August 6

The row over television ads by the pro-Bush group "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" rumbles on. Where did they come from? What's their motivation? Who's paying for it?

Whatever those answers, right-wing talk show hosts have been quick to use the group as a way to air their criticism of John Kerry, despite calls by Republican Senator John McCain for the White House to distance itself from the attacks.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle: "It was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me," McCain said, referring to attacks on his military record during the 2000 Republican primary race by supporters of Bush. At the time, Kerry and other senators who served in Vietnam came to McCain's defense.

Salon.com talks about the smear campaign and interviews Kerry biographer, historian Douglas Brinkley.

The Boston Globe, also reports that some of Kerry's critics can't seem to get their story straight, but that hasn't made the story go away - in fact it seems to have intensified their heat as the White House seeks to deflect from what post-convention bounce Kerry was able to garner.

Although there's no online link, there's a good, readable piece in this month's Vanity Fair by Michael Wolff on Bob Shrum, Kerry's chief campaign strategist. (Check out also the "New Improved Presidential Daily Briefing" item.... hilarious!)

President Bush, meanwhile, again defended the recent terror warnings while Kerry told NPR he would abolish the colour-coded national alert system for something more practical.

Finally, oops.

August 4

The details of the Vote for Change Tour were finally released today after weeks of speculation.

So, no Giants Stadium concert during the Republican Convention for Bruce Springsteen, but, like other acts, he will be playing a series of shows in potential battleground states, kicking off in Philadelphia on October 1st and wrapping up in Orlando on October 8th.

The shows will be promoted by MoveOn.org, the left-leaning pressure group, and will feature a wide range of artists including Springsteen, James Taylor, REM, Pearl Jam, the Dave Matthews Band, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Keb Mo and the Dixie Chicks.

Springsteen - whose song "No Surrender" was used as John Kerry entered the Convention floor to give his acceptance speech - will also go on Nightline with Ted Koppel this evening to talk about why the artists are signing up for the shows.

There's also an excellent interview with the Boss on the Backstreets fan site. Here's an extract:

Backstreets: You’ve supported a lot of causes over the years, but as political and socially conscious as a lot of your work has been, this is the first time you’ve really weighed in on electoral politics. So I guess the big question is, why now?

Bruce Springsteen: Basically, this is probably the most important election of my lifetime. I think that the government has drifted too far from American values. After 9/11, I was like everybody else -- I supported going into Afghanistan, and I felt tremendous unity in the country that I don’t think I’ve ever felt exactly like that before. It was a moment of great sadness, but also tremendous possibility.

And I think that was dashed when we jumped headlong into the Iraq war, which I never understood, and I talked about that on the road. I never understood how or why we really ended up there. We offered up the lives of the best of our young people under circumstances that have been discredited. I had to live through that when I was young myself, and for any of us that lived through the Vietnam War, it was just very devastating.

Along with that, the deficits, the squeezing of services like the after-school services for the kids who need it the most, the big windfall tax cuts, the division of wealth that has threatened our connection to one another over the past 20 years that is increasing…. these are things that as the election time neared -- I couldn’t really keep true to the ideas that I’d written about for 30 years without weighing in on this one.

I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before in my lifetime. I think that the freedoms that we’ve taken for granted -I spoke about this on the road a little bit, too - they are slowly being eroded. In the past I've gotten involved in a lot of grassroots organizations that sort of expressed my views, and where I thought I could be of some small help. I guess I’ve been doing that for about 20 years, and that was a way that I was very happy to work. I always believed that it was good for the artist to remain distant from the seat of power, to retain your independent voice, and that was the way I liked to conduct my work. But the stakes in this one are just too high. I felt like, given what I’ve written about, the things that I’ve wanted our band to stand for over the years, it’s just too big a battle to lay out of.