Kerry may be cooked. The second item on johnkerry.com is Check out the web of connections between the Bush campaign and SBVfT.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t this like the pot calling the kettle black? Kerry’s gone to moveon.org events, swapped staffers, etc. At best he can expect to get away with “Well, Bush is MORE dirty than we are.” At worst, a direct connection between Kerry’s campaign and the DNC 527’s will be revealed. But if there is any journalistic integrity left in the world, there will be as much scrutiny of Kerry’s campaign as their will be of their allegations against the Bush campaign.

In what may be a completely cynical take, I think that this new course of action will actually lose Kerry swing voters. I think that Kerry is misunderestimating the intelligence of the American voter by thinking he can convince us that his campaign is less dirty than W’s. The sad truth is that most Americans view the truthfulness of politicians from both parties as somewhere between that of a used car salesman and a guy at 1 AM trying to hit on the last attractive drunk woman in a bar. Absent actual legal charges, I don’t think this is going to help Kerry at all. If anything, it’s going to insult voters and lose some swing voters who otherwise would have gone for F.

(But it’s all moot since Kerry’s entire job in this election is to take a bullet for his fellow Bonesman)

(Reeder, skip this one)

Boston Globe’s biography of Sen. Kerry is pretty comprehensive. I’m sure we’ll all read this different ways, but apparently Kerry thinks that the VRWC was behind the sinking of his 1972 Congressional campaign:

“For two solid weeks, they called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other `un-’ and `anti-’ that they could find,” Kerry wrote. “It’s hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.” … To this day, despite the absence of persuasive evidence, Kerry is convinced political operatives of President Nixon were also working to sandbag his candidacy.

One of the benefits of being programmed to wake up early is catching On the Media every Saturday morning, either while sitting on the porch waiting for the rest of the clan to shake the bonds of sleep. IMO, they spend too much time focusing on Fox and the “conservative media”, but hey – they’re NPR, and they’re out of New York.

I mention them because this week’s show has two great bits. The first is a long-overdue bit on interpreting polls (Real Audio link). My guess is that it’s running now to buck up Kerry supporters now that Bush is picking up steam, even before the convention, but it’s a good statistics refresher.

The second is Pledge This! Pretty funny satire on running a public radio station.

The last reason to love “On The Media” is that they leave their shows available as downloadable .mp3 files. Perfect for putting on the iPod for long flights.