WAKING UP TO THIS AND THAT: Call me slow, but moments after I type my minor tribute to Christopher Reeve I find myself downstairs on the treadmill thinking, "Holy Cow, this could be a big factor in the election."

Sure enough they do a heartwarming/heart-rending TODAY segment on him, and I start to get mad. "Damnit, we need to do more and better stem cell research. Not just for Christopher Reeve, but for our friends with diabetes, with MS, with Alzheimer's."

Moments later they do a segment with Hamid Karzai where he thanks the U.S. for their free elections, for our steadfastness. "No way Kerry would have had the cojones to blast into Afghanistan with ground troops, to stay there and facilitate elections, to demonstrate to the rest of the world the power of democracy."

I jump in the car for a Starbuck's run and hear the Stern show kicking off with an audio montage of Bushisms, all manner of verbal blunders and evidence that the cat done took that guy's tongue years ago. What a big dunderhead!

Then I get an e-mail from a military buddy that says "don't believe what you read, this military is totally behind Bush."

Jesu, bambino! If Bush could just come to his senses on the stem-cell stuff, leave gay marriage alone, and grow a brain...

Ain't gonna happen.

So what I need is just a little more sense that Kerry is as hawkish on the war on terror, that HE GETS IT, than I have, especially after his funky little statement in the New York Times over the weekend. Yeah, I know his words are being ripped out of context, but still, he should know better. Somewhere in his heart he is not seeing the same grave threat I'm seeing. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm definitely gonna be voting my heart...the one that has Christoper Reeve in it, our soldiers, the one that has its own war going on inside...