There's a vacant lot that adjoins my property. I don't own it, but I mow it because.... well, someone has to. August has been rather dry in this neck of the woods, so I've not had to mow that lot for almost three weeks. I mowed it today and, as it turns out, almost three weeks is just enough time for a nest of hornets to build up under one of the bushes that I have to mow under. I managed to make it out of there with only four stings... but I think the worst thing about the incident, worse even than the physical pain, was standing in my underwear in my basement, carefully sorting through my hastily removed clothing and looking for more bees.

I have to wonder if that's how the John Kerry feels right now.

In his finest novel, The Shining, Stephen King uses a hornet's nest as a symbol for the problems we stir up for ourselves with our own destructive behavior. I was thinking about that today, after the hornet incident, as I finished mowing. I have four swelling, painful bee stings, and the reason is that I managed to stir up a hornet's nest because of what I did (mowing under that particular bush) and what I didn't do (mowing frequently enough, dry weather or not, to keep the hornets from nesting).

John Kerry is in a hornet's nest of his own making right now. The veterans aren't going to let up on him, and I don't suppose they feel that they should. The other day I posted an entry saying that I hoped they would drop their campaign so we could focus on the real issues, but I don't think that's going to happen. On top of that, more and more people are questioning the links between Kerry's campaign and the anti-Bush 527 groups. His hypocrisy is becoming more and more transparent. His voting record in the Senate remains indefensible. In fact, he's not even trying to defend it, having decided nstead to focus on his long ago past. And his lies, especially recent ones, like how he found out about Martin Luther King's assassination, are revealing more about his true character. This is a man without substance... a politician in the worst sense of the word... who cares more about how he's perceived than he does about the well being of this country.

The stings keep coming. Kerry is in a hornet's nest of his own making.