I love the NY Times. In yesterday’s paper, Elisabeth Bumiller’s article on Bush and the blackout was headlined Bush Doesn’t Let Blackout Upset Lunch With Troops. The headline is disappointing, it should have been “Bush attends $1 million fundraiser during blackout”, but at least she got in these items:

But unlike the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when news of another New York catastrophe sent Mr. Bush on an odyssey on Air Force One, today he continued his lunch and went ahead with plans to attend a $1 million political fund-raiser here this evening.

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So after more than four and a half hours of White House silence, Mr. Bush made what was intended to be a reassuring statement to a small group of reporters at the Grand Hyatt hotel here.

“One thing I think I can say for certain is that this was not a terrorist act,” Mr. Bush said.

I’m not posting much, because I AM STILL ON DIAL-UP 24 HOURS AFTER POWER WAS RESTORED TO MY NEIGHBORHOOD THANKS TO TIME WARNER CABLE/ROAD RUNNER. All they can say is that I’m “in the queue” to have something done internally by their IT department. The email I sent to support bounced back to me. Nice.

The lovely and talented Anees is back — with a bang — from his blog break:

silipups: Suckers!

Quick! Go see the George W. Bush Air National Guard action figure on eBay before they take it down.

Why wait until the redesign of Mount Rushmore?

Now you can own a piece of American history; the Texas Air National Guard George W Bush Action Figure.

This figure probably stands 14" in height, and is exactly as the future Leader of the Western World™ appeared during his service defending our Nation’s borders from Mexicans and Bahamians.

Comes with detailed uniform (as imagined by base commander), sealed discharge papers, Coors Light keg, and “licensed to chug” bumper sticker.

Now you can have George in your home every day, even after November 2004!

This fully pose-able action figure of the Commander in Chief is likely correct down to the slightest detail. Our highly skilled Chinese craftspeople have been in the action figure industry for years, and trained under a generous re-education program. They make the best, most desirable action figures in the Free Market, or die tryin’!

Winning bidder will be notified of upcoming GWBANG accessories; pile of dried branches, action pretzel, overstuffed bags with “$” printed on them, blindfold, bible with real, highlighted passages, and earplugs.

The winning bidder will also receive TWO bonus gifts: the George W. Bush “Afternoon of September 11th 2001” tennis ensemble, and a genuine “First Lady Laura Bush Serving Sandwiches at a VA Hospital” action figure!

Supplies are limited; don’t let yours disappear!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

[via TBOGG]

The first annual Howl! Festival happens August 20-26 in the East Village. Check out the web site, plus James’s recommendation. One of the highlights: Wigstock returns to Tompkins Square Park on Saturday, August 23rd, from 5:00-7:00pm!

I.F. Stone once said the Washinton Post was exciting to read “because you never know on what page you would find a page-one story.”

Why was this in the Business Section of the New York Times yesterday?

The Bechtel Group, one of the world’s biggest engineering and construction companies, has dropped out of the running for a contract to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, as other competitors have begun to conclude that the bidding process favors the one company already working in Iraq, Halliburton.

After the United States Army Corps of Engineers quietly selected Halliburton in the spring to perform early repairs of the Iraqi oil business in the aftermath of the war, other companies and members of Congress protested that the work should have been awarded through competitive bidding.

…

Preliminary plans for a new contract, which industry executives had thought might total $1 billion, were announced late in June by the Corps of Engineers. The bidding was meant, in part, to introduce competition and a sense of fairness into the lucrative Iraqi reconstruction market, an executive with a major engineering concern said. Like many industry executives, he would speak only on condition of anonymity because his company does not want to jeopardize its chances for future government contracts.

But in the last month, the corps, which is overseeing the reconstruction efforts, has specified a timetable for the work that effectively means that the value of any contract companies other than Halliburton could win would be worth only about $176 million, according to Corps of Engineers documents and executives in the engineering and construction business.

Earlier this week, Bechtel cited the timetable as its reason for dropping out of the bidding. The company now plans to deal directly with the Iraqi oil ministry for future reconstruction work, a spokesman, Howard N. Menaker, said.

…

Working in Iraq has helped turn around Halliburton’s financial performance, its second-quarter results showed. The company made a profit of $26 million, in contrast to a loss of $498 million in the period a year earlier. The company stated that 9 percent, or $324 million, of its second-quarter revenue of $3.6 billion came from its work in Iraq.

Your money at work, good Catholics:

This is an April 2002 file photo showing the mansion-style residence formerly lived in by the archbishops of Boston. Newly installed Archbishop Sean O’Malley has decided to live in the rectory of cathedral of the Holy Cross instead of the mansion.(AP Photo/Michael Dwyer,file)

Boston Archdiocese Offers $55M Settlement

The BBC’s Jane Standley, in New York, says it is believed at least 1,000 children could have been abused over a period of more than 60 years.

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Updated: The NY Times article today (August 9) uses an image which only shows the side of the mansion, making it look much smaller — even though they say the photo was taken for the Times. What’s up with that?

Q Thank you, sir. Since taking office you signed into law three major tax cuts — two of which have had plenty of time to take effect, the third of which, as you pointed out earlier, is taking effect now. Yet, the unemployment rate has continued rising. We now have more evidence of a massive budget deficit that taxpayers are going to be paying off for years or decades to come; the economy continues to shed jobs. What evidence can you point to that tax cuts, at least of the variety that you have supported, are really working to help this economy? And do you need to be thinking about some other approach?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. No, to answer the last part of your question. First of all, let me — just a quick history, recent history. The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. Then the first quarter of 2001 was a recession. And then we got attacked in 9/11. And then corporate scandals started to bubble up to the surface, which created a — a lack of confidence in the system. And then we had the drumbeat to war. Remember on our TV screens — I’m not suggesting which network did this — but it said, “March to War,” every day from last summer until the spring — “March to War, March to War.” That’s not a very conducive environment for people to take risk, when they hear, “March to War” all the time.

— President Bush press conference, July 30, 2003

Very cool tool! If you find yourself editing HTML, or just having trouble fixing formatting problems in your blog posts, you have to get Mozilla and installl the pnhtoolbar.

It lets you do cool stuff like outline all of the block elements — “why is that indented there?!”, view cookies, disable style sheets, enable a different style sheet, etc.

I’m reading a great book at the moment: Roger Shattuck’s The Banquet Years, about the origins of the avant garde in France in the period from the 1880s to the beginning of World War I. It’s the era of Rousseau, Alfred Jarry, Apollinaire, and near the end, Picasso and Gertrude Stein. After I finish it I intend to re-read Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, since it describes events around this time. Powell’s has just put up Edmund Wilson’s 1933 review of the book on its web site. Go check it out.

I finally met Cory Arcangel and heard him perform with his sister Jamie. We got to see from home videos from their childhood, when they had a goth-ish/death metal band called “Insectiside”. They did two songs live — very cool stuff. Another highlight was a video of Jamie as a child, complete with knee pads and other 80s accoutrements, dancing to Vanilla Ice’s, “Ice Ice Baby”. There! Now you have that damn song running through your head too!

James already did all of the research and made nice links, so go see his post and photos.

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Updated:

Here are some more photos — link via Tom Moody.