Declaring victory over a figure of speech, and going home

Bush said that Kerry will nationalize health care. Which is the sort of lie you can tell when your lies never seem to have consequences.

Of course when he does tell the truth... Today Bush said that the war on terrorism can’t be won in the conventional sense. This is of course true, since “war” was always an inappropriate metaphor. I think Bush has finally realized that all the “war on terrorism” talk does not leave him with an exit strategy from that war. This is a follow-up to that weird comment no one understood early this month: “We actually misnamed the war on terror, it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.” John Edwards went on the attack, saying that of course he and Kerry believe that the war on terrorism is winnable, and it’s defeatism to say otherwise. I can’t wait to see what he says when someone asks how you know when the war is over.

And yes, I did just say that Bush was right and his opponents wrong. Even a stopped clock is right once every 58 years.

The Secret Service has issued subpoenas trying to find the person who posted on the internet the names, addresses, phone numbers & NY hotels of R convention delegates (you’ll remember that Florida decided that the names of its delegates to this largely-taxpayer-funded convention was a trade secret). The feds are pretending this amounts to voter intimidation.

The R platform, on which those I’d-tell-you-my-name-but-then-I’d-have-to-kill-you delegates voted, included a provision to withdraw the jurisdiction of federal courts over the Defense of Marriage Act, which Congress can do under the stupidest, but little-used, provision of the Constitution (Article III, section 2, clause 2).

A Sadr spokesman on why the Mahdi army won’t give up its weapons: “Don’t most families in America keep a weapon?”