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.

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 Recall that Al Gore did concede late Tuesday night November 7th - then rescinded his concession after midnight, launching his legal war to win the presidency in the courts.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.

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.

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.