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Now, that's winning hearts and minds.

GORE, THE HATCHET MAN

So it looks like we have our flame-thrower.
Since there's no VP candidate yet, and it's too early for Kerry to really be throwing fast balls - everybody's go-to guy is laying it on pretty thick:

President Bush has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name.

The speech at New York University

Drunkenness

Yahoo! News - Judge Kicked Off Bench for Drunkenness
I do some of my best work...
You know it's a problem when NEW ORLEANS says you have a problem.

THE FLIP SIDE

A New York Times correction from last week:

Correction
An article last Wednesday about South Africa's wine industry referred incorrectly to Thabani Cellars, a winery there. It is not minority-owned. (As a black man, the owner, Jabulani Ntshangase, belongs to the country's majority.)

DON'T BE RUDE

My lady-friend is back in the game over at The Morning News. And now she taking your questions.

First-time caller, long-time listener asks Maggie 'How to get rid of houseguests?' (we know nothing about this...)

MAUREEN

Maureen Dowd has a fantastic op-ed article in the New York Times - and if you don't subscribe to the NYT, you can read it at the Salt Lake Tribune.

It's their reality. We just live and die in it.

In Bushworld, our troops go to war and get killed, but you never see the bodies coming home.

In Bushworld, flag-draped remains of the fallen are important to revere and show the nation, but only in political ads hawking the president's leadership against terror.

In Bushworld, we can create an exciting Iraqi democracy as long as it doesn't control its own military, pass any laws or have any power.

In Bushworld, we can win over Fallujah by bulldozing it.

In Bushworld, it was worth going to war so Iraqis could express their feelings ("Down With America!") without having their tongues cut out, although we cannot yet allow them to express intemperate feelings in newspapers ("Down With America!") without shutting them down.

In Bushworld, it's fine to take $700 million that Congress provided for the war in Afghanistan and 9-11 recovery and divert it to the war in Iraq that you are insisting you are not planning.

BAY TO BREAKERS

For the record, Maggie can take care of all her own conflicts.

I just cooled this guy down 'cause it was funny.

I WILL BE THE END OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

I went to Catholic school in Colorado. I received 4 of the 7 sacraments under the archdiocese of Denver. I work daily to understand the principles, incorporate the teachings, and justify the contradictions involved in growing up Catholic.

When leaders in the church work to exclude those who don't inflexibly follow the dogma out of Rome, they're done. Plain and simple, it is the right of clergy to lead as they see fit: but this course will cause the church in the U.S. to wither away -- as it has begun to do.

Colorado Bishop: Bar communion for abortion-rights voters

NOTHING SAYS I LOVE YOU LIKE IRON

Who the hell made up the traditional anniversary reference list?
"Happy Fruit Anniversary!"

First - Paper
Second - Cotton
Third - Leather
Fourth - Fruit or Flowers
Fifth - Wood
Sixth - Candy or Iron
Seventh - Wool or Copper
Eighth - Bronze or Pottery
Ninth - Pottery
Tenth - Tin
Eleventh - Steel
Twelfth - Silk or Linen
Thirteenth - Lace
Fourteenth - Ivory
Fifteenth - Crystal
Twentieth - China
Twenty-Fifth - Silver
Thirtieth - Pearl
Thirty-Fifth - Coral
Fortieth - Ruby
Forty-Fifth - Sapphire
Fiftieth - Gold
Fifty-Fifth - Emerald
Sixtieth - Diamond

JOHN 17:10

Though John Zogby once told me a candidate I was working for was a close second (we came in a hard fourth), he is still my favorite pollster. His polls are solid, I've never seen evidence of a political agenda, and this week he came out to say,

We are unlikely to see any big bumps for either candidate because opinion is so polarized and, I believe, frozen in place. There are still six months to go and anything can still happen. But as of today, this race is John Kerry’s to lose."

DOUG MADE THIS

Google just launched a re-design of Blogger.com, which was a co-production of my company, Adaptive Path, the world-class design firm Stopdesign, and the bad-ass team at Google.

Doug Bowman (of Stopdesign) also created a number of new templates, of which this is a great one.

Jeff and Doug did fantastic work on the redesign!
Congrats.