All the links that aren't.

Edwards announces 1,000 rural supporters who have agreed to caucus for him in Iowa. (yes, this is a big deal)

From John Cole at Balloon Juice -

Won’t be written by Petraeus (via the fire-breathing pinko commie America hater Kos):

Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data. The senior administration official said the process had created “uncomfortable positions” for the White House because of debates over what constitutes “satisfactory progress.”
From my standpoint, a report from Petraeus written by the WH isn’t a report written by Petraeus at all, and should be ignored. What is the point of even debating the results of this report? Why get mired down in arguing the specifics of the report when you know it is going to be full of shit from word one?

Conquest Of Land Began In Shark Genome

Science Daily — Scientists at the University of Florida have identified genetic activity in sharks required for the development of hands, feet, fingers and toes in limbed animals. The finding shows what was thought to be a relatively recent evolutionary innovation existed eons earlier than previously believed, potentially providing insight for scientists seeking ways to cure human birth defects.

Science Blogging Conference Update: Note, this is a great event even for the non-scientists.

Missing votes in the NC House. The print version, and the more interesting blog version.

Binker on Easley on Transportation.

Easley talked about getting a bipartisan group of legislators, DOT and others together to come up with an answer to the problem of funding highway construction and repair. "Hopefully everybody recognizes we're going to have to come up with a solution for transportation, it's going to require more money and there's never a popular way to find more money," Easley said.

How about NOT cutting taxes on the wealthy this year, that might have fixed a few bridges.

Hastert retires. Bush Republicans falling all over the place.

U.S. pays millions in cost overruns for security in Iraq.

Baghdad - The U.S. military has paid $548 million over the past three years to two British security firms that protect the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction projects, more than $200 million over the original budget, according to previously undisclosed data that show how the cost of private security in Iraq has mushroomed.
The two companies, Aegis Defence Services and Erinys Iraq, signed their original Defense Department contracts in May 2004. By July of this year, the contracts supported a private force that had grown to about 2,000 employees serving the Corps of Engineers. The force is about the size of three military battalions.
U.S. officials and company representatives attributed the overruns to the cost of protecting a largely civilian workforce amid an escalating insurgency, as Corps of Engineers commanders demanded more manpower and increasingly expensive armor to guard their field staff.
"To pay a man or a woman to come over here, put the vest on every day and escort military and civilians around the theater, knowing that people want to blow them up and kill them, you gotta pay to get that level of dedication," said Col. Douglas P. Gorgoni, senior finance officer for the Corps of Engineers in Iraq.

BTW, are you still pissed that Kirk Ross didn't get press credentials this year?

This year there proved to be at least one great advantage to having been denied membership to the 2007 edition of the Capital Press Corps: I didn’t have to write about what a regular guy Don Beason is and how I was either shocked or knew all along that he was the one who “loaned” Jim Black half-a-mil’. Unlike some of the pros up in Raleigh, I’m not used to explaining how it’s important I get cozy with lobbyists and insiders and how I’m completely immune to their charms.

Via Ezra Klein: Socialized Medicine makes you happier, another reason Republicans hate it.

We examine the effect of publicly provided health care on welfare by combining local level data on public health care, and individual level data on life satisfaction. It is shown that relatively high expenditures in health care have a positive effect on individuals life satisfaction in our data. We further illustrate how life satisfaction data can be used to directly test theoretical hypotheses about how the welfare effect of public provision should vary among different groups in the population. We find some evidence for an “ends-against-the-middle” equilibrium (Epple and Romano, 1996) in the provision of public health care, where middle-income individuals prefer higher public expenditure at the margin than low-income or high-income individuals. Further, our results indicate that valuation for health care depends on individual political orientation.

Sally Greene may come and blog about homelessness, in the meantime click the picture to read what she thinks about 'stuff'.

From today's Hotline:

"I can't think of any laboratory that shows better why you need a stream of immigrants than New York City."

-- Mike Bloomberg, New York Sun, 8/14

Mike Huckabee continued to make the TV rounds:

On his straw poll showing: "It was kind of like 'Rocky.' You lay there and you think, I don't know if I can beat the guy, but I can go the distance. And that's what we showed, and it really was a victory for us."

More: "The only thing people have ever said about me was that, you know, he would be a great guy if he just had the money. And I have been saying that we have got the message, and the message ought to produce the money. You know, a lot of donors told us that, if we got some traction, they would help us. Well, I'm telling them, we have got the traction. You need to send the check. And, once that happens, this campaign is totally different. That's the only thing that has lacked."

Clean your CDs with a banana.


How To Remove CD Scratches With A Banana - video powered by Metacafe

Copy music from your iPod to your Mac or PC.

Thinking through Facebook - it is here to stay, how can you use it?

From MojoMom: Baby Einstein makes you kid stupid, they like McDonald's carrots, and women who are angry are thought of as incompetent.