TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Obama, Not Osama.
Meanwhile, In War Number Two... With all the fun and scapegoating over that NASA photo of John Kerry (note: If Kerry wins, you guys will be lucky to get funding for a trip to Boise, let alone Mars), we had almost forgotten GW Bush's grandest experiment in democratic civilization-building. So, how goes it in Iraq? Well, as the link above shows, insurgents set off a car bomb that killed 68 people outside a police station in Baghdad, and as this link shows, unemployment in Iraq is now hovering around 70 percent. So, full steam ahead there, then.
Hell: Literally, Good for Business A study by the Federal Reserve shows that countries with a widespread belief in Hell, or in some type of punishment in the afterlife, have better economies than countries without such widespread belief. I don't know what that says about the Fed being in cahoots with Satan, but I do know that this is exactly the kind of thing I want the government to be spending money on.
Election Follies in Florida, Part 157284892 The Florida Secretary of State was forced to reveal, after a Freedom of Information request from a citizens' group, that computer crashes had destroyed touchscreen voting records collected during elections in 2002, effectively removing all trace of those elections from the system.
July Surprise? Yesterday, the local conservative radio talk show host boldly announced that today, John Ashcroft will hold a press conference announcing the capture of Osama Bin Laden, which would almost assuredly derail the Democratic convention and make Bush a shoo-in in November. For your edification, here's a story that a Pakistani newspaper reported back in April, saying that the Bush administration was putting serious pressure on Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf to capture Osama "by the end of July."
Shine On, You Crazy Diamond The surgical removal of Ann Coulter from the mainstream continues apace, as USA Today fires her from a weeklong stint writing columns from the Democratic National Convention. Not a single Coulter column ran in USA Today, because she refused to make changes suggested by the editors to her first one. This article plays nice, but I've read elsewhere that the problem with Coulter's column was that it was bizarre and "unreadable" in its attacks on Democrats, who were called "the spawn of Satan" in the column. The 40ish spinster is busy making the rounds on Fox News, calling herself a victim of censorship. A sample from the column, which can be found on Coulter's web site: "My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call 'women' at the Democratic National Convention." We will leave to the reader all conclusions as to why an unmarried, strident woman in her 40s who recently moved to Miami Beach to better her chances with "real men" is so excited about "pretty-girl allies."
-Consider Arms, insinuating nothing
