sfarber

Godwin’s law is hereby suspended. When an American national party decides to run “Triumph of the W___”, any and all shots are fair game. (BTW, Fightin’ John has arrived; it couldn’t happen too soon– but the man is a closer, and I am convinced now more than ever, our next President.) While I missed Edwards’ prologue, which I understand was even better, it looks like the gloves are off. And under the light of day, the Bush record meltsdown and shrivels. Take away irrational fearmongering, and the Bush-Cheney team has nothing other than giant tax breaks for multi-millionaires, and running...

Well, it was… I’m not sure what! night at the GOP Convention last night; the Prez was in Queens, hob-nobbing with the firemen. You’ll recall Bush promised greater aid to New York, only to not deliver it (far lower priority compared to repealing that awful death tax); of course, several (well, 6 anyway) City firehouses have been closed since 9-11, as New York spends kazillions defending us from fake terror alerts, protecting visiting foreign dignitaries (like the Republicans), and similar unfunded Bush mandates. Which takes us to last night at the convention; I confess I didn’t see or hear Miller’s...

Hey, boys and girls… remember “yellowcake”, or uranium hexaflouride, one of the key ingredients in the recipe for enriched uranium which can either power a nuclear power plant or a nuclear bomb? Well, Iran seems to be on the verge of having enough of it to actually generate some enriched uranium… enough fissionable material to make up to five nuclear bombs. If we add that to the between two and seven nuclear devices in the hands of North Korea, we get our aggregate “Axis of Evil TM” scorecard: Axis of Evil Member Number of Nuclear Bombs Iran…………………………………….Up to 5 Iraq…………………………………….None...

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger dazzled the GOP Convention crowd last night with his speech about “immigrant dreams”, national security, and significantly, how naysayers about the (disastrous) state of the American economy are really economic girlymen. BTW, I almost hate myself for kind of liking Laura Bush’s speech, which almost had me convinced that George W. Bush is a human being capable of the same doubts and fears as the rest of us. Of course, one quickly realizes that this is not true: like Schwarzenegger, Bush is a multi-millionaire well-divorced from the reality the rest of us face (though unlike Ahnold,...

Where’s Osama? Where’s Osama? (Well, we know he’s somewhere in Western Pakistan, awaiting his photo op in October, but that’s not important right now.) No, no… after giving the President credit for behaving like an adult, and announcing that the war on terror TM can not, actually, really be”won”, the President promptly disappoints me, with his new marching orders from Karl, and, of course, told veterans in Tennessee, that, au contraire, the war on terror CAN be won! While this presents a nice opportunity for Senators Kerry and Edwards to call Bush a flip-flopper, it’s really a lost opportunity to...

Well, I watched the twin GOP-heavyweights (the Sainted John McCain and St. Rudy of Giuliani) with a very limited attention span last evening. But I tend to agree with this CNN assessment, that the “big moment” (used by both speakers as their spurious justification for extending the Bush power-grab by another four years) was that asinine shot of Dubya screaming through a bullhorn at firemen on 14 September, 2001 (little mentioned is the scene of Bush frantically washing himself afterwards to get the stench of Untouchable Caste members off of his body, or his immediate rush to get the hell...

In fact, the mayor wasn’t kidding: an entire array of discounts for peaceful protestors has been made available. We’re not just talking Applebee’s: we’re talking discount tickets to Mamma Mia (the Abba related musical). Now, you can be a card-carrying protestor… and the card entitles you to… discounts! From our mayor from the same party as our president who told us that the appropriate reaction to 9-11 was to go shopping, we give you… discounted shopping. Amurrka, she’s a great country. Love it, or shove it, eh?

Your talking dog decided to waste his lunch hour by checking out “the street” around Madison Square Garden. I later went to “The Tank” at 432 W. 42nd Street, a few blocks North and West of the Garden, where “Blogger Alley” is set up; I was most pleased to shake the hands of visiting dignitary bloggers Jesse and Ezra of Pandagon, both of whom are (ahem) half my age; I hoped they solved their technical problem. Nice guys; hope to chat with them later in the week (work allowing). Being an “over 40”, I don’t know WiFi from Kung Fu,...

The New York Times is reporting that crowd estimates for yesterday’s main anti-Bush protest rally were around half a million people. Just as it seemed obvious to me that the Times and other press elements were desperate to understate the scope of anti-war protests last winter (at which I was present), largely because the Times, led by ersatz journalist Judith Miller (who they have still not fired) favored the American aggression against the people of Iraq, it seems like the tide may be turning, with little things like an accurate count of the number of people who showed up to...

The lunatic defrocked priest, Cornelius Horan, who cost sportsman of the year Vanderlay Lima the gold medal in the Olympic marathon by jumping onto the course and tackling him was given a suspended sentence by a Greek kangaroo court. Assuming that Mr. Lima was, say, a Greek athlete, I suspect a life term for attempted murder would have been handed down. I hope Mr. Lima is around in four years at Beijing. There, if the likes of Mr. Horan attempts to cross onto the course, I have little doubt that he’d be shot dead well before he disrupted the race....