LOVE her

AP:

Teresa Heinz Kerry, the outspoken wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, told a rally Monday evening exactly what she thinks of the prospect of a second Bush term.

With a Bush supporter chanting 'Four more years! Four more years!' through a bullhorn from the back of a park, the candidate's wife stopped herself to respond. 'They want four more years of hell,' Heinz Kerry said.

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New ABC/Wash Post poll - the good, the bad, and the confusing

1. For Americans who say the economy is their number 1 issue, which candidate do you prefer?

Kerry 60%
Bush 33%

Compare this to a virtual tie before the convention.

2. Kerry is running about even with the president on who can be trusted to handle the war on terror and the conflict in Iraq.

3. Which candidate is more qualified to be Commander in Chief?

Kerry 52%
Bush 44%

4. Kerry backers have intensified their support of the nominee.

5. Which candidate is more consistent?

Kerry 31%
Bush 60%

6. While Kerry has the lead among registered voters, among those 'MOST LIKELY TO VOTE' the race is too close to call.

REGISTERED VOTERS
"Among registered voters, 50 percent support Kerry in this ABC News/Washington Post poll, 44 percent Bush and 2 percent Ralph Nader — a gain of four points for Kerry and a loss of four for Bush from the pre-convention ABC/Post poll."

LIKELY VOTERS
"Among likely voters, Kerry's six-point edge slips to an insignificant two points — 49 percent support for Kerry, 47 percent for Bush and 2 percent for Nader, a net (and at best very slight) six-point shift toward Kerry from the pre-convention poll."

You can read LOTS more details of the poll's findings here. Read the rest of this post...

Homosexual Activity Among Animals Stirs Debate

Time for another constitutional amendment.National Geographic:

"The bonobo, an African ape closely related to humans, has an even bigger sexual appetite. Studies suggest 75 percent of bonobo sex is nonreproductive and that nearly all bonobos are bisexual. Frans de Waal, author of Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, calls the species a 'make love, not war' primate. He believes bonobos use sex to resolve conflicts between individuals."

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Missouri votes Tuesday on gay marriage ban in state constitution

Missouri votes on Tuesday (tomorrow), then "Louisiana residents are to vote on a marriage amendment Sept. 18. Then Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah are to vote on the issue Nov. 2. There also are initiatives pending in Michigan, North Dakota and Ohio."

Kos has some good coverage of the anti-gay hate the amendment has generated. Read the rest of this post...

Segregationist Republican Senator Trent Lott calls Kerry a socialist

From the Clarion Ledger:

"U.S. Sen. Trent Lott today told an enthusiastic Neshoba County Fair crowd that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is 'a French-speaking socialist from Boston, Massaschusetts, who is more liberal than Ted Kennedy.' It was a line that Lott said he'd been working on for a while."

Yeah, I'll bet. Wonder what the earlier versions looked like? A French-speaking nigger-loving socialist? :-) Read the rest of this post...

This guy's the REAL shitstain

It looks like Cheney opened the door when he said he "felt better" after telling Pat Leahy to go f*ck himself -- now this guy thinks dumping three tons of shit on a street -- in front of a gay rights parade -- is simply exercising his right to free speech.

Meanwhile, two local disc jockies decide it would be funny to hand out gay porn to kids at the parade. Thankfully, the radio station has decided to cancel their show.

Of course, the way radio works, these two jerks will find another job somewhere. Let's make sure the next place that hires them gets an earful from us... Read the rest of this post...

Al Franken Radio Show to Be on Cable TV

Beginning Sept. 7 on the Sundance Channel. Hope it will do well, but not convinced radio does well on TV. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Ridge politicizes today's latest terror alert

And they wonder why we don't trust them. Ridge came right out yesterday and linked the new terror alert to clearly partisan praise for Bush. At the same time these guys criticize folks for being suspicious of these alerts, they turn around and do this.

"'We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror,' Mr. Ridge said."

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Is Bush gay? Part II

Now, I'm not saying he is, but I'm not saying he isn't. But he sure does look "dandy" in this "fabulous" top.


Source: AP & NY Daily News Read the rest of this post...

Hoping you all can help this guy

Sounds pretty serious. (Click on the link that says "view the film".)

If that link doesn't work, you'll need to download quicktime.

UPDATE: Ok, this was supposed to be a joke people - I didn't get the sense anyone was clicking through, so I'm telling you now, click through and watch this, it's quite funny. Read the rest of this post...

Feeling Paranoid, Part II

Well, to follow up on Michael's report from NYC, today's Washington Post lead story is enough to scare you shitless (if it's true). They've got evidence that the terrorists have supposedly been casing the IMF and World Bank HQs in DC (glad I don't work at the Bank anymore!). A brief and scary excerpt:

The surveillance, recounted in chilling detail in newly obtained documents, included the location of security desks and cameras in the buildings; traffic and pedestrian patterns surrounding them; employee and vehicle routines; the locations of nearby fire departments, police stations, libraries and schools; and what kinds of explosives would do the most damage to the structures.

U.S. officials said the operatives noted that one of the buildings had three male security guards but that only one carried a weapon. "Getting up to the higher floors is not very difficult if you go there midweek, as I did," one operative added....

In one example of detailed surveillance cited by a senior administration intelligence official, operatives logged the flow of pedestrians outside one targeted building at midday in the middle of a week. "Fourteen persons pass by every minute" on one side of the block, they concluded.

Other communications focused on security barricades, traffic patterns, the use of sewers as escape routes and the locations of nearby fire and police stations, schools and libraries, officials said. For one building, potential attackers discussed how visitors must sign a book telling where they are going, but "on Sunday there is no security. This is not the case on Saturday."

I don't know what to make of this. If it's true, it's frightening. And in contrast to the article Michael cites in the NYT (I still need to check it out), this one is pretty damn specific. My only concern is whether this is even true. Bush has been putting HEAVY pressure on the Pakistanis to come up with something NOW to show that he's on top of the war on terror. It's certainly not beyond our intelligence services to fake documents, why couldn't the Pakistanis have fakes these? Or why couldn't Al-Qaeda have done this just to bluff us?

Again, it bugs me that I just have no faith in Bush anymore. Under any previous administration I'd have trusted this report. Now I don't know what to think. Read the rest of this post...

Feeding Paranoia

WTF, as John would say. A front page story in the New York Times today highlights credible threats against major financial institutions in the U.S. Halfway through the article, the writer says:

"Several episodes in the United States have recently drawn scrutiny from counterterrorism officials, including the apprehension of a Pakistani woman in Texas with a suspicious passport as well as reports from passengers on a recent flight to Los Angeles about odd activity by a group of Syrian musicians. But officials said that neither of these incidents was a direct factor in the decision to go to Code Orange."

Ohmigosh! A casual reader would believe these troubling events indicate terrorists are all over the U.S. getting ready to strike. Run for the hills!

But just a few days ago, the New York Times did a lenghty story about the Syrian musicians, making clear it was a case of cultural misperceptions, that the men had been thoroughly questioned and interviewed by three federal agencies and the LAPD and found to be exactly who they claimed to be. So how did a false alarm morph into one of a string of disturbing incidents, much less one that the author tells us was not "a direct factor" in the decision to go to Code Orange? Huh? Why would a panicky investigation of musicians that proved to be nothing at all be any factor at all?

It's irresponsible to investigate an incident, report that it was nothing at all, but then include it in a list of disturbing events that might have contributed to the high alert the article has warned us about. If the NYT needs to retract its earlier article, it should. Otherwise, this seemingly banal paragraph is misleading and dangerous. More dangerous, in fact, than those musicians. Of course, this doesn't call into question the report of heightened alert -- it calls into questions the NYT's coverage of that alert and how it conflates false alarms into incidents of concern.
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