It is scary to think gritty patches like southeastern Ohio can sway this election.

"Bush put $447 million into coal research last year," Mr. Williams said. "Kerry is a tree hugger." Besides, he said, "Kerry would just tax me."

Annual per capita income in the county in 2001, the last year for which statistics are available, was less than $17,000, and 10 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. A third of the houses were built before World War II, and more than half of the new births here are to teenagers. Almost 99 percent of the residents are white.

Fashion at the RNC, whose delegates "have left no five-and-dime, no dollar store, no souvenir stand unbrowsed":

Delegates were not particularly worried about making a positive visual impression on the five undecided voters watching from home. If they were, someone surely would have suggested that the delegate from New Hampshire remove the moose from atop her head. Someone would have confiscated the brooch worn by the West Virginia delegate because it appeared to be a stuffed mouse head surrounded by organza ruffles. And someone would have warned the Alaska delegate that while her red Open ANWR cotton vest effectively delivered a political message on oil drilling, it made her look as though her follow-up phrase would be: "Would you like fries with that?"

Since I am a true lover of polls (sarcasm), I couldn't help but post this one (more sarcasm) that gives Bush a double-digit lead.

If the 2004 election for President were held today, 52% of likely voters surveyed would vote for President George W. Bush, 41% would vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry.

Taking the mill worker vote out, it was reported 99% of those polled would vote for Bush (sarcasm).

Followup from Mike: Yeah, this poll was disheartening. A few minor points:

• 1. This is one poll among many. Its results, so far, seem to be anamalous.
• 2. The numbers are for LVs, not RVs, which is strange. The fact that RV numbers are very difficult to find (they're not here, for instance), as well as the fact that RV numbers were reported for most of the other questions, suggests to me that the RV numbers just weren't as illustrative (which is to say, they're a little closer).
• 3. This is a poll taken during the convention. Pollsters generally agree (from what I've heard and read) that polls taken during a convention almost always give the candidate a temporary (i.e., 3-4 day) bounce.

Forget the story, just look at the picture.

Any picture where George W. Bush is riding a horse with Osama bin Laden's head in his right hand is really cool. Or really sick. Whichever.

The Boston Globe's opinion staff takes a collectively-fair-and-balanced look at the Bush campaign:

• Thomas Oliphant: "You can always try putting lipstick on a pig, as President Bush did last night, but the result is rarely helpful, much less transforming."
• Derrick Jackson: "It was only the beginning of his national plea for amnesia."
• Joan Vennochi: "There may be two John Kerrys, as Republicans charge. But there is only one Bush, and he never lets facts get in the way of a good argument."

Time's James Poniewozik uncovers the real reason for the Zell speech:

"It had long been expected that President Bush's re-election strategy would hinge on his convincing us we needed him to protect us from terrorism. So it was a surprise this week when the Republicans revealed the real message of their 2004 convention: We need President Bush to protect us from Zell Miller. The Democratic senator-turned-Democratic scourge laid into John Kerry Wednesday night with an Old Testament rage that crescendoed when he looked into the camera, quivering, and promised Americans that if they voted for the Democrat from Massachusetts, he would personally come to our houses and 'whup your traitorous, Osama-loving asses with a hickory switch.'"

E. J. Dionne deconstructs GOP strategy:

"George W. Bush and his gang have decided that the only way they can hold on to power is to throw so much dirt at Kerry that he ends up looking like Pigpen. In the process, they are painting the Democratic Party as a collection of lily-livered, America-hating, French-loving, defense-destroying, United Nations-kowtowing girlie men."

Andrew Sullivan comes dangerously close to, well, endorsing terrorist attacks on France:

"If the jihadists take the war to France now, we may get the Western unity that has so far eluded us. And that can only be a good thing."

(In his defense, he also wraps up the column with this:

"Meanwhile, the Family Research Council has been distributing fortune cookies in New York with the message: 'Real Men Marry Women.' I guess Jesus and the Pope aren't real men.")

Two further quick notes about last night's speech (which can be found in its entirety here):

• There was a line that I rather liked initially, and then really liked when I went back and read the speech again this evening. I didn't much care for the way he delivered it (as usual), but the rhetoric was pretty impressive: "My fellow Americans, for as long as our country stands, people will look to the resurrection of New York City and they will say: Here buildings fell, and here a nation rose."
• Do you suppose that Bush honestly thinks that John Kerry actually doesn't respect the Coalition soldiers fighting with us? ("...allies that deserve the respect of all Americans, not the scorn of a politician.") One imagines it's just campaign rhetoric, in which case, it's fine by me; but one is also afraid that Bush really believes that by belittling the diplomatic efforts, Kerry is also belittling the troops that are out there, at our behest and mostly on our behalf. And it'd be a shame if he believed that.

Frank Ballance, "who cited ill health in resigning from Congress in June," may have had something else on his mind.

This is probably old news by now, but it's the first I've heard of it: Pataki is "actively considering" a 2008 White House run? "Mulling over," I'd buy. "Looking into," sure. But "actively considering" seems to carry a whiff of actuality that I'm hard-pressed to believe. (Of course, it would explain his ridiculous convention speech...)

This post gets two disclaimers: First, I'm writing this immediately before I go to bed, so it may not have all the benefits of coherance that a normal, shorter, wittier post might. Second, I fully recognize the fact that what I'm saying here is frightfully apparent to everyone who agrees with me and completely preposterous to everyone who doesn't. So, that aside...

I just want to make a quick point about the SwiftVets' ads. Specifically, the one that's supposedly the most damaging of the four they currently have out, "Sellout," which is the one where the three guys say, essentially, "he hurt my feelings with his testimony." Maybe he did, what do I know, but take a look at what he actually says:

"I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

He's recounting stories that he personally heard from "over 150" other people. In fact, the part of his testimony that the Swifties quote actually starts like this:

"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears..."

(The italics are mine, obviously.) Now, take a look at what the SwiftVets say:

• "The accusations that John Kerry made against the veterans who served in Vietnam were just devastating."
• "That was part of the torture, was to sign a statement that you had committed war crimes."
• "John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in north vietnam in the prison camps took torture to avoid saying."

In short, his testimony "betrayed" the veterans and "dishonored his country." But how? Seriously, how?

There are two things he doesn't say, which are both worth noting. First, he doesn't say that all Vietnam veterans were war criminals. Second, he doesn't say that Joe Ponder, Ken Cordier, or Paul Galanti were war criminals. So then what is it these guys have a problem with? Surely they don't think that there should be war criminals? If war crimes were taking place, wouldn't the "honorable" thing to do actually be to stop them?

If Kerry had said anything along the lines of, "The United States Army is entirely composed of war criminals," I'd at least understand where the Swifties were coming from. But for them to take offense at his admission that some war crimes were taking place... That just seems foolish.