I guess the big political news is that somehow Bush's approval rating for his "War on Terror" went up by 5% over the past week. This despite the fact that in the past week, the Senate issued a report that basically states that the CIA's Iraqi WMD report was a total my bad. Not to mention the news that came with it that out of a 93 page intelligence report detailing all the supposed WMD programs and all the caveats and possible maybe-not's, Bush only read a one page summation of the report. Which is kind of like doing a book report on "Moby Dick" by only reading the Amazon.com review, getting it wrong, then claiming that it doesn't matter anyways because Herman Melville is an evil-doer. All of which proves the point that if you repeat the phrase "America is safer" over and over again, ad nauseum with a big, huge ugly backdrop that says "Protecting America" with a big bald Eagle on it, people are gonna be banged over the head with so much that they'll start thinking it. Even if the very-same White House issued a report a few months back saying essentially, well whadda ya know, there has been more terrorism over the past couple of years. Or even if the President's very own Homeland Security Department recently announced that there's a sort-of, maybe, slight, we're not exactly sure, chance that there might be a big terrorist attack around election time. Apparently America's sense of irony isn't as finely tuned as we thought. But maybe the point is, to paraphrase Jon Stewart, to make everyone scared enough to forget about the Edwards nomination, but not so scared enough that we'll punish Bush for not protecting us.

Then there's Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post who has an interesting look at the way things are going:

I have no quarrel with folks who are trying to make up their minds between Bush and Kerry. What drives me crazy is voters who are not undecided but willfully ignorant. That is, they can't make up their minds because they pay so little attention to politics.

I thought about this after reading a Washington Post interview with Charlotte McFarland, an Arkansas woman who has lost a number of jobs. She said she's definitely not voting for Bush. Fine. But then she said:

"I don't know about Mr. Kerry. I just don't know where he stands on the issues."

Excuse me, but it's not all that hard to find out. Pick up a newspaper, grab a magazine, turn on the television, listen to the radio. Kerry's positions are out there. He repeats them every day.

As Randall Carver, the Imperial Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan would say on the Howard Stern show, "Wake up White People!"

I will have to say this about the President, though, his drunken floozy of a daughter, Jenna, is pretty damn hot.