The choice is vivid. The stakes are vast.

The Philly Inquirer goes for Kerry. In a particularly big -- and shrill -- way.

Our nation is threatened by jihad warriors who scoff at boundaries. It stumbles toward a fiscal ruin that will punish our children. The rules that protect our air, water and health are weaker than we know. When 45 million of our neighbors fall ill, they have no insurance card to hand to the doctor.

We boast of exporting liberty and rule of law, yet watch them erode at home. A hooded prisoner on a box has replaced a soaring lady with a lamp as the global icon of America's intentions. Our national discourse has grown peevish, choking on distortion and bile.

On Nov. 2, we can return to office the man who, since 2001, has spawned some of those ills and shown a shaky touch at healing the others.

Or we can go a new way, one alert to fresh global challenges yet rooted in the approaches that made the 1990s so productive. We can elect Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.

Dear fellow citizen, this is as important an election as any in which you've had a chance to vote.

The Inquirer's urgent, deeply felt recommendation: Cast that ballot on Nov. 2 for JOHN F. KERRY [sic].

Thus, the newspaper's editors begin the first of 21 editorials on why John Kerry should be the next president of the United States and why George W Bush should not.

Via Atrios.

Oh, and as expected, this morning Bucheney is jumping all over the story in yesterday's NY Times Magazine. They are ridiculing Kerry's idea that terrorism can ultimately be boxed in and made no more than a nuisance, similar to organized crime. That it will take more than military actions to fight Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Kerry voices the wacky idea that we can go back to having normal lives.

Bucheney finds anything short of total war without end as totally unacceptable.