Punditchick

Tangerine Theron

Bigley is in a cage surrounded by chaps from Zarqawi's band of beheaders, the terrorists in Iraq are killing people and blowing stuff up, and John Kerry has gone suddenly and absurdly orange. Huh?

It makes no sense that he would go orange for the debate. I know he's losing women, but looking like a vain and girlie boob is no way to turn on the Security Moms. How pandescending can Kerry get? A bad insta-tan isn't going to win him the swing states.

On the contrary, I suspect Kerry's Charlize Theron like big event prep is a little too metro for America right now.

The lefty intelligencia is bemoaning the fact that Bush has turned Kerry into a man in panties. Doesn't going orange for the debate make matters worse? It is so Paris Hilton. It's so red carpet diva.

Mr. Kerry has said that this election is the most serious election of our lifetime. Doesn't the fact that he's paid someone to color him orange for the debates (barring some last minute cosmetic correction) make him look laughably unserious?

He intends to argue that Bush is an outsourcing, misleading, hope killing, Halliburton enriching, terrorist creating, world raping fool. Isn't that something Kerry should argue to an electorate that largely doesn't believe it when he's not orange?

It seems to me that Kerry's last best chance is to make Bush have awful debates-- something that is deceptively difficult, but very far from impossible. But I tend to think that candidate Kerry is so dreadful that Bush can bumble and fumble and still win.

I just don't see how a dour, fake-baked flip flopper can get elected in this country.

Dude, No!!

"Real Time with Bill Maher" is generally an orgy of non-stop Bush loathing. Unfortunately for KE04, a good bit of this week's episode was spent bitching about Kerry.

Aaron MacGruder of Boondocks fame, declared that the GOP had turned Kerry into "a man in panties." All the other far out Lefty panelists and Maher agreed. MoDo added that Kerry's Iraq position sounds so bitchy. And some Hollywood guy said "in politics a politician will demonize his opponent, but in this campaign the Bush people have feminized Kerry." He also said that Security Moms are leaving Kerry because "they take their little Beckhams to their soccer games in Hummers and Escalades and they want a badass Sherriff." Very true.

This isn't good. Even Kerry's friends think he's a man in panties. And MoDo let slip that big time Democrats (who are gun control freaks) want Kerry to drop the windsurfer and pick up an uzi.

The despair on the Left over Kerry has gotten so overwhelming--it's delicious. So what does Kerry do to assuage their fears? He gives them this awful, ultra bitchy pigskin photo op.

Since when is looking like an ass in public a solution? This is so bad and so mockable. He looks like a desperate man in panties.

Assuming Bush doesn't give Kerry a Gerald Ford like gaffe in the debates, Kerry is going to stay in his panties and lose big.

Doesn't This Count?

According to a recent Zogby poll, Seventy-six percent of Arab Americans want Kerry elected. I'm sure 100% of the people at CAIR are for Kerry. Shouldn't we look at that and come to some unpretty conclusions?

During World War II, would America have been helped in anyway if the candidate of German American Bundists defeated FDR?

Kerry thinks John Howard should be replaced by a Leftwing dove-- so does Al Qaeda. Kerry has slowed down the pace of reconstruction in Iraq by engaging in demogoguery over Halliburton. Al Qaeda has slowed down the pace of reconstruction in Iraq through bombings and terror. Al Qaeda and Kerry both wish to portray Iyad Allawi as Bush's puppet. I mean, show me where Mr. Kerry dissents from the Zarqawi Doctrine? He doesn't. He wants us to fail badly in Iraq. Politically, he needs us to fail badly.

Isn't it likely that every terrorist in the ME sings "Go, Kerry, it's your birthday, it's your birthday," every time he launches on the administration over Iraq and the WOT?

Isn't it likely that Mr. Zarqawi wants a voting majority in America to believe that Iraq is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Kerry's surrogates, when they aren't dissing Iyad Allawi, bring up the fact that more Americans have died this month than died last month and that more Americans died last month than the month prior. Memo to Devine, Lockhart , Cahill and Sasso: Duh, they are trying to elect your candidate!

What every American needs to get before 2 November is that the 527 that coordinates the most with the Kerry campaign is the terrorist insurgents in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq.

The Truth About Dan

Even the the Lefties at Slate get it:

"When Rather quits—whether this week or at a moment of his own choosing—it will mark an enormous shift in American cultural life. For the first time in a generation, viewers will flip on Evening News, grab a snifter of brandy, and prepare to receive the day's stories from someone who isn't barking mad."

Dan-o is No Longer Defiant

I must say, I never thought we'd get this. Dan is a self-conscious Texan and a failed marine. I thought it was Alamo time, baby.

I thought the Dan was going to fight to the last man.

Perhaps, this CYA statement will put off a widescale affiliate mutiny and keep the numbers for CBS News north of McEnroe's in the top markets.

I'm kind of sad about this. We're still getting a partial stonewall, but I liked it better when they were hysterically blind to the damage Danron was bringing to the brand.

I allowed myself to imagine a Howard Beale endgame. Weren't we close to the formation of a "Kill Dan" cabal at Black Rock?

I thought it was going to play out like that scene in Goodfellas when Jimmy (DeNiro) asks Henry (Liotta) to go to Florida to do a job for him. Jimmy wanted Henry to go to Florida so he could whack him.

Were we that far away from Moonves asking Dan to go to Iraq? Moonves could've got the number to Zarqawi's sat. phone (screw having to get SLA wannabes to do the job) and got Musab to rub out the Dan in real time during his live shot from the roof of the Palestine Hotel. That would have been a helluva coup.

Sadly, it looks like Mapes is the patsy. But I suspect Mapes won't be enough. Heyward and Rather need to go too.

Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling...

Memo to Black Rock: Cover This

Assuming this picture isn't a hoax (and if it is, Sophia Parlock should get a SAG card), Kerry's in real trouble. If Lupat is going Cobra Kai on a BC04 loving three year old, Kerry's base is a swing voter alienating mess.

Lucky for Kerry, the Gang of 500 will bury this. Of course, if that shirt had Halliburton on it, and it was a Bush guy doing this to a KE04 "working family", this picture would get more plays in the MSM than the Dean scream. It would be brutal, even Utah would be in play.

GOP Seeks SWF

Single white women are the new, new it demo of this election. How do we know this? Kerry's recent gun control move means he's abandoned his NASCAR Dad strategery. And then there is this new push by Jane Fonda (Is that really wise given that the Swiftees are pissed off and popular?) and Eve Ensler to get SWFs and their vaginas to vote for Kerry.

The CW is that Dubya scares SWFs a lot with his neocon foreign policy and that if these women voted (something like 20 million of them didn't vote in 2000) Kerry would win in a landslide.

Apparently, the GOP buys it too. At the convention, Karen Hughes decided that the "Sex and the City"watching, latte drinking diva vote was gettable for BC04. Young, pretty Hill interns at MSG wore shirts that read on the front "Carrie doesn't speak for me" and "Kerry doesn't speak for me" on the back-- of course, they are talking about Carrie Bradshaw, Sarah Jessica Parker's character on S&TC. And another pretty, young intern had a shirt that said "Pro Manolos, Pro Bush."

Is "Pro Manolos and Pro Bush" a winner with the swing voters? I'm thinking that being for $1,000 shoes and tax cuts sounds just as shitty to a swing voter in Ohio as being for $1,000 shoes and tax hikes.

Karen Hughes' hunch that the SWFs will decide this election explains the speech she wrote for the twins. It was a little slutty and a little nutty, and all the squares at NRO were not pleased. But the Bushies are still up big, who can argue with that?

Does the fate of the Republic lie in the hands of women who guffawed when Samantha's dye-job of her bush got botched? Does the fate of the Republican party depend on SWFs marrying their Mr. Bigs and moving to the exburbs? I'm sure Michael Barone knows.

The giant killers over at Power Line think the SWFs think Bush was much hotter than Kerry in 1971. And this SWF agrees.

The Liberal Lion In Nuclear Winter

Dan has dropped a nuclear tipped MOAB on the credibility of CBS News.

The case against Dan's memos is so overwhelming; regime change at the big desk seems like the only option.

Is it Survivable?

Can Dan make it? The "pajama people" of the blogosphere have made Dan look very corrupt and very foolish. His memos are fakes and everybody knows it. It's not just Hewitt, Reynolds, Gerahty and the fellas at LGF and Power Line who are saying it. Safire, WaPo and ABC News are saying it.

Dan has found out that there is a New Media Order-- no longer are there just a couple million Archies in their tv rooms yelling at their sets impotently. Rather is being watched by millions of connected, savvy and resourseful people who don't think Tina Brown is fabulous.

I don't see how Dan recovers.

Here's Dan taking everybody for chumps once again: "I want to emphasize that I stand behind my President in a time of war. There is no joy in reporting such a story." Yeah, no joy. I must have imagined that Dan looked like he was the lead in a Cialis commercial.

The hubris it took to put on those obviously phony memos is astounding. After all, the blogosphere took out Raines and Lott, talk radio (against all odds) has kept Bush's base solid and spread the Swiftee story like wildfire, and Drudge and Lucianne got Mr. Clinton impeached.

If Rather wasn't treated like the baby Jesus over at CBS, he would know what a force the New Media is and this mess wouldn't have happened.

But no one tells Dan Rather spit and the results are catastrophic for CBS News.

This is an Enron moment for CBS News. The 72 year old golden child is probably gonna have to go.

Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling....

Photo Flop

The Swift boat ads are deadly and everywhere and the GOP convention, despite Karen Hughes' mediocrity, was a smash, but John Forbes Kerry's biggest electoral impediment is himself.

Last night on Hannity and Colmes, Bob Beckel said he clocked the Democrat convention and only 45% of it was about Vietnam. In Beckel's world, Kerry showed restraint.

Kerry's post-convention planning makes Bush's postwar planning seem prescient by comparison. Kerry had to know his lame salute and seemingly paid for "B.O.B." would provoke O'Neill and the gang. If Kerry can't be counted on to do something as simple as run a serious campaign for the Presidency, how can America trust him to run a complicated, global WOT?

It's not just Kerry's tactical idiocy that has him down in the polls. His stagecraft is just awful.

Kerry's belief that photo ops of him windsurfing in Nantuckett is what the swing voters have been waiting for is mysterious to say the least. He looks like the whitest man in show biz doing it.... it's laughable. Kerry's mission to be Kennedyesque is not accomplished, but he has managed to come off like Kato Kaelin in Winter. I'm thinking that probably doesn't get them closer to sealing the deal with the undecideds.

The Nantuckett photo spread is endlessly mockable and hard for the little guy to relate to.

Chris Matthews said this of Kerry's windsurfing: "That's a rich guy having fun. Where are his friends? He needs to play stickball in South Philly."

I agree with Matthews that Kerry's windsurfing in public makes him look like a thrust fund dandy, but I don't think stickball in South Philly is the answer.

Earlier in the campaign, John Forbes Kerry's cheese-steak-eating-regular-guy photo op flopped badly. Can staging a stickball game with the Breck Girl , Begala and Devine be anything but disastrous?