THE HILL: “Guns split the Kerry campaign.”

BLOGARAMA: This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up. Don’t miss it!

Also, Alphecca’s weekly look at media bias relating to guns is up. And having recently posted on catblogging and birdblogging, in the interest of interspecies amity I suppose I should link to the Carnival of the Dogs. Woof!

DAN GILLMOR’S NEW BOOK, We the Media, is out. I read it in manuscript, and it’s very good. It’s a must-read if you’re interested in blogs, new media, and all this cool stuff.

BRUCE SCHNEIER points out another dumb airline security incident, and offers some suggestions. “Security works best when people are in charge.”

KERRY’S SECRET PLAN TO END THE WAR:

Reminded that he sounded like Richard M. Nixon, who campaigned in 1968 by saying he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, Kerry responded: “I don’t care what it sounds like. The fact is that I’m not going to negotiate in public today without the presidency, without the power.”

Ed Morrissey observes: “It’s really too bad he’s not already an officeholder, a person with some official standing in the US government, or he could already be working on America’s behalf. Darn it!”

UPDATE: Reader Sean Starke points out a Kerry Tax Straddle from the same article — and I notice that it contains another howler:

On domestic issues, Kerry gave a “rock hard” pledge not to raise middle-class taxes if he becomes president, though he said a national emergency or war could change that.

Reminded that the country is at war already, Kerry said, “We’re going to reduce the burden in this war, and if we do what we need to do for our economy, we’re going to grow the tax base of our country.”

“Reminded that the country is at war already”?

I wish the Democrats had nominated a guy who didn’t need to be reminded.

GREG DJEREJIAN faults Kerry and Edwards’ response to the latest terror alerts: “Mr. Kerry–if he thinks this latest terror alert was false–should proclaim it loudly and clearly. Conversely, if he thinks it was real–he should renounce Howard Dean’s comments unequivocally (really, what he should be doing, is telling us what (if anything) he’d be doing to make the NYSE or IMF buildings safer–but maybe that’s a bit too much to ask).”

BOI FROM TROI has learned from his experience.

OUCH:

The survey showed Kerry losing 1 percentage point and Bush gaining 4 percentage points from a poll taken the week before the Boston convention. The change in support was within the poll’s margin of error of +/–4 percentage points in the sample of 763 likely voters. But it was nonetheless surprising, the first time since the chaotic Democratic convention in 1972 that a candidate hasn’t gained ground during his convention.

I don’t think that polls tell us much, and a Newsweek poll showed a slight gain for Kerry. But this can’t be good news.

But hey, Kerry’s way ahead in this poll! “When asked who would be a better president, the journalists from outside the Beltway picked Mr. Kerry 3 to 1, and the ones from Washington favored him 12 to 1. Those results jibe with previous surveys over the past two decades showing that journalists tend to be Democrats, especially the ones based in Washington.”

Who knew?

UPDATE: Many, many readers have emailed this chart from the Iowa Electronic Markets showing Bush pulling ahead since the convention. I don’t know how much these are worth, either.

Meanwhile, reader Jon Roscoe has been watching the morning TV shows and says that it’s surprising how little attention the first poll is getting. Maybe that’s because of the second poll. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: On the other hand, Howard Kurtz notes: “Kerry, for his part, proved a big draw, attracting more than 24 million viewers for his acceptance speech, compared to 21.6 million for Al Gore at the last convention.” There’s a number for everybody!

Meanwhile Sardonic Views writes that the real winners in the polls are media companies in the battleground states, and the real losers are media consumers in the battleground states: “That puts me in the ‘loser’ category since I live in one of the battleground states and can only expect the partisan crap on both sides to get worse over the radio, TV and in print.”

Democracy ain’t pretty.

MORE: Some interesting stuff on electronic markets vs. polls in terms of accuracy.