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.

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.

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.

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.

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.