The latest Zogby numbers are in. (A refresher for those just joining us; Zogby is the only polling organization to get it almost exactly right in both 2000 and 1996. We keep an eye on them.)

It looks like more bad news for the Bushies with a 5 point lead for Kerry-Edwards before the Convention was even over. It's been a rough day for the Bushies (see the previous couple of items.) But at least it's a Friday!

Worse than the newly opened 5 point lead, is the rest of the story. Atrios' summary of the report will suffice at this late hour:

Bush is leading only by 2 points in the Red states?!

I know you Lefties don't want me to jinx ya, and you Righties like to point to the "dead heat" National Polls (and overlook the only ones that matter: The Battleground Polls), but unless Kerry or Edwards screw the pooch between now and November (perfectly possible), or they take Bin Laden out of cold storage (even more possible), I'm starting to smell a Kerry Landslide. I'm just sayin'.

Wall Street Journal reports that Sandy Berger has been cleared of all wrongdoing. Their site is subscription only, so the link to their story "Berger Cleared of Withholding Material From 9/11 Commission" will only work if you have a subscription.

So here's a report instead from KYW NewsRadio:

Where does Mr. Berger go to get his reputation back? I'm sure apologies from Rush, Sean, O'Reilly, Scarborough, Matthews, Fox, CNN, MSNBC and Drudge etc. will be forthcoming. Not.

Congratulations to the fiscal "conservatives" of the Bush Administration!

While it seemed nearly impossible to beat last years record setting $375 Billion defecit, "the party of smaller government" has done it again!

The numbers are in, and this year...It's another record deficit! $445 Billion! The largest in the history of mankind as a matter of fact!

Sadly, the numbers were released today instead of the more tradition July 15th date. Which is a shame, because they really could have embarrased those Democrats at their convention with this terrific news, which came out just one day too late! Darn the luck!

It's also a shame, because it was late on a Friday before the White House was able to release the numbers, and most of the press had already shut down for the weekend! Curses!

Still...it didn't keep the White House from crowing about this terrific news! As reported by AP:

Mr. Bolten didn't explain how this year's record deficit came about when Mr. Bush had previously told Americans in 2001, that if his tax cuts were passed that we'd have a $262 Billion surplus this year instead.

But never mind that! A record is a record!

So congratulations George W. Bush! And to all of you fiscal conservatives who helped put him into office! Your tax cuts and keen grasp of economics is certainly paying off!

Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

Uh, oh. Looks like another bad day in Bushville.

(First one to catch the inevitable "Nancy Reagan has clearly lost her mind since the death of her husband" line from the Attack Monkeys, be sure to let us know!)

A few final thoughts on the DNC Convention after it's close (other thoughts on the week's activities are sprinkled throughout the last 3 or 4 days worth of Blog items below).

John Kerry said all the right things last night in his speech. A little too quickly perhaps, there was so many applause lines that he'd have better served himself to allow them to reverberate a bit more. But he's never been known for his oratory genius. It's what he said that counted most. At least to me.

Still not certain I'll actually be able to cast my own vote for him, paticularly since I live in the "locked" state of California and my vote may be better spent elsewhere (though, obviously not on Bush). If you live in Missouri or Texas or Ohio or Florida, etc., you'd be crazy to vote for anybody else. Which is what the Bushies are counting hoping for, of course!

I was, however, impressed with the speech in general. He said a lot of things that a lot of us Progressives had been wanting to hear from the man who isn't George W. Bush.

The coverage of the speech, which I watched mostly via Fox, though switched over to CNN and others throughout, showed again how even in their choice of camera shots the Foxies are anti-Democrat and Pro-Republican. While earlier in the week they would cut away to bored folks, dark folks, and folks in funny outfits right in the middle of important points in the various speeches (as opposed to waiting for applause lines and then showing cheering Dems) they subtly switched to a new tact last night.

If you watched Kerry's speech on Fox, you'd think he was actually in Hollywood making his speech! Which was clearly no accident of editing by the Fox directors. Almost every cutaway was to one of those "awful Hollywood Liberal Elitists" (I counted shots of Ben Affleck, Leo DiCaprio, two guys from The West Wing, Rob Reiner, John Cusack, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Steven Spielberg..and oh, yeah, Hillary...all within the first fifteen minutes of the speech!)

There were about five thousand delegates there, 15,000 reporters, scads of Democratic officials, but it was the "Hollywood Liberal Elite" who got the bulk of the camera time. That's Fox for ya. More on them later.

I was a bit mystified by the following comment from Kerry's speech though:

The ideas of building unity and not angry division, and respecting one another, etc., made shrewd sense. But the last part there, about "never misus[ing] for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States" seemed an odd way to end the thought.

I wasn't certain what he was speaking of there, until I saw a Bill Schneider/CNN explanation that he was referring to Bush's cynical and failed "Gay Marriage Amendment". Then it made sense.

Perhaps the most interesting developement of the week was the Dems enormously clever --- and so far very successful --- move to co-opt the "optimistic" tone that Republicans had likely been hoping to seize upon themselves. The Reagan Effect is fully in play suddenly in this year's campaign, and it's the Democrats, ironically, who have successfully taken that legacy (for now) and made it their own. Beating the GOP at their own "we're the party of optimists, they're the party of doom and gloom!" game.

So kudos to whoever came up with that plan!

The Bush-Cheney thugs already look pretty pathetic (and un-American in this case), by tearing into Kerry-Edwards in the bargain. Drudge's lead item at this moment, for example, "Bush Derides Kerry as Man of Few Achievements..." will likely ring pretty poorly today for Team Bush amongst the electorate who really does seem to want some hope and optimism in this country for the first time in years! Yes, I know the pols always claim that "American voters are tired of the negativity"! But this time, I sense that it may actually be true!

Thus, I'd predict the more positive candidate this year may also end up winning because of it! Bush may soon figure that out, but his record of years of ugly divisiveness along with a proven inability to be the "uniter, not a divider" he claimed to be, added to his surrogates complete inability to be positive (that's just not what they're made of, and they don't have positive facts on their side to boot) means that Bush finds himself now in an unfortunate corner.

Anybody wanna start laying bets for which day between now and November 2 that Dubya will have his own "Bozos" moment this year? (Surely you all remember when Papa Bush's chances were so bleak back in '92, that the sitting President referred to his opponents as "those two Bozos".) Desperation does funny things to a guy, I guess. Watch for it from Mr. Bush at some point within the next 95 days.

Also, of note this year, was "Fox Up Against It!" They weren't able to pull of their usual all-out unchallenged assault on the Democrat Party this week. Was it because they were surrounded by Dems? Or is the Anti-Fox Movement really beginning to have an effect in the House that Murdoch Built?

More on that later...and meanwhile, where are those fucking balloons? Well done, CNN! You guys are geniuses!

CNN had been posting it's "Pundits Scorecard" each night of the Convention to score the various keynote speakers. Last night, the pundits were asked "How would you rate the Democratic National Convention?" Here's how Tucker Carlson scored it...

Speakers: B+
Themes/Message: A
Kerry's Speech: B+
OVERALL: C-

Hmmm...Average together the B+, A and B+ and come out with a C-! Got it!

(Was Tucker the one responsible for coming up with the bad numbers for Bush's "Prescription Drug Plan" by the way? Or the figures for how much Iraq Reconstruction wouldn't cost the American people? I'm noticing a theme amongst the GOP. Perhaps all Bush Admin Officials should be forced to take the Math Section of their "No Child Left Behind" standardized test! Or at least explain how they can possibly paint the Democrats as the the party of big spenders!!)

Photo once again, by Tom Tomorrow, who seemed to be there for all the Alpha-Dog Moments this week! Well done, Tom! (He also captured the Moore/O'Reilly standoff.)

Does anyone know where I can find a link to an archive of the Franken/Hannity matchup on Air America. Word has it that Hannity was pulled in, unscheduled, and was taken to task (meaning given facts and documentation!) for several of Hannity's continuous on-air lies. For example, he was forces to admit that he'd "misspoke" when he claimed that Howard Dean "told people George W. Bush knew about 9/11 in advance." Apparently, Hannity "misspoke" to that effect about 9 or 10 times.

Anyone have a link to copy of the interview?

UPDATE!: Here's the .MP3! Thanks, Jaime!

Surely I'm not the first to mention this, but it occured to me tonight that if John Kerry wins, we'll have our first African-American First Lady!

And it figures she'd be white.

Today, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning "Doctors without Borders" organization announced they are pulling out of Afghanistan after 24 years there "because of security concerns and frustrations with the U.S. military" as the situation in the war-torn nation continues to deteriorate (since we failed to finish one war before beginning another).

Additionally, here's some War News from just yesterday for ya, courtesy of Today in Iraq:

Suddenly the story I just reported on in the previous item becomes even more relevant!

Just reported by Reuters:

"Compassionate Conservatism" in action.

Not even sure what to make of this one. Following up on a story headlined "Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides" (as pointed to on the BRAD BLOG last month), Capitol Hill Blue, the self-proclaimed "politically agnostic" news site (the oldest one on the WWW) files a report today headlined "Sullen, Depressed President Retreats Into Private, Paranoid World".

The lack of named sources in the report is again troubling here, but the "newsworthiness" of a "Commander-in-Chief" being prescribed "powerful anti-depressant drugs" is at least as notable as "WOMAN NAMES BILL CLINTON FATHER OF SON IN SHOCKING VIDEO CONFESSION" as reported by Drudge back in 1999. Not to mention that had this story, anonymous sources or not, been about Kerry instead of Bush, you can bet your boots that not only would it be leading The Drudge Report today (with a SIREN!), but it would be splattered over the entire "Liberal" and Extremist Media.

Such as it's about Bush, however, it's been picked up nowhere else yet that I've seen today. I'm waiting for the White House release of today's Press Gaggle to see if anyone asks about the story. Though I have a feeling the "Liberal" Media may drop that ball as well. What a shock.

Here's the first few grafs. The entire story is worth reading however for those familiar with the "dry alcoholic" syndrome or otherwise interested in some stunning (if true) insider gossip about a White House in disarray:

(Thanks to Jaime for the tip on this story!)

Comments are frequently made on older blog items that may not be noticed by regular BRAD BLOG readers. I hope to do something about that soon (as soon as my busy schedule of late will allow anyway). But a comment came in this morning on the "Michael Moore Connects the Dots" item that I believe is worth highlighting here, since it may otherwise go largely unnoticed.

"Sam" commented to say:

Given the Right's smoke-screen that "the Military" supports George W. Bush, I think it's important to show what the real story is. That there are millions of Americans out there, yes, many in the Military, who are able to understand the brink of danger that this Administration has brought us towards. Folks who understand, as Bill Clinton said on Tuesday, that "strength and wisdom are not opposing values".

Thank you "Sam" for serving our country in both uniform and by speaking up in hopes of countering the deadly spin of the Right. If you have not yet visited Paul Rieckhoff's website, you (and everyone else) should do so! I highlighted his story some months ago here. He's another great American, one who gave up a cushy Wall Street job after the towers fell to serve his country, and who is not afraid of speaking out when he sees a "Commander-in-Chief" who is dangerously playing partisan games with the Constitutional (and otherwise American) Ideals that this country was founded on and which are being surreptiously frittered away under the cynical guise of "National Strength and Security".

It's not a fight for "National Strength and Security" that the Right is waging. It's just another cynical "wedge issue" being exploited in order to further divide this country, so that the Right might hang on to their power. And it's high time we put an end to such self-destructive nonsense in this country. Thanks, "Sam", for doing more than your part in that regard!

At a time when our country is at war in Iraq, and theoretically in the middle of a "War on Terror", shouldn't the positions of the only two parties we essentially get to choose from be fullied aired on the American airwaves so that the populace can make the most informed decision possible?

Surely the conventions now are produced and scripted to appeal to mostly one segment of the voting populace (the middle), but still it seems to me that the more Americans get to see of both major political parties --- even if they are striving to show only their best/most palatable face for four days --- the better the chances are that the people might have a better understanding of the real issues at stake at a crucial moment in our nation's history.

To that end, though the "breaking news" and "Fox News Alerts" may be at a minimum at the modern day Political Convention, it seems to me that the gathering itself, and the ideas presented throughout, ought to be "newsworthy" enough for the Networks to set aside 3 hours a night for 4 days every 4 four measly years even if it means a few dollars lost for their Corporate Parents and Shareholders.

News and Public Affairs has always been a loss-leader for the networks, but it was once the jewel in the crown for the nets, adding a certain prestige to these corporations who are, after all, making money by using our public airwaves.

In service to their country, and to their public, the networks ought to be airing these conventions whether they are, arguably enough, "infomercials" for the party interests or not.

Anything that can be done to aid the voting public in increasing their knowledge about what's going on --- ironically enough at a time when they are being fed more dis-information than ever before via the highly charged partisan media --- would be a service to our country. Even if it means a few dollars lost for the Corporations and their Share Holders.

The biggest "news" at these conventions has become how the "news" business is failing our nation in the name of corporate greed disguised as "news" judgement --- or in reality at this point, a lack thereof.

Yeah...it could happen.

In another stem-winder (yes, I like that word and one really only gets to use it properly every four years) tonight at the convention, a star was born: Barack Obama, running for the U.S. Senate, so far unopposed, from Illinois.

Here's just some of his mustard:

Expect much in the future from the man who will be our only African-American U.S. Senator in the next congress --- and only the fourth in the 225+ year history of this country!