Uncle Horn Head

GOP Delegate Defects

And he's a Philadelphian:

One of the 2,509 delegates to the Republican National Conventions has dropped out because of dissatisfaction with President Bush.

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.

Tip of the Horn to Kerry 2004 at Kos.


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HTML: Close Bush

Best sticker yet.


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Bush's New York Times Interview

A site that I don't visit, or link to, often enough is Slacktivist. The proprietor just posted on our President's recent interview with the Paper of Record. Enlightening to say the least.

Highlights (NYT Article text in italics):

On environmental issues, Mr. Bush appeared unfamiliar with an administration report delivered to Congress on Wednesday that indicated that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades. Previously, Mr. Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of global warming.

The new report was signed by Mr. Bush's secretaries of energy and commerce and his science adviser. Asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming, Mr. Bush replied, "Ah, we did? I don't think so."

"Ah, we did?" Yes, you did.

It gets worse. The president is asked about North Korea:

Showing none of the alarm about the North's growing arsenal that he once voiced regularly about Iraq, he opened his palms and shrugged when an interviewer noted that new intelligence reports indicate that the North may now have the fuel to produce six or eight nuclear weapons.

He "opened his palms and shrugged." He shrugged. The strong, decisive, tough-on-terror leader man freaking shrugged.

In the immortal word of Sugar, Mr. Poon?: Um.

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Bush's Plan for the RNC

An excellent overview of the week's events in the WaPo from Dan Froomkin.

From which I found this in the NY Daily News:

President Bush wants to watch the Republican convention from a New York City firehouse and "bond" with the city's Bravest, officials said yesterday.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is also scouting out firehouses so he can watch it with the heroes of 9/11.

"Both Bush and Schwarzenegger want to bond with city firefighters," said one city official who asked not to be named...

Bush & Friends are trying to rekindle the emotion and popularity among citizens right after 9/11/01.

That may not be the best idea, especially if he brings Dennis Hastert with him:

New Yorkers yesterday slammed House Speaker Dennis Hastert for claiming the Big Apple was guilty of an "unseemly scramble" for cash after Sept. 11 — and one city councilman demanded he return his FDNY cap.

"I want to let Hastert know we want our FDNY cap back," fumed Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., referring to the baseball cap given to Hastert three years ago when the powerful Illinois lawmaker toured Ground Zero shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

The New York Fire Department hasn't endorsed a Presidential Candidate. Yet.

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Bush May Have Dashed NY Hopes to Host Olympics

An article in the German Magazine, Der Spiegel details the IOC's amazement at the President's gall in using Olympic images in his campaign ads. One adverse effect:

...The controversy between the olympic and political powers is not one between equals. However the IOC possesses at least one indirect means of retribution. One IOC member had this to say regarding the competition to host the 2012 Olympics, which is to be decided in July of next year: "The chances of New York City to host the games were already not very good. Now they have dropped to near zero."

The original and translated article is here.

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Fahrenheit 911 vs. Swift Boat ads

Trying to ignore the content of the messages, which of these emissions received more media coverage?

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Tricks of the Trade

Remember this if you're a restaurant server:

When you realize you have forgotten to submit an order to the kitchen, go to the table and mournfully say, “Did you just hear that crash?” Nine times out of 10, the customers not only will say “yes,” but actually will believe they just heard a noise of some sort. You can then sigh sadly, and say, “Unfortunately, that was the chef dropping your food,” and then scurry back to the kitchen to hand in the neglected order.

Lots more occupation tricks listed.

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And So It Begins

Outside the Plaza Hotel in NYC before the start of the Republican Convention.



Tip of the Horn to Cool Hunting.

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My First Political Activism Experience

Last night I took my 10 year old son to a MoveOn meeting in Center City Philadelphia. They are organizing a GOTV initiative called, "Leave No Voter Behind." Volunteers will canvas suburban neighborhoods and phone registered Dems and Independents to make sure they'll head to the polls on Election Day. In some cases we'll recruit new volunteers to spread the word about John Kerry in their neighborhoods.

We did a little role playing with the phone script and I shared mine with a guy sitting near me. We each took a turn being the caller and then they asked for two volunteers to do it in front of the entire group. (Did I mention there were about 250 people there?) My partner's hand shot up and we ended up doing it before everyone. We agreed I would be a difficult phone call recipient. I didn't disappoint. Took me back to my days in theatre. Fun.

Another enjoyable part of the evening was sharing it with my son. He knows how his parents feel about the, "Shrub" but we also talked about the importance of exercising our right to vote every chance we get and that people all over fight very hard for this right. It was a valuable experience for both of us, I look forward to him joining me on the 'campaign trail.'

It was inspiring to be around so many people who are united in their efforts to get Kerry elected. And I'm sorry I didn't do it sooner, as it's in my blood. When I was seven or eight I went with my mother to NOW marches where she was an active member. Before I was born she marched on the Papal Embassy in Washington in support of women's reproductive rights. She occasionally visits my blog and has even gone through my blogroll. Thanks for setting a great example.

The MoveOn meetings are being held all over the country. If you're interested, go here to find the closest organizational meeting.

Get involved!

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You're Fired! No Wait...

Link

An announcer fired by a minor league team for making a joke about Gov. James McGreevey's sexual orientation was rehired Thursday at the governor's urging.

Greg Maiuro lost his job with the Atlantic City Surf after dedicating the 1970s song "YMCA" to McGreevey during a game Aug. 17. The Village People hit is widely considered a gay anthem.

McGreevey -- who announced earlier this month that he is gay, had an affair with a man and plans to resign Nov. 15 -- urged the team to accept an apology and reinstate Maiuro "so we can move beyond this incident and get back to enjoying America's favorite pastime."

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Freddie Mercury is of Iranian Descent

So it makes sense that his band, Queen, has been given the official seal of approval by the current Irani regime.

God Save The Queen

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Swift Boats Through History



Tip of the Horn to Neil over at Polemic Propaganda.

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A Good Joke

The RNC web site links to a story (look under: protesters supporting John Kerry) from the New Hampshire Union Leader about the perils facing delegates when they come to New York for the Republican National Convention. Included in the linked-to story:

NEXT WEEK, people who hate Republicans plan to release swarms of mice in New York City to terrorize delegates to the National Republican Convention.

Republican-haters plan on dressing up as RNC volunteers, and giving false directions to little blue hair ladies from Kansas, sending them into the sectors of New York City that are unfit for human habitation.

They plan on throwing pies and Lord knows what else at Republican visitors to the city. Prostitutes with AIDS plan to seduce Republican visitors, and discourage the use of condoms, according to liberal journalist Ted Rall...

Apparently there are some liberal blogs and web sites that are promoting the above information as proof that the GOP are idiots. Of course they are, but for a different reason. The "liberal journalist" mentioned above can be none other than the Ted Rall. Of course the name Ted Rall (emphasis above, mine) is synonymous with biting political cartoons that I'm sure you've seen.

The Union Leader printed this story in apparent seriousness and the GOP linked to it thinking it was something to be up in arms about. For Rall to get quoted as a journalist in this fashion is just as funny as one of his cartoons.

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Blair to be Impeached?

Unlikely, but you have to admire a legislature that will stand up to it's leader, unlike some countries I live in know.

Tip of the Horn to The Hamster who is back up and running after some host troubles.

BTW - Clicking on the envelope icon at the very bottom of this, or any, post will allow you to email it to a friend.

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Uncle Horns at Arsenal

After much pressure from my legions of readers* I have posted a picture on my Blogger Profile page. The photo is from three years ago and was taken at The Home of Football within the N5 section of North London. It was after a Champions League game against Lyon, which the Gunners drew 1-1 on a last minute equalizer from the French side. The smile is of someone who's just achieved one of their longtime goals.

*Rovian assertion

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A Reason To Watch The RNC

A GWB speech quiz will keep your interest!

Did I mention there are prizes? (Including Kerry flip-flops. This will be funnier on the evening of 11/2/04)

How many times will Bush say faith?
From which direction will he take the podium?
How will he refer to Senator Kerry?

All of the 50 questions have multiple choice answers. Even if you don't win, the questions are entertaining.

Enter now.

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Halliburton's Black Hole

So where did all of the money go?

Alternet has an explanation.

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I'm Going To Stop Bashing Bush

Until tomorrow.

As I ready to watch John Kerry on the Daily Show I thought a break from Bush bashing would be in order. Sorry Hoges.

Onto football...

Tomorrow, Arsenal goes for it's 42nd consecutive Premiership match without a loss against Blackburn Rovers (with Yank Brad Friedel minding net.) This would be the longest such streak in the history of top-flight English football. The record tying game against Middlesbrough, this past Sunday, was tense for several different reasons. First, I purchased the Premiership season package from Comcast, knowing that they will usually air the weekend's best games. (One on Saturday and one on Sunday. Last year they only had Sunday games, it's more expensive this year but hey, it's football.) I tune in at 11am only to find that Comcast is having trouble with the Arsenal-Middlesbrough feed. Agonizing.

Which segues us into reason number two on the tensity scale. I followed the first half on the net (giving up on Comcast, they will be crediting me for that game, sunspots or not) which ended 1-1 with Thierry Henry tallying his first of the season. Not being able to take it, I went out to run some errands, after another half-an-hour Mrs. Horns calls to remind me that her satellite radio is hooked up in my truck (yes, we are a family of AV gadgets, a definite post for another time.) I pulled over and found the BBC broadcast (what sunspots?) only to hear Arsenal was winning 4-3, which isn't surprising. What was surprising was that they were down 3-1 just after the half. Three unanswered goals. Champion quality. I listened to the last 15 minutes in the mall parking lot with the volume cranked and me pacing outside. I didn't want the draw to equal Nottingham Forest's 41 match unbeaten run, I wanted the full three points to keep pace with Chelsea, who won the day prior. When Henry netted his second in minute 90' to seal it I did a brief celebration outside Target.

I did mind the BBC announcer saying over and over, "No matter what happens for the rest of this campaign every other game will be measured against this one." Thanks for reminding me, git.

The scoring:

Arsenal - Henry - 25'
Middlesbrough - Job - 43'
Middlesbrough - Hasselbaink - 50'
Middlesbrough - Queudrue - 53'
Arsenal - Bergkamp - 54'
Arsenal - Pires - 65'
Arsenal - Reyes - 65'
Arsenal - Henry - 90'

I'll get to see a replay on Fox Sports World Thursday at 5pm EST.

The beautiful game indeed.

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Scooter Libby Fries!

As in 'Bundy Fries' (infamous Philadelphia Daily News headline from 1/25/89.)

It looks as though we finally have a culprit in the leak of CIA Agent Valerie Plame's identity. Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby is on the hook. Who's going down with him?

In the immortal words of Snap!: It's gettin' kinda hectic.

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Moral Cowardice

Josh Marshall presents us with a detailed analysis of where the Bush Administration went wrong and how Kerry can frame the campaign in his favor. Liberal excerpting ahead:

...Look at the wrong direction/right direction poll numbers and you see pretty clearly that the country is looking to fire George W. Bush. The president's only hope is to get the debate on to issues like these, shift the dynamic of the race, and convince voters that, whatever their dissatisfactions with his administration, John Kerry isn't an acceptable alternative.

When this stuff comes down the pike, Kerry has to fight back mercilessly. And he can win those fights. But, fundamentally, every day of this campaign that isn't spent talking about the sluggish economy and the president's debacle in Iraq is a day wasted, a strategic failure for the Kerry campaign.

But Democrats don't have to choose between hard-hitting lines of attack on the president himself and focusing on the main issues that are facing the country today. The most damning attacks turn out to be the most compelling, the most relevant for what the country faces, and the most difficult for the president to combat.

(...)

The current debate about these two men's military service has put the spotlight on physical courage. But that really is a side issue in this campaign, if we're talking substance. The real issue isn't physical bravery but moral cowardice.

President Bush is an examplar of that quality in spades. And it cuts directly to his failures as president. Forget about thirty years ago, just think about the last three years.

Before proceeding on to that, one other point about the two men's service. On the balance sheet of moral bravery, as opposed to physical bravery, the two men are about as far apart as you can be on Vietnam. On the one hand you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went, and put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have George W. Bush who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go; just not him. It's the story of his life.

That is almost the definition of moral cowardice.

(...)

The president didn't think he could convince the public of the merits of his reasons for going to war. So he lied to them. He greatly exaggerated what was thought to be the evidence of weapons of mass destruction and completely manufactured a connection between Iraq and al Qaida. He couldn't get the country behind him on the up-and-up. So he took the easy way out; he took a shortcut; he deceived them. And now the country is paying a terrible price for it.

He and his advisors knew that if they levelled with the public about the costs of war -- in dollars, years, soldiers -- he'd have a very hard time convincing them. So he didn't level with them. He took the easy way out.

The sort of forward planning that would have made a big difference in post-war Iraq was scuttled or attacked because it would make the job of selling the war harder. Those who sounded the alarm had their careers cut short.

Once we were in Iraq and it was clear that we had been wrong about the weapons of mass destruction -- a judgement that's been clear for more than a year -- he wouldn't admit it. And he still hasn't. A year and a half after we invaded Iraq and he still can't level with the American people about this. He still relies on his vice president to try to fool people into thinking Hussein was tied to al Qaida and the 9/11 attacks.

(...)

The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face, those are the same qualities that led the president to lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when the bill started to come due.

That's the argument John Kerry needs to be making. And he needs to make it right now.

The most cogent article I've seen on this yet.

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Iraqi PM Allawi Speaks English (Often)

From TomDispatch:

From at least early August, our prime minister in Iraq, former Baathist Iyad Allawi, has been calling the [chose one: young/ambitious/anti-American/fiery/rogue/radical/renegade/rebel/populist] cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers "outlaws." Strangely enough, so has our Secretary of State Colin Powell. It's lovely, isn't it, that Allawi and Powell not only see things in such an eye-to-eye way, but are coordinating in such a mouth-to-mouth manner, linguistically speaking. We know this is so, because translation from the Arabic never gets in the way. Allawi, a former exile who like many of his confreres in the "interim administration," has planted his roots abroad (not to speak of possessing a British passport), expresses himself regularly in English. In fact, as our nightly TV news so often makes clear, the PM gives numerous news conferences in English (as do others among his colleagues). This evidently seems so natural to our press corps in Baghdad that no one even thinks to comment on it. But for just a moment, imagine the unimaginable. The President of the United States steps to the podium to begin a White House press conference and launches into Arabic. Oh well, I know it's too ridiculous to consider. But it certainly tells us something about where Allawi's prime audience lies and where he is trying hardest to solidify his base. Perhaps one day someone in the press will find this curious enough to make something of it.

Bush? Arabic? Whoa, he has a tough enough time with "nucular."

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Undecided Voter

From Tom Tomorrow:



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Krugman

Nothing to excerpt. All of it is powerful.

Read now.

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Business Week Onboard

Business Week is the latest to ask president Bush to denounce the 'Swift Boat' attacks on John Kerry:

...A nation has to honor its war veterans whatever their political party, while remaining realistic about the horrors of war. If some Americans do otherwise, all Americans are shamed. McCain has also called on Bush to denounce the attacks on Kerry and condemn that kind of low-life negative campaigning. It's time the President complied in no uncertain terms, and it's time he meant it.

Scotty, from the Gaggle on Friday:

Q Scott, subject once again, the Swift Boat ads, et cetera. You've seen the New York Times article this morning which gets into quite a lot of detail, and they allege that there's a web of connections to the Bush family and high-profile Texas figures and Karl Rove. So how can the White House say that there's no connection whatsoever between the campaign and White House and --

MR. McCLELLAN: We've already said we weren't involved in any way in these ads. We've made that clear. I do think that Senator Kerry losing his cool should not be an excuse for him to lash out at the President with false and baseless attacks. I mean, where has the Kerry been -- Kerry campaign been for the last year while more than $62 million in funding through these shadowy groups has been used to negatively attack the President. The Kerry campaign has been noticeably silent, and in many instances, they have actually fueled these kinds of attacks by these shadowy groups that are funded by unregulated soft money.

It's never about the message, it's always about the unregulated money and "shadowy groups". I wonder what would have happened if Clinton attacked Dole's record in 1988, saying he can't throw a grenade and didn't deserve a purple heart? There would have been, GOP fueled, national outrage.

Hypocritical to the core.

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Blair Refuses To Accept Award in US

Not just any award, but the Congressional Medal of Honor:

..."There has been a lot of telephone traffic between the White House and Downing Street over the medal in recent week," the Sunday Mirror quoted a senior government source as saying.

"George Bush wants the prime minister to come to Washington and pick up the medal, which is the highest honour America can bestow on a foreigner.

"But he has refused for more than a year now and for good reason. He cannot possibly accept an award for the Iraq war when British and American troops continue to risk their lives there."

Mr Blair is concerned also that a trip to the US now would effectively be giving a boost to Bush ahead of November's presidential elections...

Ah yes, politics.

UPDATE: Thanks to Richard in the comments for sharing that the Congressional Medal of Honor only goes to members of the U.S. Military. It's been given out since 1861. Details on the medal here. That will teach me to believe what the U.K. Sunday Mirror prints. Murdoch.

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More Herbert, More Florida

Bob Herbert continues his look at the thuggish tactics of the Florida GOP. (The first two stories are covered here and here.) Today he has this unbelievable quote:

..."A Democrat can't win a statewide election in Florida without a high voter turnout - both at the polls and with absentee ballots - of African-Americans," said a man who is close to the Republican establishment in Florida but asked not to be identified. "It's no secret that the name of the game for Republicans is to restrain that turnout as much as possible. Black votes are Democratic votes, and there are a lot of them in Florida."...

The Orlando Sentinel reported on Friday that some lawmakers in FL have asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate the questioning of elderly black voters by armed, plain clothes State Police officers.

If this blows up in Jeb Bush's face and Florida goes, with the Presidency, to John Kerry I would love to be having Thanksgiving dinner this year with Jeb, Poppy Bush, Babs, George W. and Laura.

Frosty!

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