…for me not to say anything about the debate tonight so here’s my two cents: Global test my mivonks.

Two more cents: it isn’t hypocritical to demand non-proliferation to terrorists and increase our nuke capacity. If you ask me we’re the only country that has the prudence to own nukes. So when Kerry, in one sentence, epitomized the dovish mentality of being ashamed of our own strength, that’s when this debate turned towards Hezmanah for him.

Link sluttage update: Doc J can analyze debates and type in real time quite well.

Though the presidential debate is at 9p tonight, there’s yet another debate, one between Michele Catalano and Neal Pollack that’s worth reading, up at Blogcritics. Like most debates between people of fixed minds there is little in the way of a “conclusion” to this discussion, and I don’t mean the flooding in Michele’s office.

The conversation, though impassioned is not bitter,but I’m not surprised to see that both sides are arguing familiar points, that, frankly, make discussions like these seem like the participants are seeing past each other. Right now I think we on either side of this war have run out of ammo to convince each other what we believe to be right. However, there is a war going on, and it is prudent for those who oppose it to tread lightly: Neal Pollack is no traitor. Phillip Shenon, should the allegations raised against him be proven true, is one.

Biggest election-related news of the day: Even if Diplomat Kerry knelt down and did some serious French and German mivonks-sucking, they still will tell him to go to Hezmanah. I expect the Kerry campaign to pile on the dren towards the Bush camp for bruising the country’s respectability in the first place.

Stronger at home, respected in the world? What the yotz does that mean now? “Zoop,” went the campaign platform.

[Here's the Farscape vocab; pardon the bleed-through but I can't wait for Oct. 17. UPDATE: Link to Paul of Wizbang's post added. Oops.]

Jay Nordlinger is done, done and way done (HT: Allah) with fiscal conservatives who, as usual, want the perfect candidate (scroll WAY) down:

[...] I’ll get a million letters saying, “George W. Bush isn’t a conservative! His spending, waaaa, his steel tariffs, waaaa. Gee, it’s not even worth voting in November! Or maybe I’m voting for Kerry, because at least a Republican Congress with a Democratic president . . .”

And so to save money and ensure the purity of their small government conservatism they’d elect to gridlock the nation’s legislative process, screwing the economy, screwing Iraq, and screwing what we did in the war on terror? It reminds me of the “neo-Stalinist goons” that Michael J. Totten wrote about, and how they value purity over results. Or maybe like the contractarian libertarian Randbots that can not, for any reason, justify pre-emption. Or like Andy Sullivan who complains ad nauseam over Bush’s drunk-sailor spending in order to diversify his loathing for the current president on the basis of the current state of his not being able to tie his jollies in a knot with someone else.

Maybe they find the singularity of my rationale for my desired outcome for this election just as hard as to understand as I do the pluarility of their reasons to which they have sold off the judgment between right and wrong. But that’s just me.

Volokh Buddy Orin Kerr, after listing grim news, has three questions for the hawkish among us bloggers, regarding the war in Iraq. I accept his offer; his questions are in bold:

First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea? Why/why not?

A short series of short questions that require long answers. Initially, in the preparations towards this war, I had a number of concerns that are not unfamiliar. A unified Arab front would campaign against us militarily¹, a rise in retaliatory terrorism on our home front as we further anger our enemies into reaction², and that there was a rush towards mobilization that would make a shoddy military campaign³. Over time, as the campaign actually approached, I shed most of those preconceived concerns and saw that the invasion would actually work, and has continued to work, despite the grim news that we hear every day.

I do believe that the invasion of Iraq is a good idea, on two standpoints: the moral and the tactical.

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