TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Can't Leave Blogging Alone, the Game Needs Me.

WHAT A FUCKING JOKE It was for this that the farmers of Lexington and Concord went out on the morning of April 19, 1775 to confront the armies of the king. It was for this that Col. Joshua Chamberlain and the men of the 20th Maine stood against the storm of Pickett's charge at Little Round Top. It was for this that the men of the United Auto Workers occupied the GM plants in Flint for the right to organize a union. So that an Austrian son of a Nazi could stand before a political convention at Madison Square Garden and call critics "girlie men." Still, on the bright side, this speech includes the first time in the history of human civilization that someone has compared hearing Richard Nixon speak to "a breath of fresh air."

Meanwhile, On Planet Earth... While Rudy "The Lisping Failure" Giuliani is busy comparing Bush to Churchill and Roosevelt (why not just compare him to Superman and Green Lantern?) and talking about how America has been made safe, the casualties in Bush's Iraq war are now approaching 1,000 dead and 7,000 wounded. During the Falklands War, Crass wrote a song about Margaret Thatcher called "How Does It Feel to Be the Mother of A Thousand Dead?" Last night, watching the Girls Gone Wild Bush twins giggle about being drunk bar sluts, I gained some insight on how it feels to be the daughter of a pampered yokel.

Your Name is a Curse on the Lips of Millions At least one good thing has come out of the Republican occupation of the NYC: hundreds of thousands of protesters have mobilized, reminding the Stetson-clad GOP storm troopers that they don't belong in the big city and aren't welcome. Compare the anemic show of lefty protest in Boston with the hundreds of thousands of marchers, demonstrators, legal observers, and pissed-off New Yorkers now expressing their outrage that the GOP has engendered by coronating King George in the Big Apple.

It Wasn't a Bad Year for Everyone The average pay of CEOs went up about 9 percent last year, according to Business Week - but not for CEOs who outsourced jobs. The pay of the CEOs at the 50 firms that outsourced the most jobs went up an astonishing 46 percent in 2003, compared to a 2 percent increase for the average American worker (I helped bring that number down by getting a 0.0 percent raise). Another awesome statistic from George Bush's America.

Wednesday's Theme: Hatred and Vilification of Our Enemies The GOP has been pulling a real bait-and-switch at the convention, putting moderates up to speak in prime time while allowing the real nutjobs three-minute slots during the day. Case in point: If you had watched last night and didn't know anything about the Republican Party, you'd think they were about civil rights, immigrants, and not blowing a fuse when your bar slut daughters get bounced from a Yale bar for using a fake ID. It's worth watching C-SPAN to see the other side, though. Like convention speaker Sheri Drew, who compares supporters of gay marriage to German supporters of Adolf Hitler before World War II. Drew says that "it may seem a bit extreme to imply a comparison between the atrocities of Hitler and what is happening in terms of contemporary threats against the family - but maybe not." Maybe not: the moderate face of the Republican Party.

-Consider Arms, apologies for the absence, but I had to tunnel my way out of a free speech zone