NP: Steve Earle, The Revolution Starts Now

While I'll admit being a somewhat partial (note that "partial" is different than "partisan") observer, I'm starting to really think Bush might be toast, Election Day shenanigans notwithstanding. There's just way too much going against him:

• al Qaqaa is not going away, despite the best efforts of the right-wing punditry to actually try to portray the whole story as bogus. And it's a big deal for both reasons of arming the insurgency and watching the GOP desparately try to spin their way out of it.
• The Halliburton investigation by the FBI.
• Photoshopping extra troops into a campaign ad, although this might be one that is much more important to the left flank of the blogosphere than anyone else.
• Kerry -- and Springsteen -- attracting 80,000 to 100,000 people.
• Bush giving the opposition all the ammo it needs. It looks like Wes Clark was the first to pounce on this publicly. Then Kerry adopted it. And apparently self-absorbed blogger Dave Pell tried to take credit for it.
• The Red Sox win. Yeah, it sounds frivolous, but it makes for a good media narrative, and we know how crucial the media narrative is to this whole election cycle.

And I think I'm still forgetting something.

The whole situation shows exactly why Kerry's comment about Mary Cheney in the debate was a poor tactical decision, because it was able to take over a large chunk of the news cycle for several days. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, as there are just too many stories that look bad for Bush, and any one of them could lead the 24-hour cable news charge.

The obvious question, though, is whether or not Rove has anything up his sleeve to stem that tide, but it's an awfully big tide to stem.