The coming weeks will be so tough because the essential contest - of which the Swift boat stuff was only a start - will be over who really has courage, who really has resolve, and who is just a fraud with a manly bearing.

If Cleland had any decency, wouldn't he resign? Why would he accept a political appointment from a man he so loathes and thinks represents the very worst in American politics?

"He said he was very disappointed, we'd been friends. I said John, we're still friends, but [the Swiftvets] have First Amendment rights, just as your people have First Amendment rights.

Dole told Kerry, "I'm not trying to stir anything up, but I don't believe every one of these people who have talked about what happened are Republican liars."

And very frankly, Bush is my guy, and I'm tired of people on your side calling him everything from a coward to a traitor to everything - a deserter."

Dole said he urged Kerry, "Why don't you call George Bush today and say, 'Mr. President, let's stop all this stuff about the National Guard and Vietnam - and let's talk about the issues."

Dole said Kerry responded, "I haven't spent one dime attacking President Bush."

But the Republican war hero shot back, "You don't have to. You've got all the so-called mainstream media, plus you've got MoveOn.org and all these other groups that have spent millions and millions of dollars trying to tarnish Bush's image."

"Don't tell me you don't know what some of these people are doing," he told Kerry.

"Everybody likes quiet heroes," Dole added, saying he told Kerry, "John, everybody knows you were in Vietnam and the less you say about it, the better."

Dole said he tried to end the tense conversation cordially by telling Kerry, "I wish you good luck, up to a point."

KERRY: "Why are all these swift boat guys opposed to me?"

BRANT: "You should know what you said when you came back, the impact it had on the young sailors and how it was disrespectful of our guys that were killed over there."

[Brant had two men killed in battle.]

KERRY: "When we dedicated swift boat one in '92, I said to all the swift guys that I wasn't talking about the swifties, I was talking about all the rest of the veterans."

Kerry then asked if he could meet Brant ["You were one of the best"] -- man to man -- face to face.

Brant declined the invite, explaining that Kerry was obviously not prepared to correct the record on exactly what happened during Vietnam and what happened when Kerry came back.

Michael Moore recently asked Bill O'Reilly if he would sacrifice his son for Falluja. A clever rhetorical device, but it's the wrong question: this war is about Des Moines, not Falluja. This country is breeding and attracting militants who are all eager to grab box cutters, dirty bombs, suicide vests or biological weapons, and then come fight us in Chicago, Santa Monica or Long Island. Falluja, in fact, was very close to becoming a city our forces could have controlled, and then given new schools and sewers and hospitals, before we pulled back in the spring. Now, essentially ignored, it has become a Taliban-like state of Islamic extremism, a terrorist safe haven. We must not let the same fate befall Najaf or Ramadi or the rest of Iraq.

I miss my family, my friends and my country, but right now there is nowhere else I'd rather be. I am a United States Marine.

A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior before and after that war. And, by the way, Mr. Bush is supposedly honor bound to repudiate them.

Mr. Kerry brought the whole thing up; why is it Mr. Bush's obligation now to shut it down?

Over two decades, the income gap has steadily increased between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks and got big tax breaks, and those at the middle and bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less.

• Real after-tax incomes are up by 11 percent since December 2000. This increase is mostly due to the President's tax relief and is substantially better than those following the last recession.
• Homeownership rates are at record levels - nearly seven out of ten American families own their own home today.
• Household wealth is near a record high.
• Consumer confidence is up from the levels seen at this time last year and is in the upper third of its historical range.
• Inflation remains low by historical standards, as do mortgage rates.

Real estate agent Lance Anderson, 38, of Overland Park, Kan., expects a record sales year, as homeowners upgrade to more expensive homes and commercial clients expand. He recently took his family to Disney World for a two-week Florida vacation.

"My clientele, it seems as a whole, has seen positive growth," he said. So his family, including three children, now eat out more often and spend more on clothes. They recently bought two new cars and anticipate buying a larger house in the next few years.

While many characterize the CBO report as evidence that the tax cuts shifted the burden of taxation to the middle class, CBO data show precisely the opposite effect. The tax cuts actually made the tax system more progressive. The highest 20 percent of earners now pay a larger share of federal income taxes than they would have without the tax cuts, while the share of income taxes paid by all other income groups fell.

The overwhelming majority of federal income taxes are paid by the very highest income earners. The top 1 percent of income earners pays 31.6 percent of all income taxes, the top 5 percent pays 51.4 percent, the top 10 percent pays 63.5%, and the top 20 percent of income earners pays 78.4 percent of all federal income taxes. The bottom four-fifths of income earners pay just over one-fifth of all federal income taxes.

Israel declared psychological war on hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners today, saying it would barbecue meat outside their cells to try to break their spirit.

Israelis plan to make Palestinians' hunger strike as miserable as possible, saying it would hold a block party outside the prisoners' windows.

"So Jay went on around and he went to board the bus and when he did, the driver put his arm across the doorway and said I don't have a seat for you," explains Carol [his mother].

If there is anything easier than being a Monday morning quarterback, it is promising to do great things in the future. Yet these two themes constitute most of Senator Kerry's campaign.

The basic reason for the 'liberal' double standard has already been alluded to. It is that today's 'liberals' are really leftists who have rejected the older liberal belief in a shared equality of citizens before the law and have embraced the socialist vision of 'equality as a fact and equality as a result,' as Lyndon Johnson famously put it. Since people are unequal in their ability to accumulate property, as Hayek argued in the Mirage of Social Justice, equality of results can only be pursued by treating people unequally. This is the origin of the double standard.

The goal of the next attack is twofold: to damage the U.S. economy and to undermine the U.S. election. The view of al Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush.

• Friday's report also showed that a survey of jobs taken by sampling households rather than businesses registered a gain of 629,000 in July. Hourly earnings and hours worked were up. The economy has now gained 1.2 million jobs since the start of the year, winning back two-thirds of those lost in the recession Bush inherited from Clinton.
• Second-quarter profits for the 900 companies tracked by Business Week rose an incredible 32 percent. Business investment is soaring, up 14 percent for the year. The Institute for Supply Management's measure of manufacturing activity, which includes orders, inventories and employment, is at lofty levels not seen since the 1980s.
• Over the past 12 months, David Malpass of Bear Stearns points out, the U.S. economy--measured by our GDP--has grown at a rate of 4.8 percent. That's faster than in any 12-month period during the Clinton administration and three times as fast as Germany and France are growing.

• smart enough to drive a safer vehicle
• successful enough to afford an SUV
• isn't filled with self-loathing - is confident, self-sure
• can handle big machinery

• Yeah, like you even support the draft
  
• As far as I know, there is no gasoline shortage
  
• SUV drivers pay for all the gas they use
  
• If the war in Iraq as about "blood for oil", why didn't we get any of the oil? All of Iraq's oil now belongs to the Iraqi government and people.
  
• How'd they get it? Oh, yeah, we gave it to them after the war.
  

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.

Listening to these folks, one gets the sense that America's greatest foreign-policy triumph was to get sucker-punched on 9/11 because it resulted in sympathetic newspaper headlines in Paris and Berlin.

It is difficult to know where we go from here. There is no way to keep a terrorist from flying without first trying to determine who he is. Yet the most innocuous identity verification system prior to a flight is now seen as tantamount to illegal surveillance. With the rights advocates back in the saddle of national security, al Qaeda can blithely get on with its business.

I am going to take three months' unpaid leave from The Wall Street Journal and attempt to support the Republican Party in the coming and crucial election. (Every four years everyone says "this is the most important election of my lifetime," but this year I believe it is true.) I'm going to give whatever advice and encouragement I have in terms of strategy, approach, message--I hate that word--and issues. No one has asked me to do this, and I do it as a volunteer, not for a salary but simply to give my time to help what I think is the more helpful side. This will take a bite out of my finances but I can do it. Actually most of us, when we die, wind up with a few thousand dollars in the bank. We should have spent it! I am going to spend mine now.

"If in fact you were to rule that all of the rape-shield
evidence were going to come in this case, I'm thinking the
prosecution is going to sit down and re-evaluate the quality of its
case and its chances of a successful prosecution," Prosecutor
Ingrid Bakke told the judge."

More telling was Teresa Heinz Kerry. She pointed to the picture of the bowl of chilli above the clerk's head: "What's that?" she asked. He explained that it was something called "chilli" and she said she'd like to try a bowl. The Senator also ordered a Frosty, a chocolate dessert. They toyed with them after a fashion, and then got back on the bus.