philly

Broad St for Kerry!

Walking around on Halloween, Lady and I came across a bunch of people standing on the island on Broad St holding up signs for Kerry and Hoeffel. They were getting people to honk and cheer, showing support for change on November 2nd.

Lady got into the fray and held up her Women for Kerry sign and got people to honk.

Here is an album of photos I took of the gathering. They're kinda grainy, taken at ISO 400 with flash. They turned out as good as you can expect from across the street. I wanted to get closer, but that would've involved standing in the middle of the busiest street in Illy and I didn't want to do that.

Who was honking? Cabbies, SEPTA bus drivers, everyday folks, truck drivers. It was great.

VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Your Polling Place

If you don't know where your polling place in Philadelphia is, click here and enter your address. The polling places should be current.

Questions about voting in your county? Go here for a list of numbers by county.

Voting is from 7am to 8pm. I'll be out around 6-6.30am or so. And on my lunchbreak. And after work. Methinks I'll bring some sandwiches, snacks and some drinks to make sure people stay on line and vote.

Fucking-A. This is so fucking important.

The Gmen, not on in Illy

Damned NFL blackouts! I was very excited a few days ago when I saw that the Eagles game was moved to CBS, because I knew that the Giants game would be carried on FOX. But then I found out that the Giants game would not be broadcast here in Illy. Nor would the very important Green Bay v. Washington game. That game is important because what happens to the Redskins is what happens to the incumbent president, ALWAYS. The Pack are up 20-14 right now in the 4th. Go Pack!

But back to the Giants game not being on TV. What was in in its stead? Brokendown Palace. Good grief. Granted, the hot Kate Beckinsale is in it, come on! Giants v. Vikings! That's huge!

I had to go to the B&W Sports Bar in the Best Western Hotel up by 22nd St & Race St to see the Giants game. It was incredibly overpriced [for normal Illy standards]. I stayed to watch the game until it was 27-0 in the 3rd. It is now 34-13 Gmen.

Let's see what happens next week as this Giants fan in Philly will have to make due, once again.

Philly Yard Sign

This is what we here in Philly call a yard sign. Look at that nice 1x1 meter [that's metric for "yard"] of yard.

MoveOn PAC Rally

Lady and I want to the MoveOn PAC rally at the Sheet Metal Workers Union in South Philly. It was my first venture into a union hall. It was a great gathering of what I'd say was about 2000 people or so.

Julia Stiles spoke, I can't stand her movies, but it was nice to see a fairly articulate Hollywood personality speak at a rally in a union hall. Vanessa Carlton, a Pennsylvania native, got up there too. She's 24 and this is the first election she voted in. I say did because she already mailed in her absentee ballot. Jessica Lange got up there too. She wasn't scheduled to talk. Apparently, she's done quite a bit of work with UNICEF in the Congo.

A couple got up to speak about their son who they lost in battle during the "war" in Iraq. The mother was incredibly eloquent despite being so overcome with emotion. It pains me to see these parents during these rallies and in documentaries like Lila Lipscom in F9/11, but we do need to hear their stories and honor what their children gave up.

Al Franken was the keynote speaker. He came on after the parents. He mixed in his comedy while making some good points. He also threw in a few of his impressions of Dick Cheney and my favorite, Donald Rumsfeld.

We stuck around and tried to meet Al, but to no avail. We waited around patiently, right behind him, but others just grabbed at Al. I didn't get to say hi, but it's OK.

Here are some pictures from the rally. They're not the greatest in quality though. I forgot to change the ISO setting to a higher speed. I did get a couple of nice shots though, so check them out anyways!

The Onion's 2004 Election Guide

Oh The Onion, where would we be without you?

Here's their guide to the 2004 Election.

MoveOn PAC & Al Franken in Philly

MoveOn PAC: Philadelphia Super Rally

The gates open at 4pm at the Local 19 Sheet Metal Workers Union, 1301 South Columbus Boulevard at Washington.

Al Franken, co-host of the Al Franken Show and author of Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them will be the keynote speaker.

You wanna go? Go to MoveOnPAC.org, register and print out a ticket. Tickets are limited to the event, it should be a big draw.

See you there

Ann Coulter

Good grief.

I saw her speak for the first time just a little while ago on Bill Maher's show Real Time. What a horrible, lying, disgusting fembot. That's what Randi Rhodes calls her because she's not a human being. She can't be a human. No way.

Bill introduced her as a friend and I thought he was going to be a little soft on her because of that. At first, it did look like he was giving her a free pass like O'Reilly with W, but then I noticed that he wasn't. She was just not answering anything. Not only was she not answering, she was just blabbering. Maher said that if Al Gore were the President when 9/11 happened and he sat in a classroom for 7 minutes reading a book, that the Right Wing Attack Machine would base the entire re-election on that one moment. She responded that the President shouldn't be reading in classrooms to kids and then said that women should not be allowed to vote.

Whaaa?!?

I did a double take at the TV. "Did she just say that?" I asked myself. "Yes she did," I told myself.

It was then I concluded that Bill wasn't giving her a free pass, it was just that you cannot have a discussion with this fembot because she's living in her own bot world and doesn't understand the things us humans are asking her to comment on. She just spits out answers and sometimes the software is buggy and crazy anti-womens' sufferagist remarks are spewed out. How can anyone take her seriously?

Bin Laden's Latest

Have you read the transcript of what Osama said in his latest video? Following is the complete text as translated by Reuters:

"O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results.

"Security is an important foundation of human life and free people do not squander their security, contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not attack Sweden for example.

"It is known that those who hate freedom do not possess proud souls like those of the 19, may God rest their souls. We fought you because we are free and because we want freedom for our nation. When you squander our security we squander yours.

"I am surprised by you. Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened.

"God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers but after the situation became unbearable and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed -- when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet.

"In those difficult moments many emotions came over me which are hard to describe, but which produced an overwhelming feeling to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the unjust.

"As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way (and) to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.

"We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush and his administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half by the sons of kings ... They have a lot of pride, arrogance, greed and thievery.

"He (Bush) adopted despotism and the crushing of freedoms from Arab rulers and called it the Patriot Act under the guise of combating terrorism.....

"We had agreed with the (the Sept. 11) overall commander Mohammed Atta, may God rest his soul, to carry out all operations in 20 minutes before Bush and his administration take notice.

"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American forces (Bush) would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone at a time when they most needed him because he thought listening to a child discussing her goat and its ramming was more important than the planes and their ramming of the skyscrapers. This had given us three times the time needed to carry out the operations, thanks be to God...

"Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic presidential candidate John) Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe.

No Luck Photographing the Projection

I went back tonight, tripod and F717 in tote, but the projection wasn't up. Oh well.

It's Bill Maher time! Ann Coulter is supposed to be on tonight, he considers her a friend. Let's see how he treats her.