Still a good idea

Kerry On

Despite receiving more votes for President than anyone in history except perhaps for G.W. Bush, John Kerry apparently was not significant enough to be named among Time Magazine's 100 most influential Americans.

Perhaps that's why a claim that he had made a single speech that may have violated campaign laws was immediately investigated, while a prior claim that Condi Rice (undoubtedly one of the 100) had made a whole string of political speeches late in the Bush campaign, unprecedented for a National Security Advisor, all paid for by taxpayers, was not investigated by the supposedly nonpartisan government panel, which incidentially is under fire for dumping professionals and promoting GOPer partisans. Whatever the reason, Senator John Conyers wants to find out.

Meanwhile, Kerry's outrageous charge that the Bushies had Osama bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora in 2001 but lost him when they "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords, has been supported by a German intelligence official, who says that bin Laden escaped by bribing the Afhghans.

FRIDAY UPDATE: We might also mention that while a soldier in Iraq was killed recently because his post didn't have sufficient sand bags---yes, sand bag shortages--Senator Kerry got a couple of bills passed through the GOPer Congress increasing benefits for soliders and their families at home.

And while we're more or less channeling 11/04, allow us to announce that from election day to this day, here are the number of hours we have spent watching or reading the following:
Fox News 0
MSNBC 0
CNN 0
Time Magazine 0
network news 0
Wall St Journal 0
"reality shows" on network, cable or Mr. In Between: 0
[margin of error = + or- 0.1]

Bushcrash

Though largely unreported in American media, TV viewers witnessed the image of GW Bush on big monitors in St. Peters square evoking boos and whistles at the Pope's funeral. Bill Clinton, however, was cheered wherever he went, and had to cut short a walk because he was being mobbed by enthusiastic Italians.

But that's nothing to what's happening back in America. In their study of the major polls, the Democracy Corps ( Democratic consultants Stan Greenberg, James Carville and Robert Shrum) issued a dramatic report, showing Bush with 50% disapproval for the first time, and across the board numbers on his performance below 40% approval. Here's Karl Agne's opening paragraph:
"While media coverage has been saturated over the past few weeks with the tragic case of Terri Schiavo and the death and burial of Pope John Paul II, American politics has not stood still. Public polling released over the last two weeks show unmistakable movement on a number of fronts, and the news is almost uniformly bad for the White House and Republicans in Congress.

After a series of mixed results in mid-March, it is now clear that George W. Bush has reached
the lowest point of his presidency on fundamental measures including overall job approval,
personal favorability, and his handling of the two issues that have dominated his time in office – Iraq and the economy."

Perhaps most worrisome to the White House is the quick drop in the consumer comfort index, the sharpest plunge in a two week period ever recorded.

Meanwhile, the rabid right has been aggressively attacking the judiciary, with some issuing less than veiled threats of physical harm. And while Senator Rick Santorum, about to face a tough reeelection campaign in PA, was piously attending a prayer vigil for Terri Schaivo in Florida, he nevertheless managed to collect $250,000 there for his campaign.

In other new...

"Much Ado About Few" at Books in Heat. "The Mall is a Place" at Shopopolis. "Sharks and Whales" at Soul of Star Trek. "DVD Bonus" at Blue Voice.