BRING OUR ALLIES TO OUR SIDE
John Kerry loves to talk about how he'll be able to "bring our allies to our side" by the force of his will, his credibility and, of course, some reconstruction contracts for non-U.S. companies (basically, double outsourcing the rebuilding of Iraq).

But do you bring allies to our side by intentionally trying to alienate the Australians, who are already at our side, and by directly supporting the campaign of the Australian candidate who promises to withdraw from Iraq and abandon the United States?

Yes, John Kerry is actively working to lessen international support for what we are doing in Iraq and to deliberately drive allies from our side. Not to mention his attempts to undermine the coming Iraqi elections and to parrot terrorist al Sadr in his attacks on Iraqi Prime Minister and ally-by-our-side Ayad Allawi.

Yet, somewhere in the neighborhood of 45% of the U.S. supports this man.

Charles Krathammer drives more nails into the Kerry Campaign coffin.

THE NEXT GERALD FORD?

When the national media starts running pictures like this, is it over?

Have they pretty much decreed a candidate a joke?

Time will tell...

HORSERACE NEWS - KERRY GIVING UP ON FOUR STATES
The Kerry Campaign is pulling ads in the following four states (Federal Review analysis of current margin of lead in parenthesis).

Arizona (Bush +9)
Arkansas (Bush +3)
Louisiana (Bush +16)
Missouri (Bush +6)

Still, Kerry doesn't need any of these states to get elected - they were all won by Bush in 2000. Kerry, like Bush, really just needs two out of these three: Ohio (Bush +6), Pennsylvania (Tied) and Florida (Bush +3). It's hard to envision a scenario where a candidate loses two of these but picks up enough states from the other party's 2000 total to pull it off. Kerry would have needed some combination of AZ, AR, LA, MO, Nevada (Bush +5), New Hampshire (Bush +1) and Colorado (Bush +7). Bush would need some combination of Wisconsin (Bush +5), Minnesota (Kerry +2), Iowa (Bush +2), New Jersey (Kerry +4), New Mexico (Tied) and Oregon (Kerry +2). Yes, Bush is closer to making it possible to lose 2 of 3 and still win, but I still don't see it happening.

JUST A "GRIEVING MOM"?

Liberals, and their willing allies in the media, were aghast when the "grieving mother" of a soldier killed in Iraq was arrested for disrupting a New Jersey appearance by First Lady Laura Bush last week.

For example, columnist Jimmy Breslin bemoaned, "they whisked her out of the place and arrested her for using free speech." CBS News, that bastion of accuracy, declared her a "Grieving Mom."

Now, however, it turns out that the woman, Sue Niederer of Hopewell, N.J., may have been more of a threat than the media portrayed her.

WNBC news is reporting that the Secret Service in investigating Niederer for threatening to shoot President Bush last May:

In portions an interview posted online in May on the Web site Counterpunch.org, Niederer said she wanted to "rip the president's head off" and "shoot him in the groined area."

As WNBC notes, "It is a federal crime to threaten to kill the president."

With the Secret Service involved, Niederer now claims that she did not mean it when she threatened the president.

However, given that threats to shoot the president were made, no one should be surprised, or disturbed, that Niederer was taken away from the First Lady as soon as possible.

DEMOCRATS ADOPT THE "O.J." DEFENSE

Now that a connection has been established between Bill Burkett, the CBS source in the forged documents story, and Kerry advisors Joe Lockhart and Max Cleland, the Democrat National Committee has gone into a furious, and some would say desperate, "spin" mode.

DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe has even issued a statement all but accusing the Republicans of forging the anti-Bush memos themselves:

“In today’s New York Post, Roger Stone, who became associated with political ‘dirty tricks’ while working for Nixon, refused to deny that he was the source the CBS documents. Will ...the White House admit today what they know about Mr. Stone’s relationship with these forged documents? Will they unequivocally rule out Mr. Stone’s involvement? Or for that matter, others with a known history of dirty tricks, such as Karl Rove or Ralph Reed?”

McAuliffe's statement is both illogical and counterproductive.

It's illogical because, to believe that Republicans forged the documents, you need to believe that the G.O.P. would forge documents attacking their candidate, leak them to the Democrats and/or CBS News, wait for CBS to air them and assume, hope and/or pray that some blogger, "sitting in his living room in his pajamas", would make history by convincing the world that CBS News aired forged documents.
You need to believe that the G.O.P. would count on these bloggers getting other "mainstream" news sources to pick up on the story and help discredit the Democrats and CBS.
And, finally, you need to believe that these Republican operatives, these calculating geniuses, were willing to bet that these pajama-clad cyber warriors would accomplish all this before the documents did irreparable damage to President Bush.

In addition to being based on such a wildly improbable scenario, this latest statement by the Democrats is, to say the least, counter-productive.

Normally, when a damaging story surfaces in an election, the best way to deal with it, especially once denials are impossible, is to change the topic and/or let the story die down ("move on," some might say).

However, by accusing the Republicans of attacking their own candidate in order to "frame" the Democrats, McAuliffe just opened up a whole new reason to keep talking about this story. This is bad for the Democrats for several reasons, not the least of which being that it distracts from other issues. It also creates a scenario under which the casual observer might begin associating the story, and the forging of the documents, not with CBS (which has apologized and would, presumably, like to "move on"), but with the Kerry campaign itself.

Given the above, it is difficult to fathom why McAuliffe would make this wild and unbelievable attack in the first place...

...unless, like O.J. Simpson, he has no choice but to hope we believe him when he says he's searching for the "real" culprits.

SOME HUMOR FROM THE PRESIDENT
From the President's Remarks in Charlotte, NC:

One of the interesting things about education is that as you increase your skill level, you increase your productivity. It means you're a more productive worker. And when you become more productive, you make more money. One of the interesting things about a changing economy is that our workers are more productive than ever before. That means instead of using a hoe, you use a backhoe. Or instead of using, you know, a regular old standard typewriter, you use a computer.

Meanwhile, John Kerry's jokes are, well, so 1999.

I WANT TO SEE THIS MOVIE
Filmmaker Michael Wilson is still working on a distribution deal for his documentary, Michael Moore Hates America, which appears to be more about America than Michael Moore. National Review Online says "in parts it's downright sweet." Here's a description of a scene from the film:

Because it covers so much ground, it's difficult to sum up this movie in a few paragraphs. But easily the most powerful sequence is a visit with Peter Damon, a soldier who lost both arms in the Iraq war. In a transparent attempt to elicit pity, Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 included footage (taken from an NBC News report about a new painkiller) of Damon in the hospital while he was recuperating from his grievous wounds.

In MMHA we see a recovered Damon at home with his family, enjoying life, proud of his service. Damon has no patience for those who feel sorry for him. The only anger he feels is at Moore for exploiting him.

Asked by Wilson what he would like to say to Moore, Damon addresses the camera: "I don't want any part of your propaganda. I don't agree with what you're doing."

At the movie's recent premiere at the American Film Renaissance in Dallas, Wilson said, the audience grew really quiet during this scene: "You could hear a pin drop." But that changed when Wilson asks Damon if Moore had the right to make his movie.

Despite his obvious distaste for Moore's film, Damon says without hesitation, "That's the reason we go off to fight — to defend his right to make a movie."

At that, Wilson said, the audience erupted into the loudest cheers of the evening.

Yeah, I'd pay to see that.

BUSH INCREASES ELECTORAL LEAD
Bush 52.0% – 321 EV | Kerry 46.5% – 217 EV
EV without Toss Up states (under 2% margin): Bush 270| Kerry 217| Toss 51

President Bush's post-convention bounce is continuing to show up in the state polling, as he adds 37 electoral votes to his total this week, picking up Iowa (+0.3), New Hampshire (+0.8) and Pennsylvania (+0.7). This is the first time that the Federal Review analysis has shown a Bush lead in Pennsylvania since May 18. While other websites take into account only the most recently reported poll or averages the last three. The Federal Review analysis uses all polls, weighting polls in each successive analysis more heavily than older polls, thereby mitigating the swings that are occasioned by margins of error or varying polling methodology. Thus, before a state can swing from one candidate to another, one of three things must have happened: (1) the most recent poll must be significantly different than earlier polls, (2) there must be several new polls confirming a state's movement or (3) there must have been a long between the previous poll and the most recent one. Pennsylvania changed because of a number of recent polls showing a slight lead for Bush (scenario 1) and New Hampshire changed because it's been a while since the previous polls showing Kerry's lead (scenario 3).

President Bush also leads by more than 2% in states worth 270 electoral votes, just enough to get elected. The biggest surprise, Kerry leads by more than 12% in only 2 states, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Details, maps, graphs, state by state numbers, election simulation -- all right here.

CBS PRODUCER TRIES TO HELP KERRY CAMPAIGN
The CBS producer, who just wasn't skeptical when given documents from an axe-grinding Bush hater, calls up the Kerry campaign and says, hey, you ought to talk to this guy. He's got some good advice for you. No, there's not possibility that Ms. Mapes' (and Dan Rather's and Andrew Heyward's) bias prevented them from being a little skeptical. Nothing to see hear. Move along.

Lockhart, the second Kerry ally to confirm contact with retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, said he made the call at the suggestion of CBS producer Mary Mapes.

"He had some advice on how to deal with the Vietnam issue and the Swift boat" allegations, Lockhart said Monday, referring to GOP-fueled accusations that Kerry exaggerated his Vietnam War record. "He said these guys play tough and we have to put the Vietnam experience into context and have Kerry talk about it more."

Sure was nice of Mary to hook them up, huh.

MEMOGATE: A TANGLED WEB BEGINS TO SHOW

Connections between CBS, the Kerry campaign and the likely source of the forged documents about President Bush's National Guard service are beginning to develop.

The Associated Press is reporting that two Kerry advisors, Joe Lockhart and Max Cleland, spoke to the CBS story's source, "retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett," at least twice before the story aired.

Furthermore, the AP notes, in the case of Lockhart, he spoke to Burkett after CBS news producer Mary Mapes suggested he do so.

In short, evidence is developing that seems to establish a coordinated effort between a presidential campaign and a major news organization to attack the other candidate...with a story based on forged documents.

Is it time to start talking about a "vast left wing conspiracy" yet?

JUSTICE IS BLIND...AND, IN NEW MEXICO, CROOKED?

Ralph Nader was booted off the ballot in New Mexico Friday by a State Judge.

This, in and of itself, would not be news. However, it turns out that the Judge, Wendy York, is a contributor to the Kerry campaign, having donated $1000.00.

As the Albuquerque Journal noted:

[The New Mexico] Code of Judicial conduct ...says in part, "A judge is disqualified and shall recuse himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances where: (1) the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party or a party's lawyer ..."

York now faces complaints to the New Mexico Commission on Judicial Conduct from Republicans. Libertarians, the Green Party and even one Democrat, the article notes.

Given that, as the article says, York made a sizeable contribution to Kerry's campaign, it seems like the Judge would have a hard time claiming that she didn't have a "personal bias" towards Kerry and against Nader (and Bush for that matter).

On the other hand, as a Kerry supporter, maybe the Judge can chalk it up to some sort of "flip flop" or "nuance."