Here’s the book that’ll outsell the one sold by the Shiftless-Boat Weterans for Cash: The Phony Fighter Pilot.

It also covers his Dad’s bailout that left two men behind to die. And it’s written by a registered Republican.

See? I knew there are ethical Republicans left.

(Cross-posted at Suddenly Routine)

[Preface: I know this post isn’t going to raise the level of discourse and will surely reek of “liberal elitism” but, well, it’s how I feel.]

As I read this sentence in the New York Times:

Valerie White had each fingernail carefully painted to resemble a tiny, shiny American flag. No detail was too small for the big night, the night she put on her sequined vest, and her husband, Lyn, his flag-decorated tie, so they could welcome Arnold Schwarzenegger to Madison Square Garden.

I couldn’t help but remember a quote by Neal Stephenson that, when adapted, I think best sums up many New Yorkers’ feelings about the RNC:

Hostility towards [the RNC] is not difficult to find [in New York], and it blends two strains: resentful people who feel [Republicans are] too powerful, and disdainful people who think [they’re] tacky. This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments.

find it at cosmopoly’s aggregator page.

(ok, we’re only doing this because we know this post will show up on the cosmopoly’s aggregator page. we want to see something refer to something referring to itself…sort of like looking into a mirror with a mirror behind you…the cyber equivalent of the illusion of infinity).

yes, we do have time on our hands, why do you ask?

(cross-posted at skippy the bush kangaroo)

the asspress is reporting at least 400 protesters were arrested in nyc tuesday:

police wrapped demonstrators and an entire midtown manhattan block in orange netting tuesday to control anti-gop protests, arresting more than 400 people across the city as activists massed in the streets for marches to the site of the republican convention.

outside the new york public library, in the streets near the famed herald square and at the site of the fallen world trade center, demonstrators pointed themselves toward madison square garden and promised to get their message across that they want president bush out of office.

there were no immediate reports of violence, but it appeared by late evening that the planned march had deteriorated into blocks of human gridlock in several parts of the city.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Cross-posted at Polemic Propaganda)

I guess this is what happens when you try to fight a sensitive war on terror.

Legal sources say the Justice Department [I believe that means John "I’m tough on terror" Ashcroft] has asked a judge to throw out the convictions of an accused terror cell in Detroit because of prosecutorial misconduct.

The request is a dramatic reversal of a case the Bush administration once hailed as a major post-Nine-Eleven victory in the war on terror.

The department told U-S District Judge Gerald Rosen that it supports the Detroit defendants’ request for a new trial, and would no longer pursue charges of material support of terrorism. Sources say that means the defendants at most would only face fraud charges at a new trial.

The department’s decision came after a months-long independent investigation uncovered several pieces of evidence that prosecutors failed to turn over to defense lawyers before the trial last year.

The announcement is expected as early as tomorrow.

What are we going to do next? Let the terrorists roam free through Syria, Palestine, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen? Oh wait…

You know, I have to say, I’ve never thought war wounds were all that funny.

Democrats on Tuesday accused GOP leaders of organizing the demonstration that made fun of Kerry’s three Purple Hearts, but Republican spokesman Jim Dyke said, “It was the act of an individual, not the party.”

Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie asked delegate Morton Blackwell of Arlington, Va., on Monday to quit handing out the bandages, Dyke said. The bandages carried the message: “It was just a self-inflicted scratch, but you see I got a Purple Heart for it.”

Democrats seized on the bandages as another example of Republicans disrespecting military service, coming on the heels of the attacks on Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

“They insulted the United States of America, even though the president belatedly supported the combat record of John Kerry,” said Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, a military veteran himself.

The bandages were visible on some delegates Monday afternoon but not by Monday night during convention speeches. Blackwell had distributed about 250 bandages.

Kerry won three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star in Vietnam. The group sponsoring television ads challenging his wartime record contends Kerry’s own fire caused the wound that brought his first Purple Heart. Navy records and other veterans don’t support the charge.

Retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, former Air Force chief of staff, said the president should denounce the bandages.

Some people appear to see the humor.

I wonder how everyone whose loved ones actually went overseas to get shot at feels?

“On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.” attributed to Martin Luther King

so what is right? what does our conscience call us to do?

over 25 organizations, including the war resisters league, code pink , pagan cluster , school of the americas watch have planned a day of nonviolent civil disobedience, direct action and partying for today.
Read the rest of this entry »

So get this. I previously blogged about Rumsfeld and Bush dodging on the Ghorbanifar connection to the current Pentagon scandal. I also pointed out that Michael Ledeen was the go between to try to get the Iranians in to see the National Security Council.

Not only was Michael Ledeen (my apologies for mispelling the name before) involved in the Iran Contra scandal, he also was involved in political slimeballery back during the Carter years. Please note the date. The week before the 1980 election.

Now Billy Carter was no prize. But still…well. read for yourself. Then google the hell out of the names and try to triangulate the former and current relationships.

Happy hunting!

From the New York Times, Oct 29, 1980:

A magazine editor testified today that a Libyan agent and a Western intelligence contact were the sources for an article that said Billy Carter met with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian guerrilla leader.

Michael A. Ledeen, executive editor of The Washington Quarterly, told a Senate subcommittee that Michele Papa, whom he identified as a Libyan agent in Italy, was the source for a statement that President Carter’s brother and some friends received $50,000 in unreported expense money from Libya to travel to the North African country.

Mr. Ledeen said that ‘’an extremely good Western intelligence source'’ told him that Billy Carter had met with Palestinian leaders. He said that there was a photograph of the meeting.

He testified under oath in an unusual public deposition given to Dennis Shedd, a counsel for the Senate subcommittee investigating ties between President Carter’s brother and Libya.

Mr. Ledeen and Arnaud de Borchgrave, a former Newsweek correspondent, said in a recent article that Billy Carter met with Mr. Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and George Habash, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Billy Carter has denied meeting Mr. Arafat and has said that he was only introduced to Mr. Habash at a social event. He has denied receiving the $50,000 Libyan payment.

Then three days later, an interesting retort by charges by Ledeen that the Times spiked another related story:

THE TIMES DISPUTES CHARGE OVER HANDLING OF BILLY CARTER ARTICLE

A spokesman for The New York Times said yesterday that an advertisement in today’s paper by Accuracy in Media relating to the handling of an article by the newspaper was misleading and inaccurate.

The advertisement contends that The Times ‘’spiked,'’ or failed to print, an article prepared for The New Republic by Arnaud de Borchgrave and Michael Ledeen about alleged activities of Billy Carter in Libya.

David R. Jones, national editor of The Times, said that the newspaper gave the New Republic report the attention it warranted in an article that appeared in The Times on Oct. 24.

The Times obtained the New Republic article from the Special Features Syndicate, an affiliate of The New York Times Company, in an effort to obtain independent corroboration of the information in it, Mr. Jones said. In that effort The Times talked with Mr. Ledeen, among others.

Mr. Jones said that Mr. Ledeen had given the source of the report as Michele Papa, who previously had made unproved allegations regarding Billy Carter. Mr. Ledeen told The Times that Mr. Papa would not be available for comment, and The Times was unable to obtain corroboration or documentation of Mr. Papa’s report.

The Times also talked with Billy Carter, who confirmed the magazine’s report that he had met in Libya with George Habash, a Palestinian militant leader. But Mr. Carter denied the magazine report that he had accepted $50,000 in travel money from Libya and had also met with Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Mr. Jones said the article on the subject in The Times reported the basic allegations in the New Republic article, as well as Mr. Carter’s denials. He said The Times in this case followed its normal policy of looking into reports that might be important to its readers and informing them, in perspective, of the results.

(Cross-posted at Polemic Propaganda)

William Saletan exposes a harsh fluorescent light to the George W. Bush is a courageous leader meme, revealing that which no televised personality, let alone elected Democrats, are willing to say.

The only moment of physical bravery any of last night’s speakers could find in Bush’s life was his secret trip to Iraq. "As I think about his leadership," Kerik recalled, "I think of the courage it took for our commander in chief to land on an airstrip in the dark of night, a world away, to be with our troops on Thanksgiving."

Thanksgiving? You mean, six months after we captured the airport and Bush declared victory?

And isn’t "the dark of night" normally a term we use to describe the preferred arrival and departure time of people who aren’t exactly overflowing with courage?

Or is Kerik pointing out the difficulty of landing a plane in the dark? Is he unaware, perhaps, that Bush wasn’t flying the plane? That once again, as in Vietnam, somebody else was doing the hard part and Bush was along for the ride? That Air Force One has more security systems than any other vehicle on Earth? That Bush went to Baghdad to "be with" the troops in the same way he went to New York to "be with" the firefighters? That waiting for a safe time and place to "be with" people who have braved unsafe places at unsafe times is the difference between heroism and a photo op?

…I don’t mean to be unfair to Bush. Vietnam was a lousy war. He wanted a way out, and he found it. But isn’t it odd to see Republicans belittle the physical risks Kerry took in battle while exalting Bush’s armchair wars and post-9/11 photo ops? Isn’t it embarrassing to see Bob Dole, the GOP’s previous presidential nominee, praise Bush’s heroism while suggesting that Kerry’s three combat wounds weren’t bad enough to justify sending him home from Vietnam?

Watching the attacks on Kerry and the glorification of Bush reminds me of something Dole said in his speech to the Republican convention eight years ago. It was "demeaning to the nation," Dole argued, to be governed by people "who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered and never learned."

Indeed. Saletan is divergent with the truth in one aspect, however, and that is his insistence that Bush never takes risks. No matter how much I deride Bush for all his fallacies–and there are plenty–I doubt this would be an apt characterization of his administration. Risk is being attacked by people funded by Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and then deciding to attack Iraq instead of focusing on targets #1 and #2; risk is drafting and executing a war plan, without drafting one for occupation and reconstruction; risk is embracing the anti-Catholic, anti-black Bob Jones University and not fearing that the media would excoriate him for it; and risk is attacking every opponent he has ever faced with their strongest issues (e.g. Kerry and McCain on war records), albeit inadvertently and shamefully. In fact, Bush takes plenty of personal risks, but that neither makes him heroic nor honorable. It is one thing to take noble risks for the betterment of mankind, and it is quite another to take them for the sake of one’s own self-aggrandizement.

(Cross-posted at Polemic Propaganda)

The poll tax has largely been relegated to the annals of history, as it represented a time when man’s basic civil liberties and the pillars of democracy waivered in the face of bigotry and hatred. Unfortunately, it appears to have made a comeback in South Dakota, where Senator Tom Daschle is involved in an embittered reelection battle with Republican John Thune.

Nobody knows how widespread the problem was on June 1.But at least 21 Native Americans were turned away from the polls because they didn’t have a photo ID, says Bret Healy, executive director of the Four Directions Committee, a nonprofit voter-registration organization in Rapid City, South Dakota. He’s collected signed statements from all of them.

“In one case, an election worker insisted that in order to use an affidavit, you had to have an ID,” Healy says. “What had been drilled into folks was that you had to have an ID.”

…Native American voters have been courted (and feared) ever since 2002, when Democratic Senator Tim Johnson got 524 more votes than John Thune, who’d been handpicked by Karl Rove to run in the race. Indian voters turned out in unusually high numbers for the election and put Johnson in office. This year, Thune is taking on Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country. Native American voters may again tip a close election. It’s a prospect that has, says Tim Giago, former editor of the Rapid City newspaper Lakota Journal, “stirred up a little fear in the hearts of Republicans.”

Roughly 9,500 Native Americans voted in 2000, according to Healy, who’s the former executive director of the state Democratic Party. In 2002, thanks to a get-out-the-vote campaign run by state Democrats, the number of Native American voters jumped to 16,500 — with roughly 88 percent choosing Johnson.

The following year, Republicans in the state Legislature proposed a bill requiring voters to show a photo ID. Local activists were outraged. Many Native Americans don’t even have driver’s licenses, they said. And, yes, they can get a tribal ID — if they pay $8. Requiring an ID would be tantamount to imposing a poll tax. The bill was amended so that people could sign a personal-identification affidavit if they didn’t have an ID. Last year, it was signed into law.

As the article goes on to note, this is a very partisan issue as Republicans have cited security, while Democrats have stuck to disenfranchisement. In recent years, many more states have adopted similar rules–primarily in the South. While outright skepticism might be a bit rash, past statements regarding the Native American and African American vote are cause for concern.

How to relate this to the Republican National Convention? While I do not possess the patience to meander through pages of transcripts to find the appropriate quote, many Republicans have proudly acknowledged the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan as speaking towards the president’s leadership, and ability to execute. In the same breath, they also mention the upcoming Afghani elections, which are a momentous occassion indeed, but remain stained by a massive over-registration, voter fraud, and dirty money.

With scarce funds and hasty plans for rebuilding Afghanistan, some critics aren’t surprised the elections are starting to unravel in advance of polling day. Although it will take at least a week to report the final tally of registered voters, United Nations officials overseeing the elections admit that more than 10 million voting cards have been issued — surpassing the estimated 9.8 million eligible voters.

“Probably there is a lot of multiple registering,” U.N. spokesperson Manoel de Almeida e Silva said yesterday.

“This is not perfect. There will be problems. In many countries, they have lots of problems during their first elections.”

In a country where the average income is $2 a day, some Afghans who heard that political parties and presidential candidates would pay up to $150 for voting cards, gladly lined up at registration centers several times to get multiple voting cards.

In separate interviews, two Afghans told the Star it was easy to obtain more than one card. One man who registered six times, using his real name and photograph, said U.N. election workers asked him only once if he had previously registered. A woman said her nephew had been approached at school numerous times to sell his laminated voting card and that she knows a woman who obtained 40 cards while cloaked in a burqa.

$150? Not bad. You don’t even get that for donating blood in the United States, where per capita GDP is in excess of $30,000.

So that effete little prince who cross-dresses as a cowboy and loves to don macho uniforms sometimes sporting medals he doesn’t seem to have earned is planning to run for his second term on the basis of what happened in New York on 9/11, is he? And he’s so lacking in decency and good taste that he dares to present this here, in New York City? All this simpering sentimentality over 9/11! This guy really knows how to tug at the heartstrings, doesn’t he? This whole damned (and I mean damned in the religious sense of the word) convention is nothing more than a slick — very pretty, very slick — lie.

What did Bush have to do with 9/11 except to allow it to happen because he was too arrogant and ignorant to pay attention to Clinton’s warnings about al Qaeda? The 9/11 Commission seems to have been able to find plenty of indications that something major was about to happen. Even strong indications that whatever was about to happen would involve hijacked planes. To not have enough airport security to prevent four — count em, four — planes from being hijacked at the same time, and then to not even notice that four planes had been hijacked until they began to crash into buildings — and then, once aware that something was amiss, not be able to figure out what to do about it, has to mean that those responsible for protecting public safety were not only asleep but in a deep coma.

And what has he done since then for this city besides showing up three days later for a photo-op? His immediate REAL response was to betray us by not allowing the REAL reports on air quality at the WTC site to be released, thus poisoning all who worked there and everyone who lived near there. How many of the workers at the site, who could have been protected by at least wearing a mask, are now sick, probably damaged for life? Yeah, now he calls them heros. I guess they just weren’t heroic enough or important enough to protect their safety by telling them the truth. The police and firemen who sacrificed so much that day certainly aren’t being rewarded like heros — they’ve been working without a contract for two years. Or, in the Bush every-man-for-himself ideology, they should have figured out for themselves that the air was poisonous and not believed the reports that the air was safe? Oh, there’s a long list of sins against the city, a history of utter contempt for the city and its suffering, the most recent being that remark about the “unseemly scramble for money” by city officials afterwards. Only a bunch of psychopaths could act like this and then come to this wounded city to claim credit for how noble their response has been. Their response? Establishing the huge, incredibly expensive, meaningless “Homeland Security” department, taking away the workers’ rights to do it, which seems mainly tell us to buy lots of duct tape, to issue dubious terrorist alerts based on a color scale — and, of course, the amazing decision to attack Iraq while ignoring the real terrorist danger.

Yeah, McCaine has to tow the party line if he wants to advance his political career. I can understand that. I can understand Giuliani, too. I’ve always known that he’s a man of overriding political ambition. If anyone in the Republican party has a right to talk about 9/11 he does. He went to the site immediately, at great personal risk, and the city owes him a lot for the calm way he handled the aftermath. At least the officials in NYC had been aware ever since the first attack on the WTC that something was going to happen, had planned for this, and had held disaster drills for years. I know this, and know this began long before Giuliani was on the scene, because I worked for city government. But he deserves full credit for steering the city through impossible times. Even so, shame on both these men for pandering to Bush!

Then, of course, there’s Pataki. A notably weak governor who can’t ever get a state budget passed on time, to the point where last year the Assembly rebelled and overrode his veto. He will introduce Bush for his acceptance speech, He also has his political ambitions and knows how to pander. A perfect courtier for the effete little prince. We’ll see how long it takes Bush to turn on him. Bush has a charming habit of doing that to his “friends.” What’s weird about Pataki is that he seems to actually believe the lies and the garbage about why we’re at war in Iraq and that it has something to do with 9/11. He’s said that he wants to include a piece of that statue of Saddam that was famously pulled down, thus “liberating” the Iraqis, in the foundation of what gets built at the WTC site.

Yes, they’re all still insisting that the war in Iraq is part of the “war on terror” to the point where it becomes impossible to tell which they’re talking about. In spite of the fact that it’s perfectly clear that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda. Wrong religious sect for one thing — al Qaeda had ties with Iran, and maybe Bush didn’t know the difference between the two countries? Well, a large portion of the country still believes there was a tie between Iraq and al Qaeda, and that if Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, they would have gotten hold of them.

Of the people. By the people. For the people. We’ve managed to govern ourselves by this principle for a very long time. Either the State exists for the people, or the people exist to serve the State. These are two extremely different points of view. If you believe the state exists to serve the people, you believe that people are capable of intelligent choice. That’s why we’ve had free public education in this country. If you believe that the state is superior to the people, then you believe that an elite must subdue and control the “masses” because the “masses” are a churlish mob. Thus, if you’re a member of the elite, it’s not only OK but a duty to deceive the “masses,” lie to them, it’s for their own good. And who are those inferior masses? That’s us, folks, you and me and everyone we know, unless we happen to be members of that elite governing group. We’re those churlish brutes, and that’s how we’ll be treated. We’re expendable. That’s why there’s so much security around Madison Square Garden. To protect the elite from us churlish brutes. That’s why the Republicans are lusting for violent demonstrations to prove we’re the churlish brutes. That’s why there will be so many arrests justified or not, every incident reported by the media, true or not, instigated by the police or not. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

There are those who understand this all too well. There were those who understood in ancient Rome, in Germany, in Russia, in every country throughout history that lost its liberty or its chance for liberty. That’s why that army of people in Sunday’s demonstration was chanting: This is what Democracy looks like. Well, folks, which is it going to be? Do we lose our Republic and allow ourselves to be conned into Empire?

(Cross-posted at Polemic Propaganda)

"We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them on the streets of New York City, or Boston, or Chicago," is a line commonly echoed by Mr. Bush, and as seen last night, by his supporters. But I would be straying from the big picture if I suggested that this line was not accurate or admirable, because it is. It is our duty to ensure that the central front in this new war is not on American shores, but in the land of the terrorists, which is why context is so important–considering this is typically preluded by an ardent defense of the mission in Iraq. Without belittling the reasons given for going to war, the post-war operation, ally-building, and such, I think it is accurate to say that we are also fighting a true war on terror here at home–on a daily basis. Perhaps those living in the country’s most rural areas don’t realize it, but walking through the streets of New York one sincerely realizes that the threats posed to us are as grave as ever.

Police were busy confiscating cans, glass bottles, umbrellas, perfume, nail polish and even fruit. "Apples, oranges, bananas. They can be used as projectiles," explained one officer.

Walk in with some bottles of water and you’ll have to take a sip from each one to get through. "To see if they’re poisonous?" quipped one journalist. No one responded or even cracked a smile.

Another reporter was told to open his water bottle and take a gulp, only to reach a second control point where he was ordered to throw the bottle out because it had been opened.

Katherine Ernst, a Republican volunteer, eagerly reported for work Sunday with her sandwich. When guards made her run it through their X-ray machine she lost her appetite and her enthusiasm.

Yes, but she lived, and that’s all that counts.

Slacktivist tells you everything you need to know about last night’s primetime speeches

As I’ve watched and rooted for key Democratic wins in Congress this year, my focus has largely been on the Senate, where judicial and other appointments are approved. Key to my support is the strong likelihood we can get a Democratic majority in the Senate to balance out the federal government, which has all three branches working against the mainstream pursuits of most Americans. More Americans have voted for a Democratic Presidency than a Republican one for three elections in a row, which is why the GOP is pushing as far to the right that it can, while it can.

Yet being a person of limited means, I also have to view every race with a microscope, as I don’t want to throw my funds at a race where a win’s out of reach with so little time left in their campaigns. And no matter what happens in the Presidency or Senate, the redistricting game done by DeLay in Texas makes it very unlikely we can win back the House of Representatives.

This year.

Yet knowing the power of incumbencies in elections, taking back the House is a process that must be chipped away at. A handful of wins this year and a handful in 2006 is a reasonable aim to recapture the majority. So which are the ones I think we can get this year?

After Labor Day, we’ll be examining the ones that spell o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y. But there’s one that ranks among the highest right now. She knows the struggle it takes to rise to the top from times of adversity to positions of responsibility. As a Republican who switched after her party kept moving to extremism, she can relate to the issues that matter to the middle of the electorate in a district where the middle typically defines the outcome, reaching Democrats and moderate Republicans alike.

As well, for the disappointed Deaniacs in our party, Schrader’s race has been targeted by Governor Dean as one of the highest priority races in the country to win. The district leans slightly Republican in registration, yet it voted for Clinton twice and Al Gore. Even if you disagree with some of her positions, the GOP chose to run a replacement who’s anti-abortion (Fitzpatrick), though no-one with that position has been elected in the district since 1966.

And though the money is starting to come into this race to give her a fighting chance, she has a long way to go from where her funds were just two months ago.

Her ad, asking for your support, is in our sidebar now, so although I intended to beg for your support for her next week, I’m begging you to do so now. Please review her website. Consider that your support can help make the difference. Don’t put it off for future consideration, as the money’s needed now when the ads and hard campaigning launch.

Please, make a difference today. Let her know with your donation and an email what you’d like to see her fight for. Whether you send $500 or even $20, Schrader’s the kind of candidate who’ll listen. Governor Dean reminded Americans that we “have the power.” And this is a place and time that I strongly encourage you to use it.

Today. Now.

fyi, the bloated plutocrat capitalist oppressors of Billionaires for Bush will be flashmobbing in support of their tax cuts around Manhattan today.

Huzzah!

Sadly, utterly unphotoshopped from the front page of MSNBC:

I can’t imagine what conservatives would do if the media ever gave this kind of fawning to a still-living Democrat. “His speech didn’t make you love Bush? I’ll kill you, you terrorist!”

Cheney would probably go into a Killer Robot Rampage. At least it would be good television.

Via Talking Points Memo.

(Cross-posted at Polemic Propaganda)

I have heard it being said that mockery is one of the greatest tools a politician has in an election campaign, as it cuts through to the core of each person’s being. There is not a warm-blooded person alive that cannot be swayed by some sort of apt, clever, cunning comedic retort against an opponent, and such has been exploited en masse as last night’s anti-Kerry speakers noted. Of course, the only thing that can make such statements stronger and more legitimate is significant crowd support.

I hope that vile human being is proud of herself, as well she should be. It takes a very large woman (in terms of heart) to chastise military veterans for their cowardice in engaging communists, terrorists, and tyrants on the battlefield. Finally someone has the courage to stand up to these charlatans even though people like John McCain say otherwise:

I said earlier that the sacrifices in this war will not be shared equally by all Americans. The President is the first to observe, most of the sacrifices fall, as they have before, to the brave men and women of our Armed Forces. We may be good citizens, but make no mistake, they are the very best of us.

It’s an honor to live in a country that is so well and so bravely defended by such patriots.

May God bless them, the living and the fallen, as He has blessed us with their service.

For their families, for their friends, for America, for mankind they sacrifice to affirm that right makes might; that good triumphs over evil; that freedom is stronger than tyranny; that love is greater than hate.

It is left to us to keep their generous benefaction alive, and our blessed, beautiful country worthy of their courage. We should be thankful — for the privilege.

Who is John McCain to speak about warfare? I mean, really? Some background on the bastard that is passing these bandages out. Perhaps Bush can apply one of these bandages to the bruises he incurred when he swiftly fell off his bike.

Instapushover will be all over this.

Well, on one side is these guys…

Scientists & Environmental Experts, Economists, Military Commanders & Diplomats who collectively worked for Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, the first Bush and Clinton. Oh, and there’s more Generals, too. And business leaders.

Plus these guys who switched since 2000, and these guys, whose hard work gained support long before Kerry became a candidate. Oh and how could I forget these guys?

However, to be fair, it’s important to know there are upright guys supporting Bush. Rumors that he may gain the support of Barbara Bush, too.

(Hat tip to Tim for nearly half of those links)

Does anyone really believe that this actually happened?

Well the President remained there and talked to everyone, the firefighters, the police officers, the healthcare workers, the clergy, but the people who spent the most time with him were our construction workers.

Now New York construction workers are very special people. I’m sure this is true all over but I know the ones here the best. They were real heroes along with many others that day, volunteering immediately. And they’re big, real big. Their arms are bigger than my legs and their opinions are even bigger than their arms.

Now each one of them would engage the President and I imagine like his cabinet give him advice.

They were advising him in their own words on exactly what he should do with the terrorists. Of course I can’t repeat their exact language.

But one of them really went into great detail and upon conclusion of his remarks President Bush said in a rather loud voice, “I agree.” [at this point, the audience wasn’t as impressed as he thought they should have been, so he said something like “Can you imagine, you’re a construction worker, and you just told the president what to do with the terrorists and he says I agree?”]

At this point the guy just beamed and all his buddies turned toward him in amazement.

The guy just lost it.

So he reached over, embraced the President and began hugging him enthusiastically. [at this point Giuliani showed us how the guy put his arms around Bush and started squeezing]

A Secret Service agent standing next to me looked at the President and the guy and instead of extracting the President from this bear hug, he turned toward me and put his finger in my face and said, “If this guy hurts the President, Giuliani you’re finished.”

Meekly, and this is the moral of the story, I responded, “but it would be out of love.”

Um, yeah. A Secret Service agent just stood by and threatened the big-hero Republican mayor of New York with career death while some construction worker squeezed on POTUS and our legendarily thin-skinned and vindictive mayor put him off with some of his trademark meekness.

This screams Peggy Noonan louder than Peggy Noonan does.

FYI, a not inconsiderable portion of Mr. Giuliani’s fires of hell were fed by the fuel supply for the city’s emergency response bunker, which he insisted on locating in 7WTC in the face of universal insistence by the city’s security consultants that it wasn’t a good idea to locate an emergency response bunker in a terrorist target.

Of course, since the Motorola radios his administration insisted on buying for the firefighters through a no-bid contract, which were never field-tested, didn’t work properly, a working communications center might not have gotten the message to the firefighters in the towers that they needed to evacuate.

And I will always remember that moment as we escaped the building we were trapped in at 75 Barclay Street and realized that things outside might be even worse than they were inside the building.

We did the best we could to communicate a message of calm and hope, as we stood on the pavement seeing a massive cloud rushing through the cavernous streets of lower Manhattan.

It really does seem like the least you could do under the circumstances.

The Peace-Out President formerly known as the War President, respectfully requests your attendance at his coming victory over terrorism, followed by terrorism emerging victorious.

You may now commence feeling safer, while I go set the terror alert on Red.

I attribute it to post-traumatic flashback syndrome from the time he was doing the brown acid and God appeared to him as a great big ol’ honking pretzel.

Senators Frist and Clinton see a nation’s critical need and set partisanship aside to address it. The Compassionate Traitor, working undercover in his make-pretend-journalist-underoos, leads the charge against them in his pursuit for the American constitutional right to be sick and destitute.

Seeking a comment from noted compassion expert, Jesus H. Christ, my calls went unanswered. The message on His machine left me confused. It said: “Forget the Second Coming; I’d be held incommunicado at Gitmo if I showed up, so rapture your own ass, bunky.”

(cross-posted at skippy the bush kangaroo).

while you’re seeing all the wonderful pat-ourselves-on-the-back headlines from the self-love-fest that is the repubbb national convention, you may want to consider the latest news from the commerce department:

personal incomes grew at the slowest pace in two years, and though spending rose more than expected, it is assumed this was because of incentives by auto dealers (end of the year clearance, we suppose), and is not anticipated to continue next month. cnnmoney:

analysts said purchases of autos helped lift spending in july, fueled by heavy incentives from automakers, and that spending was unlikely to post further solid increases if income growth remains weak.

the commerce department said americans’ personal incomes rose a scant 0.1 percent in july — the slowest growth since november 2002 — compared with a 0.2 percent gain in june. economists surveyed by briefing.com had forecast an increase of 0.5 percent.

at the same time, spending by individuals jumped 0.8 percent in the month, compared to a revised 0.2 percent decline in june. consumer spending is watched closely since it fueled about two-thirds of the nation’s economy. economists had forecast a 0.7 percent gain for july…

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(cross-posted on skippy the bush kangaroo)

from cursor, we get the wonderful mark morford’s sfchron piece: “is our nation drunk?”

hey, it happens. sometimes you just gotta purge. vent. let it all out. because, really, it all makes you ask: is everyone on drugs? mass delusional? are we just blind? or is the vicious gop spin machine really that powerful? why, yes, yes, it is. and isn’t it just the funniest thing?

but, wait, there’s more. the gop is also accusing kerry of a nasty bout of “flip flopping” on a handful of issues. griping that he’s changed his mind on a few key pieces of legislation, not the least of which is his support for war on iraq. and the usa patriot act. which is, you know, sort of true.

but, then again, not really, not considering how nearly every single congressperson was equally duped by the vicious gop war machine, the outright wmd lies and bushco’s post-9/11 propaganda and the invidious usa patriot act midnight ream-through. hell, kerry was just as misled as the rest of us.

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Talk about prescient dept….

Quicksauce, writing on Halloween last year, 5 months before we even knew the name ‘Abu Ghraib’, wondered why the same guys condemning Saddam’s torture chambers (Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc) were silent about torture on the part of a government they supported back in the day.

She was referring to a certain Central American nation, whose soldiers were known to resort to elaborate meal preparations (Warning: even without pics, you better have some tolerance for the hideous, to read about it).

Not long after that, a young Senator started looking into another corrupt arrangement that had our government supporting a Central American government in defiance of Congress’ cutoff of funds, which used drug money that also went to the third leg in the Axis of Evil, Iran.

What drew his attention to it? He was tipped off by a US military veteran. Unlike many politicians who send young men to die in unjustified wars and claim to be ’supportive’ of the troops, this senator actually listened to a veteran, and acted upon what he subsequently learned.

Thus, the Iran-Contra investigation began. The higher ups - Reagan, Bush, Rumsfeld, etc, - skated free of responsibility though an awful lot of evidence suggested they knew or were actively involved. The Kerry campaign has likely been holding back on championing his other work exposing the BCCI global terror funding ops, waiting for the Fall campaign. I imagine they may not bring this one up however, because he’s trying to woo back Reagan Democrats, which gets harder if you provoke memories of Reagan’s failures.

Quicksauce wondered if these guys had a change of heart, but as recent investigations conclude, it’s clear they’re quietly condoning the same old forms of brutality. And who was overseeing El Salvador back then while denying knowledge of its death squads? Why, it was John Negroponte, recently appointed ambassador to Iraq.

When asked for a comment on this essay, an unnamed higher-up in the administration said: “We’re not subject to wussy laws put out by wussy groups like the UN. Ever since I was growed up playing cowboys and Indians in Crawford, my daddy said ‘Son, you don’t have to adhere to no wussy Geneva Convention treaties; you just have to respect that there higher law.’ ”

“I knew ‘zackly what he meant and I vowed right then and there that I’d never stray from that power which is why I religiously follow Murphy’s Law.”

Addendum: Yeah. These guys. It’s a good thing they only supported torture and murder, then lied to Congress. Imagine how harsh we could treat them if they did something serious like getting blowjobs and lying about ‘em.

(Cross-posted at Suddenly Routine)

OK…I know I’m a little late to the party.  I didn’t have a chance to write up my experiences at the big UPJ protest until now.  I was too busy arguing with delegates and stuff.  People have done a great job of covering it so far so I’ll limit my comments to new observations:

• When I got to the staging area at 14th Street at 10 AM, there was a group of ukulele players singing folk songs, which really helped pass the time until the march started.  There were two maintenance men from a local building on their smoke break standing outside a doorway mocking the singers and making fun of outrageous people who walked by.  One of the men sounded Italian, I think the other guy was Haitian, and they were both 60-ish.  They were chatting and laughing and it was very obvious that this was the most entertaining smoke break these guys had had in years.  The ukulele players started playing “We Shall Overcome” and the Haitian guy got really serious.  He put out his cigarette, took off his hat and placed it over his chest as if he was saying the Pledge, and started singing along very loudly.  The Italian guy cracked a joke at some guy who walked by with a green mohawk and the other guy shushed him and solemnly finished the song.  When it was over, he turned around and went into the building without a word.
• The best part about the march were the rolling cheers that would come over the crowd.  People would start cheering at the end of the march and the noise would sweep through the crowd like a wave until it reached the front.  It was like thunder — you’d hear a distant rumble and the noise would build and build until it was right on top of you and then it would vanish into the distance.  Very cool.
• It’s been mentioned in other places but I was also surprised at how large the socialist/communist contingent was.  I think the most frequent chant I heard was “No to Bush, No to Kerry / Revolution is Necessary”.  I tried to start “No to Bush, Yes to Kerry / Pragmatism is Necessary” but it didn’t take.
• The sign at Madison Square Garden cracked me up.  It kept blinking “Thank You New York”.  It seemed like such a funny thing to display when you have tens of thousands of people marching by the building yelling insults but I really can’t think of anything better.  “Welcome RNC” would have sparked a riot, a message referencing the protestors could have been interpreted as patronizing, and the usual sequence of the current time and coming attractions would have been out of place because it would have completely ignored what was going on outside.  I guess “Thank You New York” is the best way to acknowledge that it was not an ordinary days while being inoffensive.  Still, I would have loved to be in MSG’s “What the hell do we put on the sign during the protest?” meeting.

W. Ralph Basham
Director, United States Secret Service

Dear Director Basham,

It’s not often that the public gets a chance to hear the Secret Service in action. I was blessed with such an opportunity tonight while listening to Republican National Convention coverage on National Public Radio. They did a masterful job.

It all started when the demonic filmmaker, Michael Moore, arrived at the convention and made his way to his seat. NPR reporter Andrea Seabrook intercepted him to get his opinion of the unfolding events. Just as the interview began, courageous agents of the US Secret Service, without regard to the possibility that they might be hit in a crossfire of questions and answers, bravely threw their bodies in between Seabrook and Moore. Once they had secured that small corner of the marketplace of ideas, the agents instructed Seabrook to vacate the immediate area and NPR moved on to other commentary.

Thirty minutes later, the NPR anchor reconnected with Seabrook and asked her if she was ready to interview Moore. She replied that the agents were aggressively defending the area around the dark lord of celluloid against all attempts by the media to penetrate it. Indeed, even as she spoke, an agent commanded her to move a little farther away from her target. With a voice weary with resignation, she noted that it was the first time she had ever seen Secret Service agents act in such an obviously political manner.

Of course, it’s easy to blame the agent’s actions on politics, but it’s more likely they were acting on security concerns. There is no telling what might have occurred had Moore and Seabrook been able to continue their interview. Perhaps the treacherous man from Flint would have grabbed Seabrook’s microphone and drawn all of the electrical energy out of her recording equipment, using it to fuel powerful lasers implanted in his eyes. With a glance he could have turned the convention into a fiery hell of burning flesh and smoldering polyester.

Your agents are to be congratulated. They saved America tonight.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, Patriot

Note to readers: I finally found an audio file of the broadcast. My inner Frenchman made a transcript and posted it here.

Crossposted to Jesus’ General.

(Cross-posted at Suddenly Routine)

It all finally came to a head for me tonight.

I was tired after going to protests for the last two days so I decided to take the night and just relax. I came home from work, had some dinner, changed into some gym clothes and decided to go on a walk. I started my Book on Tape and headed out on my usual route — I walked along the Hudson River down to the ferry station for the Statue of Liberty in Battery Park, retraced my steps, and then followed the river in the other direction past the World Financial Center and up to Stuyvesant High. I was having a great time and finally felt like I was shaking some of the tension of the last few days loose.

Then I saw it. There was a big, curved tent that had been erected around the Irish Hunger Memorial near the Financial Center. The memorial was lit up, providing an ideal backdrop with its horizontal slits of light framed perfectly by the glow of Ground Zero radiating up Vesey Street. I tensed up again but walked past it. Words were still coming through my headphones but I wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. All I could think of was the party that must be planned for tomorrow — people standing around laughing and enjoying themselves without any idea of or appreciation for what we’ve been through. I made my loop by Chambers Street and started walking back home. By the time I passed the memorial and its tent again, my heart was pounding. I pictured the partygoers and thought about what I would want to yell at them if they were there. I was grateful that no one was there because I really didn’t know what I would do. I was boiling over with anger.

I rounded the corner and, with the tent out of sight, began to calm back down a bit. I took some deep breaths and tried to put it behind me. I walked past the marina in front of the Financial Center and saw a group of about eight people who looked like conventioneers getting off of a yacht. They were dressed in suits and formal gowns and embodied the caricature parodied by Billionaires for Bush. I shook my head and walked past them but something just tugged at me. They were right there. I just wanted to tell them how I felt. I wouldn’t yell. I wouldn’t get angry. I’d just tell them.
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(Cross-posted at Polemic Propaganda)

Not too privy towards the consumption of alcoholic beverages (oh, the carbs), I found myself being tortured by the onslaught of Republican lawmakers, supporters, and film stars for the better part of four hours–even after returning home from a long day of hard work in the city. Asexual former mayor of NYC Ed Koch, newly-anointed Republican hack Rodney Alexander, and Silent Rage co-star (alongside Chuck Norris, aka The Man) Ron Silver were, to say the least, delightful in a sadistic, NC-17 sense of the word. Dishing out praise as if Madison Square Garden had been transformed into a soup kitchen, they were relentless in their assertion, as were virtually all of the speakers, that this president’s leadership in the days after 9/11 and since have been a Godsend. While conveniently leaving out relevant facts, which one would not expect from a convention speech, they used broad, over-reaching platitudes to characterize the reasoning behind their support of one George W. Bush.

Playing catch with the lesser-qualified and lesser prominent speakers is most likely a waste of time, and so instead let us focus on the real primetime RNC, which featured speeches by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), several 9/11 widows, and former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R). The theme presented by this careful presentation was of course one of using the sentiment of 9/11 to hide the failures incurred during this administration’s tenure. As emotional speakers figuratively allowed the viewing audience to relive the events of that tragic day, a narrative was created to tie-in to the president’s leadership and his efforts towards avenging the lives of 3,000 Americans. However, there was an obvious disconnect for those not lost in the blind nostalgia of Madison Square Garden, and for those that were not awestruck by the tears shed by the audience. No one will deny the heroism of countless individuals on that day, as so aptly portrayed by the 9/11 widows, whose speeches are unfortunately not made available at this time. Yet, when contrasted with the statements made by John McCain, and the overblown, incoherent, and disjoint 45-minute speech by Giuliani, the disparity was as evident as the light of day.

Mayor Giuliani said:

On September 11, this city and our nation faced the worst attack in our history.

On that day, we had to confront reality. For me, standing below the north tower and looking up and seeing the flames of hell and then realizing that I was actually seeing a man a human being jumping from the 101st or 102nd floor drove home to me that we were facing something beyond anything we had ever faced before.

We had to concentrate all of our energy, faith and hope to get through those first hours and days.

And I will always remember that moment as we escaped the building we were trapped in at 75 Barclay Street and realized that things outside might be even worse than they were inside the building.

We did the best we could to communicate a message of calm and hope, as we stood on the pavement seeing a massive cloud rushing through the cavernous streets of lower Manhattan.

Our people were so brave in their response.

At the time, we believed we would be attacked many more times that day and in the days that followed. Spontaneously, I grabbed the arm of then Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and said to Bernie, "Thank God George Bush is our President."

And I say it again tonight, "Thank God George Bush is our President."

Omitted from this quotation is Mr. Giuliani’s acknowledgment that he took a moment, a mere 5-6 seconds, to register what was happening. The grand president upon whom he seems to be reaping so much praise, however, took seven minutes to remove himself from a photo-op before he found time in his schedule to confront the massive threat before the country. While Mr. Giuliani, blocks from the site of chaos remained steadfast, decisive, confrontational, and proactive, his hero fleed to the bunkers of Nebraska returning days later to finally provide some words of spirit to the hard-working, selfless construction workers, firefighters, and police officers of New York City. Tucker Carlson described it as such:

Then came September 11. Bush’s approval ratings immediately soared to unbelievable heights. Yet the attacks initially made me sorry I’d voted for him. For most of that day, as my wife and children stayed inside our house listening to the roar of fighter jets overhead, and black smoke from the Pentagon hovered above our neighborhood, Bush failed to return to Washington. My family sat unprotected a few miles from the scene of a terrorist attack; Bush hid in a bunker on some faraway military base.

It infuriated me, as did the subsequent excuses from White House spokesmen. There was a risk in coming back, they said. Of course there was. That’s the point: Leaders must take risks, sometimes physical ones. Bush should have elbowed his Secret Service detail out of the way and returned in a display of fearlessness to his nation’s capital. I found it distressingly revealing that he didn’t.

[summary: Bush’s speech to joint session of Congress was great] [it was]

…Over the next few months, however, Bush slowly reverted to the man he had been. He wasted critical momentum tinkering with the Department of Homeland Security, as if the obvious response to 9/11 was bureaucratic reshuffling. His administration alienated even potential allies by responding to the slightest criticism in a tone that fluctuated between high-handed and contemptuous.

And then, of course—famously, fatally—Bush began planning for a war in Iraq. It was obvious from the beginning what was happening. Bush intended to topple Saddam Hussein. He said as much, in public, repeatedly. But it was still hard for me to believe it. This was the next step in the new war on terror Bush had described on September 20? At the time, he promised to avenge 9/11 with a campaign "unlike any other we have ever seen." But a conventional invasion of Iraq, with tens of thousands of American soldiers driving north in tanks through the desert toward Baghdad? We had definitely seen that before.

The fact that these issues are seldom brought out by those conducting regular interviews in our broadcast media is extremely disheartening. Chris Matthews, whom I praised for his human-gatling-gun coverage of the DNC, like usual, rolled over and peed on himself like a little pup when confronted by talkingpoint-inbred conservative Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). Allowing them to echo carefully crafted, distortive, and in many cases, outright false statements regarding the president’s and John Kerry’s views on a slew of issues–healthcare, defense, the economy–Matthews failed to rebut the obvious fallacies, not only in their arguments but in their purported facts.

Virtually every speaker echoed the over-arching theme of the day–the president’s leadership–but not even one contrarian arose to question the validity of this depiction. Leadership you ask? Leadership is telling the truth when it does not support your views of the situation at hand; leadership is acting in the interest of those that are working night and day to rebuild a terrorized city; leadership is not waiting for polls to affirm that a course of action is just and proper; leadership is honoring the fallen with something other than hollow rhetoric; leadership is recognizing that miscalculations have compromised the task at hand and making the appropriate adjustments as necessary; and most importantly, leadership is maintaining ardent, unwaivering, unflinching support for American ideals with an idealistic optimism that projects hope–well-founded or otherwise. These are the definitions of leadership and the fact that they run in the opposite direction of this administration, and this president is a relevant fact that should not be cast aside because it’s Bush-bashing; those same people have little hesitation in bashing an honorable veteran’s distinguished military service.

Perhaps I expect a greater level of introspection from a media that possesses virtually every accessible resource, ample manpower, and boundless communicative tools. Unfortunately, it is much of the same as the same liberal media that frothed at the mouth when it came time to taunt Bill Clinton’s sexual history, would not dare address leadership-relevant issues such as Bush’s 7-minute daydream. Perhaps shameful is not an apt characterization, but in the wee hours of the morning, it will have to do…

Slow posting today, mostly because of work and the refusal of the RNC to pre-release the prepared statements by their key speakers. No need to worry though, I will be back with a vengeance either tomorrow morning, or late tonight to analyze the poor way in which the media has thus far confronted the wingnuts and how war-on-terror rhetoric is widely prevalent, but key figures such as UBL, Ayatollah Khameini, the Pakistanis, Kim Jong Il, et. al remain in a closet. Are they scared? Methinks yes and the fact that nobody is yet to call them on it is disheartening at best, and an outrage at worst. More later.

amazing, inspiring, diverse, creative and nonviolent.

i marched with pagan cluster. on the other side was a woman who works on wall street marching with her mom. behind us were a group of anarchists and behind them the massive “no bush” sign. in front of us was the big green dragon (”don’t just vote”). different people, with different ways of communicating their dissatisfaction with the bush agenda - all united in a massive action. from the blind man carrying a peace sign to the burning of the dragon, i loved it all. and the “picnic” in central park was a perfect ending… a big peaceful “NO” to bloomberg.

below are some of my pics (click on the thumbnails for the larger pics), the nyt has more.

this morning i checked in with the national lawyers guild and got my orientation for tomorrow - now i’m off to the still we rise march
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turns out there’s another link between the Swift Boat group and the Bush campaign, with which they are, we are told, not coordinating activity in any way

A fourth Bush campaign official has been linked to a veterans group hammering Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s Vietnam War heroism.

GOP convention Chairman David Norcross practices law in the same D.C. firm, Blank Rome, as William Schachte, a retired Navy admiral who says Kerry did not deserve one of his Purple Heart medals, Time magazine reported yesterday.

Schachte is aligned with the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has dominated the campaign in recent weeks with accusations that the former Swift boat skipper is lying about how he got his war medals.

Norcross said he did not know about Schachte’s claims that Kerry got the first of three Purple Hearts in Vietnam from a self-inflicted wound%3B and the Bush campaign denied there is any connection.

Schachte says Kerry wounded himself by firing an M-79 grenade launcher into a nearby riverbank during a 1968 boat patrol.

Kerry says he was wounded by enemy fire and other vets point out that the single-shot weapon’s explosive 40-mm. shell was designed not to arm itself and become lethal until it has flown 50 feet through the air.

The Kerry campaign also notes that Schachte was not with Kerry during the incident - despite his claims.

Quiet office parties they must have over there at Blank Rome, what with nobody talking to anybody about politics.

Mr. Cheney feels that we need reminding of Mr. Bush’s visit to our fair city after September 11.

Cheney recalled President Bush’s trip to New York in the days after the attacks and his promise to retaliate.

“He is a man of his word, as the Taliban were the first to find out,” he said. “My job here this week and in the two months ahead, is to tell people all across America about how strong and steadfast our president is . . . . He is exactly the leader we need for these times, and we need him for four more years.”

I’m reasonably certain most of us remember that visit. Mr. Bush threw his arm around a firefighter for the cameras and grabbed a bullhorn. Someone in the crowd still couldn’t hear him. Bush’s response: “I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

Osama bin Laden is apparently a little hard of hearing. But I digress…

As eventually happens, the cameras were turned off, and then Mr. Bush became a little hard of hearing himself. One of the reasons so many firefighters died on 9/11 was that they didn’t get the order to evacuate the towers before they collapsed. Their radios didn’t work. Congress passed legislation authorizing funds to replace them with radios that did work.

Mr. Bush vetoed that bill. [Call it a pocket veto. The money was allocated. He refused to spend it.]

He claimed that he vetoed it because congress was “tying his hands” by loading the bill with pork, but he sent a message to the hill telling them what had to be in a bill he was willing to sign, and the funding for the firefighters wasn’t in it.

I agree with Mr. Cheney. When you’re deciding who to vote for, do remember Mr. Bush’s photo op in the ruins of the World Trade Center.

Remember he doesn’t value the lives of our firefighters at a fraction of the money he handed out to his contributors as tax cuts.

Yesterday’s Portland Oregonian featured an interesting juxtaposition of two letters to the editor.

The first letter, “Media silent on Kerry’s cancer,” wants to know why the media hasn’t made an exhaustive inquiry into Kerry’s brush with prostate cancer. It then raises doubts by calling John Edwards’ capabilities into question.

Kerry is seeking the presidency. Is that a responsible undertaking for anyone who could well be faced with a recurrence of cancer? Is Kerry truly confident that Sen. John Edwards, a first-term senator, is ready and qualified to replace him should that happen a year or so into Senator Kerry’s first term in office?

The second letter, “Bush backers’ scare tactics,” relates an independent voter’s experience with a Bush campaign representative doing voter identification calls.

After a short, respectful discussion, she asked me if I knew Kerry had had cancer. She added that a patient is not truly a “cancer survivor” until one is cancer-free for five years.

The message was clear: I should not vote for Kerry for fear that he will have a recurrence while in office.

…This is another excellent example of the scare tactics used by the Bush administration and its supporters. Thank you, caller, for reinforcing my conviction that I will not vote for an administration that deliberately instills fear among its constituents for political gain.

Fortunately, this voter was savvy enough to recognize the game being played.

A letter-writing campaign and a push poll about cancer. Is this the next meme the Republicans will use to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt? Or are they just taking it out for a test drive?

Some of you know that I’ve been writing for some time about hearing planted stories — anonymous callers to talk shows, letters-to-editors, forwarded e-mail letters, etc. - saying Kerry cuts in front of lines and says “Do you know who I am?” I’ve been saying this obviously is part of a coordinated smear campaign. Well, I think the following adds some weight to what I have been suspecting.

Take a look at John Kerry: Uppity Rich Guy with a Superiority Complex:

“In Boston, where the junior senator from Massachussets [sic] lives when he’s not skipping Senate votes, John Kerry stories are commonplace. Most of these stories involve Kerry pulling rank on a “little guy,” cutting to the front of the line, expecting special treatment, or demanding something for free. When confronted about his behavior, Kerry defiantly asks, “Do you know who I am?” Evidently, Kerry believes that once the “little people” understand how important he is, they will simply back down and shut up.”

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CBS News said this morning that the demonstration yesterday was the biggest ever at any American political convention. I assume that includes 1968. Eventually I’ll get around to explaining the title for this blog, but this will be more or less straight reporting.

What I’m interested in is the mood, the general tone, the feelings and passions behind what’s happening. So I’ll start with Saturday. It was one of those hazy, hot, humid NYC August days when it’s like breathing under water, early enough so that there were still plenty of people from the woman’s march in City Hall Park, late enough to start thinking about Ring Out down by the WTC site. I was on my way to the deli. Next to me on the street was a guy on a bike staring hard at the sky. I looked up, too. Looming out of the haze, really low, was the NYPD blimp, a gaudy Fuji blimp they’ve rented for the convention and fitted out with the latest Si Fi technology. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. What was it doing HERE? There was nothing going on in the West Village. It was sinister and creepy. I’d have been less creeped out if it had been a UFO. When I compared notes with him, the guy on the bike said he felt the same way. He pulled his camera out of his pocket and photographed it. I didn’t take mine out of my purse and photograph it. It’s an image that will stay with me forever, but the thought of photographing THEM while it was photographing US photographing THEM was just too Si Fi, too surreal, for me to play the game.

Sunday morning I had to go to the drugstore. I wasn’t planning to go straight to the demonstration from there, but it took so long to fill my prescription that I went over to 7th Ave. afterwards without going home for my camera. The Village was in its usual late August where’s the party mood, people coming out of the churches I passed, groups of potential demonstrators heading towards Seventh Ave. with everyone in a good mood. The humidity had dropped a little, and there was a breeze. There was the constant drone of many helicopters, and the silent presence of that Fuji blimp. Not too bad a day, at least near the river. I didn’t have to go far up 7th Ave. to reach the demonstrators because the crowd was so huge. Since I broke my leg and have a pin in it, I can’t walk as far as the march was going, and I knew from past experience that when you’re in a march all you see is the group you’re with as the crowd pushes you along. I wanted to observe this, so I went home to watch it on C-SPAN. I’m glad I did. There’s no way to observe all of a demonstration of this size, except by helicopter or from a blimp. MSNBC was occasionally giving reports from Union Square, where the march was to end. NY1 was doing an unexpectedly terrible job of reporting, spending more time interviewing two officials about security than on the march itself. The other channels were essentially ignoring it.

The demonstrators started passing Madison Square Garden at noon, and this continued until 4:30 PM. I don’t know whether everyone got up there, or whether the police decided that was enough and cut it off. This was one truly massive river of people, every possible age, race, and ethnic group, at first rather heavily white, largely baby boomers and older. The oldest woman interviewed was 77 and had managed to get there from New Jersey, but at least one person there was 90. The crowd rather quickly became more mixed, with occasional drums, trumpets, and even bands playing mostly music from Latin America. It was as things were getting a bit hedonistic that the Dragon Float was set on fire; the police handled this, I thought, pretty professionally. They had to get the crowd to move away; this was dangerous. It was also damned annoying since all it accomplished was to disrupt the march. You’ll hear a lot on the news about the angry demonstration. Of course there was anger, but the mood went far, far beyond anger. One sign said, “They Stole Our Anguish.” Meaning the city’s anguish and pain since 9/11. The vast majority of the signs were variations on “Bush Lies.” Yeah, they’ve caught on to this. The mood was more anti-Bush than anti-war. Although there were plenty of anti-war signs and banners, Bush is being blamed for a lot more going wrong than the war. Unfortunately, the mood was vastly more one of desperation about getting rid of Bush no matter how than pro-Kerry. There were very few pro-Kerry signs.

Warning for today: There were a lot of arrests, no reliable figures yet, maybe around 200, maybe as many as 400. Many of these had nothing to do with the demonstration itself. A lot of them were people on bicycles. Police Commissioner Kelly has a thing about bicycles. He said on TV that activists often come in on bicycles. That may be true, but this is a city where people routinely ride bikes! Be very careful riding your bike around town for the next few days. Also, if you’re doing the tourist thing and want to take photos of landmarks, no matter who you are, Democrat or Republican, don’t do that. If there are any police around and you want to take pictures, ask them first if it’s OK. If you don’t, you might be in for a big shock. Nobody wants to be arrested for being a terrorist spy.

I hate Kelly, for reasons that date back to his previous appointment as police commissioner. He’s a total cynic who controls crime by moving it around the city, and I might write about this later because he’s doing this to us again. I do not hate those noble souls who serve in the New York police department who are doing their duty in spite of the fact they haven’t had a contract for two years now. Someone — unfortunately I forget who so I can’t give credit — researched the instructions Kelly has given to the police department about what to watch out for during the convention. Much of the information about what demonstrators are likely to do is an outright lie; much of it exaggeration. Anything anyone ever did anywhere in the world is included, regardless of whether anyone in this country ever did it. How are the police supposed to sort this out under the pressure of dealing with crowd control? So be careful if you’re in the city this week, no matter why you’re here.

One more observation — I attended the street demonstratons against Iraq in February and March 2003, and I remember that International A.N.S.W.E.R. was a huge presence at those events. There were so many big A.N.S.W.E.R. banners and blocks of IA people marching together in both events one might have thought they were IA, not United for Peace and Justice, demonstrations.

Yesterday, IA was just one of many, many diverse groups, and not an especially prominent one. I saw some hand-held IA signs, but that’s about it.

This is a good thing.

About the numbers: I’m seeing estimates of anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 people. I cannot say how many people were really there. However, UPJ had a permit for 250,000. The city set aside a several-block area for the marchers to gather before the march began. If we assume this area was big enough to accommodate 250,000, then there were more than 250,000 people, because the area wasn’t nearly big enough.

500,000? Maybe not. But more than 250,000.

As I recall, the NYPD claimed there were about 100,000 people at the February 2003 rally on Second Avenue, and yesterday’s march was many times bigger than that.

As both the General and Atrios have noted, a Mormon, Sheri Dew, will be giving the opening prayer at the Republican National Convention. While much has been made of her history of hateful comments about gays and lesbians, little has been written about the interesting dynamic this brings to the convention.

Conservative Mormons and Christian fundamentalists have a long history of mutual antagonism toward each other. Fundamentalists do not believe that Mormons are Christians because they reject the concept of the trinity and believe that each member may someday become a God. Indeed, many fundamentalist believe that Mormonism is a cult.
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Disturbing images of the dangerous radicals rampaging in the streets of New York City today.

It seems like some folks are protesting the Republican Convention.

“tens of thousands” - Voice of America, Miami Herald, the International Herald-Tribune (which is to say the New York Times) as well as the actual New York Times, CNN, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle, the Christian Science Monitor, ABC News

“thousands upon thousands” - LA Times

“hundreds of thousands” - Reuters, Kansas City Star

“more than 100,000″ - AP

and my personal favorite, from the news service owned by our beloved Republican mayor, whose Idea this party reportedly was, Bloomberg News:

“thousands,” in which they are joined by the Miami Herald and the BBC

As a basis for comparison, United for Peace and Justice are claiming 400,000, and the AP says that the protesters filled the entire route of the march.

Of those, they’ve arrested around 200 people, most for disorderly conduct away from the march.

Meanwhile, 81% of the home team are all for the demonstrations, six percent more than the number of us who disapprove of the job Our Fearless Leader is doing.

I love my city.

Conventioneers, welcome to New York. We wish you weren’t here, but we have nothing against you personally. You’ll probably feel right at home in one of our many TGIFridays or Applebees. If you’re out after dark, blocks with restaurants on them are always a better choice than blocks of closed stores.

A respectful silence on the subject of 9/11 would be greatly appreciated, but we don’t really expect it. Be nice to our cops and firemen, please. Your party hasn’t.

Please note that we aren’t being allowed anywhere near you folks while you’re here, so if you aren’t happy with conditions you should know that you almost certainly brought the problem with you.

Have a nice week.

While spectator pundits such as myself watch with baited breath as droves of protesters publicly voice their discontent of the present administration on the streets of Manhattan, millions of less-informed, koolaid-drinking individuals must be pondering why New Yorkers hate Bush so much. Hate, being the operative word, might seem a little harsh, but is an apt description of their feelings regarding issues such as tax cuts aimed towards the wealthiest Americans, the elimination of overtime benefits for occupations such as nurses, the constant abuse and misuse of NYC by the Republicans, and so much else. It is worth taking a moment to define each of these causes for the social unrest that exists in much of New York City–even in the areas not dominated by ultra-liberal socialists like Greenwich Village.

Using Their Own Words Against Them

Republican Speaker of the House Denny "I hate the 9/11 Commission" Hastert, who has proposed the country move to a national sales tax, insisted last week that the $20 billion provided to New York City by Congress was adequate, saying that "more was never enough on this." Greedy New Yorker Beth Krumholz politely pointed out that "I don’t know how you can call it an unseemly scramble for dollars when five buildings were reduced to dust."

Dismissing The Burden of 9/11 On New Yorkers

While New York City, which inhabits in excess of 8,000,000 people and experiences a massive influx of commuters from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Long Island on a daily basis, is presumed to be the number one most likely target of a future terrorist attack, it stands 35th in terms of per capita spending for Homeland Security (PDF). More here.
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So there was this march today, right? United for Peace and Justice. And everyone expected all this trouble. But I spent much of the day at the stagings sites and Union Square Park itself and frankly it was pretty cool.

Two anarchists got themselves arrested while I was there but that was obviously their intention…nothing could stop it. And there were folks in costumes and artwork and such…but most of the people were just regular ol’ people.
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I am typing this on 106th Street and Riverside drive to the whop/whop of helicopters overhead. They’ve got the party in Central Park covered, literally.

When I woke up this morning I gave thanks to the Deity that the weather improved. Yes, it’s hot as a cauldron in New York, but not nearly as humid as yesterday, when it felt like a large wet blanket literally covered the city. There’s a breeze, too, and in the shade it’s quite pleasant.

Everyone should have the organizational skills of the Falun Gong. Everywhere I went today they had large, neat, well-tended and informative presentations. They may be religious fanatics but they know how to approach people and make a case.

There is a very large “police presence” everywhere. When I exited the subway at about 10:30 a.m., to go to the Workmen’s Circle, where my contingent was meeting, Park Avenue South was mostly deserted (although not closed to traffic). First thing I saw, as I exited the subway and crossed the avenue was a lineup of 19 motorcyles and cops lounging on them. (Yes, 19. I counted twice.)

The contingent I went with was pretty large–several hundred people, varying ages, but mostly young. We walked to Madison Avenue, down to 21st, where we turned right (east), and up Seventh, towards Madison Square Garden. The crowd was not a walking Kerry demonstration, although there were many Kerry buttons. It was more anti-Bush, anti-Republican agenda. It was quite an eclectic crowd with a diffuse aura. I couldn’t quite get a handle on any focus, except a dislike of Bush.

I was also trying to gauge how many people were marching. I am not an expert on these matters but…I hate to say this but I must be honest…I do not believe that 400,000 came, as Leslie Cagan claims. Yes, it was a large demonstration, but a few blocks away from the main action and you didn’t know it was going on. That’s just not the way I remember the enormous anti-war demonstrations of my childhood, although I could be exaggerating their impact. But I don’t think that this demonstration was as big as they were.
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Cross-posted at The Mahablog.

First off, I want to request … nay, plead … that persons whose names can be shortened to bush or dick not ever be elected, ever. And while we’re at it, let’s eliminate anyone whose name rhymes with duck. On principle.

Today I have seen more slogans built around suggestions for what to do with bush and dick than I’d care to see for the rest of my life, thank you.

How many marchers? Word on the street was 400,000, still marching.
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Earlier this week, the General reported on rumors that ultra-conservative Mormon homophobe Sheri Dew had replaced ultra-conservative Baptist homophobe Jerry Falwell at the RNC prayer podium. It’s now official.

One has to wonder what Falwell’s followers will think of this. Many of them believe that Mormonism is a cult.

(cross-posted at skippy the bush kangaroo)

the left coaster (pointed out to us by the kids at the daily cookie) links to a washpost piece about former nixon aide kevin phillips, who has some not-too-kind words about awol and his family:

i’ve never understood why we take bush and his family seriously,” he says. “they come from the investment-inherited-money wing of the republican party. they display no real empathy for anyone who is not of their class”…

“they aren’t supply-siders; they’re crony-siders. as far as i’m concerned, i would put bush on a slow boat to china with all full warning to the chinese submarine fleet”…

his best-selling, muckraking book on the family that has held the presidency for eight of the past 16 years, “american dynasty: aristocracy, fortune and the politics of deceit in the house of bush,” is a sustained rummage through the bush family closet. he pulls out all manner of files on the early bushes and the walker branch of the family, and their dealings with post-world war i german industrialists and post-world war ii saudi princelings. and he draws a bright connecting line between those wheeler-dealer financiers and their texas-lite descendants…

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Except they’re not. Instapuss links to a so-called interesting graphic detailing the Bush tax cuts and their effect on various income groups. Apparently, this is irrefutable evidence, tantamount to that used to go to war, that the tax cuts are working, that the economy is getting better, that we’re turning the corner, that we’re not turning back, that Glenn Reynolds is not an economist or good at mathematics, and that Donald Luskin doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry claiming it proves that “Over the last four years, the burden of taxes has shifted from the wealthy to the middle class.”

Those are politically motivated lies that distort the findings of the report. Here’s the truth.

The report proves that what President Bush said about his tax cuts is true: “Tax relief is for everyone who pays income taxes.”

It’s true for the rich, and it’s true for the not-so-rich. Across 109.4 million tax-paying households — from the wealthiest 1 percent with incomes averaging over $1 million to the lowest-earning 20 percent of people with incomes averaging $14,900 — the report shows that all income classes have seen their income tax rates lowered thanks to Bush’s cuts in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

The CBO report shows how 2004 income tax rates have dropped for everyone compared with tax laws in force in 2000 [yes, that’s usually what happens when you lower the income tax, while not touching the payroll tax].

The report also shows that Bush’s tax cuts have been “progressive” — that is, they have shifted the share of the overall federal income tax burden toward the wealthy and away from lower-income earners. Without the Bush tax cuts, the highest-earning 20 percent of households this year would have paid 78.4 percent of all federal income taxes. Now, after the Bush tax cutes, their share of the burden has risen to 82.1 percent. Every other group now pays a smaller share of the total income tax burden.

Another part of the CBO report shows how the income tax burden has shifted upward for the rich and downward for everyone else.

Really? I’m surprised that the non-partisan CBO would output such lies and deceit as that with which you disagree while hiding the salient Bush-supporting evidence in uncitable sections of its report. Spinsanity provides the appropriate evidence of this distortion:

But while the point about share of the federal income tax burden is accurate, that’s not what "progressive" means. Merriam-Webster Online, for instance, defines progressive as "increasing in rate as the base increases." But President Bush’s tax cuts have had the opposite effect. The highest quintile had a greater reduction in their effective federal income tax rate and total federal tax rate this year compared to their rate without the Bush tax cuts than any other quintile, according to the CBO report. The Bush tax cuts have made the tax system less progressive by the definition of the term.

You’d think the president, of all people, would have a greater respect for the English language. The fact is, the Bush tax shifts have disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans while depleted tax revenues (also caused by a piss-poor economy) eliminating key federal programs for the vast majority of Americans. If either party seriously wants to lower taxes and aid the lower and middle classes, perhaps they should focus upon eliminating the egregiously wasteful spending in Social Security and Medicare, while reverting the payroll tax to its pre-Greenspan levels. Now that would make the system more progressive.

That is what you’d expect John Kerry to be saying at this moment, considering the recent drop in his poll numbers during the past two weeks as he has fended off attacks regarding the manufactured uncertainty about his record in Vietnam (every attack on his medals remains unsubstantiated). Of course, this ignores the fact that a vast majority of the controversy has been created by cable news networks that have transformed a half million dollars in 527 contriutions to the SBVT from a handful of Texas Republicans into a multi-million dollar ad blitz. Today, Instapantywaist links to the New York Post, that conveniently lays all the blame of the current situation on Kerry.

Kerry can rail all he wants about the unfairness of criticism by the Swift boat veterans. But to see who is ultimately responsible for this controversy, Kerry should look in the mirror.

Shorter NY Post:

And hey, Kerry brought all this on himself by serving in Vietnam – he should have just modestly and unobtrusively (even invisibly, if you will) worked for a reserve unit.

Why are people so hesitant to point out this rationale to each hack pundit that seems to be so concerned with Kerry’s war service? Granted, Bush didn’t run on his lack of war service, but he was allowed by everyone to brush everything that happened in the first 45 years of his life to the side while he distorted his achievements as governor of Texas.

While military service is definitely not a prerequisite for the presidency, nobody will suggest that his service provided valuable enlightenment into issues of foreign policy, military execution, third-world sociology, etc. What Kerry’s service highlights is the courage with which he acted as a mere adolescent, patrolling the dangerous waters of the Mekong Delta, risking his own life to ensure the safety of his colleagues, and coming back from an armed conflict and taking on the behemoth Nixon administration. But hey, he’s changed his position on a number of issues during the past 35 years, which undoubtedly makes him unfit for service, since what this country needs is a president who will be unwaivering in his positions even when factual evidence contradicts their basic premises.

many thanks to kevin hayden for the invitation to the party at TAS…

this morning, as i sit in one of the two(!) starbucks within view of my hostel enjoying some fair trade coffeeand the t-mobile hotspot, i am more hopeful than i’ve been in a long time.

maybe my positive outlook is residual good vibes from E. and H.’s wedding party yesterday… there is a special joy in seeing a friend so happy. or maybe it’s all the people i’ve met since leaving the wedding in mid-party…. the amtrak parking garage attendant who saw my anti-war bumper sticker and asked me if i was going to nyc for the protests. when i told him that i would be there for the whole week, he insisted on showing me the best parking spot and carrying my luggage to the ticket counter. refusing a tip, he said he wanted to thank me for going to nyc for him and for all the people who wanted to go but couldn’t…. the agent at the ticket counter who pumping the air exclaimed “yes!” in response to learning my destination and intention…. the cab driver who took me from penn station to my hostel who told me that bush was the “worst president this country has ever had”.

could it be? is america waking up?

last night, two days before the start of the rnc, penn station was filled with police, secret service and national guard. no large weapons in sight, but still disconcerting. i’m sorry that there’s no photo to post here, but several police officers warned me i would be arrested if i tried to take a picture - even though they say it’s not against the law. yes, the police are now telling tourists that no crime has to be committed - they will arrest whomever they want.

welcome to new york city.

There’s nothing to compare with watching paranoia do its thing. Anyone in NYC who farts during the next couple of weeks is going to be in danger of being arrested as a bioterrorist. Think I’m joking? I’m not. I’m suggesting a Group Fart as a demonstration.

Here’s what I know now about the Big Plan. I watched Ridge, Pataki, and Bloomberg make their announcement from the floor of Madison Square Garden. Security is going to be provided by federal, state and local agencies. On the federal level, he Secret Service, of course; that makes sense because they always protect the president. The FBI wasn’t mentioned, but they’re certainly around. Homeland Security — the coast guard, (well, this is a port) and various “classified” agencies — apparently around 8 of them. On the state level — the national guard and the state police. Locally, the poor old NYPD, with many of its members in plain clothes, especially on the subways. Plus something very vague about “help” from New Jersey and Connecticut. Who pays for all this? The taxpayers, of course, although Bloomberg made a pitch saying “private contributions” will cover much of the cost of the convention. Everybody made a big pitch about New York being “the safest city in America.” Not with all these paranoid nuts around, it isn’t.

The fun has already begun. Without announcing in advance that this was going to happen, the streets closest to the Madison Square Garden were suddenly closed off yesterday afternoon, creating an amazing traffic mess. Geez! Nobody’s even there yet! I was planning to go to Macy’s today, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get there from here. I was also hoping to sneak some photos of the security in the area. They wouldn’t arrest a little old lady with a cane for taking pictures, would they? Yeah, they probably would, or at least take my camera away — especially since it’s a tiny digital camera, and I’d be sneaking around. I might try a bus ride to see how and where the busses are being rerouted, and whether they just stop dead at around 23rd St. There was a wonderful photo in the paper today of — I guess it’s the National Guard with machine guns — standing at attention at the entrance to Victoria’s Secret. Good grief! Who’s likely to attack Victoria’s Secret?

Yesterday The Union for Peace and Justice, the group planning to bring at least 250,000 people here to protest, lost its court battle to rally on the Great Lawn in Central Park. The judge said that they waited too long to appeal this to the court system; that they’ve had since May and waited until a few days before their planned rally, after agreeing to the city’s offer to let them march past Madison Square Garden and then down West St. and that it would be too much of a hardship for the city to have to change its plans now. This is at least partly correct; there are many activities planned in the park, including a big race, that would have to be canceled. The entire stupid fight is over whether protecting the grass on the Great Lawn violates their freedom of speech! This is logical? What absolutely nobody is mentioning at all, ever, is that if you go down West Street, over to your right a block or two away, there’s a large, beautiful new park with plenty of room — the Hudson River Park, with plenty of open grass space for a rally. splendid views across the Hudson River, including the Statue of Liberty, the NY Harbor, and Staten Island. It also has new, accessible rest rooms, and if I remember right, the Great Lawn doesn’t. The Union for Peace and Justice (why is it that the groups most likely to incite violence seem to always have the word “peace” in their name) says, in a fit of pique about losing the case, that OK, they’ll gather at 14th St., march past Madison Sq. Garden, and then the members can go where they want — presumably up to Central Park — and the mayor sez anybody’s welcome in Central Park, but the city and the group are going to continue negotiating. So — I either will or will not be able to get out of my apartment (on West St.). Either way, security is already picking up down here in the Village. Walking past the PATH station (subway from New Jersey) on Christopher St., there were so many police yesterday I thought maybe something had happened, but no, it’s just “security.” No machine guns yet, anyway.

The word is that if you want to get out of the city, the time to do it is today. Tomorrow is expected to be a gridlock day because so many people are planning to leave before the convention. The airports are supposed to be just as bad. A lot of businesses have, at their own expense, wired their employees homes so they’ll be able to work at home on computers. NY1, the local news channel, has been featuring advice for those who work at home, so there must be a lot of them. They’ve also been reporting rumors, like “80 leading anarchists are planning to be here.” So what? What’s 80 anarchists in a city of 8 million furious New Yorkers? The mood in this neighborhood, Greenwich Village, seems to be “A pox on both your houses!” The Village is a traditional bastion of liberal politics, Lincoln spoke at the Cooper Union, Union Square Park has always been a center for radical speeches and demonstrations, since well before WW I. Neighbors gather outside to discuss things, and even when you’re not part of a particular discussion, just walking by you can’t miss what they’re saying, because they want you to hear them. They are furious. Mad as hornets that the convention is here at all because of the simpering hypocrisy about 9/11 and the government’s refusal to honor its financial commitments to the city. The Speaker of the House just remarked on the “unseemly scramble for money” after 9/11 by city officials. The hospitals have collectively announced that they are in no way prepared for a major disaster. Having averaged about 9 million each at their own expense to retrofit their emergency rooms to handle bioterrorism or a “dirty bomb” because they knew they had to do it, they’ve been given 75,000 each by the Feds and need much more. Then there’s the amazing overkill of the security preparations, the bloodlust for violence during the convention so the Republicans can blame the Democrats for it, and the juvenile attitude of the idiots planning to come here to incite violence.

So right now I’m sitting in a Starbucks at the corner of Union Square West and E. 17th Street and Broadway. I am looking straight out the window at the television news vans and the guys with major equipment. And I’m here with a notebook and my cell phone and digital camera, and almost as good.

I honestly don’t know where I’m going to go from here. I may walk back over to Seventh Ave. once I’ve finished my latte. I couldn’t find any hotspots over there, however. We’ll see.

As I begin to write this, police cars are dashing downtown along the highway. Well, the New York March and Rally for Women’s Lives should be starting to gather in City Hall Park before marching across the Brooklyn Bridge, and we can’t allow that, can we? My next-door neighbor and her daughter are planning to go, so I hope they’re safe. I’m lame, so long marches aren’t for me right now. There’s a lot planned for today. There’s the Books Not Bombs Youth Convergence at St. Mark’s Church in the East Village, the woman’s march, a Green Party Festival in St. Vartan’s Park at E. 35th St. and 2nd Ave — which should be far enough from Madison Square Garden that they shouldn’t have any trouble, the Middle East Peace Coalition demonstration in Union Square (the Farmer’s Market should be open today, too, so I might get to both if it doesn’t get too disgustingly hot.) The Stone Walk is supposed to arrive in Manhattan. They’re walking here from Boston pulling a 1400 lb. granite memorial honoring the “Unknown Civilians Killed in War” which should be in NY through Sept. 11. Ring Out will be ringing bells at Ground Zero late this afternoon, The Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues, and Ideas starts today at various locations, The Fourth World War film screening is at the Anthology Film Archives this evening, there’s a Women Against War concert at Riverside Church this evening, and a Clamor Magazine Party in Brooklyn. Today and tomorrow seem to have the most activities planned.

This is a city of 8 million people. That’s probably not all that’s going on, just all I’m aware of. That’s not much for a city of this size, even on a quiet weekend at the end of August. Local neighborhood papers like The Village Voice that regularly post what’s going on usually have much longer lists than this. Normally there are street fairs, art fairs, festivals, concerts, outdoor concerts, parades, lectures, church functions, you name it, dozens of them, and nobody minds this at all. There’s a race planned in Central Park tomorrow, that’s going to cause at least some street closings and bus rerouting, and that’s so normal it’s getting no attention even though it will cause some “disruption.” There are a couple of ball games and the US Open tennis match. Only those activities designed to protest the war or Bush are getting any public or press attention, no matter how benign or tiny they are likely to be.

Geez! Four military helicopters just flew down the Hudson. They do seem to be taking this march across the Brooklyn Bridge seriously! I’m on the West Side, so I can’t see what’s converging down the East Side. I should point out that various groups often march across the Brooklyn Bridge to support various causes, and these events receive little notice. There’s also a sweet little sailboat drifting by, and a yellow Water Taxi docking at the pier across the street. Life goes on, regardless.

Then there’s the Security Orgy, not only around Madison Square Garden, but, it turns out, all over the city, including the boroughs. (A line of big police SUV type vehicles just headed south down the highway. Something’s going on down there — I’m just assuming it’s the March.) This is the biggest convergence of security forces, Federal, state, and local, probably ever. Considering that the Convention is only going to be in the Garden all day Monday, and then only in the evenings until it ends, this is incredible overkill. Even 9/11 didn’t get a response like this. Streets close around the Garden, open again, close again. Buses are rerouted, re-rerouted, and nobody knows where to catch them to go home. The subways will or will not run, there will be schedule changes, and they will be stopped for searches. More and more kinds of barriers, metal, concrete, what-have-you, are hauled in and set up. There are check points, so bring plenty of ID. Businesses in the area are giving people notes to show that they are going to work. (Now the TV News trucks are heading south. Maybe I’ll even find out on the news what’s going on downtown.) People are already complaining that it’s taking them an extra hour to get to work. It’s insane to have the Convention in the middle of midtown. Homeland Security is using this as a proving ground for all sorts of weird, Si Fi type security and spy devices. This is the Brave New World in action, folks. Be careful.

The Republicans want arrests so they can blame the Democrats for disrupting the city, so that’s what they’re gonna have. There were a few yesterday, most notably Act Up, the group of AIDS activists who have been staging demonstrations for years, who stripped beside the Garden to demonstrate “the naked truth” about the Bush AIDS policies. The police were very moderate and let them have their say for 15 min. before arresting them. Not so moderate last night. I’m hearing that there were 250, 250+, or 264 arrests, some in the area of the Garden, but mostly in the East Village. The target was a group called “Critical Mass” that rides their bikes into Manhattan once a month to protest for environmentally friendly transportation. They’ve been doing this for months without any trouble. Last night, from what I’ve learned so far, there were utterly indiscriminate arrests. It didn’t matter if you were on a bike or not. At least one person there as a “legal observer” was arrested. If you were in the area, you were arrested. Never mind that it was a nice night, and the East Village is where you go on a nice night. So — the fun has begun.

What’s a democracy? This has nothing to do with democracy, or rights, or law and order. New York City, while not exactly lawless, is never exactly orderly, either. This has only to do with PR, and press coverage. To some extent, on both sides. (More big police vehicles are going down the highway.)

I’ve saved the really scary story for last. A neighbor came over to talk to me on Friday, very upset. Her college age daughter, who doesn’t live at home, had visited her to warn her that she, the mother, might be visited by the FBI, and she shouldn’t be upset if this happened. Her daughter, a small (she wears a size 2) very pretty blond, is an artist, a photographer, and had been photographing the Brooklyn Bridge. Now, the Brooklyn Bridge is an American icon. Artists have been painting it since it was built. Some of the paintings are very famous. There are thousands of published photographs of it. It is famous in song and story — and poetry. If you go to the Smithsonian, you can see samples of the actual cable used to build it. Very impressive. The engineering plans and history of how it was built are on display and published in books. Any terrorist who wanted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge would only have to look up the volumes of, by now, public domain information about it to find any information that could possibly be needed. But, for God’s sake, don’t get caught photographing it now! She was grabbed by two policemen who called for backup, and six more arrived. Dressed in her tight little shirt and shorts, she couldn’t possibly have looked like a mad terrorist suicide bomber concealing a bomb in her clothing. It takes eight armed men to subdue a tiny blond woman? Eight seems to be the magic number now — the girl who belongs to the American Friends Service Committee (that’s the Quakers, the original non-violent group so this was really nuts) was “visited” and grilled about whether she was planning violence during the convention was also grilled by eight men. They held my friend’s daughter for several hours, demanding that she tell them why she was photographing the bridge. She tried to reason with them. She explained about art, the effects of light and atmosphere; that didn’t work. They wanted to know WHY she was photographing the bridge. She tried another approach. “Don’t you have photographs of your mother? Don’t you want to be able to remember how she looks right now? She’ll grow old, and she’ll change. The neighborhood around the Bridge will change, and I want to be able to remember how it looks right now.” They didn’t buy that, either. They wanted to know WHY she was photographing the bridge, with strong hints about WHO she was photographing it for. She finally said, “Are you arresting me?” They said, they could keep her until at least 3 AM without arresting her. They finally let her go, but it’s clear that they’re watching her. She was approached again when she was photographing an unused canal — a rancid stretch of water of no use to anyone.

This is paranoia and sadistic power let loose and running rampant. Our Brave New World.

UPDATE: So far as I can find out, nothing was happening this morning. The woman’s march was fine and everyone had a great time. I haven’t heard of any disasters at the Holland Tunnel, which is south of where I live. Various kinds of police vehicles have been dashing by, sirens blaring, all day. Doesn’t seem to mean much, except their general state of hysteria.

From a Crawford TX Press Avail, Aug. 8 2003:

QUESTION: Secretary Rumsfeld, did you authorize Pentagon officials to, you know, hold some secret talks with Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar in order to push for a regime change in Iran?

And, Mr. President, do you think that’s a good idea? And is the new policy — official policy for regime change in Iran?

RUMSFELD: I have not had a chance to see these articles or an article that, I guess, exists. I did get briefed by Condi and Larry DiRita here a minute ago. And my understanding is that some one or two Pentagon people were approached by some people who had information about Iranians that wanted to provide information to the United States government that a meeting did take place. This was more than a year ago.

RUMSFELD: And a meeting did take place, and the information was moved around the interagency process to all the departments and agencies, and it dropped. That is to say, as I understand it, there wasn’t anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further.

QUESTION: So it’s your understanding that this wasn’t intended to go around any other talks that have been going on here, unofficial talks with the Iranians.

RUMSFELD: Oh, absolutely not. I mean, everyone in the interagency process I’m told was apprised of it. And it went nowhere. It was just — this happens, of course, frequently. People come in offering suggestions or information or possible contacts, and sometimes they’re pursued. Obviously, if it looks as though something might be interesting it’s pursued. If it isn’t, it isn’t.

QUESTION: Mr. President?

BUSH: Well, we support the aspirations of those who desire freedom in Iran.

QUESTION: Mr. President?

BUSH: Yes?

QUESTION: What’s your response to the Democrats, include Al Gore yesterday and some of the Democratic presidential candidates, who say that the American people were misled in advance of the war about the reasons for going to war, that you said disarming Iraq was the main purpose, but since then no weapons of mass destruction have been found?

BUSH: I say it’s pure politics.

Listen, thank you all, have a beautiful day.

QUESTION: Do you want to say more than that?

BUSH: No, it’s just pure politics. You’ve got a lot of people running for president, and it’s pure politics. American people know that we laid out the facts, we based a decision on sound intelligence, and they also know we’ve only been there for 100 days and we’re making progress.

A free Iraq is necessary for a — is in integral part of the war on terror.

And as far as all this politic noise, it’s going to get worse as time goes on, and I fully understand that. And that’s just the nature of democracy. Sometimes pure politics enters into the rhetoric.

Thank you all.

Interesting. And it seems Michael Ladine, another Iran Contra figure, was a go between in trying to get these guys in to see the National Security Council. Is this the same Michael Ladine of the American Enterprise Institute who appeared a few days later on New York radio, WBBR-AM (Aug 10, 2003):

START: 07.01
Simply Put: Michael Goldman and Jeff Jacoby , Boston Globe, US Policy with Iran American relations discussed. On the phone,
Interview - Michael Ladine, American Enterprise Institute, author, “War Against Terror Masters”, St Martins Press published. Jimmy Carter mentioned. Robert Bare, Sleeping with the devil author former CIA mentioned.
END: 15.00

(cross-posted on skippy the bush kangaroo)

between keith obermann, chris matthews, and now, deborah norville, they are actually starting to act like real journalists over there.

ms. norville, unlike some screeching heads who let anybody dissemble any lies they like on their shows (we won’t mention anyone by name, but the guy we’re thinking of rhymes with molf mlitzer), repeatedly asked the shifty boat veterans pertinent and direct questions on her show last thursday. to wit:

norville: and mr. gardner, i want to start with you first. what do you specifically remember about that day in march of 1969?

steve gardner, swift boat veterans for truth: i wasn‘t on the boat in march of 1969.

norville: you were a part of john kerry‘s team, were you not?

gardner: i was a crew on the pcf-44 boat.

norville: and what do you remember about the day that has been so hotly debated in these ads? it was february. forgive me.

gardner: again, when you‘re talking—if you want to talk about christmas in cambodia..[yada yada yada, not answering the question]…he lied.

norville: mr. gardner, i‘m trying to find out, were on the swift boat commanded by john kerry? you were not?

gardner: i absolutely was, yes. i was on the pcf-44 for two months and two weeks of his tour of duty.

norville: but it was not the time of the incident that is so hotly debated right now?

gardner: if you‘re talking about the bronze star incident, no. larry thurlow is the man.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever you want to call them, the devastatingly spot-on analysis comes from Get Your War On.

I think he even outdid Jon Stewart this time. And both the Washington journalist and the stem cells final frames are so perfect.

You might want to pool your efforts, then.

Washington state blogger Jon Stahl is considering development of that swing state’s collective blogging effort, to rival what blueoregon is doing.

(cross-posted on skippy the bush kangaroo)

thanks to this daily kos diary, we find this upi story telling us about one of the repubbb delegates who is dropping out of the convention and will be voting for kerry in november:

congressional quarterly reported friday that after attending four previous conventions, philadelphia’s jesse walters was chosen as a delegate to this year’s gop convention in new york only to resign the position, saying he could not support bush and expressing concern with the rightward move of the republican party.

calling the decision to drop his position one of the five hardest he has had to make in his life, walters said he plans to cast his first-ever vote for a democrat for president in november.

now if we can get the log cabin repubbbs to come over…

John O’Neill, whose claim to fame has been shadowing an American war hero for three decades and slandering him, certainly is deserving of disbarment and suspension, as Steve Smith points out. But will Texas even pursue the matter?

The RNC with the help of the American Gas Association is holding a tribute to Johnny Cash this week in NYC. Here’s how the Man in Black would have responded.

Here’s how you can honor Cash.

* because a purge is needed to increase the potential for life

The Barbaric Yawp reminds us whose security is being protected.

Lincoln, Nebraska got stiffed, too.

I wonder if anyone could simply follow Bush and Cheney’s trail for a month and tabulate the cost of Bushland Security.

Thank you to the gracious Kevin Hayden for outsourcing coverage of the RNC to various bloggers across the country, including myself. I hope that my brief stint here will inspire the masses to revolt against the heathen hoard which is, as we speak, invading our sacred New York City in order to film its four-night stand (Julia Roberts would request $2000 for this amount of time). During this period, my proximity to Madison Square Garden will hover anywhere between 100ft, to 30 blocks, but rest assured that my will shall not be broken and my path shall not waiver. While cross-posting here, and at Polemic Propaganda, I hope to bring a stinging critique of the night’s most renowned speakers, which any of the homeless people that have been displaced will tell you are mere facades shielding the uninformed public from the hideous truth.

Full coverage, at least from my side, will begin tomorrow, but until then I will leave you with one of my prior posts as to why so much angst has been directed towards this tone-deaf, compass-less, and wholly uncompassionate administration:

Climbing the Wrong Mountain

Suspecting Dear Leader of taking the wrong path to Jerico is something that goes beyond the pale and is typically as unpatriotic as espionage or treason, but as a brave, courageous, young stallion I shall point out some of George Herbert Hoover Bush’s mistakes on a variety of issues–without much detail. The top of this list sounds a lot like Iran while having something in common with quagmire. Perhaps Pakistan, or Syria, or Saudi Arabia, or better yet–resolving the conflict in Israel-Palestine–would have been a better way of creating an infectious Islamic democracy within the Middle East. Perhaps that would have also led to less casualties, more progress, greater chances of success, far-reaching consequences, a smaller contingent of armed forces, less monetary costs, etc.
Read the rest of this entry »

A flotilla of Vietnam-era Swift boats is scheduled to salute Ground Zero with streams of water from Hudson Bay Thursday night, as George W. Bush gives his acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention at Ground Zero. The Bush campaign denies that this is further proof of coordination between the White House political office and the 527 group known as “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.”

According to White House officials, the demonstration is simply a “Hail to the Commander-in-Chief” from true American heroes that have gentrified the history books with their courageous tales of valor through the American political advertising system. “These poor creative souls are ready to take an FEC violation for their commander,” a White House source said. “They will reveal every truth, revise any history, and revel in their story-telling.”

In fact, the entire GOP Convention is expected to extol the virtues of swift revisionist history. While Democrat Barack Obama keynoted his party’s convention call to a homogenized America of red, blue, white and black states of mind, Democrat Zel Miller will keynote the GOP Convention with a call for Democrats to unify behind the GOP nominee.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to lift enough weight against the Democrats to crush “girlie-men” that would stand in the way of a recall steamroller. “We pumped up Kalifornia,” he will tell his supporters. “America will never again be a 90-pound weakling getting sand kicked in its face by the Left Wing.”

Color this convention, pure Hollywood style. GOP organizers will take a page from Shwarzenegger’s successful recall campaign last year against incumbent Gray Davis. Not only will George Bush’s “accomplished missions” get a Hollywood makeover, Hollywood will rule the script and the tone of the proceedings. George W. Bush will be given a brain, Tom Delay will be given a heart, and Dick Cheney will be extended enough courage to come out of his undisclosed hiding place.

The Wizards of “Compassionate Conservatism,” will hide the specter of failures in Iraq, economic failures and Abu Ghraib prison in a grand shadow big enough for Monica Lewinsky to swallow.

There will be no mention of the GOP platform that reportedly calls for the death penalty for gay married couples. There will be no limited hangout route for Muslim lynchings at the public proceedings. Prayers will be limited to “God Bless America,” and little will be mentioned about John Ashcroft’s plan for an update of the ancient Hammurabi Code into a twenty-first century US constitution. Mississippi Delegates wearing pointy-headed hats will be asked to keep them out of camera range.

Instead, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will be singing “By the Time We Get to Phoenix,” at Ground Zero, motivating the crowd with the Seven Effective Habits of Revisionist Historians.

By the time the balloons drop on the Madison Square Garden crowd, the GOP hopes to get a bigger bounce for George W. Bush than his signature generates on a US Treasury Department check.

A few days ago, The General reported that the greatest rock and roll band the world has ever known, Foghat, was going to headline the Bands for Bush concert tour. I’ve now learned that isn’t true. Their drummer says that they support John Kerry, a man who french kisses hamsters.

I’m not buying it. Obviously, they’ve done the speadsheet calculations and decided that they’d be better off traveling the lucrative county fair circuit. The forty or so middle aged, balding, beer bellied rednecks with whom I rocked to Foghat at the Central Washington State Fair a couple of years ago has to be a more appealing audence for the band than any crowd a Bands for Bush concert could generate. It’s too bad Foghat can’t just be honest about it.

Yes, yes, we are on the verge of this momentous occasion in the Big Apple, the City That Never Sleeps, Grand Central, Times Square, and if you can make out there, you can make out in your underwear. And we exhibit our under wares by ferreting out the gleanings of the truth - highlighting their importance in our Word-y ways - in this assemblage of committed or should-be-committed Poliholics - because the notion of democracy is that the less-evident truths can limit the damage done by the class of humans who compulsively wish to organize and control our lives and finances with their rapacious ferocities.

Some look for champions. Others participate for Hippocratic motives, seeking only leaders who will first do no harm. Either way, it can be a common failing to spend so much time applying pedestals or restraints, purportedly for the benefit of our lives if we don’t spend a moment now and then for the actual experience of a thrill or two that constitutes living.

It’s toward that end that I provide this blasphemous pause from the perils of the day.

Now the Internet is full of so much knowledge and beauty and strangeness that categorizing it all is like counting all the butterflies and cockroaches on the planet. As one who’s been obsessively collecting, researching and organizing hundreds of political blogs, I am driven mad by the fact that I can do so with 400 or so and find a larger number awaiting me in my bookmarks yet, forlornly awaiting such categorization.

I ask myself “What is the point?” and taunt myself with the fact that “not all blogs are created equal, so how do I highlight without causing offense to members of the community?” Ultimately, I leave the highlighting to those who’ll pick through the listings, as their tastes and discernments would not match mine. Yet amid the mere fact of inclusion, or of leaving some in bookmarks on my browsers, I presume some friend or ally may feel such offense.

Yet please consider that I’ve spent two years of accumulation and hundreds of hours reviewing, dropping dead links and stitching all together in code. I’ve endured two hard drive failures in that period, and in the past 5 months since I lost my employment, have been a vagabond at 5 different domiciles, only 2 of which had their own ISPs I could share. If I’ve overlooked a friend’s blog in this process, don’t be upset, just ask me to update and include you.

This linklist may be the largest non-automated collection of (mostly) progressive political blogs on the Net. It’s large enough that I no longer wish to own it and gladly leave it to open sourcers to add to it and better it at their whim, should any be as big a fool as I.

But that’s only one point. The other, at this moment, is quite apart from the madness of my own Poliholism.

At the end of the coming link page, I have tucked in a section that is marginally political at best. Again, I bet for every good link there, there’s 5000 good ones missed. I don’t care. I just want to preview this tiny section with you, so deal with it.

The contents look like this:

Eclectic, technical, artsy-fartsy, lovelies & pretties or whimsical

Good reads, even if apolitical: Doc Searls Weblog BURNINGBIRD wood s lot Kalilily Time The EGR Weblog whiskey river The Hairy Eyeball BLAUGUSTINE xymphora burnt toast In a Dark Time vitriolica webb’s ite woodge.com Virtual Occoquan World O’Crap The PRESURFER Indigo Ocean Nonsense Verse Worth 1000 Deoxy.org

By the title of the section, it should be abundantly clear that these links have no business hangng out together at all. They’re kind of like Americans, in that regard, with foreign tourists added. Hell, xymphora should be in the political section but with no comments, email or traceable domain, I can’t fathom how else to place it. Its content is of sufficient quality that I can’t just ignore it.

Today, though, just on a lark, go visit BLAUGUSTINE. There’s so much to consider that permalinking is often a narrowing that yields too little. Then go see the collection at the Virtual Occoquan. The entry photos alone impress. Has corn ever been so sinister?

Amidst the technical and political, Shelley’s photography at BURNINGBIRD is always enjoyable. But today I noticed in her sidebar a list of stylesheets. Try clicking on them to see how the look changes. Is it silly? I think it’s fun. I need more fun, don’t you? And look at her Tinfoil Project to understand why I find her photography breathtaking.

I don’t visit Mark Woods every day, though I should. I think I’ve learned more of arts & literature & philosophy at his site wood s lot, than all my education afforded, and there’s politics drizzled throughout.

And here’s one offbeat Brit one I just found today that no words will describe. vitriolica webb’s ite.

I just enjoy visiting such pourings forth of such creative minds.

Okay, you can get back to the politics now. Our lives depend on paying that proper attention. It’s just that some days, I wish every friggin’ power freak and rich asshole would take the time to see that everyone’s fed and cared for so that people like these could lead us to pleasance instead of world fucking domination.

First things first: thank you to Kevin Hayden for extending posting privileges to me at The American Street.

Second: to the guys at The Tank for giving us bloggers a place to unwind and to blog during the “Convention” (really: Coronation).

For those of you who are unfamiliar with me, your humble correspondent is a native and lifelong New Yorker who has been spending the summer out of town. Most of my friends have fled the city but I’m tanned, rested and ready to show the Republicans that I don’t want them here, or in power. That’s the general opinion. (registration required)

On Broadway and 101st, there’s a picture outside a bar of an elephant squatting in a most unflattering way, the word “Bloomie” written underneath, and a cigarette coming out of its ass. Butt to butt, I guess.

I think that in inviting the Republicans to come here, Bloomberg has made his party affiliation obvious in a very ostentatious way that won’t be very good for him in the next election. We elected (by a slim margin) a Mayor who had changed parties for expedient reasons–he couldn’t buy the Democratic nomination, he could buy the Republican. By so doing he circumvented the Democratic party machine.

Unprincipled? Well yeah, but clever too, and Gothamites admire clever more than principled.
Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Reich at Seeing the Forest passes on two bits about the undecided voter.

I think Arianna has the better take on it. This ain’t the Senate and counting votes to run a scientific campaign should not be the soul or the ‘all’ of it.

George Bush has put the burden on the regular troops, the Guard, the police and the firefighters, saying “you do the dirty work of protecting the nation.”

He put the burden of paying for it on the middle class and set record deficits that the sons and daughters of the middle class will pay.

And tell me, do you have any info from the government about what to do in case of a chemical or biological attack? Michael Moore’s movie explained that hundreds of miles of the Oregon coast are guarded by one trooper. How the hell does this kind of security benefit you?

Communities pay tens of thousands or more to provide security for Bush wherever he campaigns. He’s more secure from American citizens than we are from terrorists. If the undecided voters can’t add up two and two, it’s because they’d rather ponder Paris Hilton’s coochee on reality TV than the serious stuff playing on reality Reality.

Why should our troops and public safety personnel and middle class bear the burdens alone? Kerry should say:

“We’re all facing the dangers of Al Qaida together, so it’s time that every American should stand up and share the burden together as well. The wealthiest should pay a fairer share of the taxes. The poorest should have more jobs, better jobs, and they’ll add to the tax revenues a portion of their increases. America works best when America is working and under George Bush, we’re not winning security, we’re losing jobs.”

“Let us stand together and nothing can stop us. But how can we stand while our job opportunities are being shipped far away? His attack dogs claim I didn’t bleed enough in Vietnam. But this election isn’t about bleeding me, it’s about the fact that he apparently thinks you need to bleed more too.”

“His whole campaign is based on a simple proposition: forget what he hasn’t done for the last four years and pray to God that he might do better if you give him another chance. Americans are the quarterbacks calling the plays here. Do you give the guy who’s fumbled almost every ball he’s touched or should you pass it to the fullback who knows which direction to run to reach the right goal?”

“The goal is more jobs, affordable health care for your family, and an education system that lets your talents shine. George Bush thinks the goal is to give the wealthiest skyboxes to sip champagne in, no matter which team wins.”

“Our troops need better support than they are getting. Our public safety teams need fairer compensation, not the downsizing this administration has provided instead. And instead of the squeeze plays foisted on the backs of the middle class alone, they need a few good scores to inspire them to victory.”

“My opponent gives decent locker room speeches, but on the field, his plays keep losing us yardage. He fails to use the combined talent of America and leaves it on the bench. If this was really a football game, I guess it wouldn’t matter much, but it’s really you and your family getting routed by a lopsided score.”

Americans deserve better. The people who suffered under Saddam deserve better. Our allies deserve better. Our families deserve better. Not once have I backed down from any challenge, from any danger, from any opposition when America’s physical security or economic security was being threatened. I’ll stand for you, if you’ll stand with me.”

L. Brent Bozell III
Parents Television Council

Dear Mr. Bozell,

I’m a big fan of the work you do at the Parents Television Council. I’m writing you today to tell you about an attempt by the Godless media to promote the homosexual agenda to our children. I’m talking about the movie, Benji: Off the Leash!

It’s a subtle assault, one that has fooled even the most vigilant guardians of the nation’s morality–christiancinema.com says “the film embodies Christ’s teachings about love, hope, and perseverance,” and American Family Radio proclaims, “Your whole-hearted support of Benji will help ensure the return of this type of movie at public theaters.”

What these good morality policemen fail to see is that Benji: Off the Leash! celebrates transvestitism. You see, Benji is actually a bitch. What kind of message does that send to our children.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. The film’s director admitted in a recent interview that Benji doesn’t believe in God, prefers to perform in the nude, and refuses to take a stand against bestiality.

Parents must be warned that Benji: Off the Leash! is not the type of movie our children should be seeing. We need you to spread that message.

Heterosexually yours,

General JC Christian, patriot

Norman Mailer (via Father Jake Stops The World):

Do the activists really know what they’re going into? That’s my concern. Or do they assume that expressing their rage is equal to getting Kerry elected? It could have exactly the opposite effect. The better mode may be to frustrate the Republicans by coming up with orderly demonstrations. Now, when I was young, the suggestion to be moderate was like a stink bomb to me. An orderly demonstration? What were we, cattle? You have to speak out with your rage. Well, I’m trying to say, we would do well to realize that on this occasion, there are more important things than a good outburst. I wish we could remind everybody who goes out to march of the old Italian saying: “Revenge is a dish that people of taste eat cold.” Instead of expressing yourself at the end of August, think of how nicely you will be able to keep expressing yourself over the four years to come if we win. Just keep thinking how much the Republicans want anarchy on the street. I say, don’t march right into their trap.

Going to New York to protest the GOP convention? Need something good to do?

Think about going to church.

Let Justice Roll Comes to NY Aug. 31:
Thousands of Christians, Jews, Muslims to Rally, Form Human Chain to Call for Social Justice

An interfaith rally at New York City’s The Riverside Church and “Faith Lights Up Broadway” human chain August 31 will show Republican National Convention delegates — indeed, the nation and world — that people of faith are deeply concerned about poverty and social justice issues. The 7 p.m. rally - to be broadcast live by WBAI-FM radio - and 9 p.m. human chain (with flashlights) are the latest in a multi-city campaign to press the presidential candidates, convention delegates and voters to address the needs of the nation’s poor, sick, unemployed and disenfranchised. Sponsors include The Riverside Church’s Mobilization 2004 and the “Let Justice Roll: Faith and Community Voices Against Poverty” campaign — a project of the National Council of Churches USA and Center for Community Change in collaboration with dozens of partners nationwide. On July 28 in Boston during the Democratic National Convention, 800 people of faith gathered in the historic Old South Church to hear the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr., Senior Minister of The Riverside Church who also will speak at the August 31 rally. He called on Americans to get poor people on their agenda “because it’s on God’s mind.”

Click here for more.