Friday A.M. Pot Pourri

The Washington Post is reporting that the TV ad attacking John Kerry's service in Vietnam was paid for "in part by a major Republican Party donor in Texas." Gosh. It had the whiff of Karl Rove all over it already, and now it's a full-out stench.

The same group of Vietnam vets featured in the ad above have also collaborated on a book, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry," to be published next week. Yesterday it reached number one on the bestseller list on Amazon.com, based on advance orders, in part because of publicity about it on the Drudge Report. But this morning, in the Boston Globe, one of the chief Kerry accusers of this bunch recants: "...a key figure in the anti-Kerry campaign, Kerry's former commanding officer, backed off one of the key contentions. Lieutenant Commander George Elliott said in an interview that he had made a 'terrible mistake' in signing an affidavit that suggests Kerry did not deserve the Silver Star -- one of the main allegations in the book .... Yesterday, reached at his home, Elliott said ... he still thinks Kerry deserved the Silver Star."

Bloomberg is reporting that European stock markets slumped noticeably today after the U.S. government reported an almost flat job creation rate in July. After forecasting an expected gain of some 241,000 jobs in July, only 21,000 were added (according to MSNBC): "The labor force participation rate, which generally rises in good economic times, fell to 65.9 percent of the nation's adult population, the lowest since 1988." Oops. Makes a certain recently minted slogan look particularly ill-chosen: "We've turned the corner, and we're NOT going back!"

Yesterday, as he signed the $417 billion defense spending bill into law, El Presidente spoke the unintended and unvarnished truth: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," Bush said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Alan Keyes (who once ripped Hillary Clinton as a carpetbagger) has decided to run for Senate in Hillary's real home state of Illinois, even though he lives in Maryland. Obama now faces oh brother.