…is that he stinks on TV, writes The New York Observer’s Joe Hagan:

Watching Mr. Kerry on TV, [former McCain strategist John Weaver] said, “I don’t know if it’s a stream of consciousness or stream of unconsciousness.”

“It’s a lot of words and no clarity, a lot of presence and no warmth,” said Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s Hardball. … “And I think he’s got to deal with that.” …

In recent appearances, Mr. Kerry’s digressions and obfuscations about whether he threw a war medal or a ribbon on the White House lawn in 1971—or whether the young Mr. Kerry should have used the word “war crimes” to describe actions in Vietnam—have obscured the candidate. At every turn, he has managed to turn the TV screen into smoked glass: He’s right in front of you, but you can’t … quite … make … him … out. With his morose patrician mien and robotic delivery—parodied with precision by Jon Stewart on the Monday, April 24, Daily Show, surely not a good thing for the candidate—Mr. Kerry’s TV performances are sounding a gut-level alarm about his ability to inspire confidence in the electorate. “He needs to speak the truth and speak from the heart and not try to calibrate his views or his actions,” said Mr. Weaver. “The public catches on to these things, and they can see through whether there’s a calibration going on or not. He needs to stop that.”

He didn’t need to speak the name of former Vice President Al Gore. But a media strategist for another Democratic Presidential candidate said that Mr. Kerry had to lose the “legislative speak” and begin talking “like a normal person communicates, speaking in simple, more declarative sentences that have a clearer meaning for people.” Compared to President George W. Bush, he added, Mr. Kerry appeared more intelligent, “but there are many instances in which George Bush communicates more clearly.”

Read the whole thing. Near the end, 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt is quoted as saying, “The Democratic friends I have keep saying, ‘Wait, wait, he’ll get better.’” [As if Don Hewitt has any non-Democratic friends. -ed.] He adds, “Well, I’m waiting, and I don’t know if he will or not.” I’m waiting, too, and wondering.

Am I the only one who finds it more than a little disturbing that a media conglomerate is ordering its stations around with regard to whether or not they should air Nightline’s on-air reading of the names of the Iraq war dead? (Poynter has more.)

Never mind the substance of the issue — whether Nightline is right or wrong isn’t what I’m concerned about here. I just think this sort of decision should be left up to the individual station. Call it “media federalism,” if you like. If the affiliate doesn’t want to air the show, fine! But why should a centralized corporate authority make the decision for them?

Those who defend the ever-tightening consolidation of media ownership typically insist that editorial freedom is not really harmed by these mega-mergers. But here we have rock-solid evidence that it is! This decision isn’t being made by journalists, nor even station managers — it’s being made by corporate executives who have no connection whatsoever to the local communities involved! Viewers in St. Louis, Tallahassee, Columbus, and various other cities scattered around the country will be unable to watch Nightline — because some suit in Maryland decided they shouldn’t!

Like Chris Rock’s character in Head of State says: “That ain’t right!” And don’t even get me started on the fact that all 175 Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide editorialized in favor of the Iraq war. Jeez…

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a good thing.

As your #1 source for McDonald’s-flag-related news and your #1 source for controversial-French-label-related news, I have several items of interest to share with y’all today.

First and foremost, we have McDonald’s admitting it was wrong to lower the American flag to half-staff in honor of its dearly departed CEO:

Nancy King loves McDonald’s, but when she saw a restaurant in Gurnee [Illinois] flying the U.S. flag at half-staff last week in honor of the company’s late chief executive, she had to serve up a civics lesson.

After the Air Force veteran from Antioch and others complained, the fast-food giant quickly admitted its mistake in flag etiquette and asked its restaurant operators to raise the Stars and Stripes to full height.

“I got to work and said, ‘I just can’t let this go,’” said King, who knew that only the president or a governor can order the flag lowered to half-staff and that it’s normally done only for government officials or dignitaries. “I just wanted to bring it to their attention that this was not a right thing to do.”

A McDonald’s official said Wednesday that the company erred when it asked its restaurant operators to fly flags at half-staff to honor James R. Cantalupo, 60, who died April 19 at a meeting of franchisees and vendors in Orlando.

“We apologize for the mistake and plan to take steps to rectify [it],” said spokesman Michon Ellis. …

The company was trying to find an outlet for its grief, Ellis said.

Cantalupo was widely respected at McDonald’s and was credited for reviving the fortunes of the restaurant chain in his 16-month tenure as chief executive.

“We all were shocked with the loss of Mr. Cantalupo; that was the main thing on our mind at the time,” Ellis said. “By no means were we looking to disrespect anyone.”

Well, that settles that. Meanwhile, flag nerds note that such mistakes are quite common:

“A lot of people have really good intentions, but they really aren’t familiar with proper flag etiquette,” [Jerry Newberry, a national spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars] said.

“I’ve seen flags used as car seat covers, or they’ll lay them over a piece of furniture. I’ve seen them draped on stairs going up to someone’s front porch.”

More poignantly, many towns have sought to honor a slain local serviceman or servicewoman by lowering the flag, often at a mayor’s directive.

That, too, is a breach of the U.S. Flag Code, said Mike Buss, the American Legion’s assistant director of the Americanism Division based in Indianapolis.

The mayor or city council should ask the governor to issue a proclamation declaring that flags be lowered in town on the day of the serviceman or woman’s funeral.

“I know of many states where the governor has done this,” Buss said.

However, there are no legal penalties for mistreating the flag, and no one can stop a town from lowering the flag if it so chooses.

But the flag code is specific on how to treat the national banner, and Americans have a duty to do it properly, King said.

“Our flag needs to be held with respect, even if it’s at McDonald’s,” she said.

So, there’s your McDonald’s flag update. And now for your controversial French label update: Reuters has jumped on the bandwagon, running a story about the much-discussed labels that say “our President is an idiot” in French but not in English. The news service (or should I say, “news service”) declares the so-labeled products “a hit.”

Tom Bihn, the designer whose bags carry the “idiot” labels, is undoubtedly delighted with this latest bout of free publicity. He may be less delighted, however, with the questionable headline on one website’s story about the labels: “Bihn laden with buyers for US handbags bashing ‘idiot president’ in French.” Heh.

We believe in God and Minority Leader Dodd? Or would that be Governor Dodd? Or President Dodd? Whichever — GO CHRIS GO! Connecticut pride, baby! :)

USC freshman uses meal-plan money to buy free iTunes music downloads. This man is a genius!

Two of ten finalists in a Yahoo contest to interview the presidential candidates are USC students. If you have a Yahoo ID, you can vote for them. And they need your support: they’re in fourth and fifth place right now. Goooo Trojans!

Speaking of “goooo Trojans,” the undefeated, #1-ranked USC women’s water polo team will go for the conference championship this weekend.

The ACLU is suing the FBI over a provision of the Patriot Act that makes it possible for the bureau to demand confidential financial records from companies “in complete secrecy, without ever appearing before a federal judge.” Fittingly, the lawsuit was kept sealed and secret until now, because there was fear that its public discussion might be a violation of the Patriot Act!

Liquid body armor? Cool!

Robotic traffic cones? Cool!

Terrorists infiltrating the country by stowing away on Algerian liquefied natural gas tankers? Not so cool!

And the winner of the USC Student Senate presidential election, after the two-months-long Ritter/Gasparyan/Directo/Ball/Mann soap opera is… Joe DeMiero?

DeMiero and runningmate Tessie Shih — who were not candidates in the original, nullified election — won Senate’s “revote” with 603 votes, a whopping 23 percent of the rather pathetic total of 2,641 votes cast. Talk about a mandate from the people!

Here is the full vote tally, according to the Daily Trojan:

Joe DeMiero and Tessie Shih: 22.83%
Courtney Beavers and Jedidiah Jenkins: 18.85%
Andrew Ritter and Agavni Gasparyan: 16.25%
Daniel Kenny and Jessica Lall: 14.65%
Lauren Ball and David Nava: 12.93%
Mike Directo and Harold Mann: 8.87%
Write-ins: 5.3%

Well, Directo and Mann certainly went out with a whimper, didn’t they?

Congratulations, President DeMiero and Vice President Shih!

“Federal officials have warned the LAPD about an unspecified potential threat to a Los Angeles area mall and said an attack may have been planned for today,” the Los Angeles Daily News reports.

(more…)

Just uploaded my photo album of pics from our visit today — “us” being me, Becky and Robbie — to the Quail Run dog park in Mesa, which we take Robbie to almost every day. A few highlights:

Man, I loved that pug (above). So cute!! The basset hound shown directly above him, Daisy Mae, is one of Becky’s favorites. And at the top, you can see Robbie and a golden retriever hamming it up for the camera.

The park is great — you see a lot of the same dogs and people day after day, so you end up making various friends and acquaintances, canine and human alike. Lots of fun. Oh yeah, and Robbie has a good time, too. :)

Here’s a story about the dog park (or “Bark Park”) that ran in the local paper earlier this week.

Also newly online: my mom’s photos of spring in Newington.

The flowers in our yard are dedicated, as they are every year, to the memory of my Grandma Loomer, who loved our flowers (we would always bring her the best ones, back when she was living at a nursing home in town).

In addition to the flowers, the gallery also contains photos from a recent ‘rental fishing expedition — including my parents’ close encounter with Gothmog the Snapping Turtle on the Bridge of Wetherzfad-Dum. (”You cannot pass!”)

I am utterly remiss in failing to note previously that yesterday was the 17th birthday of my “honorary sister,” Kimberly Stone. (I had it marked on my iCal calendar and everything, but still somehow managed to forget. D’oh!)

Anyway, happy belated birthday, Kimber!!

Blogger Frank J. says John Kerry won’t need George W. Bush for the presidential debates — “he could just do them Gollum style, making a statement, and then rebutting vehemently right after”:

“We must fund the troops in Iraq!”

(Camera angle on Kerry changes.)

“No! I hateses funding the nasty troopses!”

Hehehe. (This idea cries out for a Fark Photoshop contest…) Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds agrees with me (scroll way down) that Kerry is beginning to seem eerily similar to another Tales from the Crypt-looking senator who tried to defeat a slick incumbent president:

This sounds like Bob Dole all over again: He can’t connect with the public, he’s unappealing on TV, but we’ll nominate him anyway! Did we mention he’s a war hero? They always win!

Chas Rich of Sardonic Views takes this point and elaborates on it — while Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web makes a separate but related point, snarkily:

Aren’t Bush’s National Guard record and Cheney’s lack of military service fair game for the Kerry campaign and its allies? Well sure, if voters deem them important. We’re guessing that they won’t, although President Dole may disagree.

Heh. But hey, after Kerry loses the election, maybe he can follow in Dole’s footsteps and became a spokesperson for a medical product. Say it with me, SAT analogy nerds: Bob is to Viagra as John is to Botox…

On a more serious note, regarding this whole “Kerry Must Go” thing, it seems Mickey Kaus — a Democrat who never liked Kerry — has been beating the abandon-ship drum for more than a month. Check out his St. Patrick’s Day post on the subject. Apparently Kaus thinks a dump-Kerry movement is more plausible than I do:

With polls showing Kerry sinking slowly-but-perceptibly under Bush’s character criticism, it’s not inconceivable that ‘electability’-obsessed Democrats will soon be asking each other such forbidden questions in private (perhaps in that same off-the-record place foreign leaders go to when they want to endorse Kerry). It’s not as if Kerry has a large, fervent constituency that will support him even if they think he’s a near-certain loser. If Democrats are focused on beating Bush, and if Kerry can’t do the job …

I assume it’s unheard of for a candidate to fail to get the nomination once he’s amassed the magic number of presumably loyal delegates. It’s an especially unlikely scenario if the only alternative is a failed primary entrant such as Edwards. (Kf recommendation: Find another white knight. And not her.)

Kaus points out that, in New Jersey’s 2002 Senate race, Dems successfully pulled off “the late substitution of a more palatable candidate for a sure loser–even after formal nomination.” However, I think the biggest problem with Kaus’s analysis is that it isn’t anonymous party insiders (as in New Jersey), nor “electability”-obsessed voters (as in the primaries) who would have to make the decision to dump Kerry — it’s delegates who would have to make that call, and the delegates that Kerry racked up by winning all those primaries presumably are a fairly “fervent constituency.” These aren’t just miscellaneous, run-of-the-mill voters who marked his name on the ballot because they thought he seemed electable; these are campaign volunteers, longtime Kerry supporters, true insiders and die-hards. To change their minds would take a lot.

On the other hand… I wonder, if you combined the “superdelgates” (who do not fit into the mold described above, but who do make up a sizable chunk of Kerry’s presumed delegate total) with the Edwards, Dean, and other candidates’ pledged delegates, how close you’d be… what’s the minimum percentage of the pledged Kerry delegates that would have to defect in order to achieve an anti-Kerry majority? Perhaps I’ll consult CNN’s delegate scorecard later and do the math, when I’m feeling less lazy. (Or perhaps someone will do it for me, and post their findings in comments.:)

As for the “white knight,” I agree with Kaus: “not her.” But who? Like I said before, Al Gore is the only other plausible savior I can think of, and considering that he lost (well, tied) an election in 2000 that should have been a gimme, he doesn’t seem like a very good “knight.” But who else? Tom Daschle? Worse than Kerry. Nancy Pelosi? Worse than Satan. Wait! I’ve got it! The Dems’ #1 pinch-hitter: WALTER MONDALE!!! :)

P.S. Glenn thinks Bush should dump Cheney and put Condi Rice on the ticket instead. I agree that Bush should do this, which, of course, means that I hope he won’t. (Although the non-ideological political junkie in me wants to hope that he will, because it would be interesting. But no — I must resist! Good things for Bush are bad for everyone else!)

“Computers will remain a part of the process to determine the teams to play for the national title in the new formula being worked out by the Bowl Championship Series,” Fox Sports reports. “Their role, however, will not be so big as to skew the process as they did in the selection of Oklahoma for the BCS title game last season, even though the Sooners were ranked No. 3 in both human polls, behind USC and LSU.”

The details are still being worked out; four different versions of the new system were “discussed at length by BCS member athletic directors and other conference officials on Wednesday,” according to BCS coordinator Mike Tranghese, commissioner of the Big East Conference. But, bottom line:

While he revealed few other details, he said all four “models” being considered would have had Oregon, instead of Nebraska, reaching the title game after the 2001 season, and USC making it, rather than Oklahoma, last season.

Yay! Meanwhile, the “five-plus-one” proposal is — with apologies to Bob Dylan — not dead yet, but getting there.

There is an “internal server error” on my 2003 and 2004 photo galleries. I’m not sure what’s wrong, but I am looking into it.

UPDATE: I didn’t do anything that could have fixed it, but now it’s working again (knock on wood). Weird!

Glenn Reynolds has a message to Republicans: “Don’t get cocky. Kerry can’t possibly do this badly for the entire campaign.” I sure hope he’s right.

Here are Glenn’s thoughts on the Village Voice article stating that Kerry must go.

51-49.

UPDATE: “Veteran GOP Sen. Arlen Specter narrowly won a fifth term,” CNN proclaims. Um, guys… it’s a primary. He hasn’t quite clinched the general election just yet. Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: They’ve corrected it now: “Veteran GOP Sen. Arlen Specter narrowly won a shot at a fifth term.” But I saved an image of the original mistake for posterity, and you can see it here.)

Los Angeles shattered the 123-year-old record high of 94 with a temperature of 102 degrees at USC!

Here in Phoenix, we managed only a measly 97. Who’d have thunk it: L.A. hits triple-digits before Phoenix does!

Okay, so maybe you didn’t put any stock in it when the New York Post’s John Podhoretz dissed John Kerry. After all, the Post is not exactly known for its liberalism. But now James Ridgeway of the lefty Village Voice has jumped on the dump-Kerry bandwagon, writing: “Note to Democrats: it’s not too late to draft someone — anyone — else.”

With the air gushing out of John Kerry’s balloon, it may be only a matter of time until political insiders in Washington face the dread reality that the junior senator from Massachusetts doesn’t have what it takes to win and has got to go. As arrogant and out of it as the Democratic political establishment is, even these pols know the party’s got to have someone to run against George Bush. They can’t exactly expect the president to self-destruct into thin air. …

Kerry sinks day by day. The pros all know that the candidate who starts each morning by having to explain himself is a goner.

What to do? Look for the Dem biggies, whoever they are these days, to sit down with the rich and arrogant presumptive nominee and try to persuade him to take a hike. Then they can return to business as usual—resurrecting John Edwards, who is still hanging around, or staging an open convention in Boston, or both.

It strikes me as extremely unlikely that the “Dem biggies” will do what Ridgeway suggests, and almost inconceivable that Kerry would go along with it if they tried. Instead, any serious move along these lines would surely produce the most divisive Democatic convention since 1968. Worse, the only candidates who would have even a remote chance at pulling off an anti-Kerry coup would be Hillary Clinton and Al Gore — and I don’t particularly like either of those options.

Alas, barring a cataclysmic scandal of some sort (as I posted earlier, “Where have you gone, Alexandra Polier?”), we’re almost certainly stuck with Kerry, a.k.a. the quantum candidate:

It’s the Schroedinger’s Candidate. He’s an undefined state. You don’t know where he stands until you put him in office.

He is subject to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as well — you can either know his momentum or his position. As a candidate, he is trying to gain momentum in his Pesidential bid. Therefore, we cannot know his position on anything.

And you change it by trying to measure it.

Heh. (Hat tip: Wonkette.)