerry move:

Let’s see: Your opponent is characterizing you as an effete internationalist willing to “turn America’s national security decisions over to international bodies or leaders of other countries.” In particular, he suggests, in all seriousness, that you want to call up Jacques Chirac for permission before deploying the military. At the Republican National Convention, you were portrayed as a beret-wearing poodle named “Fifi Kerry.” How should you defend yourself against these slanders?

By speaking French on the stump, of course.

Though not terribly well, according to the report. Maybe he was speaking Creole!

I DON’T KNOW MUCH about the flu vaccine shortage, but this post by Kevin Drum seems to make sense.

90 DAYS TO MARS? Sounds good to me, especially because it’s cheap.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

American prosecutors are preparing charges against Benon Sevan, the former head of the United Nations oil for food programme, who has been accused of accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks from Saddam Hussein’s regime.

That could wake some people up. (Via TMG).

INTERESTED IN NANOTECHNOLOGY? Of course you are. So why not check out the First Annual Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology: Research, Applications, and Policy, starting Thursday in Washington, D.C.?

UPDATE: Yes, I realize that you may be busy with other worthy events.

ANOTHER BLOG SYMPOSIUM over at Hugh Hewitt’s.

IN RESPONSE TO A COMMENT BY TONY PIERCE following this post by Jeff Jarvis, I want to make the following disclaimer for the benefit of any readers who haven’t been paying attention:

1. InstaPundit is not an unbiased news service. It consists entirely of my opinions and such links to factual items as I find interesting. Its whole purpose is as a vehicle for my biases, in fact. It is not unbiased and objective in any fashion, but rather is opinionated and slanted, much like other, more respectable, outlets such as The New York Times and TonyPierce.com.

2. I do, in fact, support the reelection of George W. Bush, for reasons that should be clear to long-term readers. While I’m not overjoyed with Bush (I’d prefer Lieberman/Cheney, or Cheney/Lieberman), I think that electing John F. Kerry at this juncture would be like electing the ugly bastard child of Jimmy Carter and Millard Fillmore — in 1940. (I could be wrong, of course, and if Kerry should happen to be elected, I fervently hope to be proven so. But that’s how it seems to me. I mean, Jesus, just look at the guy.)

3. If this bothers you, please sod off and go read Atrios or Kos.

That concludes this disclaimer.

UPDATE: Hey, compare InstaPundit to Wisconsin Public Radio.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dierk Meierbachtol emails that the above comparison is unfair to Millard Fillmore. Sorry, Millard! (Maybe Bill Maher’s take is better: “John Kerry is like a Frankenstein of other Democratic candidates that they have pieced together. He is a droning bore, like Al Gore. He is a Massachusetts liberal, like Dukakis. He is a policy wonk, like Jimmy… Jimmy Carter. Right. And he is a sap, sapling tree like Gore. They put all these together and made this one guy.” Mostly, he’s just a guy I find it impossible to imagine as an effective commander in chief, and that’s what matters to me.)

Meanwhile, further down in the comments, Oliver Willis calls me “partisan.” In the sense of supporting a candidate, sure, since I pretty much gave up on Kerry quite a while ago, but not in the sense of supporting a party regardless of candidate. I’m not, you know, a paid flack for one party like, say, Oliver, and part of my disgust with the Democrats stems from their stubborn unwillingness to be serious about the war, or to tolerate candidates who are. If the Democrats had put forth somebody decent on this front I’d likely have voted for him/her. But it’s not as if I pretend not to have opinions. I think that Oliver mistakes a reluctance to engage in name-calling with a facade of above-the-fray I-have-no-opinions “nonpartisanship.” But in fact, it’s possible to have opinions, even strong ones, and to express them in a non-abusive fashion. That’s probably easy to forget when you work for David Brock, but I hope that he’ll grow out of this confusion, eventually.

MORE: Reader Holger Uhl emails:

Hey is your disclaimer copyrighted, or can I send it to my local newspaper? ;)

Every media outlet should have one like it:

[Put name of your prefered media outlet] is not an unbiased news service. It consists entirely of opinions and such links to factual items as we find interesting. Its whole purpose is as a vehicle for our biases, in fact. It is not unbiased and objective in any fashion, but rather is opinionated and slanted.
We do, in fact, support the [re ]election of [insert candidate], for reasons that should be clear to long-term readers.

Heh.