While I was stuck in Hellhole, Virginia last week, I decided to kill and hour and a half watching “Alien Vs. Predator.”

Yes, I know, I know, that’s time out of my life that I’ll never get back. But bear with me.

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Light blogging again today. Just too much real life to do.

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Tomorrow – er, today, as I’m writing this Tuesday night but you won’t read it until Wednesday – the Big Fear will be John Kerry’s seeming rebound in the polls. Specifically, in the latest Wall Street Journal/Zogby poll.

Take a deep breath and remember: I warned you just yesterday this would happen.

Now then, let’s look at the numbers.

The big one is, of course, Florida. There, Zogby has Kerry up by half a point, with a 2.9-point margin of error. Zogby is also the only major pollster to color Florida with the blue crayon. Also keep in mind that Zogby’s last call in 2000 was a 2-point Gore advantage. Even Democratic partisan (and unusually fair-minded pollster) Larry Sabato still has Florida in the Bush column.

A sure thing? Hardly. But nothing to get too excited about.

Pennsylvania is blue, but that’s no big deal. There are lots of scenarios where Bush could win without it, but hardly any where Kerry could.

Really, the only interesting thing Zogby has, is Arkansas going for Kerry. Could it happen? Sure. And AK’s six EC votes might even matter in a close race. Then remember that according to Zogby, Kerry leads there by one tenth of one percent, with a whopping 4.1% margin of error.

Now, you might fairly complain that I’m unfairly dissing Zogby. I’m just as happy to dis Gallup, Pew, and the rest

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For those who haven’t snapped up their Star Wars DVD set, here’s the best deal I found, with a big hat-tip to FatWallet:

If there’s a Fry’s Electronics in your area, they’re selling the set for $36.99. Get a copy of their ad, and take it to Sears. Sears’ price match brings the price down to $36.19. Then use the $5 off $35 Sears coupon on this FatWallet page to bring your pre-sales tax total all the way down to $31.19. That’s just $10 a movie, plus the great extras disc for $1.19.

To paraphrase Cheech in “From Dusk Til Dawn,” if you can find a better deal than that–BUY IT.

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I’m an idiot. So are you. Some professor guy says so.

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Mysterious Unseen Veep Candidate John Edwards has been spotted in Ohio:

Sen. John Edwards on Monday chided the president for his handling of the Iraq war, but the brunt of his speech at a Bond Hill rally focused on domestic issues that resonate with the residents of this blue-collar, predominantly African-American neighborhood.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee from North Carolina spent most of his 30-minute speech at the Bond Hill Recreation Center talking about presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry’s plan to create jobs, provide health care for all Americans, and provide affordable, quality education.

In an almost certainly unrelated story:

A new Ohio poll out today shows President George W. Bush with an 11-point lead over Sen. John Kerry.

The poll from the University of Cincinnati shows Bush with 54 percent and Kerry with 43 percent. Ralph Nader has two percent. Just one month ago the same poll showed Kerry and Bush statistically tied. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Ohio poll earlier this month showed a similar post-convention bounce for Bush.

Completely related story here.

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There’s probably less to this story than meets the eye:

The Associated Press has learned a South Korean man who met with John Kerry’s fund-raisers was an intelligence agent for his country.

The A-P first reported this spring that the Kerry fund-raisers and donors had met with the man, who at the time was only identified as a diplomat.

The State Department says Chung Byung-Man’s contacts with donors and fund-raisers, if accurately described in reports, are “inconsistent” with the 1963 Vienna Convention. That accord prohibits visiting foreign officials from interfering in the internal politics and affairs of host countries.

There were at least three meetings with the man to discuss creating a political action group for Korean-Americans. The Kerry campaign says it was unaware Chung was an intelligence agent and it has returned all contributions involved.

Chung was found out, the money was returned – I don’t see a problem here.

(Thanks to reader Geoff G for the tip.)

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Dumb, dumb, dumb:

Why did it take so long for the Bush and Kerry campaigns to agree on a debate schedule? Sen. John Kerry had the answer for television’s Regis Philbin, who has hosted the quiz show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

“The big hang-up was George Bush wanted to get life lines, you know, so he could call somebody,” the Democratic candidate for president quipped Tuesday while appearing on “Live With Regis and Kelly.”

No, not Bush – Kerry.

Bush has yet to lose a debate, in part because of the expectations game. Set the bar low enough, and it’s easy to look like a winner. Sure, Kerry got a good laugh from Regis & Kelly, but he also did Karl Rove a favor by helping move the bar a notch or two lower.

Man, I’d love to play poker with this guy. Cash only, though, please.

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“Too paranoid? Or not paranoid enough?”

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Sorry for the late start. The spambots hit the site hard last night, and even with MT Blacklist, it still took half an hour to delete all the comment spam. Then I got an email from my best high school buddy, who I haven’t seen in 16 years.

Playing coffee and catch-up right now, but I’ll leave you with this thought -

Dan Rather will not quit or be fired. He’ll take the blame, just like Janet Reno did after Waco, then keep his job for just as long as he wants it. That’s the way things go now.

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Utter jaw-dropper in today’s USA Today, via Powerline:

CBS arranged for a confidential source to talk with Joe Lockhart, a top aide to John Kerry, after the source provided the network with the now-disputed documents about President Bush’s service in the Texas National Guard.

Lockhart, the former press secretary to President Clinton, said a producer talked to him about the 60 Minutes program a few days before it aired on Sept. 8. She gave Lockhart a telephone number and asked him to call Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard officer who gave CBS the documents. Lockhart couldn’t recall the producer’s name. But CBS said Monday night that it would examine the role of producer Mary Mapes in passing the name to Lockhart.

Burkett told USA TODAY that he had agreed to turn over the documents to CBS if the network would arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign.

So, let me get this straight. CBS just spent more than a week “protecting” the identity of Burkett, refusing to release his name to the general public–but they did put him in touch with a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign, before their story ran? The same week when the DNC started running ads based on the CBS story, which built on Burkett-supplied forgeries?

That’s the tipping point. This is officially a major political scandal, not just an embarrassment to a dinosaur news outlet.

CBS is toast. Dan Rather is toast. Joe Lockhart is toast… and John Kerry is burned French toast about to be tossed out in le dumpster.

Stick a fork in all of the above. They’re done.

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I’m considering fisking Michael Moore – but would it be worth the effort?

UPDATE: By popular request, I won’t fisk Moore.

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More on Darfour, Syria, and WMD.

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Just click already.

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Bill Millan writes:

CBS has now confirmed that Mapes called Burkett, not the other way around.

WHO TOLD MAPES THAT BURKETT HAD THE DOCUMENTS?

We know that prior to Mapes’s call to Burkett, Burkett had call Cleland and told him about them. We know that Cleland had told Burkett to call other Kerry Kamp members. It is just about inescapable that a Kerry operative told Mapes.

I don’t think this can be hidden for long.

Not in this day and age it can’t.

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Never underestimate the power of Google.

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Thanks to demographic changes, if John Kerry were to win the same states Al Gore did in 2000, Kerry would lose 278 to 260, instead of Gore’s 271-266 nailbiter. To win, Kerry needs to find ten EC votes somewhere. But where?

Let’s write off big parts of the map where Kerry – or probably even Jesus, if He ran as a Democrat – simply can’t win. There’s the South, short of Florida and perhaps Virginia. Everything between Kansas and Utah, and between the Rio Grande and the Canadian Border (minus New Mexico) is Bush Country, too. So what states can and should Kerry contest? It’s a short list:

New Hampshire
Ohio
Florida
Nevada
Virginia*
Missouri

Taking New Hampshire and Nevada (9 votes total) wouldn’t cut it. Ohio, Florida, Virginia, or Missouri by themselves, would. So how is Kerry doing in those states? Let’s see the latest numbers from Mason-Dixon, Rasmussen, Zogby, and others:

New Hampshire – Kerry up 6, to Bush up 9
Ohio – Bush up 3 to 8 points
Florida – a tie, up to Bush by 6
Nevada – Bush up 4
Virginia – Bush up 4
Missouri – Bush by anywhere from 2 to 14

OK, then – Florida is Kerry’s last, best, and maybe only hope. But that’s assuming an awful lot, given what’s going on in a few of Kerry’s base states.

Right now, Pennsylvania (21) and Iowa (7) are both up for grabs, Wisconsin (10) looks strong for Bush, and New Mexico (5), Minnesota (10), and Oregon (7) are all weak for Kerry. That’s 60 EC votes Kerry can no longer count on to win. Instead of fighting in Florida, he’s got to watch his back in six states he ought to have in the bag. Meanwhile, Bush’s only big worry is Florida.

Now that Kerry has exhausted the Vietnam issue both for himself (thanks to the Swift Boat Vets) and Bush (thanks to Dan Rather), he needs some fresh ammo. If what we’ve read the last couple days is any indication, Kerry thinks that Iraq is exactly the right caliber.

Brace yourselves, kids – Kerry is going to do some damage in the next week, hammering Bush on Iraq. Bush’s numbers will slip. But if Bush is vulnerable on Iraq, Kerry is even more so. He can hurt Bush, but thanks to Kerry’s history of taking every possible position on Iraq, he won’t be able to gain any traction from it.

In the meantime, Rathergate will continue to fester, and there’s not a damn thing Kerry can do to stop it – and there’s nothing Bush need do to encourage it. A hundred years from now, journalism schools will still be teaching about Dan’s Folly.

The more important question is, what about the Democrats’ Folly? In a field with Joe Lieberman (the “Let’s win the war without being total Republican bastards” candidate) and Howard Dean (the anti-war guy), the Democrats nominated a guy who is neither fish nor fowl.

Kerry voted against the Gulf War in 1991

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While we wait for Rasmussen’s update, here’s mine.

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For those who’re interested, my Monday-morning Auburn football column is up, covering the real Tigers’ 10-9 win over LSU.

For those who aren’t interested, we now return you to your regularly-scheduled blogosphere triumphalism…

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A few links to keep you reading, while I put Star Wars in the DVD player.

Election Projection (the Republican site) has Bush up 328 to Kerry’s 210.

Electoral-Vote.com (the Democrat site) calls it 327-211 for Bush.

GeekMedia, which uses the TradeSports results, has a narrower Bush victoy, 284-243 – with Iowa and New Hampshire too close to call.

Even Jonathan Alter is giving advice to Kerry, a link which I should have filed under the “Abandon Ship!” series.

Rasmussen’s tracking poll shows Bush up almost 3. They’ll have their EC projection up at 5pm Eastern.

Lawyers don’t get no respect in Denver.

Dan Rather sort of apologizes, and Eric Raymond fisks it.

Stephen LaPerla tells me the NYTimes buried the lede – to the results of their own poll. You have to click to the second page to find out they think Bush leads by 9.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to do some serious geeking out.

UPDATE: Electoral-Vote.com link is fixed.

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Will someone remind me please why I’m voting for Bush:

Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go.

Yes, I know Iraq isn’t the only front in the war. But if Bob Novak is right, this is a very bad sign.

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OK, OK – I’m up. First things first, though. Let me get some coffee.

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Eric S. Raymond has returned to blogging and given us this:

A long-serving governor of Louisiana once boasted that he could not fail of reelection unless he was caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. Thanks to Rathergate, George W. Bush has a lock on the White House unless he’s at least as seriously embarrassed during the next forty days. Kerry’s approval ratings are hovering around 36%. It seems that the MSM cannot deliver Evan Thomas’s 15-point swing anymore

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I think this says it all, don’t you?

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Damn, but I’m excited about this.

It’ll have to wait until Sunday, though – and so will blogging. Melissa and I are off to spend the weekend with friends in Silverthorne, and to celebrate a much-belated birthday.

Gifts, good company, some (read: “a lot of”) drinking, and no computers. Delightful. Will somebody please tell the news to take a 48-hour break for me? Thanks.

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Speaking of Ralph Peters, he has a non-chest thumping piece in today’s NY Post. Read it.

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Today we get a perfect Bleat. Lovely and entertaining.

That’s my way of saying, “I love ya, Lileks, but I’ve told a better scary bug story.”

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