
Lurch takes on the burning issues of our time with a promise to lift the ban on immigrants with AIDS. The Freepers did a little research and it turns out Lurch voted for the ban when it was enacted in 1993. Tsk! Naughty Lurch!

Thiruvananthapuram, July 2 (IANS) Angry youths in this Kerala capital Friday burnt an effigy of US President George W. Bush, not because they are anti-American but because he has named his cat India.They would have really been insulted if he had named the kitty, "Butthead".
Where Senator Kerry's biography is full of problematic phrases like "Swiss finishing school", Edwards's is a classic American story - if one overlooks some of the details. According to Sidney Blumenthal, Clinton-stain-mopper-turned-Guardian-columnist, "He bears the memory of his father taking the family to a local restaurant after church only to leave when he realised he could not afford anything on the menu."They couldn't if you're telling fish stories, which Opie seems to be mighty good at. And I wonder how all the organized labor droids feel about it? "Opie's dad wasn't a millworker - he was one of the bosses!"
Really? Robbins was a town of just over 1,000 people, so presumably it was, if not the only restaurant, one of only two or three. In small towns, folks generally know what the local eateries charge. And, while the Edwards family was poor by comparison with John Kerry, dad was in fact the mill's production manager (though the son tends to leave that bit out). So, in a mill town, at a restaurant presumably priced to cater for mill workers, the management of the mill couldn't afford to eat?
Kerry kicked off last week's concert by mounting the stage with new sidekick John Edwards, who has managed to transform himself into Mr. Electricity since the primaries, when many of us in the vulture class thought the too-smooth-by-half Edwards was less suited to sell us his vision of America, more suited to sell us an extended power-train warranty on a Camry. There they stood, two well-tailored, half-windsored Monsters of Rock, before they plunged into the audience.And as we all know, things went downhill from there. I sure wouldn't have passed that up for a briefing on terrorist threats, would you?
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Taking the night's first-of-many whacks at the Bush piñata, Newman mocked trickle-down tax cuts, saying rich coots like him hide their money in a sock. "Why, when the tax cuts were announced," he said by way of proof, "did the sock market go up 60 percent?"
Praise Ja that Wyclef Jean soon followed to put him out of his misery. Numerous reporters have noticed that Kerry and Edwards have jeopardized the platonic nature of their relationship since getting politically hitched, what with all the arm-touching, hair-mussing, and trapezius-squeezing. Some hoped that Wyclef would croon something suited for the budding romance, such as his song, "I'm the Only Gay Eskimo" (I go out seal hunting with my best friend Tarka / But all I wanna do is get into his parka).
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John Mellencamp took the stage to sing "I was born in a small town," John Edwards's longtime campaign song. Unconfirmed reports have it that Edwards is the son of a millworker who actually hails from a small town. At one point, while Bon Jovi held down lead-vocal duties on Mellencamp's "Pink Houses," Mellencamp actually trekked to Edwards's seat for some sort of huggy/chest-bump. With so many blue-collar poseurs keeping company, it left one feeling sorry for Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen, who must have been unable to knock off early from the factory.
But performers didn't just provide the gift of song, they also provided the gift of laughter, or tried. Many organizers would've opted to hire someone who was, say, funny. Kerry organizers thought it would be better to go with Chevy Chase and Whoopi Goldberg.
The Kerry campaign's response evolved as the day went on -- from refusing to criticize the remarks to distancing the candidate from them.You can follow the link for the blather track, but you know you're in trouble when Tinfoil Teresa is the most sensible of the bunch:
While the candidate did not directly address the issue, his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, told reporters traveling aboard the campaign charter that "some of the words were ones I would not have used."C'mon folks, share the good times with the little people - release the tape!


Edwards said it was "a great honor" to be there and insisted, "This campaign will be a celebration of real American values."And hold the presses, Opie's genius spouse weighed in:
Kerry thanked all the performers for "an extraordinary evening," hailed the "great producers" - Harvey Weinstein of Miramax and Jann Wenner - and said "every performer tonight ... conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."
"A lot of people are going to be angry - there's a lot to be angry about," she told reporters at a fund-raising breakfast on Manhattan's west side. "It's a free country and people are going to express that anger."So why not share it with the proles, Liz?
Today, on the floor of the United States Senate, Barbara Boxer referred to the Madrid bombings as a "rail accident." Honest. A rail accident. Boxer is a Senate accident. What an embarrassment.Note that Hugh has a new book, "If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends Upon It." True indeed.
I posed the question to my audience: How much money could Boxer lose in a Jeopardy game, assuming that, in her typical fashion, she obnoxiously buzzed in first every time and, also in typical fashion, she got everything wrong. The best calculation seems to be $58,000.