Kerry becomes Electra

If Americans understand that we are at war and that our survival is at stake, the election shouldn’t be close in November. Mark Steyn explains why in his own offbeat way in his Telegraph column “Kerry won’t scare any of the big beasts.” (Courtesy of Malcolm Smordin.)
Cause for concern about the war against us should be raised by reports like Jerry Seper’s Washington Times article “Islamic extremists invade U.S., join sleeper cells,” if not Andy Soltis’s more thinly reported “New 9/11 foiled.”
The Post runs a short editorial highlightling Kerry’s silliness on the war, “What Kerry said,” as well as a good column by Nicole Gelinas, “Dems don’t get terror threat.”
For those of us who think that Kerry seems to gravitate naturally to “the bottom” of the political barrel, it may come as no surprise to learn that he played the bass in a high school rock band. The Boston Globe reports: “[W]hile a preppy at St. Paul’s, Kerry played bass in a band called the Electras. Predictably, copies of the band’s 1962 LP are fetching big sums these days on the Internet. (One sold yesterday on eBay for a whopping $2,551.) So is it any good? Depends who you talk to. Erik Lindgren, a Kerry supporter who operates Arf Arf Records in Middleborough, bought the record 25 years ago at a tag sale for about a quarter. ‘[Kerry] tends to have a bit of a stiff reputation, but, objectively, the record’s really great,’ Lindgren said. ‘It has that raw, primal rock ‘n’ roll spirit. . . . For a teenage dance aesthetic, this is a really good record.’ Did we mention he’s a Kerry supporter?”
The Globe carries a report on President Bush’s National Guard service that won’t discourage Kerry from anchoring the bottom of the campaign: “Bush credited for Guard drills.” The subhead of the story adds that the “time frame leaves questions.”
The Globe also notes Kerry’s gay rights balancing act — an act it should be impossible for him to maintain. The Globe observes: “[F]or the fifth day, Kerry declined to say yesterday whether he would support a state constitutional amendment to prevent gays from marrying, even as the Massachusetts Republican Party chairman accused Kerry of being ‘evasive’ on the issue.” Hey, it takes time to figure these things out.
One notable gay rights activist and Kerry supporter has a classic quote in the Globe story on the subject: “As far as I’m concerned, [Kerry’s] vote against the marriage act in an election year was every bit as courageous as his actions serving in the Vietnam War.” Make it a campaign slogan! The excellent Globe story is “Kerry treads cautiously on gay marriage ban.”
Of the major papers, only the New York Times reports Al Gore’s testifyin’ to the Tennessee Democrats that President Bush betrayed the United States in connection with the war to depose Saddam Hussein. We linked to the story (by Katharine Q. Seelye) yesterday, but it’s worth another look: “Gore says Bush betrayed U.S. by using 9/11 as a reason for war in Iraq.” It is difficult to believe that if a prominent Republican spokesman gave a major speech asserting that John Kerry had betrayed the United States it would be equally difficult to find.
UPDATE: Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics asks about the Globe story on Bush’s National Guard service : “How in the heck did [a Democratic operative] like Bob Fertig get his hands on these records?…This is an absolutely bizarre twist to a story that just won’t go away.”
Hugh Hewitt also comments on the Globe story: “[T]he documents [discussed in the story] resolve the controversy, and they start a new one in its place: Why was the Globe so easily manipulated, and why does [Globe reporter] Robinson continue to write the stories on the subject given his obvious interest in protecting his own flawed reporting from the past? More to follow.”