The link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5528951/
Bonus Drudge link: http://www.drudgereport.com/dnc7.htm
The money shot: http://www.local6.com/news/3592257/detail.html
So, we've got some pictures of Kerry at NASA, dressed up in a clean suit. Rush thinks Kerry looks like a sperm swimming up a uterus in this pic. He's very fond of that imagery, in fact. I want to put down some of the transcript of Mary Beth Cahill talking to Brit Hume here, so you can see just how sad this whole thing is. Cahill is Kerry's campaign manager.
CAHILL: Yesterday Senator John Glenn, and, um, obviously an astronaut in his previous life, and Senator Kerry took a tour of the biofacility at NASA and it was just the two of them and the NASA staff, and all of a sudden this was a leaked photo.
HUME: It was leaked?
CAHILL: Yes.
HUME: It was made by NASA, right?
CAHILL: It was.
HUME: So the campaign had no idea that there were photographs when he put on this costume --
CAHILL: None. There was no press there, no anything, and then all of a sudden these photographs were out.
HUME: Do you smell a dirty trick here?
CAHILL: Well, what do you think?
It's too bad that this text version doesn't capture the tone of her voice. She's fucking infuriated by it all, and when she gets to the “Well, what do you think?” part, there's really this exasperated “what the fuck do you think, Brit” type of tone, like it goes without saying that this is an underhanded GOP trick, and everyone with half a brain knows it. So, regardless, the fact that she's enraged by these pictures being out is funny enough, the fact that she's accusing NASA of “leaking” them is even better, but today's response from NASA is the cherry.
“NASA spokesman Bill Johnson reportedly said the Kerry campaign asked that the pictures be taken of the senator's unusually up-close tour of the Discovery and that processing be expedited so reporters could have them.”
Holy shit. Could this be any more ridiculous than it already is? Are we in the early days of Spermsuitgate? What a fucking joke. This is what Hussain calls “chaff.” He used to call it “flak,” but at the time he didn't know what flak was. Flak is antiaircraft artillery. Chaff is strips of metallic material dropped by an aircraft to confuse and evade radar guided missiles. Even though Hussain loves the word “flak,” he realized that it was the exact opposite of what he was going for, and now he uses the word “chaff” to describe any sort of topic that he doesn't feel is of actual political merit, but which the media and pundits parade around like it's the very foundation of our discourse. I'm being kind right now, because he really just calls everything chaff, and in fact just spams the word at me over AIM for hours at a time, instead of actually reading what I say. I think that “chaff” is probably Hussain's S&M safety word that he uses in his lewd exchanges with his inner hippie, and when she really starts laying into his tender little nipples “CHAAAAAFFF. Oh, thank you mistress.”
Regardless, this whole story is utter fucking madness. Why are people arguing about this, accusing one another of leaks, acting like it's a real issue? It's a goofy picture of a goofy man. It's like 4th grade social damage control. “Does John Kerry like like his sperm suit, or just like it? Ask NASA to ask John Glenn to ask him if he likes it.”
Now, supposedly, NASA has been ordered to take the photos down from their sites, based on possible violations of the Hatch Act. Awesome.