Did I mention that Mary Cheney was gay?

Note: The title of this post has nothing to do with its content but I felt like it was appropriate given the circumstances.

Anyhoot, the election is beginning to become clearer by the day. The Kerry camp (and the main stream media - oh forget it - what's the difference?) is spinning the latest polls to say that the race is "tied." (For example, check out Newsweek's spin of its latest poll that puts Bush up by 6. The headline is "Too Close to Call" and the link to the story is ""Locked in a draw." They go immediately into the registered voters stats, as opposed to likely voters, and then take nader out of the equation to come up with a tie. In any event, this poll is of no value whatsoever. They have Bush up by 6 among women and Kerry up by 3 among men. Who did they poll, an ivy league school?) When they are trying to say its tied, you know that they know that they're losing. Meanwhile, Dubya is in New Jersey ALL DAY today. This means that they really think that NJ is in play. Wow, what a coup that would be!

I encourage all of you to sign up for the 72-hour project. This is Karl Rove's successful get out the vote campaign. I signed up to help, but being in NY, it worthless unless they give me numbers to call in Pennsylvania for instance. FOR THOSE OF YOU THAT LIVE IN BATTLEGROUND STATES, (ahem..The Newt, Don Juan, SQ, MC - at least tangentially), I strongly encourage you to help out if at all possible. You can sign up for as little as a day - any little help may be the difference. Also, I signed up to be a legal volunteer, and I recommend that my fellow attorneys do the same.

Okay, back to the race. The daily tracking polls are, expectedly, a bit down this morning with Bush up 4 head to head in TIPP, 3 with Nader, but tied in Rasmussen and Zogby. Rasmussen and Zogby are to be expected because they are 3-day tracking polls, so today's poll includes Friday-Sunday, three days when (especially during football season), republicans are undersampled. This is especially evident from Friday's numbers, which resulted in a 1.4 pt swing in Rasmussen. If the pattern continues, expect these polls to swing back into Bush's favor, with a 3-4 pt lead likely in the next couple of days.

The polls as a whole indicate a 3.4 pt Bush head-to-head lead, and a 3.8 pt lead with Nader. Also, the most recent polls indicate Bush gains among independent voters, as well as women voters (notwithstanding the obviously flawed Newsweek poll).

After months of pounding Kerry as a flip-flopper and too indecisive to be the commander in chief, the Bush campaign has moved in for the kill with their ace - portraying Kerry as too liberal. I have been wondering why Kerry's record has not gotten more attention - yes, the flip-flopper charge was very effective but voters will forgive a certain amount of change in one's positions. After all, things change, facts change, the analysis changes. But the most telling evidence of how someone would govern as president is their own record. And Kerry's record is astonishing.

To wit:
"I'm a liberal and proud of it."
Sen. John Kerry to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, 1991

"Labels don't mean anything."
Sen. John Kerry in the second debate with President Bush, 2004

We all know that the nonpartisan "National Journal" ranked Kerry as the most liberal senator in 2003. But was this an abberation? Hardly. Read this article by Robert Caldwell:

Americans for Democratic Action has been rating every member of Congress on
liberalism's key quotients since the 1940s. Its lifetime rating for the
fervently liberal Ted Kennedy is 90 percent. Kerry's lifetime ADA rating is 92
percent.

The ADA's ideological opposite is the American Conservative Union.
The ACU rates the votes of members of Congress on their fealty to such
politically conservative principles as restraining government, resisting higher
taxes and maintaining a strong national defense. Kerry's lifetime ACU rating: 5
percent.

Congressional Quarterly, the encyclopedic and non-partisan
chronicler of what Congress does and how its members vote, found that Kerry
voted 100 percent of the time with Ted Kennedy on major legislation in 1985,
1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1998 and 1999.

On taxes and spending, Kerry has a lifetime rating of only 18.7 percent from the National Taxpayers Union. Kerry's average rating from Americans for Tax Reform from 1999-2003 is 12.5 percent. Citizens Against Government Waste gave Kerry a paltry 5 percent rating in 2001 and a 1990-2001 average of just 26 percent.

On abortion, Kerry earned a 100 percent rating from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League for every year from 1995 through 2002. This tally includes six votes against legislation banning partial-birth abortions, a gruesome procedure denounced by the Vatican as "an incredibly brutal act of aggression
against innocent human life." NARAL's opposite, the National Right to Life
Committee, gives Kerry a rating of 0.

The AFL-CIO puts Kerry's big labor voting record at 100 percent for five of the last 19 years and an average of 89 percent from 1985 through 2001.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, defender of the nation's free enterprise, free market economy, records Kerry's lifetime record of support as a weak 35 percent.
Kerry poses today as a hunter, gun owner and defender of the Second Amendment's constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. The National Rifle Association, with its 4 million members, isn't fooled. The NRA gives Kerry a failing F on gun-rights legislation and last week endorsed Bush for president.

Now, you can't get much more out of the mainstream than that. (Btw, can you believe that this guy is running on the fact that the "rich" don't pay their "fair share" when Teresa Heinz (that's her legal name - she added the "Kerry" merely for the campaign) had an effective federal tax rate of 12.4%?!!! This is beyond hypocritical. This is downright evil. While they can afford armies of tax lawyers and accountants to find every nook and cranny in the tax code, "rich" people like us will fork over even more of our hard earned money (not that Teresa or John know anything about earning). In any event, this is further proof that the tax code needs simplification, which Bush supports.)

Now, are we really going to, in the middle of a war, with 5.4% unemployment, with 4+% gdp growth, with record home ownership, elect a liberal from Massachussets? It defies logic. Are we really going to vote for a famous war protestor? Are we really going to give the incumbant the boot, when his ratings on his handling of the war on terror are through the roof? In the first election since 9/11? To a guy who has no major accomplishments, who calls terrorism a "nuisance", who insists that any preemptive action pass a global test (notwithstanding the FACT that saddam BRIBED members of the U.N.), and who is a documented Liberal?

It just doesn't make any sense. Bush is going to win this election folks. I cannot see the American public sounding retreat in the face of the terrorist attacks. Speaking of that, check out Putin's latest remarks:

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin says terrorist
attacks in Iraq are aimed at preventing the re-election of U.S. President George
W. Bush and that a Bush defeat "could lead to the spread of terrorism to other
parts of the world."
...

"Any unbiased observer understands that attacks of international terrorist
organizations in Iraq, especially nowadays, are targeted not only and not so
much against the international coalition as against President Bush," Putin
said.

"International terrorists have set as their goal inflicting the maximum
damage to Bush, to prevent his election to a second term.

"If they succeed in doing that, they will celebrate a victory over
America and over the entire anti-terror coalition," Putin said.

This really is a monumental election. I just don't think the American public has gotten that squeamish so quickly after 9/11. If it has, and Kerry is elected, that would send a message to the terrorists that the beheadings and car bombs work. That we are too soft as a country to seek their elimination. That we will pass on our obligation as the world's only superpower to ensure global security, and that we consider ourselves to merely be another country. It would send a message that the U.N., which can be bribed, which puts countries like Syria, Iran, Cuba and the Sudan in human-rights positions, and which is dominated by third-world non-democratic countries, is the final arbiter of world affairs.

I don't think the American public will be an accomplice. I don't think the American public wants to see Hillarycare and wants their taxes raised. I don't think the American public wants a global test.

Bush will pound Kerry in 15 days.