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USA: The Village Voice gives the RNC a great big welcome with a top 10 list of all the ways W screwed New York City:

1. Will any convention speaker dare mention the name of Osama bin Laden? What ever happened to Bush’s cowboy threat to “smoke ‘em” out?
2. Why was Bush so afraid of a 9-11 investigation?
3. Was the Bush team awake in the nine months before the attack?
4. Iraq plus tax cuts adds up to a deficit that will force a second-term squeeze on social programs vital to NYC.
5. Bush did OK on the $20 billion, but he’s still shortchanging us on the edges of the minimal pledge he made to a city whose economy took an $80 billion hit.
6. Senator Schumer says NY doesn’t expect a share of Idaho’s farm subsidies, so why does Idaho take a chunk of NY’s security subsidies?
7. What could be worse than lying to GZ workers and residents about the air they were breathing?
8. Bush has left most New York children behind.
9. Ten thousand NY families are in jeopardy of losing their housing subsidies and homes.
10. With NYC the No. 1 target of bio and nuclear terrorists, the go-it-alone Bush administration has torpedoed international treaties that would make us more secure.

Don’t forget that W won’t stay overnight in New York City next week. He gives his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention next Thursday and then runs like a little girly man to Pennsylvania after the balloons drop.

USA: Maureen Dowd in the New York Times provides a nice summary of the Swiftie mess: “Reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post last week made it clear that the vile Swift boaters have told wildly varying accounts, sometimes supportive of Mr. Kerry. The Times revealed that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - is that like the administration’s Clear Skies Act for spewing pollution? - has a trellis of ties to Karl Rove, the Bush family and Bush supporters…. It makes sense for W. to use surrogates to do his fighting, just as he did when he slid out of Vietnam and just as he did when he sent our troops to fight his administration’s misbegotten vanity war in Iraq.”

Meanwhile, Edwards challenges W. to call off his attack dogs, and William Rood provides more support for Kerry’s story. Where’s W? He’s cowering in Crawford this week before attending next week’s riots, er, the Republican convention in NYC.

USA: Ted Rall has a scathing indictment of the GOP as we look ahead to the coronation, er, convention in NYC. I hope this isn’t like Chicago in 1968, but Ted thinks it could get that bad.

USA: The NYT has an article on Kennedy Fried Chicken, a NYC outfit that is run by Afghan immigrants. Originality is not in their recipe: Kennedy copies as much of the Kentucky Fried Chicken formular as they can, despite a 1990 court ruling. However, the NYT writer seems to prefer Kennedy’s chicken to Yum’s greasy by-product. There are also some great “only in new York” moments in the article. A customer complaining that the soda they bought somewhere else is warm, but he wants a replacement from Kennedy. A teenager tries to negotiate his own prices.

USA: Yahoo! News - New York’s 9/11 ‘Freedom Tower’ Cornerstone Laid: There’s no mention in this article of the originally scheduled date: September 11, 2004, after the GOP coronation in NYC. Wonder why they changed their minds? Are W’s handlers getting nervous?