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Shed no tears for Doug Wead, who secretly taped a younger George W. Bush and recently let the New York Times listen in.
Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters writes:
Some had noted that the tapes revealed by Wead to two Times reporters revealed little that damaged Bush, and indeed may have affirmed his sincerity as a politician and a Christian. A few thought that the entire exercise may have been engineered to send a warning to the Bushes, however, that Wead had more salacious information that he was withholding. The Times notes towards the end of the article that in the excerpts they heard, Wead pressed Bush for a place on his campaign staff but was repeatedly rebuffed. However one wishes to spin Wead’s actions, though, one fact comes through very clearly: just the act of recording these conversations surreptitiously demonstrates a perverted sense of ethics and certainly shows that Wead, despite his protestations above, values his own pocketbook more than personal relationships.
Susan at Suburban Guerilla has asked “Google maestros” for help.
Go to your local newspaper site, or TV station site, and do a search for “local man/woman killed wounded Iraq.” Weed out the duplicates, total the numbers, and then check them against the casualty lists, because there’s something funny going on here.
I started to notice something several months ago. The local papers would interview the mother of someone killed or wounded in Iraq, and more often than not, there’d be a bitter aside: “Of course, for some reason, he’s not included in the official totals.”
Her suspicion: “They’re lying about the numbers. Think about it — it’s absurd to think they wouldn’t, considering everything else they’ve done.”
While not quite as high-profile as the Oscars or the Grammys, the 2004 Koufax Award winners were announced yesterday. For those thinking baseball, think that other great American pastime: blogging. (At least liberal blogging.)
“The Koufax Awards are intended to help forge a sense of community among lefty bloggers and their readership,” writes Dwight Meredith at Wampum, which organized the blog-off. “We hope to make introductions of bloggers to each other and to readers. We also hope to create a sense that we all live in the same virtual neighborhood and that it is a very nice neighborhood indeed.”
This year Daily Kos was ranked as the best blog. Winner of the best post award was an entry by Juan Cole of Informed Comment entitled “If America were Iraq, What Would It Be Like?”
Finally — virtual envelope, please — the coveted best new blog award. And the winner is: Amanda Marcotte of Mouse Words.
With victory in her pocket, Marcotte now feels free to make a confession:
I don’t actually type my entries so much as stomp back and forth through my office wearing a diaphanous robe with a feather collar and feather-topped mule slippers while smoking from a cigarette holder, drinking a martini and dictating my blog entries to my shirtless cabana boy, whose muscles are surprisingly rippled for someone who sits at a computer all day.
Prizes? We don’t need no stinkin’ prizes, say the bloggers on the right. The lefties are predictable, tired and, well, stupid, writes The Scourge, who predicts: “Liberal blogging is going to continue to bore until it gets a new suit of clothes. We can see its exposed crotch through the rags it’s sporting now, and, well, it isn’t a pleasant sight.”
That’s the trouble with a diaphanous robe.
Finally, reacting with lightning-like speed to a CJR Daily staple, Slate at long last unveils a new feature by Bidisha Banerjee called … “Today’s Blogs”! Where in the blue hell do you suppose they got an idea like that?
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Correction: This post has been corrected to delete a reference to Daily Kos as winner of the Koufax Award for best blog in 2004 (the winner was Atrios).
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