Not the best day today. Lots of things I need to deal with still and get through. I thought I had turned a corner, but maybe I'm just fooling myself.

A very interesting article on Salon today, "here" I do feel like there are a lot of people who are much too worried about the Kerry campaign right now. As a rule, campaigns generally start well after this, and the general public really doesn't start paying attention to the campaign until after the Olympics. I agree that I would rather see Kerry beating Bush by 20 points right now, especially given the bad month Bush had in April. The torture/abuse scandal will hurt, especially if the fighting in Fallujah and Najaf intensifies because of it. This scandal is about the worst thing that can happen in terms of the Arab "street". Homosexuality, or even a hint of it, is considered to be about the worst thing in Islam, and the pictures of naked men piled on top of each other like a beaten down human pyramid is not exactly the best thing in terms of the winning of hearts and minds. Kerry had, up until the questions about the medals/ribbons, stayed silent, letting the news from Iraq and the 9/11 commission do the work for him. This was ok up to a point. He has essentially been playing rope-a-dope the past few weeks, absorbing Bush's ad blitz while raising boatloads of money to respond. I have seen reports that up to $80 million dollars has been raised in the last month, while Bush has gone through almost a third of his campaign funds in trying to define Kerry as a weak wristerd Liberal in the battleground states. Kerry just bought $27,000,000 worth of ads in these staes, and the ads are apparently well done, especially in terms of reintroducing Kerry to the voters in these states. Good luck JFK 2