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LOOK OUT FOR THOSE KITE-SURFING PLUMBERS

When I was making plans to work from the Kerry Spot Hilton Head Bureau, I was hoping the campaign news would slow this week. That the Olympics would dominate the headlines, and that Kerry wouldn’t do something stupid.

Kaus repeats a tale from ABC’s Noted Now:

But the exotic nature of some of the sports he plays (say, kite-surfing in Nantucket) and the great lengths he goes in order to play them (say, flying from Idaho to Oregon to windsurf), can have the unintended effect of making him seem out of touch with the hard-pressed middle class whose cares he says have been his concern.
As his plane was flying from Oregon to Idaho on Saturday, Kerry defended his taste in sports, saying, “The guys who do it are all local guys — plumbers, construction workers.”

Asked if these regular folks fly from one state to another, the husband of the condiment heiress downplayed the cost, saying, “What? 250 bucks for a ticket?”

Luckily for Kerry, the moment was not on camera. But it was the kind of moment — if captured on camera — that could undo months of work.


Arrrrgh! Kerry! I wanted to be on the beach right now, not trying to figure out what kind of world you live in where plumbers and construction workers spend $250 on a plane ticket regularly and go windsurfing or kite-surfing all the time!

KERRY'S LITTLE-NOTICED LATE-FRIDAY RELEASE

Via Knight-Ridder:

In Meehan's statement Friday, the campaign said Kerry spent Christmas Eve 1968 in "the watery borders between Vietnam and Cambodia deep in enemy territory.

"In the early afternoon," the statement continues, "Kerry's boat, PCF-44, was at Sa Dec and then headed north to the Cambodian border. There, Kerry and his crew along with two other boats were ambushed, taking fire from both sides of the river, and after the firefight were fired upon again. Later that evening, during their night patrol, they came under friendly fire.

"Many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group operating out of Ha Tien" on the Gulf of Thailand, Meehan said in his statement.

[Roy Hoffmann, a retired admiral who was a Navy captain in command of Kerry's unit at the time] said he was leery of Kerry's claim to have ventured into Cambodia in early 1969 to deliver CIA operatives or special forces soldiers.

"I was always properly informed. The whole time I was there, I don't recall" such a mission, Hoffman said.

TWO BITS OF NEWS FROM THE BUSH CAMP

Two things to look forward to in the day's news coverage. First, the Bush camp writes the Kerry Spot to announce,

"Today, in a major foreign policy announcement, the President will lay out his plan to bring home tens of thousands of U.S. troops from bases around the world. In what will be the largest troop realignment since the end of the cold war, roughly 70,000 uniformed military personnel, most of them in Europe and Asia, will be redeployed to bases in the U.S. The plan will strengthen the military's ability to address threats in a post 9/11 world and improve its ability to protect America. The full details of the plan will be unveiled today in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Cincinnati and the President will continue to focus on his vision for meeting the challenges of the 21st Century, including new threats to our homeland, during campaign stops this week in Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Minnesota."
Should be interesting to see Kerry's reaction to this idea of redeploying troops. ("I would have brought them home sooner, and better. With my secret plan.")

Then:

"The campaign will unveil a new ad today entitled "Intel," which highlights John Kerry's proposal to cut intelligence funding in the year following the first World Trade Center bombing and his woeful attendance record on the Senate Intelligence Committee. In a 10 AM press conference call today, House Speaker Dennis Hastert will discuss Senator Kerry's intelligence record and call on Kerry to release the attendance records of his closed door intelligence hearings, echoing the previous requests of Senators Chambliss, Cornyn, Kyl and Coleman. Kerry was absent for 76 percent of the Committee's public hearings."
I doubt the attendance-at-classified-intelligence hearings issue will gain much traction, even though it should, if Kerry wants to run on his ability to improve U.S. government's methods of gathering intelligence. The Kerry camp will probably point out that the attendance records are not public for a reason. Of course, if the Bush camp is calling for him to release it, you can bet the GOP senators on the Select Committee on Intelligence have said they don't remember Kerry showing up for many meetings — otherwise, they wouldn't have raised the issue.

KERRY'S DONATIONS LACK INFO

Blogger N. Z. Bear notices that 22.9 percent of Kerry's donors did not identify their occupation and employer, information that the campaign is supposed to make its "best effort" to obtain. By comparison, only 5.5 percent of Bush's donors didn't fill that in, and OpenSecrets.com puts the overall compliance average of most campaigns at 91 percent.

He points to this handy chart of all of this year's presidential candidates.

I wonder why a donor would not fill in his occupation and employer as required on a federal form as they are making a large campaign donation?

(coughTRIALLAWYERScough).

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