Bush yesterday:

President Bush on Monday accused Democratic rival Sen. John Kerry of “shameless scare tactics” by suggesting that the president would jeopardize Social Security for older Americans and bring back the military draft for young people.
Bush, in an Associated Press interview, said of Kerry, “He’s trying to scare our seniors. It is wrong to try to scare people going into the polls.”

Cheney today:

Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday evoked the possibility of terrorists bombing U.S. cities with nuclear weapons and questioned whether Sen. John Kerry could combat such a threat, which the vice president called a concept “you’ve got to get your mind around.”
“The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us – biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Cheney said.

I’m glad Bush/Cheney are strong moral leaders who don’t use scare tactics to get voters to the polls.

You’ve got to consider the source on this one, but Robert Scheer writes that the CIA has an undisclosed 9/11 report:

The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general’s office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.
“It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed,” an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that “the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren’t interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward.”

Given the number of CIA leaks we’ve seen the past year, I dare say that if there is such a report we’ll soon be hearing more about it. It’s clear that some people in the CIA aren’t happy with Bush, and this is an opportune time for them to “get even.”

I don’t purport to be an advertising guru, but this new Kerry ad with 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser seems like a very effective message to the so-called “security moms.” In it, Ms. Breithweiser reminds voters of Bush’s resistance to the 9/11 commission and claims America is not safe from terrorism today.
I’m not sure why Kerry hasn’t been hitting this issue harder. If Bush can make hay out of Kerry’s Iraq appropriation vote, Kerry should certainly be able to nail Bush on his flip flopping regarding the establishment of the 9/11 commission and Department of Homeland Security.

Despite record government and foreign trade deficits, America has not suffered severe consequences because foreign investors continue to pump money in. What if this market softens?

But a rash of new data, including Treasury Department figures released yesterday showing a net sell-off by foreigners of U.S. bonds in August, has stoked debate over whether overseas investors — private individuals, institutions and government central banks — are growing dangerously bearish on the U.S. economy.
. . .
In August, foreign private investors actually sold $4.4 billion more in Treasury bonds and notes than they bought that month, the Treasury Department said yesterday — the first time in a year that net foreign purchases were negative. That followed a 20 percent decline in July that shrunk net foreign purchases to $18.3 billion.
Bond purchases by foreign central banks also dropped sharply in July, falling 76 percent, to $4.1 billion. A rebound in August brought them back to $19.1 billion. The recovery was timely: Without it, the dollar may have taken a serious hit, said Ashraf Laidi, chief currency analyst at MG Financial Group in New York, who headlined yesterday’s client newsletter, “Foreign Central Banks Save Dollar From Disaster.”
Foreign purchases of stocks are off as well, going from net purchases of $9.7 billion in July to a net sell-off of $2.1 billion in August. Over the past 12 months, private foreign investors have purchased a net of $17 billion in U.S. stocks, compared with $30 billion in the 12 months before that.

Higher interest rates, a falling dollar–these economic pitfalls loom on the horizon if short-term bump becomes a long-term trend.

So which Karl Rove move is sillier?

• Spending time campaigning in New Jersey, where Kerry may have as much as a 13 point lead? (Compare with Bush’s California victory tour in October, 2000).
• Rove playing Air Force One wheel inspector on the campaign trail.

Perhaps Rove is worried the wheels are falling off Bush/Cheney 2004?