Straight Up | Jan Herman

The bookies are still giving shorter odds on Bush, which means bettors continue to favor the Ignoramus. But Kerry backers are closing the gap. There may be evidence that crowd wisdom under the right circumstances is smarter than the smartest, best-informed expert. But every time a long shot wins at the racetrack, there’s evidence to […]

It’s two-hour-old news by now, but here it is anyway: John Kerry will be the next president of the United States, according to daredevil pollster John Zogby. He had it right the last time when everybody else had it wrong, and now he predicts Kerry will beat Bush in the Electoral College, 311 to 213 […]

Voting was a snap in my election district. So I’m back earlier than I expected, and happy to see a joke called “The Balloonist” about Republicans and Democrats, which is making the email rounds. It’s being attributed to Garrison Keillor. The attribution could well be apocryphal. (Remember Kurt Vonnegut’s bogus commencement address at MIT a few years ago? Here’s the […]

Overnight reviews are back, in case you hadn’t noticed, at The New York Times. The first one in years — an opera review by Anthony Tommasini, of “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” — appeared this morning in the Metro section on page B2. (Online it’s listed in the Arts section.) Overnight notices used to […]

Please note: The odds that bookmakers are giving on the presidential election are subject to change. Some, as given here on Sunday, already have changed (though not by much). These are the latest betting lines.

Has free speech in America come to this? The 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot publish her memoirs in this country because of a U.S. trade embargo regulation “intended to punish repressive governments such as the regime in Tehran that once sent her to jail,” The Wall Street Journal reports this morning. The irony is […]

When it comes to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, the editorial page of The New York Times has been especially strong in condemning the White House and the Pentagon. My take was that “nobody has said it better.” Well, maybe somebody has: Intel Dump blogger Phillip Carter. Carter writes in a review of Seymour Hersh’s […]

Now for the nine scariest Election 2004 Costumes from the “Do-It-Yourself Guide” by Dan Savage, David Schmader and John E. Hollingsworth.

Referring to the president, Mr. bin Laden said: “It appeared to him that a little girl’s talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God.” — NY Times, 30 Oct […]

Everybody loves Wonkette — and for good reason: She gives good head. In other words, she’s got brains (and a great sense of humor). But Matt Haber at Low Culture belongs right there with her, maybe ahead of her. Consider the item he posted the other day, “conspiracy-a-ga-ga”, taking the New York Post’s Page Six […]

A friend writes: “News readers (we’re talking about the “talking heads”) have short memories for much that matters. As Brett Wagner, president of the California Center for Strategic Studies and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, noted a year ago in a USA Today article (on Oct. 6, 2003): [T]he war fighters were […]

Here, at a glance, are the bookmakers’s betting lines. At the moment Paddy Power is giving odds of 4 to 7 for Bush, 5 to 4 for Kerry. The line at Littlewoods betdirect is 4 to 6 for Bush, 11 to 10 for Kerry. At totalbet.com it’s also 4 to 6 for Bush, 11 to […]

Nine Marines died in Iraq on Saturday. It was the deadliest day for the American forces in half a year. Meantime, U.S. officials go around giving upbeat assessments of the situation, while actually believing that it isn’t nearly as rosy as they’ve painted it. For instance, top commanders fear that “Iraq’s expanding security forces, soon […]

Have a look at this citizenflick, “Visualize Winning” by Needlenose Productions. I love it, and you will too. Then have a look at the rest of these citizenflicks: “The Song”; “Game Show”; “One Vote”; “Margins”; Vinton, Iowa”; and “Testimony.” Then make Tuesday count.

You’d think it was an antiwar liberal who is venting his ideology. But it is not: Tell me there is a connection to 9/11? There’s not. Are there weapons of mass destruction? There’s not. Tell me the war will be over soon? It won’t. It is Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, an Army infantry platoon leader who […]

In case you missed it, here’s another reason to throw the bums out: The Los Angeles Times reports it has obtained documents showing that Halliburton, Bunker Boy’s old company, won a lucrative extension of its no-bid military contract after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did an end-run around its own chief contracting officer, who […]

Just in time for Election Day: Give the Ignoramus a brain. Is it possible? Karl Rove is supposed to have done it. Can you?