I don't know how I managed to miss it (must be that I have Inquirer deficit disorder), but via the Glenn Reynolds/Mickey Kaus grapevine I was somehow directed to my own newspaper!

Yup, that's right. The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Dick Polman. Polman is a regular read for me, and I don't know how I managed to miss him.

And I'm glad -- delighted in fact -- that thanks to the Reynolds/Kaus workaround, this temporary midlife attention deficit is fixed, because Polman's column (in which he sheds crocodile tears for Kerry) is actually very funny:

For Kerry, indignities abound. He trails Hillary Rodham Clinton in every 2008 survey. The other day, he was assailed by Clinton aide Ann Lewis for running "an inconsistent campaign." Indeed, in focus groups conducted this winter by Democratic strategists, he was still seen as indecisive; one participant said, "He's the guy that holds up the line at McDonald's."

And he's been dogged by bloggers who want him to authorize the release of all his military records, to clear up questions raised in 2004. He told NBC on Jan. 30 that he would sign military form SF-180 to do so, but he hasn't yet. Most of the heat has come from conservatives, but Democratic blogger Mickey Kaus also is on the case, urging party brethren to "remove this increasingly pathetic figure from our national stage." (The word in Washington is that Kerry will sign the form soon.)

Kerry also seems compelled to defend his 2004 record; he boasts these days that he won 10 million more votes than Bill Clinton did in 1996 (omitting the fact that President Bush won 23 million more votes than Clinton opponent Bob Dole). And on Feb. 28 in Boston, he noted that he beat Bush among young voters and unmarried women (omitting the fact that he lost every age group over 30, and lost the biggest female category, white married women).

But the remark that most galls his party critics is his contention that he'd be president today if only 60,000 Ohioans had switched votes - as he put it the other day, "half the people in a football stadium in Columbus, Ohio, on a Saturday."

In the words of Dick Harpootlian, a former South Carolina party chairman, "Hey, what if Napoleon had had B-52s? Then we'd all be speaking French.

Kerry will sign the form soon? When is soon? Is there a hurry?

Or is the election not over anymore?

Does this mean I should update my previous posts?