Looks like another GOP tactic backfired

Kerry's Vietnam record draws praise, questions

An examination of his record, supplemented by interviews with the candidate, his crewmates and some skeptics, found little to undermine Kerry's portrayal of his service.

Veterans of various wars greet him at the airport on his campaign stops, and John Hurley, national director of Veterans for Kerry, said 11,000 have signed up to support Kerry. With few exceptions, those who fought by his side, and the other veterans who support him today, are startled that anyone would question his valor.

Kerry's service evaluations, many of which were posted on his Web site this week, effusively cite his gallantry, his commitment to his service and the admiration of his men. In the coming weeks, his campaign will launch a series of ads promoting his military record -- an indication that he will continue to run on his military résumé.

Kerry campaign provides some military records

From Kerry MSNBC: "Conservative commentators, talk radio hosts and some newspapers editorials have questioned whether Kerry was deserving of his three Purple Hearts, fueling questions about his Navy service from 1966 to 1970 and the seriousness of his injuries."

In other words, chickenhawks who haven't served a single day of wartime duty.

Did Saudis assure Bush on oil prices?

From MSNBC: "The White House Monday declined to comment on a report in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward that a Saudi Arabian ambassador had promised the Bush administration that it would lower oil prices to help boost the U.S. economy in time for the November presidential election."

Did not comment, folks. As is, "did not deny."

As long as he was't lying about sex...

From Sunday's 60 Minutes:

Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this.

Why is no one calling for special hearings on this, or better yet, impeachment? Woodward goes on to reveal how the Bushies told the foreign, terrorism-funding, non-democratic government of Saudi Arabia about our war plans before we briefed Secretary of State Colin Powell. Where's Ann Coulter and her shrill accusations of treason?

I wasn't the only one who noticed the inconsistency...

So did Slate's William Saletan.

Depends on What the Meaning of "Polls" Is
Bush says he doesn't use polls. An adviser says he did.

For the record, I posted mine first.

Bush Takes Strategic No-Remorse Stance

From the NY Times: "One adviser said the White House had examined polling and focus group studies in determining that it would be a mistake for Mr. Bush to appear to yield."

This from the same president who said on Monday: "And as to whether or not I made decisions based upon polls, I don’t. I just don’t make decisions that way."

Man, what a bald-faced liar.

And now, a word from our Dear Leader...

Quagmire

Shiite rebels in control

"The battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold continued for a fourth day Thursday, and five more U.S. troops were reported killed. In Iraq's south, militiamen loyal to an anti-U.S. Shiite cleric controlled large swaths of three cities."

That's 40 U.S. soldiers killed this week. Let's express that as a ratio of U.S. deaths per weapon of mass destruction confiscated. Oh yeah, you can't divide by zero.

Yay!

Verizon to offer the Treo 600 From Engadget

They haven't said anything official yet, and there's nothing more than a "Coming Soon" on their homepage, but we have some good news that we think is going to make a lot of people happy: Verizon Wireless is finally going to carry the Treo 600. And it sure took them long enough, too. Sprint was offering the phone nearly six months ago, and we'd almost thought that Verizon was going to skip the Treo 600 altogether and just wait for the 610 to come out.

Anti-U.S. Uprising Widens in Iraq; Marines Push Deeper Into Fallujah

I can't wait until Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and all their acolytes start blaming Demoncrats bad attittude for this miserable failure. In other words, we didn't clap our hands hard enough, so Tinkerbell died.

Audio Codec Quality Shootout

This taste test by Extreme Tech makes me feel a little better about my hard-thought decision a few months ago to encode and store all of my CDs in WMA format instead of MP3. Everything I'd read said WMA (Series 9) was better, but I worried about compatibility issues: a lot of devices support WMA, but nearly everything supports MP3. What if I ever wanted to buy an iPod?

The clincher for me was Windows Media Player's automatic song-organizing and downsampling abilities. It fetches album art in the background and integrates that info into Windows native file system -- unlike Apple's iTunes, win which you have to open an application to get all the relevant info. The downsampling feature means it can shrink files on the fly while transferring them to a portable audio device.

Well as it turns out, the Media Player can do that with MP3s, too. And that made me wonder if I made the right choice going with WMA. Apparently, I did. Now, if only Apple would back down and let the iPod play WMA files.

(I expected a deluge of angry comments from Mac fans on the article, but several posters make some valid criticism of the article's methodology.)

Maybe Bush is a uniter after all...

Muslim rivals unite in Baghdad uprising

More flowers of welcome from the Iraqis

12 Marines killed in new fighting

I'm guessing the Bush campaign will be trotting out those "Mission Accomplished" photos anytime soon. It's time to fire Don Rumsfield and send in more troops. There's no realistic way to pull out of Bush's mistake now, so we need to suck it up and do the job right.

And of course, fire Bush in November.

What if...

I'm doing research for a story I'm doing on the 40th anniversary of the mainframe computer and came across an interesting tidbit: IBM in the late 1970s was toying with the idea of rebranding Atari computers to create a PC line -- it's attempt to take on these crazy Apple IIs and TRS 80s that were so popular at the time.

IBM's executive council rejected the idea, and as we all know, IBM built its own PC line, albeit using off-the-shelf components. The rest is history. (In a last gasp, Atari would eventually develop its own line of IBM-compatible PCs.)

I can't help thinking whether the Atari platform would have become standard had IBM had gone ahead with the idea. Would the platform, which would presumably be harder to clone, have become so dominant? Would Motorola (which made the chip) be the dominant CPU maker rather than Intel? Given my experience with Atari, would I have become a programmer instead of a journalist?

Did someone say 'quagmire?'

Rioting sweeps Iraqi cities; 8 U.S. soldiers killed

Now that the Shia hate us along with the Sunni, the only group left to alienate are the Kurds.

Not to beat a dead horse, but...

Powell no longer sure that Iraqi trailers were weapons labs

My career has peaked

Slashdot linked to a story of mine. I'm afraid to read the comments, though. The /. crowd can be pretty harsh.

Mystery solved

Police: Evidence doesn't support abduction claim

For example, the honor student told police that after taking her at knifepoint, her captor used duct tape, rope, cold medicine, a gun and a knife to keep her under his control.

Although those items were found in the marsh where she was located, buttressing her account, police obtained videotape Thursday that showed Seiler entering a Madison store and buying those items, he said.

Also, during the time she said she was held captive, two witnesses reported having seen her apparently "walking freely" in different areas of the city, he said.

Someone used her computer during the time she was missing. Also, he said, the computer had been used to look up a five-day weather forecast and search wooded areas in and around Madison.

As I suspected...

Police: Wisconsin Student Changes Story

"She initially told police she was abducted at knifepoint from outside her apartment early Saturday. Assistant Police Chief Noble Wray said Friday she changed her story when investigators confronted her with inconsistencies in her account. "

Good thing to keep in mind for Friday's jobs report

From Eschaton.

So, let's choose our criteria in advance. Anything under 140K is seriously bad. A number between 140K and 240K isn't particularly good, but at least a sign that things could be picking up. And, anything under 306K is proof that the tax cuts are not working as promised.