Tuesday, April 06, 2004

Onion: Yahoo Launches Soul-Search Engine. 5:31:31 PM    comment []

Is George Bush the master of his domain (name)?   You might think that after all the publicity garnered by parody site Whitehouse.org, the Bush/Cheney campaign would have been careful to reserve all relevant domain names.   But you would be wrong. BushCheney04.com is the latest offering from the Whitehouse.org folks. Check it out. 12:21:53 PM    comment []

Alert reader Roch Smith Jr. fact-checks George W. Bush on the North Carolina economy. Bush spoke yesterday in Charlotte at an event that raised over $1.5 million for his campaign, but he saved his bloopers for a talk at Central Piedmont Community College. Bush: "More people own a home here in North Carolina than before." Um, before what? Census data shows that NC home ownership rose in the late '90s, but since 2001 has declined to pre-1995 levels. Maybe he means more of the people who helped raise $1.5 mil at lunch have second homes at Fig'Yate. Bush:"Six years ago, the largest export of this state was tobacco. Just six years ago. And now, it's computer equipment. That's an amazing transformation of an economy, isn't it? Well, it would be more amazing if true. Computer and electronic products already dwarfed tobacco six years ago -- as did textiles, an industry Bush mischaracterized as trailing tobacco in importance in recent NC history. Facts matter. Bush painted a picture of North Carolina's economy that suggests he doesn't know, or doesn't care, that much about what goes on here. Thanks for the research, Roch -- but shouldn't the big NC newspapers be fact-checking politicians instead of just transcribing their words? 11:14:51 AM    comment []

Via Matt Gross, a look at the big training center for Blackwater Security Consulting in northeastern NC.   He also links to a Washington Post article about Blackwater's active combat role in the current fighting in Iraq:   Blackwater...sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine...The role of Blackwater's commandos in Sunday's fighting in Najaf illuminates the gray zone between their formal role as bodyguards and the realities of operating in an active war zone. Thousands of armed private security contractors are operating in Iraq in a wide variety of missions and exchanging fire with Iraqis every day, according to informal after-action reports from several companies. Again, the larger story lost in the blog-fight over Kos' nasty remarks about the dead in Fallujah is the role of these contractors. Tucker Carlson's Esquire article suggests they operate with few constraints -- and as the comment at Kos says, Iraqis will rightly perceive "them" as "us" when something goes wrong. 8:34:24 AM    comment []

King Kaufman on UConn's run to the NCAA championship: "It's not that Connecticut wasn't challenged, it's that the Huskies were beating people with baseball bats." 8:14:12 AM    comment []