The Bush recovery continues...

Jobless Rate Rises to 6.4 Percent; Highest in More Than 9 Years

Like Bush said: he's a uniter, not a divder

Power Moves May Be Uniting Hard-Liners in Iraq and Iran

U.S.: Banned arms evidence in Iraq

Before the Republicans get too excited: "U.S. OFFICIALS said the discoveries were not proof that Iraq had managed to build or obtain banned weapons of mass destruction, as President Bush asserted before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March. But they said the materials, some of which dated back to the first Gulf War, were compelling proof that Saddam was trying actively to acquire such weapons in defiance of the United Nations."

In other words, inspections and sactions were doing the job.

Labels aim big guns at small file swappers

Telling quote of the article: "Go in the stores and buy the records."

You'd think after Napster, Kazza and iTunes, the recording industry would get it through their heads that people don't want to "go in the stores." They want their music online. And as someone who just cancelled his subscription to Pressplay, most of the music isn't online, leagally anyway.

Arizona wildfire grows by a third.

Fortunately, the fire is threatening only vacation homes and the UofA.

KensAwesomeCalc, version 2.01

I fixed a rounding bug. After two hours of taking the mathematical approach (adding .5 to the result and truncating) and trying to figure out why I couldn't add a fraction to a decimal, I finally did a Google search and discovered this magical little function in C# called System.Math.Round.

Heh.

Is Bush lying? Depends on what your definition is 'is' is.

Bush Speech Overstated Iraq Report (washingtonpost.com)

Bush did not indicate that the consensus of U.S. intelligence analysts was that Hussein would launch a terrorist attack against the United States only if he thought he could not stop the United States from invading Iraq. The intelligence report had said that the Iraqi president might decide to give chemical or biological agents to terrorists, such as al Qaeda, for use against the United States only as a "last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." And it said this would be an "extreme step" by Hussein.

A scary statistic for you

"A Fox News poll last week found that almost half of Americans feel that the administration was "intentionally misleading" about Iraq's weapons, but more than two-thirds think the war was justified anyway."

Inside the Beltway

We did just about everything you can do in D.C.: Visited the Smithsonian (we actually went in only the Museum of American History), White House, Capitol building, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and Vietnam War Memorial.

I have to say that the WWII memerial going in now really disrupts the flow of the Lincoln to the Washington Monumant. Considering how overdue the WWII memorial is, you'd think they would have had the time for some better planning.

It was pretty awesome to think that so much power is concentrated into such a small geographic area. I know, I know, the power actually comes from scattered votes of the country. But so much decision-making occurs is this small niche of a city. Pretty amazing, if you ask me.

And the train stations are just so cool in the East -- little airport-like malls that overwhelm with size and architectural history.

Off to Baltimore / Washington D.C.

Andrea and I are taking Friday off to visit the Capitol. Will blog.

More Bush lies.

This time, they're about the tax cuts.

Arizona may ignore next orange alert

This ought to do wonders for tourism.

Productive weekend

I finished version 2.0 of my "Awesome Calculator" for work, with changes that include a smaller interface, rounded results, the ability to leave some fields blank, a currency exchange rate converter and automatic copying of results to Windows' clipboard.

I also updated my resume, researched this weekend's trip to Baltimore / Washington D.C. (no, I'm not going to protest) and saw "Finding Nemo," which was excellent.

And best of all, I'm all caught up on my reading.

The results are in!

In the non-daily categories, Andrea won 1st and 2nd place for page design, and I won 2nd place and honorable mention (basically, 3rd place) in technology story. Unfortunately, my archrival from the San Francisco Business Times took 1st.

Full results here.

Liar, liar

Compare what the Bushies said then to what they're saying now.

Isn't anyone else stunned at the sheer audacity of this bunch? Call Clinton a liar, but at least his were about himself -- and didn't get 150 Americans killed.

Our great leader

“Al Qaeda is on the run. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re not a problem anymore.”

-- George W. Bush
May 5, 2003

Iraq weapons hunt may take years

Of course. They were such an imminent threat that now we can't even find them.

While we were bombing Iraq...

This guy (remember him?) was planning more attacks. Thank goodness Bush & Co. have made the world so much safer.

Bush: Defender of the common man

Some Audience Members Told Not to Wear Ties for Bush Speech

Bomb attacks rock Saudi capital

Ah yes, as we can see here, Al Qaeda is nearly crippled. OK, OK, terrorists, we're leaving.