Winning hearts and minds:

Seventeen months into a shadowy terror campaign that has killed more than 100 people, numerous Saudis express less anger at the insurgents than at the United States for its invasion of Iraq, the signal event that they say touched off the attacks inside the kingdom.
In interviews over the last week, the Saudis condemned the terror attacks, aimed primarily at foreigners, but called them a small inconvenience that has not forced them to make significant changes in their daily lives. By contrast, they expressed unremitting disdain for the United States.

The article portrays a prevalent anti-Americanism in Saudi Arabia, which to a large degree stems from the war in Iraq and our policy toward Israel. I’m led to two conclusions from articles like this: (1) Sooner or later the growing anti-Americanism is going to bite us; and (2) Saudi Arabia is in danger of melting down to radicals someday. In such an instance, it should be handy to have the U.S. military nearby, wouldn’t it?

Unlike John Kerry, Bush has never even talked about having US forces leave altogether when security returns. The US under Bush will likely be a permanent Persian Gulf Power, succeeding the Portuguese, Safavid, Ottoman, and British Empires in that role. At the moment, the US lacks a big permanent land base in the region, though it has a de facto naval base in Bahrain and an air base in Qatar. These are small countries that can host only small facilities. With 12 enduring bases in Iraq, the US posture in the Gulf becomes dominant for perhaps the entire twenty-first century. Being an Iraq power would bring the US into permanent and active diplomatic and military contact with Iraq’s neighbors, including Syria and Iran. In all likelihood, the Bush path of Iraq bases leads inexorably toward further US military conflict in the region.

I’d add Saudi Arabia to that list.

Dr. Glen Harold Stassen offeres an interesting finding:

Under President Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed. Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction.

Stassen believes an economic deline may have led to the increase in abortions. That seems like a logical cause, if he is correct regarding this purported trend.

Tim Grieve notes words we didn’t hear during last night’s debate:

Chads. Butterfly ballots. Disenfranchisement. Ralph Nader. Dick Cheney’s energy task force. The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Duck hunting with Antonin Scalia. Fuel efficiency. SUVs. Mars.
Bushs bulge. Jim Jeffords. Paul O’Neill. Richard Clarke. Valerie Plame. Venezuela. Peru. Haiti. Hunger. MoveOn. Lawrence v. Texas. Jim McGreevey. Martha Stewart. The lockbox.
Jose Padilla. Yaser Hamdi. Guantanamo Bay. The death penalty. Miguel Estrada. Judge Roy Moore. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Texas Air National Guard. Alabama. AWOL. The order to shoot down civilian aircraft. “The Pet Goat.”
Ahmed Chalabi. Jessica Lynch. Danny Pearl.
Terror alerts. The Presidential Daily Brief. Condoleezza Rice. Fishing. “Greeted as liberators.” Abu Ghraib.

A number of those are surprising, given some of the headlines over the past four years.

A few random observations on last night’s debate:
Kerry: I thought Kerry got off to a slow start. Initially he seemed more concerned with getting in his buzzwords and pre-scripted talking points than he did in answering the questions. Consequently, I thought he missed several opportunities to gets some good shots in on Bush (e.g., why we are dependent on importing flu vaccine from Canada, yet are not supposed to import prescription drugs from there?)
Kerry clearly had a better command of the issues, as some of the exit polling showed. At times, it seemed like he knew too much on the issues; he should have presented fewer statistics and more vision.
Kerry did a pretty effective job at targeting his message at women, undecideds, and voters in the swing states–the people he needs to win over to seal the deal. Many men were allegedly watching baseball, so this was a great opportunity to re-establish the gender gap.
Some Republicans and several MSNBC talking heads were really worked up over the fact that Kerry mentioned that Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian. I agree that the reference was unnecessary, but is this really the great sin that some folks are trying to make it out to be?
Bush: His presentation was better than in prior debates. He wasn’t scowling or overly defensive/angry. If this Bush had shown up the first time, many in the chattering class may have awarded him the first debate. Funny how the media didn’t take up the “which George Bush will show up?” narrative that they attached to Al Gore in 2000 when he switched his debating style.
I was a little confused on who Bush was directing his message toward. People who like education, that’s for sure. But over the last few weeks he’s clearly adopted the “get out the base” strategy. But last night he had at least four missteps in shoring up the base: he (1) didn’t explicitly attack Roe v. Wade; (2) his answer on the Mexican border question was lame (the border is more secure than it was four years ago?); (3) didn’t label homosexuality as a “choice”, and (4) on the unemployment question he went through quite a list of government handouts programs. Were those answers the red meat the right wing wanted?
Moderator: Bob Schieffer did a decent job of managing the debate. The event flowed fairly smoothly and he didn’t make himself a focal point in the event. He threw a few softballs out there, but the discussion didn’t suffer too much. We got a few glimpses of the candidates unscripted.
The one major omission I saw in the debate was that there weren’t any questions on the environment. In fact, I haven’t even heard the Kerry campaign devote that much attention to environmental issues. Do voters not care about the environment this year?
Overall: Kerry got a lot of mileage from the three debates. Not only did he “win” them on the general substance/style scoreboard, but more importantly it gave him the opportunity to appear on the same stage as Bush and appear more “presidential.” There’s many Americans who are ready for a change in leadership but who haven’t yet embraced the challenger. Kerry hasn’t closed the deal on those folks yet, but I think he made some major inroads during these debates. If he finishes this campaign strong, I think victory awaits him on November 2.

Over the past 24 hours the blogosphere has been uncovering a story regarding organized efforts to suppress Democratic voting in several states. Kos provides a good summary on what’s been flushed out thus far.
Still haven’t seen any coverage of this on MSNBCNNFOX. They’re too busy giving airtime to campaign spinners.
UPDATE: Just saw a segment addressing this on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. The Keith is usually on top of such things. I wonder when we’ll hear about it on Fox. Or hear about this on Fox.