I honestly don't understand how George Bush's job approval isn't at 88%:

Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. service businesses, which account for the bulk of the economy, expanded at a faster pace in July, powered by more orders, according to a private survey.

The Institute for Supply Management's index of financial services, construction, retail and other non-manufacturing enterprises rose to 64.8, from 59.9 in June. The index has been greater than 50, signaling expansion, since April 2003.

The economic expansion may be gaining strength after higher prices for energy and other goods crimped consumer spending last quarter, economists said.

...

Economists expected the Tempe, Arizona, institute's index to rise to 61.5, according to the median of 63 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 57.9 to 64.7. The index reached a record 68.4 in April.

...

The survey's employment index declined to 50.0 from June's 57.4, which was a record. The U.S. may have added 243,000 jobs in July, according to a survey of economists before Friday's employment report from the Labor Department. Service-providing industries added 122,000 workers in June, which was the smallest increase since February.

The slowdown in hiring last month may have been a blip, economists said.

...

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits have averaged 345,633 a week so far this year, compared with 402,115 for all of 2003. The four-week moving average of claims was 336,300 in the four weeks ended July 23, according to the Labor Department.

The institute said Monday that it's [sic] gauge of U.S. manufacturing rose to 62 in July from 61.1, helped by increased orders and production.

Factory Orders Up Again: Boosted up half a percent in July.

Schadenfreude Update! Our great allies, the Germans, experience persistent and now rising unemployment.

Poland can't be happy to see so many Huns with idle hands.

Large cowbell for expanding business activity plus an above-230,000 consensus prediction for July job creation. This is going to be the last jobs number before the convention. Good numbers = Bush can speak freely and confidently about the economy.

Posted by: Ace at 07:36 AM | Comments (6)
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Oh, yeah, that SAT question:

Kerry doesn't let an appearance go by without noting that People magazine once named Edwards the sexiest politician in the country. Between Edwards and Affleck, he said in Wheeling, "I kind of feel like that SAT question: 'Which one of these is different?' "

I don't remember any "Which of these things is not like the others?" questions on my SAT's. I do remember such questions, but from Sesame Street and Kindergarten fun-time quizzes.

Brilliantly Nuanced and Complex Intellectual John Kerry hopes to point out further "SAT questions" in the coming weeks, such as:

Compare and Contrast the following two items: 1) Your ass, 2) a hole in the ground.

TRUE OR FALSE: It is safe and fun to take a pair of scissors and jam them into your soft palate.

ODD/EVEN NUMBERS: Identify whether each of the following are EVEN (evenly divisible by 2), ODD (not evenly divisible by 2), or NOT A NUMBER at all:

a) 2

b) 7

c) 31

d) an antelope

e) 4

f) former LA Dodgers pitching great Fernando Venezeula

g) 336

h) Emilio Estevez

i) 52

j) the bassline of KISS's Lick it Up

Do bears shit in the woods? a) Yes b) No c) It cannot be determined from the information provided.

Would you like a cookie? a) Yes b) No c) It cannot be determined from the information provided.

Should we have gone to war with Iraq? a) Yes b) No c) It cannot be determined from the information provided.

Hat-tip to NRO's The Corner.

More: Da Goddess is also featuring some "SAT questions," apparently from the "Can you guess what I'm thinking?" section (which, if memory serves, followed the Antonyms).

Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (12)
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A week ago, the WashPost & ABCNews put out a poll showing Bush gaining big.

The poster called "Kerry is Unelectable" called shenanigans on that poll. He thought the poll was deliberately biased in favor of Bush so as to produce a big Kerry bounce after the convention. In other words, the lower Kerry's support seemed to be right before the convention, the bigger the "bounce" he would show afterwards.

Now, I didn't really buy that theory then, and I don't know if I do now, either. But I do have to note that Kerry Is Unelectable at least called the outcome of the two polls, if not the chicanery behind them. In fact, it's the ABCNews/WashPost polls that are showing the biggest Kerry "bounce," all based off of the cratering Kerry support reported in the previous poll. Had that earlier poll shown results more in-line with other polls, the new poll wouldn't show a bounce at all.

Kausfiles (August 3 entry) dismisses that earlier poll as a likely outlier, and decides that Kerry probably got little if any bounce at all.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (5)
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My Pet Jawa's got the goods. All in easy-to-read graph format.

But why is Bush's line in pink, of all colors?

He also tips that the Commissar has dug through bloggers' old high-school yearbooks and turned up the skeletons in our closets.

Well, not mine. He's quite right that I played cowbell for the school marching band. But he completely missed the fact that I lettered in Varsity Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Yeahp, Advanced-- none of that Basic shit for me. I was hard-core, baby.

Posted by: Ace at 12:49 PM | Comments (8)
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For those out there who seem to live in an alternate pocket universe in which every day is September the 10th (and in which we're always in a weed-hazed unending Summer of Love), this slideshow of the actual universe might be a bracing and needed jolt of reality.

Thanks to Michele at ASV, who puts it all into context for us.

By the way-- wasn't she supposed to give up political blogging in favor of pop-culture and baseball blogging? I'm glad she didn't.

Posted by: Ace at 09:18 AM | Comments (2)
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Son of Nixon has an early draft of Kerry's CV.

The key part of "CV" is the C. His grade-point average at Yale. You know, the low-C averages that brilliant intellectuals so frequently earn. (Bush's high-C/low-B average, on the other hand, is the mark of a drooling retard.)

Thanks to Florida Cracker.

Posted by: Ace at 09:11 AM | Comments (27)
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Nabs Appear to be "Timed" to Prevent Future Terrorist Attacks; Terry McAuliffe Blasts, "We were counting on successful terrorist attacks for our 'bounce'"

And once again, Democrats are surprised to learn that summer offensives are "timed" to occur in the summer:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistani authorities have arrested two high-ranking al-Qaida terrorists - one with a multimillion-dollar U.S. bounty on his head - in a days-long sweep that has netted at least six suspected militants, officials said Tuesday.

The interior minister said the arrests in eastern Punjab province were a major break just days after intelligence agents arrested Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa.

"In addition to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, whose bounty was $25 million, we have captured another most wanted suspect with a bounty on him running into the millions of dollars," the minister, Faisal Saleh Hayyat, said.

He said both suspects were of African origin but refused to identify them or their nationalities.

Four Egyptians and a Libyan on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists are believed to be in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Each of them has a $5 million bounty on his head in connection with the embassy bombings.

Osama bin Laden's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, is also from Egypt. He and the al-Qaida chief are believed hiding along the Pakistan-Afghan border, far from Punjab province.

Hayyat's announcement followed news that at least six al-Qaida suspects, including a Syrian, have been arrested in separate raids in recent days.

Three of the suspects - two Pakistanis and a foreigner - were arrested on a road near the eastern city of Lahore, and five grenades and two AK-47 rifles were found in their sports utility vehicle, a high-ranking intelligence official told The Associated Press.

Another detainee is a policeman, Raja Waqar, assigned to the office of Punjab province's top politician; he is suspected of passing al-Qaida linked groups information on the whereabouts of top government officials, Lahore police chief Tariq Salim Dogar told The Associated Press.

"The previous record of the policeman shows that he has been involved in jihadi activities and had links with al-Qaida. We have initiated a probe to find out how he managed to get posted to such a sensitive place," Dogar said.

A fifth suspect, arrested Sunday at a bus station in a town near Lahore, identified himself as Juma Ibrahim, a Syrian, said district police chief Aslam Ghauri. He said Ibrahim was turned over to Pakistan's spy agency.

Another man was arrested trying to board a plane in Lahore with questionable documents, said a government official who gave no further details.

It was not immediately clear if any of the six militants described by Pakistani officials included the two senior al-Qaida men that Hayyat said were wanted by the United States.

Several of the detainees were believed to be linked to other al-Qaida suspects in custody, including a computer expert identified as Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan who was arrested July 13.

Posted by: Ace at 08:33 AM | Comments (3)
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Believe it or not, I got this somewhat-interesting story from Filet-O-Fish.

I know a lot of hardcore conservatives dig this guy. I don't. I think he's a hustler with a smooth rap. And I think he sounds like a Muppet.

Still, I think this is a good idea. We're going to lose this seat anyway. We might as well Keyes so we can't be demagogued about never not having a black candidate for Senator this cycle.

Suspicious Timing Update! Was fellow Illinois native Denny Hastert doing Alan Keyes a solid when he floated the "abolish the IRS" trial balloon? That, of course, is one of Keyes' biggest schticks; and you'd need an issue of that sort of size and star-power if you wanted a chance to change the dynamic of the race.

Correction: I originally said the GOP hadn't ever run a black candidate for Senate. Senator Philabuster tells me Keyes has already run twice in Maryland. My bad.

Posted by: Ace at 07:20 AM | Comments (11)
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I posted an article about the continued factory growth below, but I like the way this story puts it:

Factories enter longest stretch of rapid growth in 30 years

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The American manufacturing sector sped up activity in July, cementing the longest stretch of rapid growth in more than 30 years, a survey showed.

The Institute for Supply Management purchasing managers' index (PMI), based on a survey of supply executives, rose 0.9 point from June to 62.0 in July, in line with private economists' forecasts.

It was the 14th consecutive reading above 50 points, which indicates an expansion in activity.

"The manufacturing sector continues to grow at a rapid rate as the PMI has now been above 60 percent for nine consecutive months," survey chief Norbert Ore said in a statement.

"This is the longest period of growth above 60 percent since the 12-month period of July 1972 through June 1973," he said.

Key findings in the report showed:

-- New orders sped up, with the index rising 4.7 points from June to 64.7 in July.

-- Production accelerated, with the index up 2.9 to 66.1.

-- Employment grew, albeit at a slower rate, with the index easing 2.4 to 57.3.

-- Input prices rose at slower pace, with the index falling 4.0 points to 77.0.

"Today's ISM report provides further verification of the strong state of US manufacturing," said Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI president and chief executive Thomas Duesterberg.

...

Many economists expect economic growth to speed up in the second half of the year as consumers bounce back despite an expectation of gently rising short-term interest rates.

Larger cowbell to represent not just the great economic news, but the actual media recognition of this fact.

Posted by: Ace at 06:56 PM | Comments (7)
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CONTENT WARNING: Bomb-sight camera footage. Too distant a shot to be gory, but it does depict the extirpation of a group of alleged human beings.

A reader (name withheld) tips me to this video of the Marines calling in an airstrike on a group of "famous Baghdad wedding singers" "choreographing their dance-steps" in the middle of the road.

The bomb impacts just as they're hitting the second verse of Lionel Ritchie's Say You, Say Me. If you turn up your speakers really high, you can just manage to hear the famous Baghdad wedding singers croon, I had a dream, I had an awesome drea--

Update: ScottB says he posted a link to this two weeks ago.

My first impulse was to make him weep for his impudence. I began planning a series of steps to terrorize him-- ruining his credit rating, filling his house with carnivorous Amazonian cockroaches, leaving bloody, mutilated dolls on his doorstep, murdering each of his pets one by one, etc.

But that's sooooooo mid-nineties "The _____ from Hell" thriller-pic. Sorta passe at this point, isn't it?

Instead, I'll just say sorry, I never saw that item, and give him an apology link. I'll also mention he said this about Kerry's planned 55 minute speech:

Kerry does not help himself when he speaks. It should be short and done. I will watch, but dang it is going to be painful.

Just doing this should save me some time. The one problem with running a daily blog is that it leaves virtually no time at all for creepy stalking behavior.

Update: Live Link! Apparently the original link died. This link seems to still be working.

Thanks to James at Curbside Prophet.

Posted by: Ace at 06:12 PM | Comments (11)
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