The Confidence Man Watches CNN

While the Confidence Man sees many things, with this ding-danged head- and chest cold, his hearing is somewhat dodgy.

But nonetheless, he straps on the headphones and attends the evening news on CNN whilst he performs his calisthenics and ablutions, and notes certain minor details.

1. Parsdint Flightsuit is being mighty cute with this impugn-Kerry's-sexuality line: '"Once again, Senator Kerry is trying to have it both ways," Bush said.'

2. Kerry doesn't help matters any with his invocation of either the site of the origin of the contemporary gay rights movement or the nickname of a Confederate hero: '"Why is this administration stonewalling and resisting the investigation into what happened and why we had the greatest security failure in the history of our country?" Kerry said at a hastily arranged news conference.'

3. The Confidence Man caught about 3 minutes of this with the sound off, and honest-to-god, thought he was actually watching this. The empty offices, the strange sense of "is this staged/recreated, and if so for whom," the socially inept insider-outsider dynamic, the stagey "emotional confrontations" ...