Back from his annual August hiatus, a blogger of some renown writes:

Every time I checked out the blogosphere or the cable news or the papers, I felt relieved to be absent with leave. The low point was obviously the Swift Boatvets, jumping like bait on the end of Karl Rove's line. For a president who never served in Vietnam to get his cronies to lambaste an opponent who actually put his life in danger was, well, breathtakingly bold. And you really have to hand it to Bush. He knows how to campaign hard, to deploy smears of opponents indirectly, to stoke fears of minorities to rally votes, and every other hardball tactic. I wish I could get all huffy about this, but it's always been Bush's campaign mojo: divide, smear and beam. Kerry should have seen it coming.

And later...

And then that left-wing maniac, Dick Cheney, refuses to give up his federalist principles, his love of family and freedom, or his basic humanity, by signing on to the president's anti-gay constitutional amendment. Good for the veep, and the entire Cheney family. Too bad his own president has put them in such an awful position. And the GOP platform dispenses with any nuance and comes out not just against marriage rights for gays, but any kind of legal protections for their relationships whatever. That, of course, is what the FMA is designed to do, whatever lies its sponsors tell. No wonder Zell Miller is now the keynoter for the Republicans. Here's a man who once proudly condemned LBJ for backing civil rights for African-Americans, while Bush's Republican grandfather stood up for decency. History has come full circle, hasn't it? The Dixiecrats meet again in New York. Now they're called Repulicans.

Can't improve on that.