And France interjects again:
The head of the Figaro press group went to see [French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin] about the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq; Raffarin assured him they would soon be freed, reportedly saying, “The Iraqi insurgents are our best allies.”
Best of the Web has found an interesting story from Traverse City in Michigan:
Skunks have invaded a downtown neighborhood . . .
In a letter to City Hall, residents said nearly 30 skunks had been spotted in the area. They’ve ransacked bird feeders and trash bins, sprayed pets, crawled under houses and even strolled along the streets at midmorning.
Says one resident who dog has been sprayed three times:
“It sounds humorous, but it really isn’t . . . It’s been pretty unbearable.”
The resident’s name? Bob Sniff.
Did anyone hear about the outcome of Najaf or Samarra?
”Samarra is a beaming success story over here,” writes Lt. Col Jim Rose, a Tennessee Marine whose parents live in Old Hickory. ”We were getting ready for a take-down there right after Najaf. We told the locals, ‘Hey, see what happened in Najaf? Is that what you want? Cause we’re coming.’ It took the locals about two days to get the bad guys out” . . .
Rose verified a message I received from another Marine officer in Iraq. He provided perspective missing in the media: ”Those achievements, more than anything else … account for the surge in violence in recent days — especially the violence directed at Iraqis by the insurgents. Both in Najaf and Samarra, ordinary people stepped out and took sides with the Iraqi government against the insurgents, and the bad guys are hopping mad. They are trying to instill fear once again” . . .
”The Najaf shrine — HUNDREDS of dead women and children were brought out after Sadr left,” Rose wrote. ”They (Sadr’s supporters) rounded them up during the battle and brought them in to be executed. Why? Because they anticipated the Americans would eventually enter the shrine and walk into a media ambush. We never went in. The people of Najaf love us right now because of that. They hate Sadr and want him dead.
”Have you heard that one yet (in the media)?”
I hadn’t.
Remember the unsubstantiated allegations by CBS that George Bush was planning to reinstate the draft?
It turns out that John Kerry is actually the man calling for mandatory national servce. On his (now removed) web page:
As part of his 100 day plan to change America, John Kerry will propose a comprehensive service plan that includes requiring mandatory service for high school students and four years of college tuition in exchange for two years of national service.
Perhaps the CBS “journalistic standards” have sunk to such an extreme that they are mixing up their candidates.
Tom Daschle considers George Bush a cuddly man:
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle hugged President Bush from one end of South Dakota to the other this summer — in his own campaign commercials.
The brief embrace might seem an odd claim on re-election for the man Republicans depict as obstructionist-in-chief for the president’s congressional agenda. But Daschle is one of several candidates with a common political problem as Democrats nurse fragile hopes of gaining Senate control this fall.
From the South to South Dakota and Alaska, they are running in areas where Bush is popular — and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry not so much . . .
Democrats must gain two seats to be assured of a 51-vote majority in the Senate. The parties are virtually certain to swap two of the 34 seats on the ballot — Democrats winning an open seat in Illinois while Republicans counter in Georgia, one of five Southern states where Democratic veterans are retiring.
Of the eight seats that remain most competitive, five are in Democratic hands and three belong to Republicans, and Democrats must win seven to gain an outright majority.
IBM Corp. plans to announce today that it has built the world’s fastest supercomputer at one of its facilities in Rochester, Minn., wresting the title from a system in Japan.
Dubbed the Blue Gene/L supercomputer, IBM’s new system nudges past a nearly three-year-old computer speed record of 35.86 “teraflops,” or trillions of calculations per second, with a working speed of 36.01 teraflops . . .
The top 500 supercomputer list, posted at Top500.org, is updated twice a year; it is scheduled to be updated again in November.
The IBM system would mark the first time in three years that the world’s fastest supercomputer is located in the United States. The current record-holder, known as the Earth Simulator, is a supercomputer in Yokohama, Japan, designed to simulate earthquakes.
The word teraflops amuses me.
CBS drowns itself in partisanship:
Once again, it seems that the Democratic Party has proven itself more intelligent than its media arm, CBS. Just as it earlier refused to run with Bill Burkett’s third-rate forgeries, the Democrats have mostly stayed away from draft speculation. But last night, CBS News once again let its ideological blinders cause it massive embarrassment . . .
In a story that was a textbook example of shoddy and biased reporting, CBS reporter Richard Schlesinger used:
to scare elderly “Evening” viewers into believing that the U.S. government is poised to resume the draft.
According to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News averaged 1.8 million viewers, while CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Headline News averaged a combined total of 1.7 million. The quarter ended Sunday.
CNN came in a distant second, averaging 882,000 viewers, while MSNBC drew 421,000. Headline News averaged 226,000 in primetime, and CNBC attracted a paltry 133,000 . . .
In the key news demo, Fox News averaged 405,000 viewers in 25-54, a 44% improvement on the same period in 2003. CNN averaged 195,000 viewers in the demo, up 17%. At 115,000, MSNBC was up 34%.
Headline News averaged 75,000 viewers in the demo, up only 6% from the same frame last year. CNBC improved its performance in the demo, averaging 53,000 viewers, a 36% jump . . .
Fox News had nine of the 10 top programs during the third quarter, with O’Reilly remaining at No. 1, averaging 2.4 million viewers. The one exception was CNN’s “Larry King Live,” which was No. 6, averaging 1.3 million viewers.
Wow. And I don’t even like Bill O’Reilly . . .
France said Monday that it would take part in a proposed international conference on Iraq only if the agenda included a possible U.S. troop withdrawal . . .
Paris also wants representatives of Iraq’s insurgent groups to be invited to a conference in October or November . . .
Oh, yes, please. Let’s do pull out the American troops and send France in to negotiate with the insurgent groups. Perhaps they could assist them in constructing (and testing) their very own guillotine.
John Kerry saves the milk industry:
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry told voters in America’s Dairyland on Monday that President Bush had a secret plan that would hurt milk producers after the election.
Kerry tried to convince voters in this rural community, where he is practicing for Thursday’s debate, that he would look out for dairy farms here even though he hadn’t always in the past.
So . . . John Kerry only secretly supported Midwest dairy farmers? And learned about the secret Bush dairy farm plan . . . how?
Perhaps he got the secret information from the secret foreign leaders who secretly endorse him . . . in their own secret way.
In a way, I love John Kerry. I will be somewhat sorry when he is gone.
