Chinese, written and spoken, is my candidate for the weirdest major language on earth. At the Monterey Institute, where US diplomats are taught foreign languages, it takes on average 600 hours of instruction to be fluent in a European language such as French or German, 1200 for Arabic - and 2400 in Chinese. (This means, of course, that for China and the world to communicate, Chinese must speak English, as the world will never speak Chinese). Beyond the technical difficulties lie far deeper problems, resulting in a grossly myopic view of China’s history and future. The one buried most deeply is the way Chinese grammar reverses time: the past, in Chinese, is in front of or before you, while the future is behind you. Chinese culture is oriented towards the past, reading Chinese history through a distorted lens, and stubbornly attempting to apply illusory lessons to the present. This is precisely what China’s military and government leaders are doing with their strategy towards America.

Just like Al Gore, John Kerry’s most human moment during his entire campaign for the presidency was his concession speech. As I sat crying in relief that it was over and we had won, I heard him say something I will never forget. He said that no matter who you voted for, we’re all winners:

In an American election, there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates are successful, the next morning we all wake up as Americans. And that is the greatest privilege and the most remarkable good fortune that can come to us on earth.

The headline of the Associated Press story was predictable. As the US Army and Marines win an extraordinary victory in Fallujah, the AP’s response is: “Insurgents Not Giving Up!” Once again, all the liberal media know how to do is root for America’s enemies and endlessly predict “Quagmire!” whenever those enemies are fought.The truth is that the Iraqi terrorists - the press insists on ennobling them as “insurgents” - have been devastated in Fallujah. Upwards of 2,000 have been killed and over 1,000 taken prisoner. Some of their key leaders like al-Zarqawi escaped, but it’s hard to lead when so many of your followers have been wiped out. Bombings and sporadic attacks will continue in various places - most all of them Sunni - but the bottom line is that the Battle of Fallujah has broken the back of the Iraqi “resistance.”The Battle of Fallujah didn’t just decimate the ranks of the terrorists physically - it has devastated them psychologically. The completely mind-blowing synergy of the US military’s professional competence, humanitarian ruthlessness (“no better friend, no worse enemy”), unimaginably overwhelming firepower, and technology so advanced it seems straight out of science fiction has shattered their will.It is the US’ total willingness to use all its force and technology that has turned the terrorists into mental zombies. War - especially guerrilla war - is always a battle to break your opponent’s spirit. That’s what the liberal media is trying to do to us, break America’s spirit with Abu Ghraib or a Marine killing an “unarmed insurgent” in Fallujah or the AP bleating how the enemy will never give up. That’s what the press did - on purpose - in Vietnam, that’s what they are trying to do in Iraq, that’s how and why they are the terrorists’ partners. But this time it is working the other way around. This time, we are breaking the enemies’ spirit. This time, our enemies are in a quagmire, not us.

The deepest and darkest joke I’ve heard in a long time goes like this. Osama bin Laden prays to the spirit of Yasser Arafat who then appears before him. “Yasser, please help me understand something,” requests Osama. “We’re both fellow terrorists. You’ve even killed more infidels than I have. Yet you get the Nobel Peace Prize, your funeral is attended by heads of state from around the world, and European newspapers compare you to Moses - while I am the world’s most hunted and hated man, reduced to hiding in inaccessible mountain caves. How did you do it? What is your secret?” Yasser breaks into a ghostly smile. “That’s easy,” he explains. “I only killed Jews.” A deep joke always reveals a black truth. European hatred of Jews is an ancient hate, and periodically erupts from the darkness of men’s souls into the light of history. Today in Europe -- particularly France -- another eruption has begun. It will get worse unless it is fought and opposed. It is getting worse because Jews are the Europeans’ perennial scapegoat for cultural failure. Old Europe now faces demographic doom because its native inhabitants refuse to have children, and economic doom because they would rather go on vacation than work. You know how bad it is when Consumer Reports currently ranks Mercedes and BMW as the most poorly made of the world’s luxury cars. To rescue Old Europe economically and demographically, to exorcize its Jew-hatred, it needs to be rescued culturally. There is only one way to do that, and only one group of folks to do it: American Christians.

A number of people in Congress have suddenly become very interested in an obscure scholarly article in the October 1, 2004 issue of Science magazine, America’s premier scientific journal. Written by UCLA paleobiologist Blaire Van Valenburgh and her colleagues, it’s entitled “Cope’s Rule, Hypercarnivory, and Extinction in North American Canids.”The paper is being scrutinized on Capitol Hill because a pair of science advisors to several Congressmen, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, pointed out implications the paper has for US tax policy.The evolutionary lesson for politicians is clear. Hypercarnivores become extinct because they are dependent on hunting very big animals of which there are not very many. Once environmental changes result in even less of them, a hypercarnivore can get wiped out.Just like Governor Grey Davis in California.

I surrendered at three o’clock in the morning after watching election returns for eight straight hours, and fell asleep convinced GW had won but oddly unemotional. Up at six to get my 12 year-old to school and let my wife sleep, I fussed away the morning with newspapers and the computer. Checking Fox again for the umpteenth time at eleven, when the announcement came that Kerry had called Bush to concede I didn’t yell or jump for joy. An emotional dam broke instead, and I just sat and cried my heart out with relief.America’s future is on track. Cokie Roberts on NPR stated that, more than Iraq or terrorism or the economy or anything else, exit polls showed that “moral values” was the issue of highest concern to voters. Bill Strauss and Neil Howe would not be surprised.I wrote about Strauss and Howe in The Curse of the Xer’s (TTP, February 5, 2004, currently up in Classics, and providing a capsule summary of their theory). Using their model of generational cycles, I predicted that:

American culture has not disintegrated, we’re not going to keep heading down into a bottomless cultural barrel. We’re in the bottom of a generational cycle that our country has gone through before and will again. Our nightmare of degeneracy will soon be coming to an end.

The Jewish Talmud makes the following observation:

There is no beauty like Jerusalem, no wealth like Rome, no depravity like Arabia.

The contempt I have for Bill Clinton doesn’t come remotely close to the revulsion I have for John Kerry. While I despise Bill Clinton on many grounds, I don’t question his patriotism. I would question John Kerry’s - if he had any patriotism to question. For all his faults, Bill Clinton is not a traitor to America. John Kerry is.Many of you have asked what is the October Surprise of the SwiftVets that I mentioned last month. This is it.

OK, I’ve taken off the black hat I wore to write “The 279 Trigger” and I’m back to normal now. So forgive me if I poach a title from an article I wrote last February, but Shut Down is still the best way to describe my electoral predictions for next Tuesday.So step right up and get ‘em, folks, while they’re hot. Bottom line: Bush wins not in a landslide, but not close either - a comfortable victory garnering 52-53% of the total vote, and between 290-310 electoral votes.Let’s face it -when Bush might take Hawaii, you know Kerry is in deep scatology.

While I am an incurable optimist, today I’m putting on my black hat and taking a look at the dark side.All those prayers that whoever wins on the 2nd let it be a clear and convincing win, are just whistles in the twilight. The litigation war contesting 2004 will make 2000 look like a small skirmish. Kerry has made a decision: that if the electoral vote is less than 280 - that is, even if Bush wins by 9 electoral votes -- he will not concede. It takes 50%+1 of the 538 in total: 270. Recall that Al Gore did concede late Tuesday night November 7th - then rescinded his concession after midnight, launching his legal war to win the presidency in the courts. That’s the precedent. The Democrats have decided that with the precedent established, they will make the same attempt again. 279 is the trigger - if Bush wins states that add up to no more than 279 electoral votes, Kerry refuses to concede and legally contests the results.Confronted with Kerry’s decision, Bush has now decided he will do the same.

Scorpio was suspended in the clear night sky above Ghazni, Afghanistan. The air was so pure the tiny two stars of Lambda and Upsilon in Scorpio’s stinger shone brightly. The city below was quiet, the only sounds were emplacements of government soldiers calling out to each other to watch for Mujahaddin attacks. Every few seconds one of them would fire off a round or two from a Dashaka machine gun, the tracer bullets creating bright day-glo pink arcs through the dark. Looming in front of me was the enormous rock fortress of Bala Hissar, on top of which were the barracks and headquarters of the Soviet High Command for Ghazni, lit up with huge floodlights. It was August of 1984 and I was with a group of Harakat Mujahaddin about to attack the fortress.

When I was State Chairman of Youth For Reagan during Reagan’s original campaign for California Governor in 1966, I assembled a memorable cast of characters. There was Mr. Energy, Shawn Steel (who just retired as chairman of the California Republican Party), Mr. Enthusiasm, Dana Rohrabacher (now R-CA), our resident geniuses Arnie Steinberg (now the famous pollster) and Dennis Turner (whom we still call The Wizard), and the gorgeous Tammy Zebold in charge of the Reagan Girls. But most lovable and memorable of all was our Social Director, Bill Anthony. I had known Bill since we met in UCLA College Republicans in 1962. It was virtually impossible to dislike Bill. There was only one thing that really bugged him, that he would grouse about. He put it as an unfathomable mystery, a question for which he had no answer: “Why can’t the Right be hip?” Because no one was hipper, no one was cooler, no one was more plugged in than Bill. And it drove him crazy that the Barking Moonbats of the Left were perceived by society as jet-set couth, while denizens of the Right were sneered at as uncultured redneck troglodytes. Bill always dreamed of a time in the distant future when the Right would be Hip, and the Left’s clueless hypocrisy was exposed for everyone to witness - exposed, Bill dreamed, by those who set the standards of hipness in popular culture, the guys in Hollywood. Yet even in Bill’s very creative imagination, not even he could have come remotely close to guessing how this dream would be achieved in the 21st century. For it has been - by two Hollywood guys named Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They have made Bill Anthony’s dream come true, by making a movie called Team America.

OK, kids, it’s safe to come out and play now - the Sheriff is back and chased away the scary man.During the second debate, I was so nervous that I drank an entire bottle of wine watching it. For the third, all I had was a glass of water. Kerry got demolished. He looked old. He looked haggard and weary and baggy-eyed tired. His hands trembled, either from nervousness or the onset of Parkinson’s. He droned and babbled statistics. He lost every pro-life Catholic vote in the country and every anti-homosexual “marriage” vote as well. He was constantly on the defensive regarding his pathetic and hyper-liberal Senate record. He reassured no one who doubts his capacity to win the war on Islamofascist terror.Bush looked young, fit, energetic, relaxed, and upbeat. People don’t remember statistics. They remember images and a sound bite or two. The images, not the words, lost it for GW in the first debate, and destroyed it for Kerry in the third. Couple that with lines like, “A plan has to be more than a litany of complaints”; “In the mainstream of American politics, Senator Kerry is way over sitting on the left bank”; and of course, GW’s reply to what men should learn from their wives: “To listen to them.” Just as Bush clinched it with millions of women voters with that response, so Kerry repulsed them with his “cheap and tawdry political trick,” as Lynn Cheney put it, of his invoking her daughter’s homosexuality. Moms all across America now agree with Mrs. Cheney’s assessment: “He is not a good man.”What closes the deal with voters is Bush’s message of optimism, versus Kerry’s being little more than a litany of complaints posing as a “plan.” In virtually every presidential election in American history, the candidate perceived as most optimistic has won. Let that fact sink in. George Bush has nailed John Kerry’s coffin shut.

Have you ever been to Iowa? Even if not, you know that it’s a middle-size state, smaller than Wisconsin and a little bigger than Arkansas. Now imagine Iowa with over 140 million people, half of the entire US population. Then let’s reroute the Mississippi and Missouri rivers so they both run through Iowa and flood the place so much that most Iowans have to build their homes on stilts. To complete the picture, let’s say these vast swarms of Iowans are as poor and uneducated as Appalachian trailer park folk, and, oh yes - they are Moslem. As you may have guessed, we’re not in Iowa any longer, Toto. We’re in Bangladesh. The only time Bangladesh appears on most of our radar scopes, is when we give a passing glance to yet another story of a flood or typhoon wiping out ten thousand villages, or a ferry sinking with ten thousand people drowned, and so forth. When we think of Moslem countries and terrorist crucibles, other places come to mind like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan. But it’s time to refocus - because there’s a cat fight going on in this land of 140 million Moslem souls that has major implications in the War on Islamofascism.

So now the fate of our country rides on which George Bush will show up in St. Louis tonight, the one we saw in Coral Gables or the one in Wilkes-Barre. If the latter, GW has the capacity to do Kerry in once and for all. To go for the jugular, he could make the following points:

My opponent keeps using the word “truth.” Well, here’s the truth. Our troops who are putting their lives on the line in fighting the war on terrorism in Iraq cannot trust a man who, when he was in uniform, publicly accused his fellow soldiers of war crimes he knew they did not commit. Senator Kerry owes his fellow Vietnam Veterans an apology for calling them war criminals and I expect to hear it right here tonight. America cannot afford such a man as my opponent as her president. America cannot afford a president who is all style and no substance - tall, big hair, deep voice uttering eloquent phrases that constantly contradict each other. It’s all frosting and no cake, folks. America cannot afford a president who has never owned or managed a business, never met a payroll, doesn’t have the slightest clue of how businesses work, never been an employee of a company and hasn’t a clue of what it’s like to work for a living. America cannot afford a president who has no record of accomplishment in 20 years in the Senate. America cannot afford a president who has never held any executive position and never managed any sort of organization, who has done nothing in his 20 years as a Senator except talk -- talk on the Senate floor, talk in speeches, talk to the press, and vote badly, vote consistently in ways that would damage American security.

Finally, we’re learning one of Israel’s two best lessons in fighting terrorists. Israel, Sharon in particular, figured out a long time ago, that the enemy wasn’t a phenomenon, it was individuals: terrorists, not “terrorism.” So the solution was to forget about defeating some “ism” and hunt down and kill specific terrorists personally.The latest example took place this Sunday, September 26, when Israeli agents planted a bomb under the driver’s seat of Izz al-Deen Sheik Khalil’s SUV, and blew the senior Hamas leader up to the Moslem Bordello in the Sky.Taking this lesson to heart, US forces have begun targeting specific terrorists in Iraq. On September 22, US fighter jets nailed the “grand mufti” or spiritual leader of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawid and Jihad terrorists, Omar Youssef Jumah. Using the nom de guerre Abu Annas al-Shami, Jumah was fond of issuing fatwas proclaiming that Allah approved of beheading infidels. No more fatwas for you, Omar. You’re a good terrorist now.We’re learning at last to give Islamofascists what they want. They say their greatest strength is that they prefer death to life, while our greatest weakness is to love life more than death. If they love death, hey, no problem, happy to oblige.Now it’s time to learn the second great lesson in national security we can learn from Israel.

This is the text of a briefing I am giving to Senate and Congressional staffers on Capitol Hill this morning.The Reagan Doctrine was above all a paradigm-shift. We weren’t going to try and outlast the Soviets anymore, we were going after them. We didn’t want peace with them, we didn’t want to get along with them, we wanted them gone, history, da svedanya, adios and goodbye. Support of various anti-Soviet insurgencies was a conscious assault on the structure of the Soviet Empire. The goal wasn’t simply freedom for this or that Soviet colony, but the full collapse of the Empire as a whole, which ultimately meant the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.This strategy… worked. The Reagan Doctrine is the most spectacularly successful geopolitical strategy of modern times. The question now is: where and how can such a strategy be best applied to the War on Islamofascism?I think the “where” is Iran. Iraq is a job for the United States Military. Iran is not -- not in the sense of the 3rd ID taking Tehran. During the Cold War, we needed US and NATO forces in Europe capable of blocking a Soviet invasion, say through the Fulda Gap. But we didn’t need US soldiers to fight in the jungles of Nicaragua or protest in the streets of Prague and Budapest. What we needed - and what we had -- were large numbers of people living in these countries willing to struggle for their own freedom. This is what we need, and this is what we have, today in Iran.The main obstacle in implementing a Reagan Doctrine for Iran is the same we had with implementing a Reagan Doctrine for the Soviets: Squishes in the White House and the State Department. In the 1980s they were Michael Deaver, Dick Darman, Jim Baker, and George Shultz. Today they are Robert Blackwill, Richard Armitage, and the entire Near East Bureau at State.Thus to implement a policy of regime change in Iran, there must be a strategy of regime change in the National Security Council and the State Department.

I used to live in Washington DC. But for the past while now, I, like so many millions of other Americans, have been residing in Rotflmao City. It’s a fun place to be, but it can be exhausting. A number of my muscles, such as those attached to my rib cage, have become achingly sore. It’s a very distracting place to be. You keep losing your focus, and keep being uncontrollably seized by convulsive behavior. Yet I, like so many others, don’t have a choice. We’re all going to be living here for the next several weeks.Moving to Rotflmao City is easy. All you have to do is read a news item like this:Datelined September 21, 2004, ABC News ended its story on the activities of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates for the day with this closing line:

President Bush will address the UN at 10:30 a.m. All day long, he will be meeting with world leaders. John Kerry appears on "Live with Regis and Kelly," before moving on to Florida for more campaigning.

Comfortable? Have a bucket of buttered popcorn and a cold beer at the ready? (If you were my friend Otto, you’d have instead a Grey Goose martini.) All set for the greatest political fireworks show of your life? Showtime is about to begin.Those SwiftVet ads, you see, have been just the pre-lims to warm the audience up. The main acts will be much more entertaining. They’ll begin with signs appearing at Kerry campaign rallies saying:Ho, ho, ho - Kerry must sign the One-Eight-OhWhat does that mean, you ask? It is the demand that Kerry sign a DoD (Defense Dept.) Form 180, which authorizes the release to the public of all military records the Pentagon possesses on him.

Ask anybody who knows how to street fight, and they’ll tell you the most important thing is not to get mad. Lose your temper, act out of rage, and you lose your emotional intelligence, your capacity to think calmly and react quickly - so you get the crap beat out of you. This is why Hollywood casting directors are proposing that actors Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels be replaced in the coming sequel to the 1994 movie Dumb & Dumber with… John Kerry and Dan Rather.Oh, excuse the typo. It’s Dan Rather.No kidding, folks - the characters of Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne in Dumb & Dumber are Einsteins compared to Hanoi John and Frequency Dan. Let’s take Danny first.