The Great Leap Forward

Condi is a liar.

People much smarter than you or I have analyzed Rice's testimony and found it wanting. No surprises there. Go educate yourself.

The ICL are getting their asses kicked.

Over in the Daily Kos-Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball League, the Iowa City Liberals have hit rock bottom after just 4 days. Out of a possible 144 points, my team has scored 33.5, trailing the 11th-place team by 11. Out of 12 scoring categories, ICL is last or tied for last in 6 of them. There are people in the league who aren't even monitoring their teams who are doing better than me. I have a good core of players, but for the most part, they haven't done a damn thing. (I'm looking at you, Brad Wilkerson and Lance Berkman! Both off to 0-for-9 starts at the plate.) None of my starters has recorded a win yet. I've made a few tweaks, like dumping Todd Walker (I mean, who gets beat out for the Cubs' 2B job by Mark Grudzielanek?) Picked up a few promising youngsters: Hee Seop Choi (Marlins 1B, who promptly went 0-for-4 in his first game for me) and Chad Gaudin, a promising young pitcher with Tampa Bay. I hope to climb out of the cellar, but it's a long way to the top.

George W. Bush: Against freedom, for baseball.

Bush goes to a game. Why are we not surprised?

At St. Louis, Scott Podsednik drove in four runs and Milwaukee opened the season by beating the Cardinals, with President Bush watching from a box above home plate.

[snip]

Bush threw out the ceremonial first pitch, an inside strike, to Cardinals catcher Mike Matheny. Then, Bush watched the first five innings from a private box.

They have plenty of time to campaign as well, but our soldiers won't be coming home any time soon.

The Bush administration was last night considering sending more troops to Iraq to reinforce the 130,000 already there as a Shia uprising continued to rock parts of the country and threaten Washington's plans to hand over sovereignty this summer.

With 1,200 US Marines and two battalions of Iraqi security forces poised to march into the sealed-off city of Fallujah, and with an arrest warrant having been issued for a radical Shia cleric, many observers were predicting an increase in the bloodshed.

An edgy President George Bush tried to brush off the problems, insisting America's plan to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqis on 30 June would not alter. In a speech in North Carolina, he said: "The deadline remains firm. Terrorists can't stand freedom. We're still being challenged in Iraq and the reason why is a free Iraq will be a major defeat in the cause of freedom."

(emphasis mine)

Does he even know what he's talking about any more? Time for another drink, George. Takes the "edgy" off.

But wait, there's more...

On Monday, a senior official with U.S. Central Command said that the return home of about 24,000 U.S. troops who were scheduled to leave in the next few weeks would be delayed as their replacements arrive. Central Command's responsibility includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With the 24,000 remaining and others who have arrived as intended replacements, there are 134,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

When will they start telling us the truth? (Correct answer: Never.)

Bank of America to lay off 12,500 (and that ain't all).

We gained 308,000 new jobs, but so what? We just lost 12,500 at Bank of America, not to mention the 2,500 at Gateway because they're closing their remaining 188 retail stores. Sun Microsystems settled a lawsuit with Microsoft and snuck in an "oh by the way" layoff of 3300.

Where are the new jobs coming from? Wal-Mart?

readThis: Does filesharing really hurt CD sales?

In an article in today's NYTimes, two economists have concluded that file sharing does not affect CD sales:

It might seem counterintuitive, but that is the conclusion reached by two economists who released a draft last week of the first study that makes a rigorous economic comparison of directly observed activity on file-sharing networks and music buying.

"Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates," write its authors, Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School and Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Of course, the RIAA disagrees. What did you expect? Here's more from the study:

Instead, they analyzed the direct data of music downloaders over a 17-week period in the fall of 2002, and compared that activity with actual music purchases during that time. Using complex mathematical formulas, they determined that spikes in downloading had almost no discernible effect on sales. Even under their worst-case example, "it would take 5,000 downloads to reduce the sales of an album by one copy," they wrote. "After annualizing, this would imply a yearly sales loss of two million albums, which is virtually rounding error" given that 803 million records were sold in 2002. Sales dropped by 139 million albums from 2000 to 2002.

"While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing," the professors wrote.

In an interview, Professor Oberholzer-Gee said that previous research assumed that every download could be thought of as a lost sale. In fact, he said, most downloaders were drawn to free music and were unlikely to spend $18 on a CD.

"Say I offer you a free flight to Florida," he asks. "How likely is it that you will go to Florida? It is very likely, because the price is free." If there were no free ticket, that trip to Florida would be much less likely, he said. Similarly, free music might draw all kinds of people, but "it doesn't mean that these people would buy CD's at $18," he said.

So we aren't necessarily downloading music we would buy. Makes sense to me. There are so many live shows, for example. 99.9% of these shows will never appear on commercial releases. Where is the harm?

Here's the part of the article I found most troublesome:

That statement is at the heart of the war on file sharing, both of music and movies, and underpins lawsuits against thousands of music fans, as well as legislation approved last week by a House Judiciary subcommittee that would create federal penalties for using what is known as peer-to-peer technology to download copyrighted works. It is also part of the reason that the Justice Department introduced an intellectual-property task force last week that plans to step up criminal prosecutions of copyright infringers.

And that's where the major problem lies. The RIAA is quite prepared to litigate against its biggest customers. I'm of the mind that if you're downloading a lot, you're probably buying a lot as well, and as I said before, you're likely to be grabbing things that are rare or even out of print. Can you imagine - jail time for downloading music? It could happen...

This is not America.

Fantasy Baseball: Iowa City Liberals update.

ICL starts the day in 8th place in the Daily Kos league (out of 12 teams), 50 points out of first, and only 3 points ahead of 11th. Some bad luck - Desi Relaford pulled a hammy after his first hit (a single). On the bright side, Albert Pujols got 2 RBIs and Adrian Beltre' got 2 hits. I'm hoping for big things from Rangers catcher Gerald Laird. Tim Hudson starts tonight for the A's.

How about those Tigers, huh?

Pew Research Poll: Historic lows for George W. Bush!

Read 'em and weep, pubbies:

Bush's overall job approval is at 43 percent, a low point for his presidency, down from 56 percent in mid-January. In the new poll, 47 percent disapproved of Bush's job performance. Bush's job approval soared to 90 percent after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and remained in the 70s for almost a year after that.

43 percent! Who would have thought it six months ago? Where are the Kerry ads? Things can only get uglier from here.

Part 2 of The Fond Farewells' story.

It's just been posted at the TFF blog - right here. Catch yourself up on the long, long story.

Live365: All Over The Place - April 3 update

Here's who's new on the AOTP playlist:

+/-, The Thrills, The Shins, The Comsat Angels, Spiritualized, Ryan Adams, Radiohead, Placebo, Nine Inch Nails, Mission Of Burma, Massive Attack, Mark Robinson, Mark Eitzel, The Tyde, Dashboard Confessional, Elbow, Crowded House, Belle and Sebastian and Ballboy.

Go here to listen - click the yellow button to play.

You knew about this with your head in your hands. All along, I was the puppet. I was the puppet.

Well, we knew this all along, but let the thought seep into the American mainstream. Pre 9/11, it used to be a cute little joke. Now, it's a serious problem. Why won't these bastards testify under oath?

This was the week the curtain got pulled back on the Bush presidency. In exchange for allowing Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath, President Bush gets to bring along his vice president when he appears privately before the commission. A top Republican strategist dubbed the legal document striking the unusual deal “the Wizard of Oz letter” because it strips away the myth that Bush is in charge. Until now, it’s been all speculation about Vice President Cheney’s influence. With the revelation of the tandem testimony, nobody with a straight face can deny Cheney is a co-president or worse, the puppeteer who pulls Bush’s strings.

They just keep making up the rules as they go along. If Clinton did this, we would never hear the end of it. Hopefully, this throws some more doubt into the minds of independent voters on the fitness of George W. Bush to be pResident.