YOUR CHOICE. You can go to OpinionJournal today and read Brendan Miniter's piece on how Kerry was wrong not to go to post-hurricane Florida, or you can wait until Miniter is dead and go view his private papers at Bob Jones University, where you can compare the published column with the one he almost certainly wrote at the same time, in case Kerry did go to Florida, calling him an opportunist, French, etc.

I would not be making such charges were Miniter's scribblings not so consistently content-free that their only imaginable use is as the rankest sort of propaganda.

ERA OF GOOD FEELING. In a day of tactical evasions, John Kerry talked down a MoveOn.org anti-Bush ad, apparently in solidarity with John McCain, who had talked down the Other Swift Boat Guys' anti-Kerry ad. I see the political usefulness of this for the Big Stiff, and invite him to denounce my own ravings as well if it will help him defeat the fascist scumbag space-alien freak Illuminatus Bush.

Meanwhile the Mayor has invited RNC demonstrators to don "Peaceful Political Activist" buttons for discounts on hotels, Broadway shows, and other tourist attractions. Well, if it'll get me 10% off at Applebee's, I guess I can behave myself. But if the wings aren't hot, all bets are off.

RATHER WELL PUT. In case some of you were wondering why New Yorkers are hatin' on the RNC*: here. (Thanx Ezra.)

* "A recent survey by a Manhattan public relations firm found 83 percent of those polled do not want the Republican convention in town. When asked why, more than half, 53 percent, were worried about traffic, street closures, and security hassles." -- WABC-TV. (Found by Margaret.)

WE KEEP TELLING THEM CONSERVATISM IS COOL, DAMMIT. WHY WON'T THEY LISTEN? Michele Catalano:

I'm not a huge moralist and I don't think there is no place for sex - or sexuality - in our society. But there is a big difference between promoting sexuality and promoting sex.

I forget, which is the good one -- sex or sexuality?

I see this blitz of breasts on even network television every day and it saddens me to think that my daughter is growing up in a media-crazed society that rewards most the women -- and girls -- who show the most. Maybe I've become a bit of a prude in my old age, but I cringe when I see women parading around in next to nothing because I know that teenage girls are impressionable and will emulate these women...

That reminds me: I don't have a TV Guide -- anyone know when women's floor exercises are back on?

IF IT WEREN'T FOR CHEAP IRONY, WE'D HAVE NO IRONY AT ALL. The only two entities I have found that responded favorably to the victory (such as it is) of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela are The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It's an ill wind, I guess, that blows no one some good.

More ominous still: John Derbyshire will no longer buy American cars.

Ah, big deal. Everyone knows the real threat to our Republic is insolent teens and wide-band watches in the Marshall Field's catalogue.

A CITIZEN RESPONDS. The Mighty Mighty Reason Man has chewed out the Kerry campaign for its lame responses to the Republican spin machine. "There's a lot of dirt gonna be thrown your way in the next few months, and the time to pattycake with this bullshit is over... what your crew needs to do," he advises, "is set up a resource, a central repository of factual bitchslaps across the jaw of all this character assasination."

Who am I to argue with Reason? But allow me to add a nuance. The GOP is not dishing out truth, it's dishing out, as MMRM correctly calls it, bullshit -- smears, deliberate misreadings, and mountainized molehills. In the feral playground that is current American politics, one looks weak even trying to counter much of it logically. Edwards can point out very reasonably that Cheney is quoting Kerry "out of context" and a thousand operatives will react as if he were the kid with asthma challenging the assertion of bullies that he caught asthma by being gay -- that is to say, with more abuse.

So if the Kerry operatives are going to get talking points, maybe they should go more like this:

On Cambodia: "Aw, hell, man, you know how it is. Guys get together at the VFW Hall, have a coupla drinks, they say all kinds of shit. It was spooky back in 'Nam, man, and Kerry was smoking a lot of the good weed, so maybe in his mind he was in Cambodia. Hey, hit me in the stomach, hard's you can."

On Kerry's "sensitive" remark: "When he said 'sensitive,' he meant sensitive like an ultra-thin Trojan condom. I mean, when you get in there, you want to feel it, know what I'm saying? We think Bush's approach is more like a ribbed condom, betraying a deep insecurity that he can produce the desired effect. Plus which it's probably loose and he only has a piss-on."

On gay marriage: "Dude, why you care so much about it? Got troubles in the bedroom? Jesus Christ."

On a varieties of other issues: "Oh, no you didn't. Oh, no you didn't. Pundit, please."

Alternately, the Kerry people can simply repeat the interrogator's questions in a high-pitched voice.

It's worth a try, and if it doesn't work everyone will have forgotten about it in a week.

WHATTAYA WANT ME TO DO, DRAW YOU A PICTURE? SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU? AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, DON'T EVER ASK ME MORE! Pretending to be mentally retarded, Daniel Henninger marvels at a Democratic fundraiser with rich Hollywood stars. "Isn't it becoming harder by the day to take the Democrats seriously as the party of the common man and the left-out?" cried the faux dumbass.

Sigh. Here's the top ten list of contributors, from OpenSecrets:

1. Goldman Sachs -- $3,910,296. 51% to Democrats; 49% to Republicans.
2. National Assn of Realtors -- $2,062,839. 51% to Democrats; 49% to Republicans.
3. Morgan Stanley -- $1,882,535. 33% to Democrats; 67% to Republicans.
4. Microsoft Corp -- $1,768,446. 64% to Democrats; 36% to Republicans.
5. Time Warner -- $1,730,995. 75% to Democrats; 25% to Republicans.
6. Citigroup Inc. -- $1,659,287. 50% to Democrats; 50% to Republicans.
7. SBC Communications -- $1,632,381. 32% to Democrats; 67% to Republicans.
8. Wal-Mart Stores -- $1,585,410. 19% to Democrats; 81% to Republicans.
9. UBS Americas -- $1,584,828. 37% to Democrats; 62% to Republicans.
10. Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- $1,556,630. 97% to Democrats; 4% to Republicans.

If the Dems are not "the party of the common man and the left-out," that sure doesn't mean the Republicans are. All us po' folk are fighting for an ever-shrinking slice of the American pie. If you trust Bush, Cheney, et alia to give you a bigger one, God go with you. But let's not make believe that the presence of Bruce Springsteen at a Donkey fundraiser means that the GOP, of all entities, has become the party of the little guy.

McGREEVEY. We can almost entirely ignore the pundits' reactions to this, because they are hamstrung by politesse. Indeed, the intemperate Tacitus is having such trouble working this corner that he has spun out of the blogosphere and into the ionosphere, at least:

The coincidence of the rumored harrassment suit -- or imminent social exposure -- is a convenient excuse for an action that was ultimately inevitable. Pace those who feel sorry for him, a victim of society and its mores he is not. Which is not to say he shouldn't be.

(Had to slip that in there, didn't he?)

Second, it's worth pointing out that McGreevey came to office in the fall '01 election season -- part of an incoming class of Democrats that included faux-Republican Michael Bloomberg and Virginia Governor Mark Warner. Some good conservatives went down in that cycle. Why mention this? Because it puts the lie to the Democratic canard -- repeated by no less than John Kerry himself -- that the President has relentlessly used 9/11 for partisan purposes from the get-go. His popularity was assuredly at its peak in the months of that grim fall season, and he refused to use it in the service of electioneering or his own party. Count me among those who thought at the time that he should have -- and were appalled that he did not. Next time you hear this line dragged out for ritual flogging, quash it dead: in the heat of the crisis, the President was President alone. Those who give him no credit for it do so because they, by contrast, are partisans all the time.

What the hell is this guy talking about? normal people might ask. Go to the dictionary and look up "sublimation." McGreevey's resignation and disgrace have nothing to do with Bush, 9/11, and "faux-Republicans" -- unless you live over your head in a murky swamp where homosexuals are senior partners in an imagined tyranny that has been keeping every decent American down, and must use issues of national security and authenticity to give some socially-acceptable form to your inchoate rage.

For source matter, look at the lumpenprole response to the gay side of McGreevey's revelation:

Who is the person he had the affair with? Barney Frank?!?!??!?!

This is probably due to the fact that they have a relationship similiar to the Clintons. A Business relationship.

But where are the NOW people screaming that he placed his wife and child in EXTREME DANGER with AIDS and other STD's!!!! Where was his respect and love for them and their health??

Maybe he should hook up with Marv Albert and Howard Dean! Yeeahahahahhahaa!!!!!!!

Dump your dumocrat legislators in Nov. if they don't force the sodomite to resign this week.

And:

Mind you, the guy didn't say he was bi-sexual, but that he was homo. He looks as though he is a bit on the thinnish side (yes, I am using code for possible aids).

Far from accepting deviance, we should buckle down and reinstate society's stigmas.

We are seeing the groundwork laid for the 'Closet Homo Defense' here.

The sad thing is that there are sick perverts like this in even more powerful and prominent positions. McGreevey is a start -- but we need to flush them all out.

There are many more, but I'm just sick of looking at them, though you may go and find them even in the "respectable" quarters of the Web.

The procurement of a sinecure for McGreevy's inamorato is a matter yet to be dealt with, and it certainly will be, but let us not (pardon the expression) mince words: the national result will be an intensification of the Republican Fags 'n' Flags strategy for the Presidential election. It's a good idea for them, too. I mean, what else have they got?

UPDATE.Mild edits for clarity. As to T's national security angle, I see WorldNetDaily got a copy of the hymnal: "Given that New Jersey was where one of the 9-11 planes originated from... one would think McGreevey would have vetted his security czar closely... According to a sexual harassment lawsuit to be filed shortly by Cipel, perhaps McGreevey did vet him ... a little too closely." Using the same standard by which the President is often judged, though, I'd say McGreevey and Cipel did a great job -- no one has blown up New Jersey on their watch, have they?

WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY. David Frum on Kerry's plan for government purchase of cheap Candian scrip drugs:

...drug re-importation is a cheap and cynical non-solution to a real problem: the unfairness of asking Americans to pay the whole cost and more of new drugs while the rest of the world pays less. But it’s no kind of answer to cut prices in the US: In that case, innovation could disappear entirely. (emphasis added)

The scene: a high school chem lab in the Midwest.

TEACHER: Congratulations, Timmy, on your acceptance to Stanford! As my best student ever, I'm sure you'll make a great translational pharmacologist.

TIMMY: (exhaling a cloud of cigar smoke) What's in it for me?

TEACHER: I beg your pardon?

TIMMY: You heard me, cloth-ears. This Kerry mug wants to buy drugs on the cheap from Canada. That'll cut into Big Pharma's racket but good -- and then it's bye-bye, fat signing bonus from Eli Lilly.

TEACHER: But surely your interest in medicine grows from a desire to help your fellow man?

TIMMY: What put that in your nut? There just one reason anyone gets into the pharmacology game -- and that's the sweet do-re-mi. You think I spend my nights drawing time-concentration curves just to heal some poor sap in a charity ward? Harvard gave Otto Krayer his own private jet, for Chrissakes. I won't so much as pick up a beaker for less than six figures.

TEACHER: But Timmy, what will you do if not pharmacology?

TIMMY: (shrugs) A little of this, a little of that. I'm pretty handy with a shiv. I've had offers from the Sudanese government and JPMorgan Chase, but I'm keeping my options open. So go tell your highbrow friends to lay off Bush, or us pill-packers will cut off your flow of new life-giving drugs but pronto, get me?

TEACHER: (placing the back of his hand to his brow) My faith in the younger generation is shattered.

TIMMY: (aside) I guess now would be a bad time to tell him all his engineering prodigies are going to work for Halliburton.

(Aaaaaannd... scene.)

AND ALSO I DISAPPROVE OF WHAT I JUST DID. The Vanderbilt student newspaper slots two AP dispatches to humorous effect. First:

A statewide poll last month by Middle Tennessee State University found that only 20 percent of Tennesseans support gay marriages, and about one-third favor gay civil unions... Also, Tennesseans were nearly divided in the poll about whether the U.S. Constitution should be amended to define marriage as a relation only between a man and a woman.

Immediately after:

More than half of adult Tennesseans have trouble reading well enough to understand a street map or to calculate postage, a new study on adult literacy shows.

Professor Reynolds' tenure explained! ad hominahominahomina... (Found via Alice.)

I should take this opportunity to note, in the spirit of Andy Kaufmanesque self-reproval, that my only travels in the Volunteer State centered around Nashville, where I met some of the nicest, brightest people in the world, along with many musicians.

SELF-DETONATING LOGIC BOMB OF THE DAY: "My position against gay marriage is essentially libertarian, although I've never managed to convince my libertarian friends of this." -- Cathy Seipp, NRO.

THEY DON'T MAKE CULTURE WARRIORS LIKE THEY USED TO. Really, I miss Pat Buchanan. At least he could write -- vicious ravings, sure, but well-turned! Sadly, the Right couldn't abide Pat's alleged anti-Semitic stink, and has replaced him with a squad of pablum pukers who, while perhaps even crazier that Buchanan, utterly lack his chops.

One of these is Duncan Maxwell Anderson, last seen in this space comparing Jesus to a Marine. Twelve years ago he was telling America how the nefarious, little-known Securities and Exchange Commission ("The Securities and what Commission? The SEC was founded in 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt...") was going to destroy multi-level marketing. Today Anderson runs something called Faith & Family magazine -- yes, it has a weblog, where you can can read ALL CAPS exhortations to avoid Calvinism, as well as some extremely confused Constitutional theory -- and runs something called High Tor Media, whatever that is (There was once a very fine playwright named Maxwell Anderson, and he wrote a play called High Tor -- if this DMA is in fact his progeny, let us take up a collection to have some spikes driven into his coffin to arrest the poor man's spinning.)

Occasionally, mystifyingly, Anderson writes for the New York Post. Today the Post has published his "A Time for Manhood," which treats the ancient conservative Daddy Party theme (Right is Strong, Left is for Homos, etc). Even poor, crack-brained Peggy Noonan knows that this sort of thing requires an angle, however trite -- but Anderson just combines various cliches as a child might mash together lumps of Play-Doh. And they're not even current cliches -- there's "Let's Roll" again, and when was the last time you saw Alan Alda used as a symbol of liberal emasculinity? On an episode of C.P.O. Sharkey?

Though I must admit, comparing the Democratic Convention to "the Berlin Olympics of 1936" is a new one. Incomprehensible, but new.

Meanwhile we have Jonah Goldberg explaining why feminism is to blame for girls' pants with words on the butt (all the while explaining, as is his increasingly pathetic wont, that he's no prude). And Dennis Prager, defending his right to beat on children ("why should a 12-year-old girl be immune from adult criticism?"). At least he's found an adversary whose stage of intellectual development may not have exceeded his.

Such are the new Shondekommando. Go here, punks, and see how it's done. If you're gonna be nuts, at least be articulate!

HOW MUCH TO MAKE THIS GO AWAY? I'm surprised it hasn't dawned on anyone else: our treatment of Libya basically says you can do whatever you want to innocent civilians as long as you pay for it afterwards:

Libya agreed Tuesday to pay $35 million to some victims of a bloody terror bombing at a Berlin disco nearly two decades ago, making another step in Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's effort to rebuild relations with the West.

The deal, coming after much larger settlements for the bombings of two U.S. and French airliners, does not cover 169 American victims, including two soldiers who died in the blast at the La Belle disco on April 5, 1986. Lawyers are seeking separate compensation for them in U.S. courts.

Agreed to by German lawyers and officials of a Libyan foundation run by Gadhafi's son, the settlement deals with 163 non-U.S. citizens, including Germans who were wounded and the family of a Turkish woman killed by the bomb...

In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli welcomed the accord, but he emphasized that the claims of U.S. victims also must be met.

Maybe one day Bin Laden will hold a pan-Arab telethon to pay off the vig on the World Trade Center.

LAFFS. This Slate article about the literary efforts of three Maxim associates is so much funnier than I expected that I must, in gratitude and wonder, share. The author, Dan Chiasson, turns some delightful phrases -- e.g., "Itzkoff's promise to 'consider the torturous path that any piece of copy had to follow before it ever appeared in print' might well mark the all-time low-water mark for the quest narrative..." -- and the careers of the authors on view say more about the collapse of literary culture than a thousand Roger Kimball essays ever could.

I am especially grateful to be made aware of Felix Dennis, who has led a fascinating life and now builds a poetry career for himself out of money and balls. Good for him! If his hoary verse fails to raise his literary profile, they will at least damage Tom Wolfe's.

AN ERRAND BOY SENT BY GROCERY CLERKS TO COLLECT A BILL. As to the recent Vietnam-related doings of the VRWC (Vast 'Re-elect W' Committee), I note that the medium seems to have become the message, as the blogosphere congratulates itself on holding the media's feet to the fire. You know you've reached the tertiary stage of scandal-mongering when the subject becomes "Look how much braver we are than CNN."

The Swift Boats Vets For Truth seem a minor annoyance: some of Kerry's comrades like him, some don't; at least we're thus assured he's no Raymond Shaw. The Cambodia story is a little stranger, though.

I find the John McCain's quick defense of Kerry on the Vets' ad, and his disinclination (not to mention Bush's) to leverage the Cambodia story on the stump, very interesting. It may be mere, collegial courtesy on McCain's part, as conventional wisdom has it. It may also be that McCain knows how these boys operate from previous experience -- in fact, some of his opponents are still at it -- and he wanted some of his own back.

But it may also be that both Kerry and McCain know some things about America's operations in Southeast Asia -- no so much through their combat (and McCain's POW) experience as through their work on a Congressional POW/MIA inquiry years ago -- that they're not prepared to get into.

Kerry's and McCain's MIA work was sufficiently shady to arouse the interest of Sydney Schanberg -- the sentinel of My Lai and Abu Ghraib -- who still thinks Kerry and McCain were less devoted to uncovering the truth than they should have been. Given what we do know about Vietnam, I would be shocked if Kerry and McCain didn't have secrets about the War and its aftermath. Whether these secrets are dishonorable, or merely disturbing and (in someone's view) politically or diplomatically necessary to keep, is unknown to me.

But I would say that if Kerry is less than transparent about his service, there many be more than one reason.

Time may tell much more -- there was a lot no one knew about America's Cambodian adventures until someone dug it up, so someone may yet dig up something on Kerry's Cambodian adventure, or lack thereof, too. Or it may be that this thing sinks back into the vast, unexplored backwaters of history, and the political operators will content themselves with working whatever unease its moment in the media sun has stirred up.

DEMOCRACY! WHISKEY! SEXY! Al Jazeera has been closed in Baghdad. Attend the voice of censorship, sounding suspiciously like Elmer Fudd:

"They have been showing a lot of crimes and criminals on TV, and they [send] a bad picture about Iraq and about Iraqis and encourage criminals to increase their activities," Iraq's interior minister, Falah al-Naqib, said.

PM Allawi cited the recent bogus beheading video as part of their reason for the station's 30-day timeout. I guess Reuters and AP will be the next to feel the wrath of the world's newest republic.

If you're waiting for a MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT item on this from the Ole Perfesser, you will wait a long time indeed.

DO TELL. Ramesh Ponnuru:

...again and again [Wieseltier] suggests that liberals are sadly lowering their standards to match those of conservatives. Right. We had this great, civil, elevated political discourse until Limbaugh and Coulter came along, and it's too bad that liberals are now meeting fire with fire. I don't have the space, time, or patience to go into all the counter-evidence here, which could stretch all the way back to the Goldwater campaign or, for that matter, to William F. Buckley Jr.'s first coming to public attention. Suffice it to say that no right-winger wrote a major book talking about killing Bill Clinton during the 1990s.

I assume that final crack refers to that new Nicholson Baker book, which so sorely vexes some conservatives' understanding of such arcane literary terms as "fiction," "character," etc. But what's the rest of it about?

It's really too bad he doesn't have the patience, because I would love to hear how the Daisy ad stacks up again McCarthyism (both original and throwback varieties), Nixon's plumbers, the various bullshit Clinton prosecutions, and yeah, while we're at it, Limbaugh and She Who Cannot Be Named, and all the other dirty tricks without which modern conservatism is nearly unimaginable.

Maybe they're saving that one for the cruise.

THE QUARRELSOME QUADRENNIAL. Since I have but two topics, myself and politics, and I am sick of both (hey, guess the ref!), y'all have fun with HarpWeek's Presidential Elections 1860-1912.

I have some feelings about these spellbinding horror stories of pride, ignorance, slander, and power madness, but I'll leave that alone for now. I just figured you guys would like it.

HE LIKED YOU BETTER WHEN YOU WERE A PUSSY. After being called traitors again and again and again, liberals got sick of it and started fighting back, which has prompted one "Doverspa" of RedState.org to ask, "Where Are The Reasonable Liberals?"

the center-left and center-right have been able to respect each other despite their differences in the past... I continue to hear the conservative critique of liberal programs... but the liberal critique has changed. The President (and by association all Republicans) are greedy, racist, and terrorism is a political ruse to scare the nation. President Bush probably knew about 9/11 ahead of time, he wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act, and he wants to enrich all of his rich buddies while screwing anyone who works for a living.

Yeah, when Kerry hollered "No blood for oil! Bush lied, people died!" at the Fleet Center, I knew the jig was up.

So conservatives are all sweet reason, are they? Let's see what kind of friendly, collegial criticism they're dishing out at one typical, mainstream right-site -- RedState.org:

Why should any believing Catholic vote for a Democrat, given that the Donkey Party's one sacrament is abortion on demand; and why should any Catholic who takes her faith at all seriously vote for John Kerry?

...it is nonetheless dismaying to watch the Donkeys descend into ahistorical madness... Clearly, the Democrats are either slowly self-destructing or acting out one heck of an ideological spasm. More power to them, I say.

...Osama bin Laden fan [Washington Senator] Patty Murray...

Congratulations, Democrats. You've just nominated for yourself an epistemological zero.

...one wonders if the modern Democrat party might have read too many comic books in its time... John "Kiss Me If You've Seen the Photo of Me Kissing Ortega" Kerry...

That's just in the past week or so, and not to speak of the Comments section.

Let me be clear. As a practitioner, I have nothing again hardcore invective, and I get a kick out of the RedStaters', which employs advanced vocabulary words and, on occasion, wit. But to sigh, at the same time you are using these flammable chemicals, that you are so very disappointed that your once "reasonable" opponents now use such techniques is rather like complaining that the kid you used to bully in third grade came back for the first day of fourth grade with some martial arts lessons under his belt. Nobody likes a bully, much less one that complains about the quarrelsomeness of his former victims.

THE RIGHT HAND DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE OTHER RIGHT HAND IS DOING. From the Washington Times we get a story about two talk radio hosts who wish to unseat a congresscritter whom "they deem soft on issues such as border security and benefits for undocumented aliens."

We don't know this official's name. Neither do the show's hosts, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of KFI-AM in Los Angeles. The unlucky legislator will be chosen by their audience over a long and arduous campaign.

The "winner," as chosen by the listeners, will be announced the day after Labor Day. The hosts then will use the airwaves to pursue the representative's political downfall in November's election -- and have a little fun.

"We've made it like a reality show -- we've got drums beating in the background, stuff like that," Mr. Kobylt said.

Five nominees are named, all, BTW, Republicans who are not hardline enough to suit Kobylt's and Chiampou's taste.

Elsewhere in the same edition of the WashTimes, one Barry Casselman denounces the "self-styled (sic) 'cultural' elite" that seeks to defeat political candidates.

I am not saying that comedians and entertainers are not citizens like everyone else, with the right to express their political opinions. But in our American society, celebrities enjoy many special privileges of fame and wealth. And when these privileges are misused, we are all the poorer for it...

The comedians and entertainers who have hijacked the political debate to publicize themselves are doing no service to their country.

Seasoned readers will not need to be told that Casselman is talking about entertainers who "are conducting a class war against President Bush."

Casselman is described as having "reported on and analyzed national politics since 1972." You'd think that by now someone would have told him about talk radio.