Saying something pompous about national security

And some suggested Kerry slogans, from Wonkette:
• "Vote Kerry: He Led America To Victory In Vietnam!"
• "John Kerry: Pretending To Fight Against Special Interests Since Very Recently"
• "If There's A Rich Heiress America Can Marry John Kerry Will Find Her"
• "John Kerry: Al Gore But Without The Charisma"
• "Kerry For President: He Barely Even Knew Jane Fonda"
• "57 ways to kick Bush's ass."

Clare Short on Blair’s response to her revealing British bugging of Kofi Annan: “Either he has to say it's true, we are bugging Kofi Annan's office, which he doesn't want to say, or he's got to say it's not true and he'd be telling a lie, or he's got to say something pompous about national security.” Short could, but no doubt won’t, be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.

The Bushies are going to go on and on attacking Kerry as a hypocrite. You heard Bush himself do it, now there’s this from the latest email to my cat: “The NEW John Kerry has slammed NAFTA, saying he would vote against it. The OLD Kerry praised NAFTA as a path to the future... The NEW John Kerry slams the Patriot Act. The OLD Kerry, who helped write the law, praised the Patriot Act as key to the War on Terror...” And on and on like that. How about this: The OLD George Bush had his pilot’s licence yanked; the NEW George Bush pranced around on a flight deck. The NEW Bush talks about marriage being a sacred institution; the OLD Bush spent the first 20 years of his marriage in bars, snorting cocaine off a hooker’s butt...

From each according to his abilities... : the greatest gap in wealth between the urban rich and the rural poor is in Communist China.

From the Daily Telegraph: “A Frenchman found himself in New York's notorious Rikers Island prison when an attempt at toilet humour backfired. After alarming a stewardess over the time he spent in the toilet on an American Airlines flight from the Dominican Republic, Franck Moulet joked: "My shit don't explode." But, with his poor English and thick accent, the hostess thought she heard him say: "Shit, it does not explode." Convinced he was a terrorist, she alerted the authorities in New York and M Moulet, 26, was charged with raising a false alert and found himself in Rikers Island for a week before being allowed to fly home.”

And this: “German prosecutors said yesterday that a student had been investigated for theft for plugging his laptop into an electrical socket at a train station and using 20 euro cents (13p) of electricity.”

The chairman of Smith & Wesson is forced to resign because, like the president of the Hair Club for Men, he is also a client. Asked why he never mentioned the 15 years in prison for several armed robbery sprees, he responded, “Nobody asked.”

The Russian foreign minister, in an outrageous display of mock outrage and evidently unclear on the meaning of the word terrorism, accuses Qatar of obstructing the war on terrorism for having arrested 2 Russian secret service agents for assassinating the former president of Chechnya with a car bomb.

Sharon said three weeks ago that he planned to pull Jews out of Gaza. Now he is seizing more land to add to settlements there, including Netzarim, a settlement of 60 families for whose benefit the movement of 10s of thousands of Palestinians is restricted. They are not allowed to use the main road through Gaza. The army is allowed to shoot anyone who looks at Netzarim through binoculars.