FEAR AND SMEAR ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: John Kerry dislikes the use of smear and fear tactics in this campaign. You will pardon me if I do not weep copious tears at his discomfiture. The man and his allies have been smearing President Bush on a regular basis for months now and now the much vaunted Republican attack machine is beginning to smear back. This is the way things work in American politics and if Mr Kerry cannot stand the heat he should be running for some other office. The shrieks of Republican conspiracies coming from the Democratic camp do not impress me either, given that the Democrats have aligned themselves with organizations like MoveOn.org, which can be loosely described as fronts for George Soros and his billions. I think I understand why the Democrats are shrieking though; Kerry's Vietnam service was supposed to protect him from Republican efforts to bring up his lousy voting record on national security issues. If anyone brought up his votes against almost anything having to do with the military Democratic operatives would sneer and bring up Bush being AWOL; in fact, as I write this I can practically hear James Carville doing just that in my head. But it isnt turning out that way and the Democrats are furious that Kerry's war record is not turning out to be the political prophylactic it was supposed to be.

They are equally furious that their pals in the Big Media can't bury this story. Tough luck, guys, but the fact is you've spent years squandering your credibility and now, with the Internet, you are largely unnecessary. A. J. Liebling once pointed out that the free press was only free if you owned the press. Nowadays all you need is a computer and a phone line. For further reading on the subject, I suggest Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly, especially the chapters on the Renaissance Popes, the corrupt products of a corrupt system, blindsided by the invention of the printing press that ended their monopoly on information and scriptural interpretation, men too blinded by their own arrogance to see that their abuses of the Church were now evident to everyone.