Rest assured this will get NO play in the media. From Rush’s site (must be a member to view, but I’m copying the relevant part here):

RUSH: Let’s talk about the American Legion convention. I watched your speech there this morning, and the Democrats are harping on something you said yesterday, or that was aired yesterday on the Today Show with Matt Lauer about your comment about we can’t win it, meaning the war on terror. I think I know what you meant but John Edwards is out there saying (paraphrased), “A-ha! Bush is now flip-flopping, and we, John Kerry and I, we can win this, and Bush is…” What did you mean by this?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate you bringing that up. Listen, I should have made my point more clear about what I meant. What I meant was that this is not a conventional war. It is a different kind of war. We’re fighting people who have got a dark ideology who use terrorists, terrorism, as a tool. They’re trying to shake our conscience. They’re trying to shake our will, and so in the short run the strategy has got to be to find them where they lurk. I tell people all the time, “We will stay on the on the offense. We will bring them to justice in foreign lands so we don’t have to face them here at home,” and that’s because you cannot negotiate with these people. And in a conventional war there would be a peace treaty or there would be a moment where somebody would sit on the side and say we quit. That’s not the kind of war we’re in, and that’s what I was saying. The kind of war we’re in requires, you know, steadfast resolve, and I will continue to be resolved to bring them to justice, but as well as to spread liberty. And this is one of the interesting points of the debate, Rush, is that, you know, I believe societies can be transformed because of liberty, and I believe that Iraq and Afghanistan will be free nations, and I believe that those free nations right there in the heart of the Middle East will begin to transform that region into a more hopeful place, which in itself will be a detriment to the ability to these terrorists to recruit — and that’s what I was saying. I probably needed to be a little more articulate.

RUSH: Well, it’s like saying that they’re all over the world. You’re not fighting a country here, a series of countries. You’re fighting a movement that will hide out anywhere it can, and you’re always going to have a renegade terrorist. Even if, let’s say, we wipe out Al-Qaeda. There’s some other group or individual that may spring up and blow up a bomb somewhere. That’s always going to happen because it always has.

THE PRESIDENT: Right. Really what I was saying to Lauer was, is that this is not the kind of war where you sit down and sign a peace treaty. It’s a totally different kind of war. But we will win it. Your listeners have got to know that I know we’ll win it, but we’re going to have to be resolved and firm, and we can’t doubt what we stand for, and the long-term solution is to spread freedom. I love to tell the story, Rush, about a meeting with Prime Minister Koizumi. He’s my friend. He’s the prime minister of Japan. It wasn’t all that long ago that my dad, your dad, and others dads were fighting against the Japanese, but because after World War II we believed that Japan could self-govern and could be democratic in its own fashion, Japan is no longer an enemy; it’s a friend, and so I sit down with him to help resolve issues like the North Korean peninsula. In other words, we’re working together to keep the peace. The same thing is going to happen in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that’s when I say the transformational power of liberty. That’s what I’m talking about.

This Yale student better be glad he didn’t get any closer:

A 21-year-old Yale student, posing as a volunteer at the Republican National Convention, got within 10 feet of Vice President Dick Cheney and shouted anti-war statements before being dragged away, authorities said Tuesday.

Secret Service Agent Shannon Zeigler said Cheney “was never in any harm or danger” during the incident Monday night in Madison Square Garden. The suspect, Thomas Frampton, was charged with assaulting federal officers and impeding the operation of the Secret Service.

Frampton was released on $50,000 bail and told to stay 100 feet from Cheney and President Bush. He also was ordered to give back a red convention volunteer’s shirt he used to get into the arena, along with any convention passes.

A complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan said Secret Service agents spotted Frampton carrying a “Bush-Cheney ‘04″ placard on the walkway behind Cheney’s box at 9:30 p.m. Monday. One agent instructed him to keep moving.
As the agents grabbed him, Frampton swung his right elbow in the direction of one agent, the court papers said. He continued to struggle with the agents and shout at Cheney as he was dragged away and handcuffed, the complaint said.

Federal prosecutor John M. Hillebrecht said Frampton went through elaborate efforts to get close to Cheney, including going through training sessions with convention organizers, “all the while masquerading as a Republican supporter of the president.”

Great piece from NRO that discusses one of the speakers tonight at the RNC: Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. Please print and read it when you get a chance. He’ll be a good one to watch in the future.

A rising star in the GOP.

Awwwh. How sad.

Not.

GOP 2004: Moore Won’t Return to Madison Square Garden

Following all the commotion last night, Michael Moore will not be returning to Madison Square Garden for the Republican National Convention, E&P has learned. According to editors at USA Today, which is publishing his daily column this week, Moore told them that he was choosing not to return again.

However, they said he would continue to write his daily column and they stressed that in no way did they second-guess their decision to have him write the commentary.

Last month, Ann Coulter, who had been hired by USA Today to write a column at the Democratic National Convention, quit after the editors requested many changes in her first submission.

After entering the Garden Monday night with USA Today credentials, Moore was criticized by Sen. John McCain in his speech, setting off prolonged boos and taunts in the arena.

Disgusting:

Toronto International Film Festival organizers have no intention of pulling a controversial film from the 2004 program, despite the outcry from local animal-rights activists.

“This is about freedom of expression of the filmmaker to make a intelligent, responsible film about a difficult subject,” said festival programmer Sean Farnel of his decision to schedule Casuistry: The Art Of Killing A Cat. “That’s what the festival is all about, setting the terms for debate, not stifling them.”

The 90-minute documentary examines the videotaped killing of a stray cat named Kensington at the hands of Jesse Power, Anthony Wennekers and Matt Kaczorowski in 2001.

“Anybody who allows this video to go around is just as cruel as the killers,” said Suzanne Lahaie of Freedom For Animals, the Kensington Market-based animal-rights group that intends to protest if the film is shown.

Lahaie, who describes herself as an activist for human and animal rights, hasn’t seen the movie.

She is opposed to giving the cat killers a platform to try and explain their actions and by doing so, the filmmakers and the festival are promoting “sickness and cruelty.”

Producer and co-director Linda Feesey says she and her partner became interested in the case a couple of years ago after reading the court transcripts and finding there was more to the story than was commonly reported.

“They really do regret the whole thing,” Feesey said of the killers. “They’re not trying to glorify themselves.”

I was hoping I’d be wrong about this but I’m afraid I wasn’t:

Outside a hotel in Times Square, delegates to the Republican National Convention were swarmed by protesters dressed in black and swearing at them. Blocks away, delegates engaged in shoving matches with protesters seeking to spoil their night at the theater. And outside “The Lion King” on 42nd Street, a delegate was punched by a protester who ran by.

Although the organized protests yesterday and Sunday have been largely peaceful, there has been a starkly different tone to smaller incidents in Midtown and elsewhere: angry encounters and planned harassment of convention delegates as they go out on the town.

Sometimes the delegates answer back in toe-to-toe, finger-pointing shouting matches. Other times the police, who are guarding delegate gatherings, have dispersed protesters, who move on to other locations to taunt other delegates.

The harassment of delegates came as organized protests continued to draw thousands of people. The Still We Rise march by advocates for social issues was peaceful, and a Poor People’s March, a column several blocks long, proceeded from the United Nations to the Madison Square Garden yesterday after the police decided to let it go ahead without a permit.

When marchers approached the Garden, a police detective was knocked off his scooter. He was then repeatedly kicked and punched in the head by at least one male demonstrator, the police said.

The detective, William Sample, was listed in serious condition at St. Vincent’s Manhattan Hospital, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly both visited him, the police said. There was no immediate word of an arrest in the assault, but as of 9 p.m., the police said there had been 11 protest-related arrests.

This is no time to get overconfident, but I sense a definate shift in the tides in the last few weeks regarding the Presdential race. So do the Dems:

President Bush has gained ground on Democrat John Kerry in the month of August because of “relatively small but unmistakable” shifts in the political environment, Democratic strategists said in a memo released Monday.

The polling memo by Democracy Corps, a group led by pollster Stan Greenberg and strategist James Carville, said the subtle gains by Bush have knotted the race again after Kerry had a slight advantage after the Democratic National Convention in late July.

“There is no doubt that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads (attacking Kerry’s Vietnam service) have had an impact on the race,” according to the Democracy Corps memo. Those attacks combined with the Summer Olympics have combined to “shift the focus away from Iraq and worrisome economic trends.”

The Democracy Corps analysis averaged numerous national and state polls to come up with its assessment that Bush is doing slightly better against Kerry, a judgment supported more by internal measures such as issues and candidate qualities.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll released Monday supported the Democracy Corps findings. Bush and Kerry were tied at 48 percent apiece while independent Ralph Nader was backed by 1 percent among likely voters. They are also tied among registered voters, a larger group.

Kerry has lost ground on several measures in the ABC-Post poll such as voter enthusiasm for his candidacy, his personal popularity and his ratings on such issues as education, the economy, Iraq and terrorism. Bush has gained trust on these issues during that time.

Link to the ABC-Washington Post poll.

This guy did a WONDERFUL job of pumping up the crowd. Let’s hope his speech in favor of Bush doesn’t get him blackballed from acting jobs in Hollywood.

I have to say that I take back just about everything I’ve ever said about New York Republicans after hearing Rudy Guliani’s speech last night. I loved it! Here’s a link to text of the speech.

For calling Michael Moore, who is in the convention hall covering the RNC for USAToday, a “disingenuous filmmaker” — in his speech!

Woohoo!

I’ll post the actual quote in the morning once a transcript becomes available

Tuesday update: Here’s the link to McCain’s speech and here’s the quote below:

It was between war and a graver threat. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not our critics abroad. Not our political opponents.

And certainly not a disingenuous film maker who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children held inside their walls.

To borrow a quote from a famous Democrat: “Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhh!”