This is a report from someone over in Kos' most recent cattle call. It's not a handle I recognize, so I have no idea how much faith to put in its veracity. If true, the Kerry campaign funding seems to be drying up:

When Randy Beers jumped the White House for Kerry I sent them $100 in support of the truth Beers spilled about the Dept of Homeland Security. I still get their emails and the occasional phone call. Last night I got a phone call from the campaign asking me to attend one (or several) of the Dec 8 fund raisers in San Francisco. One event in particular was originally posted as a $500/seat dinner but apparently there weren't enought takers. The gentleman was calling to ask me to attend and to please bring my checkbook - no $500, just please come hear Kerry speak and be open to the idea of another donation.

Folks, when you have to ask use your phone tree to get people to attend your $500/seat fundraiser for free, you're in big, big trouble.

I don't know about the last bit, unless I'm misunderstanding. I got a bunch of handwritten invitations to a high-dollar Dean fundraiser last month (didn't go mostly due to exhaustion from a lot of travel recently -- didn't have the energy, plus I probably wouldn't fit in with those snooty insider donors... ;-) ). Anyway, not sure why a phone tree is a bad recruiting strategy. Worse is that they can't fill the seats for a medium-dollar fundraiser.

Also at the cattle call, LarryinNYC's reverse rankings, culminating in:

9. Dean: Chances all but evaporate when, during a stressful television interview, he bulks up, turns green, and rampages through the studio shouting "Dean angry! Dean smash!".

Yep. Still pretty exhausted as that made me laugh out loud.