Remember how the Microsoft Zune was all set up to be an Apple killer? How “the Social” with WiFi sharing (DRM’s to three plays, of course) was going to blow the iPod out of the water and eat up Apple’s market share?

Okay, you’ve have long figured out that the Zune did no such thing. But Microsoft was shouting from the rooftops some big news a few weeks ago: we sold out two millionth Zune!!! Wow! Two million Zunes! What an accomplishment! Even better than June last year, when the Zune hit the one-million mark ahead of schedule! Two million Zunes in just over eighteen months! Never mind that Apple sold 76 million iPods in the same time period (not including iPhone sales). Never mind that The iPod is sold worldwide, while the Zune is still a U.S.-only product (though Canada is getting the Zune soon!). Never mind that the Zune is not growing in sales–they sell 1 million units every nine months, no increase.

Dan Dilger, although biased, does a pretty thorough job explaining how and why the Zune is stuck in nowhere’s-ville.

But Microsoft is not done yet, not by a long shot! They’ve got a Big New Idea, coming soon! Bigger than selling Zunes in Canada! Is it a Zune Phone? No. Touch-screen Zune? No. Zune in a few more colors? Maybe, but not this time. No, the big new idea to make the Zune break out is… Ads! Yes, Microsoft is making the Zune even better by adding ads to the Zune Social web site, and maybe bringing ads to the Zune itself!*

How could anyone resist that! Eat our dust with your puny 3G iPhone in more than five dozen countries across the world, Apple!

*Unfortunately, I am not making this up.

If you’re in the mood for sleaze, check out a political ad run by a Republican candidate (and incumbent) for Congress. Basically, it attacks the Democratic candidate’s “San Francisco values,” demonstrating that by having three slutty-looking swingers partying it up, bumping and grinding. I’ve lived in San Francisco and grew up in the area, and this doesn’t come any closer to representing the values of the area than a seedy strip club in Missouri represents theirs. But apparently, this passes for kosher in conservative Missouri politics.

I reflected on how people would react if, say, a Massachusetts liberal were to put out an ad representing rural/heartland values by showing gun-toting redneck hicks drinking beer and picking their noses in front of a pickup truck with a Confederate flag on the side. Such a politician would instantly be excoriated, blasted out of the water as an “elitist.”

What it comes down to is the fact that not just ads showing such “San Francisco” values, but pretty much all criticisms of the same sort–attacking either urban/coastal or liberal values as “elitist”–this is in fact the true “elitism.” The same people who claim that liberals are prancing around thinking they are better than everyone else are themselves the ones with the superiority complex; they think that their values are better than those of others. The values I remember from the San Francisco area were pretty much respectful of a wide variety of views and beliefs; it is an accepting, big-tent culture, with “tolerance” being a major theme. I don’t see much tolerance or acceptance among the brand of people who complain about “San Francisco values.”

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A new study:

In the “first nationally representative survey of teachers concerning the teaching of evolution,” the authors show that one in eight high school biology teachers present creationism as a scientifically valid alternative to Darwinian evolution. While this number does not reflect public demand–38% of Americans would prefer that creationism to be taught instead of evolution–it does represent a disconnect between legal rulings, scientific consensus, and classroom education.

Before you think that one in eight is not bad, or even, “what’s wrong with introducing creationism alongside evolution,” consider that this is similar to one in eight Medical School teachers telling their students to consider prayer as a scientifically valid alternative to antibiotics. And then consider whether or not you’d want to be treated at the hospital staffed by graduates of those classes.

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Finally! Rumors of the iPhone coming out in Japan. The carrier: NTT DoCoMo, as I predicted. Apparently, all the attention crashed the Apple Insider web site, which I could not access as of this time. However, the rumors only say that Apple is “close to signing deals” with the Japanese and Korean carriers, and has no specifics about when the iPhone will be available–and Japan is rather infamous for getting stuff late.

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Uh oh. Conservatives are starting to talk about “character” again. I guess, after eight years, they must miss being able to use the word in public when referring to their candidate for president.

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From Virginia:

A federal appeals court panel in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday struck down a Virginia law that made it a crime for doctors to perform what the law called “partial birth infanticide.”

Good. “Partial birth abortion,” a political (not medical) term in this case escalated to “infanticide,” is nothing more than a manufactured straw man intended to stand in for abortion in general. The idea is to vilify the entire practice by choosing the least-commonly practiced (less than one-fifth of one percent of all abortions) but most-easily vilified form of abortion, and making a campaign of it, completely ignoring the medicine or the ethics involved in the process.

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Ewww. An off-duty Japanese railway worker was arrested for forcibly kissing a woman on a train right here in Ikebukuro. Reportedly, he was so drunk that he doesn’t remember what happened, which only makes the image worse. Imagine that guy sticking his tongue down your throat–or your wife’s. From the article:

His employer was apologetic about the incident. “We’re sorry about the case. We’ll improve our guidance of employees,” said a spokesman for Seibu Railway.

Yeah. Be sure to give those employee seminars about not to get completely smashed and sexually assault women. That oughta do it. I mean, such “guidance” is stupid: any employee who doesn’t know better shouldn’t be working there in the first place.

No word in the article about whether or not the guy would be fired.

Maybe somebody can explain this to me. I know I am biased towards Obama, but I am pretty certain nonetheless that Hillary has given Obama far more grief in terms of attacks than has come the other way around. Even if you subtract the who-shot-first part of the equation, Hillary is still more guilty of bashing her opponent than Obama is.

So why are Hillary supporters claiming to be more likely to shun Obama in the general election than Obama supporters are to shun Hillary? What, exactly, did Obama do to make Hillary voters so vindictive? Was it something he said that was somehow worse than anything Hillary said? Was the way he ran his campaign that much worse than the way Hillary ran hers? Is there a double-standard in play here? Is it that Hillary supporters saw this nomination as simply belonging to Clinton fair and square, and Obama stole it from her unjustly? Or is it that women who believed this to be a woman’s “turn” to become president saw the dream slip away from them, and they’re so angry that they’d sooner vote for a candidate who opposes their rights and would snub them once he gained office?

That’s what seems to be suggested in this NY Times story, which features women who support Hillary being outraged that their candidate didn’t win. One quote: “We, the most loyal constituency, are being told to sit down, shut up and get to the back of the bus.” Beg pardon? This suggests that Obama won because democratic voters hated the idea of a woman president and so voted for the man–this despite the demographic data suggesting the opposite, that Obama was working far more against a racial boundary than Hillary was a gender boundary. Hillary lost not because she’s a woman, but because her campaign was run by a few key incompetents who didn’t look ahead very far or strategize very well, and Obama ran a very smart, grass-roots campaign. He had more general appeal and charisma, not more testosterone.

If anything, there is a bit of projection and role-reversal involved:

“There’s just been an attitude that if you aren’t voting for Barack Obama, then you’re a racist,” said Cowley, 49, a mother of four from Massachusetts who has vowed to never back the senator from Illinois. “I just find that intolerable. I feel like when the members of the media talk about how [Obama’s supporters] would react, they say, ‘Well, we can’t take the vote away from African Americans.’ Well, excuse me, there’s a higher percentage of women.”

Where did the idea come in that voting against Obama is racist? Voting against Obama just because he’s black is racist, just as voting against him because you want a woman to win is sexist (tempered only by the fact that such votes are for a woman rather than against a man, just as many black votes for Obama are for a black rather than against a white. But it’s still race- or gender-based, not reason-based). Nobody claimed California was racist when it voted for Hillary by a 9% margin; West Virginia was different because a lot of people were voting because of the color issue. But note how the speaker in the above paragraph turns things around at the end–suggesting that the idea of “taking the vote away” from a black candidate is “intolerable,” and then pointing out that women outnumber blacks–as to suggest that there would be a greater injustice in “taking the vote away” from a female candidate. The earlier quote about being “sent to the back of the bus” is an ever plainer iteration of this idea, that voting for Obama is somehow a slap in the face to women–with the inference being that Hillary should win because she’s a woman. The sensible answer is very simple: race and gender should not matter–neither one.

And will the hard-core Hillary supporters really be so spectacularly self-defeating as to vote for McCain in the fall? I just find that too hard to fathom, honestly. I know the idea of a woman becoming president is more than just empowering for many women in America, it is a breakthrough idea that would be life-changing for that constituency. But do you respond to defeat by burning your own house down? At this point, I really don’t like Hillary very much at all because of some of the things she did, but if she somehow got the nomination, no matter how down and dirty, you’d have to force me to vote for McCain at gunpoint.

Am I being too divisive or insensitive to suggest that these Hillary-supporters-for-McCain types are simply nuts?

It looks like Hillary’s campaign is falling prey to the perception of Obama’s inevitability: Gallup has Obama breaking out with a 16-point national lead, the biggest he’s had, and the latest in a 4-day trend that has taken Obama from a 4-point lead of 48%-44% to the 16-point lead of 55%-39%. Whether this will affect Democratic voting in Oregon and Kentucky is yet to be seen. Also to be seen is whether this is a true trend indicating consensus on his nomination and will continue, or if it is a statistical burp and Obama will fall back down to a smaller lead again.

The White House has accused NBC of “Deceitful Editing” of an interview with Bush. NBC’s response: No we di-‘unt!

I won’t get involved in judging all this, aside to say that if the Bush White House wants to complain about NBC’s “deceitful editing” of the Bush statement on appeasement, the I want to complain about the Bush White House’s deceitful editing of intel leading up to the Iraq War.

You can’t rustle cattle and then cry “thief!”

The music labels are at it again, this time with all-new but oh-so-familiar dizzying heights of greed. This time: Apple wants to add the ability to purchase downloadable music over the iPhone via a 3G broadband connection. The stupid part: the music labels want to charge more for that.

You got it: download a song via iTunes on your computer, you pay one price; download the same song on your iPhone, you pay a premium.

Why? Because they can. At least with ringtones, there’s a premise, albeit a phony one, for charging extra: the music is used in a significantly different way. Your phone rings, it uses the song–and if I understand things right, you can set a different song depending on who calls. It’s still highway robbery, as the spiffy part is in the software modification to link caller ID to change the sound file used to designate a ring, not in the actual music file itself, which you might already own anyway. But the music labels demand the money, so you pay more, even though it’s only a partial use of the song–and even though Apple charges an extra 99 cents for the ringtone, that is actually a low price: ringtones can cost a few bucks on other services.

But for downloading a song over your phone you pay extra? That’s beyond greedy, it’s flat-out indescribable. There is not even a phony premise for charging more for songs you download over a telephone connection, none. The only thing I can think of is that you might get the sudden urge to hear a song so badly that you can’t wait to get to a computer. And when was the last time that happened?

No wonder Apple is fighting it: the premium would reduce the feature to a seldom-used luxury, as most people would see it for what it is: a rip-off. A few people would use it, paying the extra money to look or feel cool, but it would probably fall off rapidly once they realized that others were laughing at them.

I know that the idea in economics is to charge what the market will bear, but there is a more fundamental principle, one might even call it a moral one: you charge for services rendered. If you do not extra work, you are not paid for it. Yes, I know, not the real world, but the moral pricing principle has an effect on what people perceive. Like charging more for bottled tap water than you pay for gasoline, or paying more for a black MacBook than a white MacBook, you’re paying more for an idea than for actual resources or effort. In some cases, it works, but even when it does, people who see through it recognize the dishonesty. Downloading music over a cell phone costs the record companies not one fraction of a penny more than it does over a computer connection. They just see the opportunity to charge more, figure people are stupid enough to do it, so there it is. Economics in action.

Me? Don’t ever count on me using that service. And though I wouldn’t mind using certain ringtones, I’m not going to do it if I have to pay more; instead, I’ll jailbreak the phone and use the music I already own in any damned way I please. As far as I’m concerned, premiums for ringtones and cell phone downloads are a sucker tax. Some people say that lottery tickets are a tax on stupidity, but at least with lottery tickets, you’re buying the ability to add a bit of excitement to your fantasies of wealth; with cell phone music premiums, you’re just a sucker.

Right now, there’s one hell of a rain and wind storm out there. I have my exercise equipment on the balcony, and bought a motorcycle cover to protect it from the rain. Last night I draped it over my elliptical trainer, tied it down tight, and until a few minutes ago, it was doing just fine. Then I heard a few loud thunks during one of the wind howls, and saw that the machine was tipped over (it had been firmly set against a wall) and the cover gone.

It’s probably somewhere over Saitama Prefecture by now. I just hope the trainer is more resistant to rust than I imagine.

Here’s a compilation of McCain clips which demonstrates a slightly less-than-desirable level of consistency in the candidate.

Some of the stuff, I am sure, anybody could get caught in (like forgetting he said something), and some of the stuff might be inaccurate on details (some but not all of his “tax cut” comments may have been talking about different tax cuts), but the majority of clips here show true examples of McCain talking out of both sides of his mouth, or just straight-out lying.

I’d be interested to see what kind of a video could be constructed about Obama. I tried looking on YouTube and viewed more than a dozen videos, but none did what the McCain video above does–show the candidate’s own words in direct conflict with his own words. The Obama videos either depend on opinion, accusations, parsing, and even attacks by opponents, but not his own words against himself. Except, of course, by taking words out of context and using creative editing.

For example, the only one that came close to finding an internal contradiction so clearly cut off an explanation by Obama why it was not that it was rather laughable. The clip shows an ABC debate where they get Obama to pledge not raising taxes on the middle class, Obama categorizing that to be up to $200,000 or $250,000, then they “catch” him with an increase on the payroll tax cap, cutting him off just when he says, “let me finish my point here.” After that, he explains that he could exempt people between $97,000 and $200,000, but this is not included in the “double talk” video..

If anyone knows of a video where Obama is captured in a true example of double-talk, please let me know.

From Andrew Sullivan’s “Dissent of the Day,” an excellent example of the “Either/Or” Fallacy:

I believe – and have for some time – that the struggle we face is as much between those of us who believe that there is evil in the world and it cannot – will not – go away with appeasement and those who believe that if we can just find the right words that those who hate us will all of a sudden change their ways OR of we just leave them alone “they” will leave us alone.

See? To this person, you have two choices: expect hostile nations to be implacable enemies, or expect them to be inconsequential. Diplomacy is not about changing a bitter foe into a nice guy, it’s about working things out enough so that things get better instead of worse. It might be a way of making a deal, where both parties compromise so that neither is satisfied, but both are satisfied enough so that war can be averted. Sometimes it’s about showing people on both sides the views, needs, fears, and necessities of the other, and finding a way to make them mesh in a peaceful manner. Or sometimes, diplomacy is, as Wynn Catlin said, “the art of saying ‘nice doggie!’ until you can find a rock.”

The writer’s words line up nicely with the Bush philosophy–“If you’re not with us, then you’re against us.” The enemy will never behave, so don’t even try–they must be defeated, anything else is coddling. No middle ground. No compromise. In other words, no diplomacy. That’s why they reach for Hitler, and not Gorbachev, as their example–Hitler fits their bill perfectly. And that explains so many of this administration’s abject failures. Not just abroad, but at home as well–there is no room for compromise with Republicans, or at least so little that it makes almost no difference.

It also, however, describes the foreign policy mindset of the right wing. It’s why they hate the United Nations, and instead want something like McCain’s “League of Democracies,” which is shorthand for “a bunch of countries that will do whatever we want them to do and give use more credibility.” In other words, another “Coalition of the Willing.” The United Nations is hated by conservatives because it does not always do the bidding of the United States. It’s why right-wingers demand that any multi-national force where American soldiers are serving must be led by American officers–the idea of American soldiers under foreign command is appalling to them, but they think it natural that soldiers of other countries would serve happily under our command.

It is the quintessential Ugly American, the xenophobe venturing abroad. We are the sole arbiters of what is right and what is wrong. Do what we say or else. We will not respect you, but you had better respect us; we are the natural leaders of the world. It is nationalism, it is arrogance, it is ego and a lack of compassion.

Time for a change.

For those conservatives who think it’s no big deal that Bush made a domestic political jab on foreign soil, remember that the Dixie Chicks were absolutely deluged with hateful criticism when they criticized Bush. The hatred gushed not simply because they said they were embarrassed by Bush–but because they did so on foreign soil (in London, to be specific).

That’s the protocol that Bush violated: prominent Americans traveling abroad are not supposed to criticize their own while on foreign soil. Doing so at home is okay–but not when abroad.

McCain’s direct statement:

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,’’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. ”I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.’’

Then, McCain’s policy adviser announced:

SHUSTER: Nancy, does the McCain campaign believe that talking to our enemies is the same as appeasing them?

PFOTENHAUER: We have never used the term appeasement and you know that.

SHUSTER: But the president did. […]

PFOTENHAUER: We have specifically not used the term appeasement.

Um… OK. So, Pfotenhauer either doesn’t know what she’s talking about, or she’s lying. Great.

But here’s my question, relating to McCain’s statement that “it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.”

The hostages came home at the exact moment Reagan was taking office; Reagan was never president at a time when negotiations could have taken place. McCain seems to be suggesting that Reagan’s negotiation policies were so amazingly tough, that the Iranians released the hostages before Reagan had even said a word.

He also seems to forget that when hostages were taken on his watch, Reagan not only talked with Iran, but he in fact directly appeased them, selling them weapons and supplies, in direct violation of his own stated policy, in exchange for hostage releases. Reagan continued his secret policy of appeasement for years, in fact, probably causing more hostages to be taken, while he continued to supply Iran with arms.

So, why isn’t the media challenging McCain’s romanticization of Reagan’s actions? It’s a clear lie–McCain was in Congress during the Iran/Contra hearings, he could not have forgotten about it. But after immediately recognizing this lie, I did a search, and found no media attention to it whatsoever. Only the Democratic party and other blogs picked up on it.

The Liberal Media™ at it again!

Update:

Here is Obama’s response to McBush’s “Appeasement” accusation, in which Obama hits on all the high points, all the lies and errors. It’s quite measured, methodical, and comprehensive, and well-delivered… so naturally, McCain called it a “hysterical diatribe.” Presumably McCain used those word because he wanted to engage in civil, high-minded debate like he promised.

As much as Bush & McCain made fools of themselves in the last week, nothing they did could touch the inappropriate, hypocritical, bullying remarks Bush made addressing the Knesset to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary of nationhood. Bush not only violated the general protocols that say you don’t use foreign podiums nor official appearances at major events to toss out political attacks, he also got his facts wrong and made a baldly hypocritical accusation against Barack Obama:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ”Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.“ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Oh, where to start. First of all, Bush apparently is not aware of what the word “appeasement” means. In short, it means to “pacify or placate someone by acceding to their demands.” Not talking to them–giving in to them. If Bush thinks that talking to someone is the same as appeasing him, then he has just accused Ronald Reagan, not to mention countless other American leaders, of being filthy appeasers.

Second, Bush is clearly trying to attack Barack Obama here. There is no parsing necessary to figure that out: Bush uses the weasel words “some seem to believe,” which he routinely uses when he wants to refer to Democrats without being held responsible. It is clear who he is talking about–Obama is the only prominent politician currently in the spotlight for talks with countries like Iran and Syria (though he balks at Hamas). Bush claimed he was not attacking Obama specifically, but with Obama the only prominent voice, and with the White House press secretary letting slip that she was “not going to get into ’08 politics” in reference to Bush’s remarks, it appears clear to just about everyone on the planet that this is exactly what Bush was trying to do. If, by some wild chance, Bush’s remarks had no relation at all to Obama, the remark was still incredibly inappropriate because any rational observer would have instantly made that connection–as just about every observer, including most right-wingers gleeful at high-level Obama attacks, immediately saw.

Not to mention that, as Laura Rozen points out, Bush has–by his own definition–been a serial “appeaser”:

Beyond the fact that Bush’s own administration has repeatedly offered to negotiate with Tehran should Iran suspend uranium enrichment, and that his top diplomat in Iraq has talked with his Iranian counterparts, as well as his former ambassador to Afghanistan, both with the White House blessing, as well as the ongoing negotiations with Pyongyang, Libya, and the Syrian deputy foreign minister’s visit to Annapolis; beyond those recent demonstrated exceptions in action to Bush’s rhetoric (I guess the word for it is “hypocrisy”): It’s also worth pointing out, as several Israeli security officials and political observers have recently done to me here, a bit of recent history Bush neglected to mention at Israel’s parliament. That Israel and the Palestinian Authority have chiefly him to thank for Hamas having a degree of political legitimacy it otherwise would not have had. After all, they point out, it was the Bush administration that “twisted the arm” of Israeli and Palestinian leaders against considerable resistance and skepticism on their part to allow the Palestinian militant group Hamas to run in 2006 Palestinian elections that Hamas won — an outcome to its policy interventions that the Bush administration once again failed to anticipate.

So, not only did Bush approve of “appeasement” with many “terrorist and radicals,” but his own ham-handed and actual appeasement to Hamas in 2006 allowed them to win their current place in power.

Apparently fearing that he would be left out of the publicity that Bush generated, McCain took the opportunity to take an “unrelated” potshot at Obama:

Meanwhile, in Columbus, Ohio, McCain said he took the White House at its word, but then he weighed into the spat himself, saying: “This does bring up an issue that we will be discussing with the American people, and that is, why does Barack Obama, Senator Obama, want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism?”

Asked if Obama was an appeaser, McCain said Obama must explain why he wants to talk with leaders like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and added that Obama’s position was a serious error. “It shows naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country that says Israel is a stinking corpse, that is dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel. My question is, what does he want to talk about?”

The hypocrisy: Not only has Obama insisted that he would not speak to Hamas, John McCain has said that he would. While McCain seems to have forgotten that he favored talks with Hamas, the reporter who interviewed him has not:

RUBIN: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCAIN: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

APPEASER!!! So, is this a flip-flop? Or hypocrisy? Could be both. Video of the interview:

An Obama spokesman further detailed McCain’s hypocrisy:

It is the height of hypocrisy for John McCain to deliver a lofty speech about civility and bipartisanship in the morning and then embrace George Bush’s disgraceful political attack in the afternoon. Instead of delivering meaningful change, John McCain wants to continue George Bush’s irresponsible and failed Iran policy by refusing to engage in tough, direct diplomacy like Presidents from Kennedy to Reagan have done.

McCain’s lapdog Leiberman later joined the fray, backing Bush and McCain, making for a perfect McBush day.

UPDATE: CNN has the story, that White House officials privately confirmed Bush’s statements were about Obama:

The president did not name Sen. Barack Obama or any other Democrat, but White House aides privately acknowledged to CNN that the remarks were aimed at the presidential candidate and others in his party.

Just confirming what we all already knew.

Okay, let’s plumb the depths of McBush over the past few days.

First, an appetizer: Bush claimed, in an interview, that while our own brave young men & women fought and died in Bush’s unnecessary, politically-motivated, wasteful, al-Qaeda-boosting, and horribly mismanaged war in Iraq, Bush himself was paying a terrible, unthinkable price: he gave up golf. In an interview with The Politico, Bush said:

Q: Mr. President, you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?

Bush: Yes, it really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

Q: Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?

Bush: No, I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life. And I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it anymore to do.

This absurdly outrageous question was just as offensive to soldiers as anyone imagined:

Brandon Friedman, a veteran US infantry officer who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Press Association: “Thousands of Americans have given up a lot more than golf for this war. For President Bush to imply that he somehow stands in solidarity with families of American soldiers by giving up golf is disgraceful. It’s an insult to all Americans and a slap in the face to our troops’ families.”

The real slap in the face: Bush was lying–he hadn’t given up his golf game, not for de Mello:

The problem is that Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. envoy in Iraq at the time, was killed Aug. 19, 2003. Bush, according to news reports, was still playing two days later, when he teed off at the Crosswater Golf Course in Sunriver, Ore., during a two-day visit to the Pacific Northwest.

He also played Sept. 28 with friends at Andrews Air Force Base course and again there on Oct. 13, in honor of Columbus Day. It appears that he didn’t golf after that — at least judging from a review of media coverage since then.

Keith Olbermann had a few sharp words for Bush on this.

Not to be outdone, McCain gave a major policy speech today which could quite legitimately be called the “Magic Pony” speech. In it, McCain fantasized about ending his first term in January 2013:

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy… The increase in actionable intelligence that the counterinsurgency produced led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and his chief lieutenants. There is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven. … There still has not been a major terrorist attack in the United States since September 11, 2001. The United States and its allies have made great progress in advancing nuclear security. … The size of the Army and Marine Corps has been significantly increased, and are now better equipped and trained to defend us. … the United States, acting in concert with a newly formed League of Democracies, applied stiff diplomatic and economic pressure that caused the government of Sudan to agree to a multinational peacekeeping force, with NATO countries providing logistical and air support, to stop the genocide….

The United States has experienced several years of robust economic growth, and Americans again have confidence in their economic future. … Congress has just passed by a single up or down vote a tax reform proposal that offers Americans a choice of continuing to file under the rules of the current complicated and burdensome tax code or use a new, simpler, fairer and flatter tax, with two rates and a generous deduction. … Congress has not sent me an appropriations bill containing earmarks for the last three years. … New free trade agreements have been ratified and led to substantial increases in both exports and imports. … The world food crisis has ended, inflation is low, and the quality of life not only in our country, but in some of the most impoverished countries around the world is much improved. … Public education in the United States is much improved thanks to the competition provided by charter and private schools…. Test scores and graduation rates are rising everywhere in the country.

Health care has become more accessible to more Americans than at any other time in history. … The reduction in the growth of health care costs has begun to relieve some of the pressure on Medicare; … Their success encouraged a group of congressional leaders from both parties to work with my administration to fix Social Security as well, without reducing benefits to those near retirement. … The United States is well on the way to independence from foreign sources of oil; progress that has not only begun to alleviate the environmental threat posed from climate change, but has greatly improved our security as well. … Scores of judges have been confirmed to the federal district and appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, who understand that they were not sent there to write our laws but to enforce them….our southern border is now secure. Illegal immigrants who broke our laws after they came here have been arrested and deported. Illegal immigration has been finally brought under control…. A sense of community, a kinship of ideals, has invigorated public service again.

As I said before, winsome fairies and prancing unicorns would not have been out of place in this speech. I have extravagant hopes for the achievements of an Obama administration, but not only do I keep them to myself, none even come close to the massive self-indulgent, massively overreaching self-gratification McCain wallowed in with this speech; he must think he’s the freakin’ second coming or something.

Had he given the speech in terms of goals, that would be one thing–but to try to convince people that in four years he could solve virtually all the world’s problems single-handedly and accomplish more than all other presidents combined… it comes across as absurdly arrogant, self-aggrandizing fantasy.

Fortunately for McCain, he did not have much time to suffer the ridicule that naturally follows such inanity: Bush stole the limelight and made an even bigger fool of himself soon after… with McCain quickly jumping on Bush’s brainless bandwagon. More on that in Part II.

Man.

I’m going to blog more on this later, but Bush & McCain really outdid themselves today with sheer idiocy and hypocrisy.

Really. Imagine Bill Clinton, in mid-2000, going to Israel and comparing then-Governor Bush with Hitler appeasers. Republicans would have gone nuclear with rage, not the least of which would have been at the idea of an American president going overseas and using a foreign podium to slam another American politician.

And then there’s McCain, whose big day was trounced on by Bush’s speech. Personally, I think Bush did McCain a favor by eclipsing his “Magic Pony” speech, in which he’s finishing his first term in office and he presides over a world of winsome faeries and prancing unicorns. All McCain could do in Bush’s shadow was to agree that that nasty Obama man was indeed an appeaser.

And then the wingnuts, apparently attracted to stupidity light moths to flame, chimed in. Reserving further comment for later, I will simply let you watch Chris Matthews utterly annihilate the right-wing talking head as an unimaginably blustering moron. It is literally breathtaking.

Some days you can be so thoroughly stupid that even your pals in the media come out and call you a laughable moron.

You must see these videos. This is what computers will be like in the near future.

This technology is called “Multi-touch.” Apple’s iPhone already uses it. For example, you use two fingers to squeeze or expand a photo, so it gets bigger or smaller. But the iPhone is just the simple beginning. Soon, Multi-touch will come to your personal computer, and it will make the GUI even more natural, even more easy to use. There is no mouse, just your hands on the screen. Keyboards appear on the screen when you need them, and disappear when you don’t need them.

In the videos below, engineer Jeff Han demonstrates the use of Multi-touch on a large screen, either a panel like the top of a desk, or even a large screen on a wall. You can use all ten fingers to control different points on the screen to create all kinds of amazing effects. If the screen is big enough, more than one person can work at the same time, doing very complex jobs in a very simple way.

Expect a Multi-touch personal computer to be released in the next year or two. I would not be at all surprised if Apple is the first to come out with one. When you think about it, Apple’s Dock works quite well in this context; with a few modifications, you can see the Dock growing quite naturally into this technology. The iPhone is a primitive example of how this can be applied, showing that Steve Jobs is seeing how this will be the UI for the future. The iPhone’s swipe, pinch/squeeze, and the virtual keyboard all play into this. This even makes me re-think the idea of the Art Lebedev keyboard being the “keyboard of the future”–instead, virtual keyboards within the monitors will be the norm, instead of little LCDs or OLEDs in the keys themselves.

There have been rumors that Apple has been working on tablet computers, touch-screen computers, and–important to this technology–resolution-independent displays. I am beginning to sense that this is a big movement in Apple, signaling the trend of the GUI for the next decade and beyond.

Just like today’s technology makes the “futuristic” sets of he original “Star Trek” seem quaintly archaic (compare the iPhone to the Communicator), this multi-touch screen technology is going to make the even more futuristic sets of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” seem even more out of date.

Obama and Clinton are just winding down from five months of bashing each other, while McCain has had the luxury of being the party nominee for two and a half months, campaigning and raising money without opposition, with his former rivals lauding him, taking potshots at the Democrats at leisure. The media has been incredibly kind to McCain, courting him in his “Straight Talk” barbecue media love-fest, playing down his scandals and even actively defending him (as they did when the lobbyist affair story came out), refusing to ask him questions or report on stories that could give him a bad rep–all while piling on the Democratic nominees aggressively, especially Obama with the Wright story, which ran for weeks and weeks and weeks, with an endlessly-playing video loop of “God Damn America.”

With all of that and much more in McCain’s favor, one would imagine that McCain would be leading in the polls. And yet, despite a brief bump a few weeks ago, McCain has been trailing both Clinton and Obama most of the time. Today, a Quinnipiac poll put Obama ahead of McCain by 7 points, Hillary by 5. Rasmussen, which polls more favorably for Republicans, has Obama leading McCain by one point and Clinton leading by two. CBS, which often swings the other way, Has Obama over McCain by 12 points. ABC has Obama winning by 7, Gallup by 4, Times/Boomberg by 6, the AP by 4.

If McCain is doing so poorly against Obama now, after Obama has been bashed so heavily and McCain given the buddy treatment, that is not a good sign for McCain. McCain should, by all rights, be ahead by a touchdown or two. Instead, he’s lagging behind.

Helping to explain, perhaps, is the major GOP loss in Mississippi’s first district. Democrat Travis Childers beat Republican Greg Davis 54-46. Doesn’t sound like a big margin, except for one small detail: MI-01 is a Republican district–a strong Republican district. Bush won the district in 2004 with a 62% majority, a 25% lead over Democrat John Kerry.

Keep in mind that Davis was not beset by scandals; he simply lost the race fair and square. And this is the third time in three races that a Democratic candidate has won a special election to fill a vacated House seat in a Republican district–the first was in Dennis Hastert’s district–Hastert having been the Speaker of the House.

After seven years of Bush and almost as many years of a Republican Congress, the Republican Party name has been dragged through the dirt. Given the chance to lead, they have not only failed, but failed spectacularly. The number of people who identify themselves as Republicans has dropped to 27%, while Independents and Democrats both claim 36%; and of Independents with a preference for one party over the other, 60% lean Democratic. Compare that with 2004, when Republicans had 33%, Dems had 35%, and Independents, at 33%, were split almost evenly between the two parties. That allowed Bush to win the race, as party identification was within just a few points (the margin of error) of Bush’s win. Now, however, Democrats look to have more than a 10-point advantage over GOP’ers in party affiliation or preference.

And that helps explain why, after Obama getting trashed and McCain getting feted for the past few months, Obama still leads in national polls. Had the media treated the two candidates equally, Obama would probably lead by an average of 10~12 points, instead of 4~6.

Unless something unexpected happens, expect Obama’s lead to hold or strengthen.

Meanwhile: since the Indiana/North carolina elections last week, Obama has picked up 31 superdelegates to Hillary’s 1.5. Hillary got 20 pledged delegates from West Virginia to Obama’s 8, giving her a 12-delegate gain. Offset that by superdelegate pickups, and Obama has jumped ahead by 17.5 delegates. Having picked up John Edwards now Obama’s lead can only continue to grow; Edwards brings 18 pledged delegates with him, though those are not counted in Obama’s column quite yet. However, if Obama continues to get 4 new supers a day like he has for the past week, he’ll be another 30 delegates ahead when Kentucky and Oregon come–and Hillary’s win in Kentucky will be offset by Obama’s win in Oregon.

Maybe now I understand why gun-rights supporters fear gun control laws so much: they believe that gun control advocates will act the same way that right-wingers act, taking a legal victory and using it to try to go to ludicrous extremes. Even I did not see this shameful act of vote-stealing coming, and I have a low opinion of these people:

The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.

The measure would allow far more rigorous demands than the voter ID requirement recently upheld by the Supreme Court, in which voters had to prove their identity with a government-issued card.

Sponsors of the amendment — which requires the approval of voters to go into effect, possibly in an August referendum — say it is part of an effort to prevent illegal immigrants from affecting the political process. Critics say the measure could lead to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legal residents who would find it difficult to prove their citizenship.

As if thousands of illegal immigrants have been flooding the polls in Missouri and stealing elections.

I shudder to think of what they’d do next if they actually got away with this. Require genetic scans to prove you are really you? Submit transcripts of your school records from kindergarten to high school? Take a language test?

Don’t laugh–the idea of needing special proof of citizenship at the polls is so ridiculous I don’t think many saw that coming. And lord knows what they’ll require as proof. You can bet it’ll be the thing least likely to be easily available to the elderly and poor.

We have already seen a number of voters-including a dozen or so elderly nuns–denied their right to vote in Indiana because of the Voter ID law that is denied to deny exactly such people their votes, instead of the imaginary voter fraud that is claimed as the “real” threat.

H/t to C&L.

Why not? Because in the one week since the last primary round, Obama has picked up 27 supers and an additional pledged delegate from North Carolina, while Hillary’s delegate count has remained virtually flat. West Virginia has 28 delegates, total. Hillary could win in that state 100% to 0%, and Obama would still break even for the week.

The following week has Kentucky and Oregon. Kentucky has 51 delegates, Oregon has 52. Hillary will win Kentucky stronger than Obama will win Oregon, but the net gain by Hillary will probably be relatively minor, maybe only a dozen or so. In the week between now and then, Obama will probably pick up double that amount in superdelegates, if not more, further eroding Hillary’s lead.

Hillary, despite commanding huge leads in two of the next three states, will end up losing ground, not gaining it. Even now, she trails Obama by about 170 total delegates. That could be as many as 200 by June.

Even if Hillary gets all her delegates from Florida (50% of 211) and Michigan (55% of 157), and Obama gets zero from Michigan (not even the 40% “uncommitteds” who were clearly voting for him–Hillary doesn’t want those votes to count) and only 33% in Florida, Hillary still wouldn’t catch up with Obama (it would probably only give Clinton 120 new delegates or fewer), even assuming Obama doesn’t get even more and more superdelegates from now on.

Hillary supporters who still think she has a chance–which is fewer and fewer these days–literally have no mechanism for Clinton winning the nomination short of Obama self-destructing in a huge ball of flame.

Clinton should take the two big wins, in West Virginia today and Kentucky next week, claim a symbolic victory, and call it quits on a high note. Maybe by that time she’ll have gotten a power handover and debt payoff she can live with, and she can get to work half-heartedly campaigning for Obama.

I don’t think Kindle is it. Nor is it this one, or this one.

But they’re getting there.

So far, the ebook readers haven’t broken the magical barrier where everyone will have to get one. Maybe Steve Jobs will come out with one when it’s time. Maybe not.

Here’s my projection on what’s needed. First, color would be nice. Not a deal breaker if it’s black-and-white; contrast is more important than color. But color would help. Contrast is a deal-breaker, though; if you don’t see sheer whites and dark blacks, it won’t sell. Nobody likes the washed-out look. That’s why they don’t sell paperbacks with the text in light gray, or even charcoal.

Resolution is more important. Pixel jaggies won’t cut it. Font smoothing won’t cut it. It has to look like paper, to a certain extent. That means high-quality text. That means more than 72 dots per inch. Readers are now up to 160 dpi, not bad. Higher would be nice.

The size of the screen could be bigger too. Right now the displays are about eight inches, or roughly the size of a paperback–but that’s just the screen. The bevel makes it bigger. More screen, less bevel.

Next, the book feel would be greatly enhanced by a fold-out screen, like a real book; two screens hinged to oppose each other, just like a real book. Not one screen and a solid cover.

Next, it has to be a touch screen. Get rid of the buttons on the border, make the bevel as thin as possible. Turn the pages by swiping across a screen. Natural interface. Multi-touch would be nice.

Finally, the price point. This can’t be a luxury item. Right now, decent readers cost $300 to $400. Too much. Price point has to be less than half that, $150 or less. It can’t be something that you’re constantly worried might get broken, that you would have to convince yourself to replace if it did.

We’re not there yet. Ebook readers have not yet arrived. They will. They’re a great idea. Imagine being a college student, and having an ebook reader like the one I just described being your one and only book to shlep. Your books all in one place, all with a text search feature, connected to the Internet so you can browse your favorite web sites and online databases. Heck, while we’re at it, one of the two screens becomes a touchscreen keyboard, and you can use it to type.

For the home reader, all your books in one place, backed up on a home computer or hard disk, DRM flexible enough so you don’t notice it. For the businessman, email on the fly, maybe even a built-in camera and a cell-network connection for audio or video conferencing.

Not all of those bells and whistles I just mentioned need to be there. WiFi and email, a natural yes; color, camera, and cell connection, no. The extras can be added for a premium.

Sounds like I am asking for way too much for too low a price, right? But imagine describing the iPhone to someone in 1997–16 GB storage, 3“ color touch screen at 163 dpi with 480×320 resolution, WiFi and Bluetooth, web browsing, email, cell phone, 2 megapixel digital camera, digital music and video player, games, apps, with an on-board version of a UNIX-based OS, all in a small, solid, stylish package, for $500. Hell, a 1 megapixel digital camera alone would have cost more than half that much in ’97, and most of the rest would have sounded like a pipe dream. People paid $500 for a 10 GB iPod in 2001, with a crappy, tiny LCD screen, no other functionality than a music player. Even that would have been more than anyone expected in ’97.

Ebook readers will probably hover in the background for a few years yet, until someone meets most or all of the feature sets I described above. Say, a dual-8” folding multi-touch high-contrast 200-dpi-plus color screen, with WiFi and Internet/email and decent battery life, for about $150. I would definitely use that to read all my books. Maybe even $200, But the price can’t go too high, or else people won’t use it the same way they use books.

But get most of those features for the price of a PSP or DS Lite, and you’ll have broken the barrier to massive sales. Many of us would probably buy it for a higher price with only half those features, but not the mass market.

This is starting to become a habit within the GOP: see if you can take words spoken by Obama, take them out of context, claim they mean something they clearly did not, then smear him with it. Nothing new; they did it all the time with Gore. But they hadn’t done i as much, while Hillary was there to do it for them. Now that Obama’s the nominee in all but name, they’re starting the drumbeat of lies and smears. In just the last few days, McCain did this with Obama’s remark that McCain had “lost his bearings” in terms of McCain’s breaking his promise to keep a clean campaign; they claimed that Obama had made a crack about McCain’s age, which he clearly did not.

Now they’re at it again. Obama made a remark about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling it “a constant wound, a constant sore,” noting that the conflict “infects our foreign policy.” Republicans very dishonestly interpreted it to mean that Israel is a “constant sore.” Here is the exchange:

JG: What do you make of Jimmy Carter’s suggestion that Israel resembles an apartheid state?

BO: I strongly reject the characterization. Israel is a vibrant democracy, the only one in the Middle East, and there’s no doubt that Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, but injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t advance that goal. It’s emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.

JG: If you become President, will you denounce settlements publicly?

BO: What I will say is what I’ve said previously. Settlements at this juncture are not helpful. Look, my interest is in solving this problem not only for Israel but for the United States.

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that I’m not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is just because that’s the safest ground politically.

Right-wingers are very dishonestly “misunderstanding” Obama, with GOP leaders attacking Obama over the imagined slight, bloggers insisting that he’s flagrantly insulting Israel:

Obama partisans are claiming that he said that the Midle East [sic] conflict is a constant sore. But quite clearly the antecedent to “this constant wound, that this constant sore” in the question is “Israel.” Perhaps the Harvard-trained lawyer who tells us that words are important wants us to believe he was just sloppy. Or maybe words don’t matter when he doesn’t want them to?

What dishonesty. In their quotes, they only cite the one paragraph by Obama, completely omitting the preceding paragraphs which lay down the understood subject as the conflict; as the Washington Post pointed out:

It is pretty clear from this passage that Obama is not calling Israel a “constant wound.” Indeed, he specifically says “no, no, no” when asked if Israel is a drag on America’s international reputation. He is referring to the overall Israeli-Palestinian problem, including continued Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

Goldberg describes Boehner’s characterization of his interview with Obama as “mendacious, duplicitous, gross, and comically refutable.”

The thing is, this is so easy to understand it’s not even funny. Just look at the one paragraph in context; pay attention to the words I have highlighted in bold:

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.

If you truly believe that the “constant wound, constant sore” is in fact the state of Israel, then you get in trouble in the very next sentence, where Obama says the very same thing is a problem that “Israel has a security interest in solving.” If, as the bloggers and Republican leaders Boehner and Cantor claim, Obama was referring to Israel itself as the “constant sore,” then the trailing sentence spoken by Obama would have to be read as, “Israel has a security interest in solving Israel.” Which is a stupid assertion to make.

Fortunately, the media seems more inclined to note that this obvious lie is indeed a lie.

So, what’s next? Probably won’t have to wait long.