After the speech ended early, Bush — in a rare move — took questions from the audience. When the president was asked about the number of Iraqi deaths in the war, he estimated 30,000 people have been killed since March 2003.

According to Reuters, a White House spokesman said Bush was giving a figure based on media reports and the number wasn’t an official estimate from the U.S. government.

I was under the impression from everything I’ve heard that this figure is far greater that 30,000. Has anyone seen the media reports the White House referenced and can anyone provide better figures on this so we can hold the White House to account on their ridiculous statement.

The following headlines link to blog posts about the Times article from Oct. 16 on Judith Miller’s jailing and testimony. These posts are listed in order of popularity, with timestamps of when they were first published.

Check it out.

I love my Powerbook.

I love my iPod.

I’ve got lots of other computers and electronic devices that I really enjoy using as well, but there is something about Apple’s products that brings out another level of joy and yes, techno-lust. Yeah, a Dell laptop or a Creative Zen may do the job, but a 12″ Powerbook is just so darn purty. Whether it’s the attention to the little details, like the the LED on the laptop charger that lets you instantaneously see the status of the battery, or the organic touches of the pulsing lid latch and that smooth fade-in/fade-out on the iPod, Apple in the past 5 years has upped the bar on consumer design and really left everyone else in the dust.

So while trying to not be too much of a fanboy, last week’s announcement of the new ever-sleeker iPod – now with video playback – and the announcement of new G5s and Powerbooks, totally got me excited. But try as I might, I couldn’t really figure out Steve Jobs’ “angle” with this new device. It still seemed a bit half-baked considering the screen is only 2.5″ and the battery life for watching video is only a few hours. Well Sam Sugar, over at SugarBank, an adult industry blog, seems to have hit the nail on the head IMHO:

Apple is selling cheap (just about) video capable iPods, for exactly the same price as its old audio only players, to lock-in market domination of video players. People who just want an iPod, now have to buy an iPod with video. Apple don’t have to sell the machines any differently and they don’t need video content to be a huge success – sales of iPods with video playback are guaranteed.

Then, when their lead is established, Apple will release a ‘true’ iPod video with a bigger screen, sell consumers on a ‘widescreen’ experience and use the extra bulk to hide a bigger hard drive and a lot more battery. That device will appear at the same time as a full-blown downloadable movie service. The studios will have been sold on the idea of ‘Eleventy Billion video capable iPods in circulation’ and Apple will make a lot of money from people upgrading the iPods they already have, because they don’t want to watch Toy Story on a square, two and a half inch screen. That might also be when all those engineers Apple’s hired to work on putting wireless capability into the iPod demonstrate what they’ve come up with.

In a nutshell, Apple’s solved the chicken and egg problem for selling video, by working out how to get people who want to listen to music, to buy video players anyway. They’re going to force old (clueless, greedy) industries to negotiate reasonable terms, because soon the iPod will be the majority platform for mobile video, and Apple will have total control of the hardware and online distribution. In doing so they’ve created a format which all companies selling video online (like us pornographers) need to prepare for.

As an interesting sidenote, Tuesday night on the Colbert Report, Leslie Stahl said that this week’s 60 Minutes will be fairly devoid of commercials. There will only be one sponsor and they are making every attempt to keep the commercial time as short as possible. The old broadcast television advertising model is dying. Will video podcasting – vodcasting (naturally built into the new version of iTunes) – replace it?

“I have no talent. That’s why I’m here.”

Given, I may be taking him out of context, but that is certainly what he said. As Paul Krugman confirmed today, many journalists are hacks, but it’s nice to finally see one admit it.

Questions of Character
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 14, 2005

George W. Bush, I once wrote, “values loyalty above expertise” and may have “a preference for advisers whose personal fortunes are almost entirely bound up with his own.” And he likes to surround himself with “obsequious courtiers.”

Lots of people are saying things like that these days. But those quotes are from a column published on Nov. 19, 2000.

I don’t believe that I’m any better than the average person at judging other people’s character. I got it right because I said those things in the context of a discussion of Mr. Bush’s choice of economic advisers, a subject in which I do have some expertise.

But many people in the news media do claim, at least implicitly, to be experts at discerning character – and their judgments play a large, sometimes decisive role in our political life. The 2000 election would have ended in a chad-proof victory for Al Gore if many reporters hadn’t taken a dislike to Mr. Gore, while portraying Mr. Bush as an honest, likable guy. The 2004 election was largely decided by the image of Mr. Bush as a strong, effective leader.

So it’s important to ask why those judgments are often so wrong.

Right now, with the Bush administration in meltdown on multiple issues, we’re hearing a lot about President Bush’s personal failings. But what happened to the commanding figure of yore, the heroic leader in the war on terror? The answer, of course, is that the commanding figure never existed: Mr. Bush is the same man he always was. All the character flaws that are now fodder for late-night humor were fully visible, for those willing to see them, during the 2000 campaign.

And President Bush the great leader is far from the only fictional character, bearing no resemblance to the real man, created by media images.

Read the speeches Howard Dean gave before the Iraq war, and compare them with Colin Powell’s pro-war presentation to the U.N. Knowing what we know now, it’s clear that one man was judicious and realistic, while the other was spinning crazy conspiracy theories. But somehow their labels got switched in the way they were presented to the public by the news media.

Why does this happen? A large part of the answer is that the news business places great weight on “up close and personal” interviews with important people, largely because they’re hard to get but also because they play well with the public. But such interviews are rarely revealing. The fact is that most people – myself included – are pretty bad at using personal impressions to judge character. Psychologists find, for example, that most people do little better than chance in distinguishing liars from truth-tellers.

More broadly, the big problem with political reporting based on character portraits is that there are no rules, no way for a reporter to be proved wrong. If a reporter tells you about the steely resolve of a politician who turns out to be ineffectual and unwilling to make hard choices, you’ve been misled, but not in a way that requires a formal correction.

And that makes it all too easy for coverage to be shaped by what reporters feel they can safely say, rather than what they actually think or know. Now that Mr. Bush’s approval ratings are in the 30′s, we’re hearing about his coldness and bad temper, about how aides are afraid to tell him bad news. Does anyone think that journalists have only just discovered these personal characteristics?

Let’s be frank: the Bush administration has made brilliant use of journalistic careerism. Those who wrote puff pieces about Mr. Bush and those around him have been rewarded with career-boosting access. Those who raised questions about his character found themselves under personal attack from the administration’s proxies. (Yes, I’m speaking in part from experience.) Only now, with Mr. Bush in desperate trouble, has the structure of rewards shifted.

So what’s the answer? Journalists who are better at judging character? Unfortunately, that’s not a practical plan. After all, who judges their judgment?

What we really need is political journalism based less on perceptions of personalities and more on actual facts. Schadenfreude aside, we should not be happy that stories about Mr. Bush’s boldness have given way to stories analyzing his facial tics. Think, instead, about how different the world would be today if, during the 2000 campaign, reporting had focused on the candidates’ fiscal policies instead of their wardrobes.

With that off my chest, there are ways to still get to the Select content and today’s editorial by Tom Friedman is particularly enlightening. He offers a unique take on the quagmire in Iraq by claiming that it is not the intelligence failure on WMDs that will ultimately be seen as the Bush cabal’s downfall in Iraq, but rather their complete misunderstanding of the socioeconomic status of the country prior to invaasion:

But I think Saddam knew how busted and bankrupt his country and army were. Therefore, he never wanted to completely erase the impression that he had W.M.D. Saddam lived in a den of wolves. The hint of W.M.D. was his only deterrent shield left against his neighbors, his enemies at home and the West. (This was alluded to in the Duelfer W.M.D. report.) So he tried to allow just enough U.N. inspections to clear him on W.M.D., while playing just enough cat and mouse with the U.N. to leave the impression that he still had something dangerous in the closet.

The Bush team, and the C.I.A., not only failed to learn that Saddam had no W.M.D., they failed to appreciate how devastated Iraqi society really was. The Bush team, listening largely to exiles who had not lived in Iraq for years, thought that there were much more of an Iraqi middle class and more institutions than actually existed. So Mr. Bush thought taking over Iraq would be easy. That is the only way I can explain his behavior.

This intelligence failure about Iraqi society is what is killing us today. Because what really happened after the U.S. invasion is that what little Iraqi state existed just fell apart in our hands, like a broken vase. And then Rummy let the shards get looted.

Friedman has a tendency to create his own grand hypotheses and then treat them as fact, but this one rings true with me.

[UPDATE: Here's a link to the full version.]

I just watched a remarkable piece Cooper did with Dr. Greg Henderson, a pathologist, touring the now abandoned New Orleans Convention Center. Henderson arrived at the Convention Center two days after the storm, hoping to aid other doctors he expected to already be working. He arrived to find 15-20,000 people with no medicine, no help, and no law enforcement. He was the only doctor there.

“That’s where the real hell was. This is where hell opened its mouth….People were sleeping everywhere, packed everywhere in here, all the way out to the street. It was just a mass of humanity.”

He went on to describe the only other healthcare there: a man with a few IV bags and no tubing or needles, who had to resort to pouring the liquid directly into people’s mouth. His voice broke as he showed Anderson the area where he’d heard many stories of women being dragged to and raped. Henderson picked up the tiny red shoes of a little boy and told Cooper how there were children everywhere, some laughing and playing, glad that they weren’t at school, while others lay on the floor siezing and dying.

All that’s left now in the Convention Center is trash and two abandoned dogs. As Brian Williams echoed on last night’s Daily Show, “How could this happen in America?”

Rafael Palmeiro, the Baltimore Orioles’ first baseman and owner of a 3000 hit career, testified in front of this Congressional committee and angrily shook his finger at the chairman, saying he never took steroids in his career. At the time, most everyone was impressed and convinced by his forceful testimony. Well…Turns out that’s not true as he was suspended 10 games on Monday for violating MLB’s steroid policy.

But wait, it gets richer. Because you see, Raffy and our dear leader, George W. are actually old drinkin’ buddies from their time together with the Texas Rangers. Palmeiro played for the Rangers while Bush owned the team. Despite Palmeiro’s positive test and ensuing suspension by an organization that W. was once a part of, Bush said “He’s testified in public, and I believe him.”

As The Daily Show’s Rob Cordry paraphrased last night, the president just seems to be saying, “LALALALALALALA,” while he covers his ears and holds his breath. The pattern of lies continues.

..

Oh yeah, and the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, and the man that this nation has at least once voted into office, also believes that the “theory” of intelligent design should be taught in schools. BAH!

Latoyia is still missing. Anyone with information is asked to call the Philadelphia Southwest detective division at 215-686-3183 and bloggers should keep writing about her. By keeping her profile high, and the media aware, hopefully this beautiful young woman can be found faster.

In the past year, and especially during the 2004 election, Stewart turned into a media darling. You could see him on Crossfire, on Larry King, and being cited in nearly every day’s New York Times. I’ve been watching every night for a couple of years now and I make it a point not to miss an episode.

A few weeks ago, the Daily Show crew packed up their old studio, and moved across town to a brand new stage with a brand new set. I for one, find it horrible. It’s garish, cold, and completely lacking in personality. I’m not the only one who dislikes it.

The new conference table makes the Daily Show set a more serious place, closer to the world of news than entertainment; granted, the balance between the two is difficult to strike in a satire, but if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

…

I don’t have the graphic-design vocabulary to describe this accurately, but let’s just say that you can no longer watch The Daily Show without struggling to block out two constant, and competing, written reminders that you are, indeed, watching The Daily Show.

Even the couch itself is blogging and reminiscing about what once was.

OUR former nanny, a 26-year-old former teacher with excellent references, liked to touch her breasts while reading The New Yorker and often woke her lovers in the night by biting them. She took sleeping pills, joked about offbeat erotic fantasies involving Tucker Carlson and determined she’d had more female sexual partners than her boyfriend.

Olen goes on to further disparage her by citing “semi-promiscuous couplings,” “too much drinking,” and suspicions of “boozy nights out followed by coming to work hungover.” All this despite repeated affirmations of an affinity for “this younger version of myself.” She even admits “I could say that I, too, once stayed out late, drank too much and slept with the wrong people.”

If you read the entire article I’m sure there are elements of which a parent can empathize with. But why is an employee anonymously blogging about her employer a fireable offense while the same employer writing about the employee is journalism? It all seems a bit elitist and condescending. Fortunately because these are blogs, our dear nanny can fire right back in a point-by-point refutation of Olen:

I am not a pill popping alcoholic who has promiscuous sex and cares nothing for the children for whom she works with. Nope. If you look carefully through my archives, instead you will find a young woman in her mid-twenties who decided to work as a nanny for a year while she prepared to enter the next phase of her professional life; namely the life of an academic pursuing a PhD in English Literature specifically focusing on the Late Victorian novel.

Further proof that perhaps it is blogs that will pick up the mantle of abrogated responsiblity left behind by the mainstream media.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit grandiose. But the whole thing is interesting and inspiring lots of great commentary from the blogosphere.