Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

The President discussed why diplomacy is working with Iran and North Korea. Kerry said the Britain, the French, and the Germans started the diplomacy with Iran.

The President wants to continue the six-party negotiations with North Korea. Kerry wants them and bilateral negotiations as well. The President said the six-party would fall apart if you opened bi-lateral as well.

Neither would do anything substantial for Darfur.

Lehrer stated that there are “obviously major policy differences between the two of you.” That’s what Kerry wants.

The President is pushing that we have to be certain, resolute.

They complimented each other and their families, they talked a little back and forth. Methinks that they’re relieved to be almost done with this TV show.

Kerry says that one can be certain and be wrong.

The President was specific. He will not “change my core values.”

Kerry says he’s never wilted or wavered. And that he’s been consistent. He said that Saddam was dangerous, we had to disarm him, but we shouldn’t have rushed to do it.

Kerry’s worried about “nuclear proliferation.” (He wrote a book about it.) Methinks Kerry’s found a topic about which we can speak with some degree of credibility. He’s criticizing the President for pursuing a new type of bunker-busting nuclear weapon. “It sends the wrong signal.” (Kenneth, what’s the frequency?)

The President brought up missile defense as a way to protect the country.

Kerry believes nuclear proliferation is the most dangerous problem facing our country. The President says it’s WMD in the hands of terrorists.

Kerry called again for bilateral talks with North Korea, and the President is lecturing him on why that would be wrong. (It’s what Kim John Il wants, and it would cause the 6-party talks to break down. We’d lose China.)

The President stressed his relationship with Putin. Kerry talked about being in Russia when the “transition was made.”

Kerry’s convinced that we would not lose China, because China also has a stake.

Kerry’s finishing strong.

In his closing statement, Kerry again mentioned that he defended the country in Vietnam. And he has plans of all sorts. “The future belongs to freedom, not to fear.”

In his closing statement, the President pointed out that “we will continue to” build alliances, protect America, spread freedom, etc. He spoke of spreading liberty “in the broader middle east.” He’s looking back at what we’ve been through together.

The end of the debate.

The President said Kerry would not be able to get our allies with us, as his “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” line is discouraging, and they won’t follow a man whose core convictions change with American politics.

Kerry mentioned allies Great Britain and Australia. The President said he left out Poland, and Kerry raised his finger and shook his head.

Kerry said he’s worked with these current world leaders for twenty years, “longer than this President.”

Kerry said that Osama bin Laden uses the Iraq war as a recruitment tool. Bush thought it absurd that he would let Osama pick how we defend ourselves.

Kerry’s had one consistent position: “That Saddam was a threat, and that there is a right way to disarm him.”

Bush: “You cannot change positions in this war on terror if you expect to win.”

Bush stressed that a free Iraq and a free Afghanistan will send a powerful message to the rest of the country.

Kerry’s talking about his combat again, he’s hearkening back to Vietnam, he called the soldiers noble and he wants the “outcome to honor that nobility.” Yikes!

The President is again harping on “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” and changing positions sending the wrong message.

Kerry cited Colin Powell’s “Pottery Rule”: you break it, you fix it.

Kerry accused the President of “misleading on what I said.” He didn’t say that he would take the troops out in six months; rather, he said that he would take them out in six months if we did what he said. The man is a cipher!

Bush: Kerry can’t “change the dynamic on the ground,” as he said, if you insult the leader of Iraq.

The President again asked for the additional thirty seconds after Kerry’s rebuttal. This is done at Lehrer’s discretion, and only the President has asked for this so far.

The President continues to hammer Kerry for changing his positions and being irresolute, and all Kerry has been able to do was say that he is resolute and consistent.

The President said that we went to war in Iraq because the enemy attacked us. Kerry pointed out that Saddam didn’t attack us: OBL did, and the President let OBL escape from Tora Bora. Kerry asserted that Saddam would have been weaker.

Again, the President asked for the extra 30 seconds. And the President argued that Saddam would have been stronger if we’d have let him go.

Kerry said he’s for pre-emptive war. “That was a great doctrine throughout the cold war.” You have to do it in a way, he said, “that passes the global test.” And he’s using the Kennedy, DeGaulle story, which is not at all applicable!

Kerry said, “I’ve been fighting for proliferation the entire time…” (He changed it then to non-proliferation.)

The President said he did not know of a “global test.” Pre-emption is to protect the American people. And the President pointed out that he would not have signed the World Court — “a foreign court where our people could be prosecuted.”

The candidates shook hands closer to Kerry’s podium.

Straight to the questions. Could Kerry do better than Bush in preventing another 9-11-type attack?

“Yes, I do.”

Unlike the networks, C-SPAN is running a split screen. One can see the reactions of the one candidate while the other speaks.

Although the tops of their heads are at the same height on the screen, Kerry’s podium covers about 10% less of his body.

Kerry nodded and agreed with the President when Bush noted that the world was better off without Saddam Hussein.

The President accused Kerry of a “Pre-September 11 mentality.” He answered Lehrer’s question about going after Saddam and going after OBL by saying that we can do both, and that this is a “global effort.”

Both Kerry and the President have caught themselves using “Osama bin Laden” when they mean “Saddam Hussein.” In their minds, the two are interchangeable.

Kerry mentioned that he was “in combat.”

Also, Kerry is scribbling constant notes while the President spoke, even if he would have no rebuttal. The President is doing so sparingly.

Kerry nods. “Yes, we have to be steadfast and resolute, and I am.” And he played the “I can bring the allies back to the table” card. They allies to which he refers were never at the table.

He’s used the “opening firehouses in Iraq, closing them here” line. That one’s been dismissed, right and left.

President Bush: “I don’t see when we’re going to get to how he’s going to pay for these programs. … Oh, well. That’s for another debate.” Conversational, a lot like people might have been feeling at home. That was very good.

Kerry “knows what it’s like to go on one of those missions where you don’t know what’s around the corner.”

Pre-debate, moderator Jim Lehrer spoke to the audience and admonished them to keep quiet and still. If there is noise, he said, he will stop the debate and deduct the time from the noisemakers’ candidate.

He appointed Theresa Heinz and Laura Bush to enforce this.

I don’t see it happening.

CIA Director Porter Goss today handed Executive Director A.B. “Buzzy'’ Krongard, 67, his walking papers. Word is that when Goss was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he and Krongard mixed it up a few times over compensation reform issues.

Krongard’s replace as executive director will be Michael Kostiw, who once served on the Intelligence Committee staff.

Reuters reports that Krongard “once punched the head of a great white shark.”

The man speaking to the debate audience as I type, as shown on C-SPAN, looks somewhat like Porter Goss. His name is Frank Fahrenkopf, and he is co-chairman of the Presidential Debates Commission.

I’ll try to limit my snickers or remove myself to the cloakroom.

The results of tonight’s debate will be very simple to calculate.

JF Kerry must define himself as something, in this case using foreign policy (possibly the only issue on which he can plausibly do this). He should avoid trying to explain away all the various past positions, as there is no way to try to do it before the red light begins blinking. He must prove that Iraq is “chaos, quagmire,” explain what the President has done to make it so, and then tell us what he would do to win the war. (The operative word is “WIN,” and he will use that word. He has to.)

Kerry cannot afford convolution. He would only prove a point.

President Bush has to convincingly describe the situation in Iraq and talk about what the future will be. He should also actively dismiss some of the more silly stuff from Kerry.

We’ll see he gets the memorable line off and who melts down into a lengthy, contradictory answer.

I do not think Kerry can win this debate, but he will have taken a step he has long needed to take to win this race if he defines himself. As it stands, he is not anything except “the candidate who is not Bush.” I’ve been harping at Kerry about this since last spring, and it’s time he started.

It should be a nifty show, but an hour and a half is too long for such a TV program. That being said, it could also be fun. It might depend on how it is written.

Representative Martin Frost (D-Texas) had planned a fundraiser headlined by Peter Yarrow of the Kerry-era folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary. Frost backed away when he discovered that Yarrow had been convicted of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl. Now Frost’s opponent, Representative Pete Sessions, and other Texas Republicans want Frost to refund the money or at leastdonate it to a charity for abused children.

Yarrow has known JF Kerry for over three decades, and he performed at rallies for Kerry last January, but Yarrow and Kerry had something of a tiff; Yarrow is a peace activist and, as recently as this past January, Kerry supported the war.

Puff the Magic Dragon, indeed.

The anti-Bushie 527 MoveOn.org has attacked the Gallup poll, in a New York Times ad [pdf] as being biased toward the President. Gallup stands by its work, and the USA Today newspaper defends the poll Gallup conducts for the paper.

A key component of the rationale behind MoveOn.org’s charges is that George Gallup, jr. “is a devout evangelical Christian.” I suppose the theory goes that by counting the numerical value of every third letter in a Gallup question, you come up with the Hebrew term for “I am.”

The First Amendment protects their right to have this brand of nonsensical fun.

Nearly 75-percent of all voters live in States where they make it easy to vote early via absentee ballot. Some experts predict that the percentage of the vote cast in such ballots will double this year, to 30-percent.

This is somewhat unnerving, in that this makes it easier to perpetrate fraud. Say someone decides to walk into a nursing home and collect the absentee votes of patients afflicted with Alzheimer’s. Or say someone thinks most of those whose remains reside in the cemetery should be given the right to exercise their erstwhile franchise. Or say someone becomes several dozen homeless people. Or say someone decides that absentee ballots from a Republican area of their State ought to go missing.

How does a campaign appeal to such early voters excepting by passing out ballots? I received a recorded phone call from the POTUS several weeks ago reminding me to apply for my absentee ballot.

What is the aversion to the polling place? Aside from the campaigns’ staff lurking outside, it’s an empowering, even exhilarating place to visit.

What have we here?

RADIATION POSSIBLY FROM LOST H-BOMB. The U.S. government is sending a team of 20 scientists today to check out a report of unusual radiation readings that could be coming from a hydrogen bomb that was lost off the Georgia coast in 1958.”

We’re waiting for JF Kerry to call the President a unilateralist cowboy and demand that Mohamed El Baradei and his teams be brought in.

Talking to a town hall meeting with her husband Tuesday in Duluth, Lynne Cheney asked: “How about John Kerry’s suntan?” This prompted the following diatribe from Kerry spokesperson Bill Burton:

“Is Mrs. Cheney jealous considering how hard it is to get sun in the undisclosed location with her husband Dick? Or is she distracted over how red-in-the-face George Bush should be considering his failed presidency?”

We’ve seen a good bit of that sort of defensive name-calling from the Kerry campaign

“I know you are, but what am I?” or “Yeah, well the President has cooties, maaaaan!”

Perhaps it is just JF Kerry’s way of telling the President: “You’re not the boss of me!”

And speaking of Kerry’s tan, Erick Erickson links to this Kathryn Jean Lopez post at NRO’s The Corner showing us clearly the progression from Kerry in the goofy NASA suit to Kerry with the mega-tan-of-death evidencing that Kerry wants to be an… Oompa Loompa (song lyrics).

It’s a cute freak show.

The Lone Star Iconclast — a weekly out of Crawford, Texas, with a paid circulation of 425 — editorialized recently that President Bush was “dangerous,” “let us down,” and “duped” us. The paper endorsed JF Kerry as “realistic, wise, strong, and correct.”

According to a piece in Thursday’s San Antonio Express-News:

[Iconoclast publisher W. Leon] Smith is majority owner of the Iconoclast, the Record of nearby Clifton and the Bosque Globe. He’s also the mayor of Clifton and a Democrat who was defeated twice in campaigns for the Texas House of Representatives.

There has been fallout:

As of Wednesday morning, more than a dozen readers had canceled their subscription and six advertisers had pulled their spots from the paper.

Smith expects there will be more, and he’s preparing for the worst.

“It will probably put us under,” he said.

Smith complains that his readers are trying to suppress his “freedom of speech.” No, his readers are exercising their own such freedom, and their freedom to spend their money where they choose.

It’s a cute sideshow.

I’ve put the new Christopher G. Adamo column, 527 Organizations: Unintended Consequences of Campaign “Reform”, live on the RSN web site.

Read it on the site: HERE.

Good morning.

Eric Lindholm (Viking Pundit) had quoted an article from Insight:

President George W. Bush has suddenly acquired a commanding lead among Catholic voters over his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry, according to the latest survey of the California-based Barna Research Group.

Barna called this finding a “seismic shift.” In May, Kerry led Bush 48-to-43 percent among Catholics. Today, the ratio has changed to 53-to-36 percent in Bush’s favor, reports Barna, an organization researching opinions and behaviors of the religious communities in the United States.

Watching the Catholic TV network EWTN, which is my non-Catholic wont, I hear priests and commentators, such as Frank Pavone of Priests for Life and the EWTN Franciscans, I hear them talk about the importance of this election. They mention no names, but they stress the importance of voting for life. And after Cardinal Ratzinger’s papers and statements regarding denying the Eucharist to Catholic politicians who consistently promote legal abortion, the stance of the Church is very clear.

This “seismic shift” comes as no surprise. It’s not a matter of political party.

A pro-life Catholic friend of mine referred to EWTN as “management,” meaning that they reflect the views of the church itself, not necessarily those of Catholics in general; however, it looks as if most Catholics believe what their church teaches.

This if from Canada’s nations newswire, The Canadian Press (CP):

This is the big one, the presidential debate that could determine who’s sitting in the White House after the Nov. 2 U.S. election. When President George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry face off for 90 minutes Thursday in Miami, tens of millions of Americans will be watching.

Not quite. If President Bush gets flustered and tries to order three Army divisions to march on Boston, maybe. If JF Kerry heals those watching of all their ailments and infirmities, perhaps.

Not much is going to happen. We’ll see who gets off the best line.

The AFP says that and Iraqi has negotiated a deal for the release of those two French journalists. The two Italian ladies were freed, though some say that the Italians might have paid ransom. Here are four Egyptians being freed.

What has happened to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? There is no mercy in a man without a soul, and this is not Zarqawi’s way. In no way would his fanatical brand of terror allow for a release under any circumstances. He believes he is taking these lives for something greater than himself. And he loves doing it.

Either these kidnappers are not working for Zarqawi or the mutant is dead.

California had moved its primary ahead this year so that it would have some say in the Democrat nominating process, but DNC boss Terence McAuliffe ended that, as well as the party’s hopes of nominating a viable candidate, when he truncated the nominating season. JF Kerry had waltzed untested to near-certainty by the time primary ballots were cast in the State.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a measure Monday moving the primary back to June.

An election year flip-flop. I suppose such have been made haute couture in certain rarified circles.

I’ve put the new column by Doug Hagin, Democrats are going down hard, live on the Rightsided Newsletter web site.

The beginning and the end: “Just in time for the much heralded presidential debates two of my favorite Liberal mouthpieces are sounding off demonstrating just how unhinged the Democratic Party has become. … And these people wonder why Zell Miller left?”

Read the middle on the RSN site: HERE.

The House of Representatives is set to vote today on H.R. 3193 [text], a bill purportedly designed to “restore second amendment rights in the District of Columbia.”

It proclaims the civil right to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment, the right to defend oneself and property from criminals, and that existing gun law provide “comprehensive Federal regulation,” so there is not need for the special DC gun control.

If DC had home rule, its leaders would not consider repealing anything.

But they don’t.

The repeal’s main sponsor, Representative Mark Souder (R-Indiana) does not own a gun.

“My precise argument is that it’s a constitutional violation, and local and state governments don’t have a right to usurp the Constitution,” Souder said.

mutant, n. - An individual, organism, or new genetic character arising or resulting from mutation.

This is not human behavior, ergo “mutants.”

[link]

If they were to destroy us all and set of their version of an Islamic paradise under their fatawa and their interpretations of the sharia, would these mutants then live together in piece? I’d venture that they would end up slicing and dicing each other. Once you can do these things, it’s impossible to live like a human being.

The “Official Blog” at GeoreW.Bush.com has Kerry’s latest explanation for his votes on the $87-billion (see post below):

It was a very inarticulate way of saying something and I had one of those moments late in the evening when I was tired in the primaries and didn’t say something clearly. But it reflects the truth of the position, which is, I thought, to have the wealthiest people in America share the burden of paying for that war. It was a protest. Sometimes you have to stand up and be counted.
[The bold type is from the GWB blog]

This takes me back a few years, to October 17, 1995, when then-President Bill Clinton told a group of wealthy Democrat contributors in Houston:

“Probably there are people in this room still mad at me about that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you that I think I raised them too much too.”

And Clinton tried to squirm out of it the next day at a press conference:

If I said anything which implies that I think that we didn’t do what we should have done, given the choices we faced at the time, I shouldn’t have said that. My mother once said I should never give a talk after 7:00 p.m. at night, especially if I’m tired, and she sure turned out to be right is all I can say.
[bold type, mine]

So it seems Mr. Kerry was trying to steal a page from the master. There is a problem, as the official GWB blog points out. It comes from a March article in the Washington Post:

“I actually did vote for his $87 billion, before I voted against it,” he told a group of veterans at a noontime appearance at Marshall University.
[bold type, theirs]

So it looks like Kerry is going to have to try again.

Minus a Kerry miracle Thursday or a terrorist takeover in Iraq, it is just about time to begin pounding the nails into Kerry’s electoral coffin. Let’s help him spring for the mallet and the spikes.

Although you can no longer donate directly to the Bush campaign, you can contribute to the Republican National Committee HERE. This will be used for the cause of reelecting the President.

Click RIGHT HERE to be directed to the page where you can become a Bush Team Leader, an official part of the campaign.

And click HERE (page down to #3) for a list of participating Wictory Wednesday bloggers.

The 9-11 victim’s families used by the now-defunct 9-11 Commission as a “Family Steering Committee” are complaining that the intelligence reforms must be passed quickly in legislation which would not spur any debate, such as Republican provisions expanding the definition of “material support” for terrorism and making it simpler to deport alien terror suspects.

A letter from the Steering Committee read, in part:

Legislation should be unencumbered by language or amendments containing extraneous provisions or extending or expanding the Patriot Act.

The question is, then, does this Steering Committee want Congress to pass legislation quickly, or does it seek to have Congress pass legislation which effectively combats terrorism?

In case you’re keeping track, here’s JF Kerry’s latest version of his tale of why he voted for the $87-billion before he voted against it. This edition of Kerry’s explanation was brought to you courtesy of his good friends at ABC’s Good Morning America.

At first glance, it seems to contain elements of explanations 3 and 6, while it totally contradicts versions 1, 2, and 7.

Good morning.

Lisa Hall, chairperson of a South Carolina homosexual advocacy group, e-mailed Representative Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), inviting him to attend a town hall meeting on gay and lesbian issues. DeMint’s director of opposition, Ginny Allen, attempted to forward it to another DeMint staffer addressing him: “come on farq give this dike a reply.”

However, instead of hitting the forward button, Allen hit reply and sent the note to Hall.

Hall:

“It hurt. My parents raised me to be a Christian and not to speak hateful of anyone, even when having a disagreement with somebody.”

This is what it sounds like when crocodiles cry.

Allen to Hall:

“I apologize for the language I used in the email that you received yesterday. It was completely unacceptable. I demonstrated poor judgment and a total lack of consideration. … I stand corrected on all points and will be more polite and considerate in the future. Please accept my deepest apologies.”

DeMint in a personal letter to Hall:

Mrs. Allen’s remarks do not reflect my beliefs or the character of the campaign.

Hall to DeMint:

“Perhaps some Diversity Training would be of some benefit. In any case, I will pray for her.”

Hall said that she did not want Allen to be fired, but DeMint do it anyway. He can’t have an office manager who is that careless and crass at work. If Ms. Hall had been a frothing militant, this would now be a federal case.

Judson Cox is back with a new column, Big Infanticide, after a one week, flood-related hiatus.

We have Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Auto… what to call the abortion mills?

Read his column on the Rightsided Newsletter web site: HERE.

When the Pakistanis killed al Qaeda kingpin Amjad Farooqi, it was billed as a major victory in the war on terror. The Asia Times Online, however, purports to have uncovered that Farooqi was really only an “impoverished foot soldier in a jihadi organization.” He was a nice guy, just like you and me save for that jihadi stuff, who was made out to be a bigwig by a Pakistani government eager to please their U.S. masters.

I’m posting this in hopes that someone alerts the Kerry campaign to this. I want to hear this claim in one of little daily diatribes. Because…

When the facts don’t fit the model JF Kerry needs to be elected, he or his crew either deny and contradict them or simply invent new ones.

In the latest column by Bob Redman, he makes his case for an Edwards-Clinton ticket in 2008.

I’ve put it on the Rightsided Newsletter site: HERE.

Columbus, Ohio, attorney Stephen Linnen, 34, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for getting naked and taking photographs of women.

If the guy was auditioning for a men’s magazine, someone has to tell him that he has the concept backwards. It’s the ladies who must be nekkid; the photographer remains clothed.

Najma from the Iraqi blog “A star from Mosul” posts her uncle’s observations on the differences between Baghdad and Mosul. (He’s from Baghdad, visiting her in Mosul.)

Click on her name.

Here’s an example from her uncle’s “tale of two cities”:

Baghdad in more expensive than Mosul. The fast-food places are much more in Baghdad, and their food is better than in Mosul.

With some help from outside, as their Prime Minister requested last week, the Iraqis are going to make this work. Change the city names, and that observation has been made countless times by countless Americans. Once they’ve tasted it (the freedom and the food), they’re not going back.

God bless ‘em.

Writing for The Weekly Standard’s web page, consultant Mike Murphy predicts that no matter what happens Thursday evening, “big October comeback story for John Kerry.”

The media’s Kerry comeback will unfold in earnest after this Thursday’s debate. What actually happens in the debate, barring a highly entertaining Tourette’s style meltdown by one of the candidates, really doesn’t matter.

The President could accidentally sneer.

I think Kerry’s “surge” will continue in the New York Times, and maybe CNN will cautiously climb on board, but absent something palpable on which to hang that hat, the exploits of Dan Rather have probably effectively put a damper on any media-driven Kerry surge. (Not that this might not happen in any other post-Clinton election under any other circumstances. Remember, the press is ducking some fire for buying Kerry’s “quagmire… quagmire… wrong… wrong… WRONG” line.)

But just how bold is the mainstream?

Okay, I’ve always maintained that, despite the contrary rhetoric, this country is not split 50-50, but the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has discovered a way to refute my notion.

On their web site, AM 1490 WBEX of Chillicothe, Ohio, runs a piece from Xinhua, the PRC’s government-run news organization. Here’s a paragraph:

The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows that among likely voters, Bush’s support rate was 52 percent, compared with 44 percent for Senator Kerry and 3 percent for independent Ralph Nader. That result was within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

You know, this election is really neck-and-neck in a country split 50-50, just like the media have been yapping for years. Even when the President has an eight-percent lead in a poll with a 4-point margin, it’s a statistical dead heat!

Recently, I asked why JF Kerry was not proposing anything on his sole area of expertise: fisheries; Kerry is, after all, a former chairman of the Fisheries subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee. He is credited, by himself an several aides, with being the author of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 [pdf]. (Actually, the act was primarily authored by two Alaska Republican Senators: Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski.)

Brian from John Kerry for President? You must be joking points out that last February — when campaigning against John Edwards — Kerry promised a crowd in Idaho that if elected, he would appoint a Salmon Czar, answerable directly to him and to his veep.

A new Salmon position, such as a Salmon Czar, would require a whole new Salmon bureaucracy. And shouldn’t the Salmon Czar be a cabinet-level post, with full spending authority?

The President was “making the WRONG choices” and everything was “quagmire… quagmire… wrong… wrong… WRONG” in Iraq, and Kerry was talking to Idahoans about his Salmon Czar? Methinks Mr. Kerry is out of touch with reality.

The l-word has been used. When campaigning in New Hampshire, John Edwards reacted to assertions that JF Kerry’s health care plan would let bureaucrats run health care:

Edwards also accused the Bush administration of lying about the Kerry-Edwards health-care plan in a television ad, noting: “They will absolutely lie about anything.”

I feel transported back to the enlightened rhetoric of campaigns yore. It seemed like just yesterday, in 1884, when Grover Cleveland campaigned against “James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the State of Maine.”

When the facts don’t fit the model JF Kerry needs to be elected, he or his crew either deny and contradict them or simply invent new ones.

This post is best read with the theme to the Drew Carey Show — Cleveland RocksI — in your mind. Kevin Holtsberry opines in Tuesday’s NRO: “Unless Kerry can quickly find a way to communicate a vision and strategy that connects his issues platform with the intangibles of personality and leadership, he is destined to lose Ohio and, quite possibly, the election.”

That is certainly a temperate sentiment. What I’d like to know is how Kerry can win the general election this November without taking Ohio? Realistically. (Oh, there’s always the Florida-Pennsylvania combination, but that’s implausible for the candidate. He does not have the allocatable resources to put up a strong fight against a popular incumbent in both States without abandoning other States where he is vulnerable.)

When the President spoke to 50,000 in Ohio’s West Chester township yesterday, it was the largest political rally of his campaign.

(NOTE: The aforementioned Carey describes himself as a libertarian-conservative; in his words, though: “a conservative who still gets high.”)

The GOP Class of 2002 is set to move up in the world. Mort Kondracke’s Roll Call paper tells us that Liddy Dole of North Carolina has decided to challenge Minnesota’s Norm Coleman for the right to replace George Allen of Virginia as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The NRSC, of course, raises money and elects Republicans to the U.S. Senate.

Good morning.