Heard from a FOX News guest this afternoon (paraphrased): “For someone who sits on the Senate intelligence committee, Senator Kerry seems to be getting a lot of his intelligence from the New York Times and CBS News.” Life imitates satire in a sick, sad way:

“[Bush] won’t acknowledge the mess in Iraq,” said Mr. Edwards. “All you have to do is turn your television on.”

At a Rose Garden signing ceremony, Mr. Bush thanked Mr. Edwards for the suggestion.

“As president, I have daily briefings with intelligence and national security officials,” said Mr. Bush. “And yet with all those bright people in my office every day, not one of them has proposed that we just turn on the television to get an accurate picture of the situation on the ground in Iraq. Brilliant.”

As far as October surprises go, this latest attempt at letting out the context-free truth by CBS and the NYT (the latter of which should be thanked for its brash decision to pre-empt CBS’ nefarious attempt to wait until a day before the election before releasing this) is lame by my standards. Sure, John Kerry’s treasonous activities as being a Communist operative may be seen as lame and desperate by people on the Left but these concerns are quite legitimate. As legitimate as having a lifelong record of undermining the security of the nation, of being a tried-and-true internationalist, and then pulling a chimeric (if predictable by the poll-driven Democrat standard mentality) attempt at being the opposite, as Meryl Yourish makes very clear:

I think Kerry is a liar and a poseur. You cannot have a career of pacifism and voting against military issues and suddenly turn around and declare yourself a fit commander-in-chief. It takes more than a campy salute and a “reporting for duty” at the DNC to make me believe Kerry is fit for command. I believe he is more unfit for command than any other candidate who ran against him, with the possible exception of Howard Dean. And may I say that the Democratic party may lose me forever if they can’t give me a candidate I can respect and believe in.

Now, 380 tons of missing explosives, the volume of which requires a week’s worth of round the clock, corporate-level management of machinations to make vanish using a fleet of forty unmarked trucks that can easily be made to disappear across the Iraqi border, was a legitimate concern at the time. Amusingly enough, the media shill known as CBS has already shot itself in the foot, dug the bullet out and salted the wound with its own reports during the more relevant time period.

In the run-up to the election John Kerry still cannot make head or tail of himself: he can continue to critique the President ad nauseam, and all he can do is make people sit the election out. I doubt this is a tactic that could work this time. Too many people know the stakes are too high, and even Republicans I know in the sure-to-be-Kerry state of Maryland are mobilizing to go out and vote. They want to show the Democrats that though every vote counts, every vote must be won, and that no state is safe. If Maryland Republicans can show that even this deep blue state, like any blue state, is no safe haven, if they can show that there is solidarity among themselves, it would keep the Democrats on their toes.

This campaign phase is now quite officially, immune from scandals. People have made up their minds and I think—like Shepard Smith does—that the “unsure” answers in the phone polls are mostly the answers of liars. I think that this election is not as close as even FOX News tries to present it to be, and save for a major disaster on either side, nothing will shock people out of their preconceived, and predecided votes that they will take to them on the second of November.

(Provenance of links: Smiling Kevin » Scrappleface. Instapundit » Captain’s Quarters.)

UPDATE: A quick link that I forgot to find context into my post above, is John Cole’s contextual perspective of the 380-ton elephant that really isn’t in the room.