From the AP:

Indicators measure the nation’s unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.

“That’s a source that didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. “Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay.”

What next will the Bushies dredge up to convince us that the economy is swell? The value of shared MP3s should count in the GDP? Add offshore employees to the ranks of the newly employed?

When you can’t tell the AP from The Onion, you know we’ve entered the realm of the post-ludicrous.

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Ethan Zuckerman has published the initial results of the alpha version of a project he’s started, and it’s pretty damn interesting. He’s scraping NY Times articles and then checking which ones are being linked to in blogs. The raw results are depressingly unsurprising: We blog about the US, then about the US, with occasional digressions about the US.

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This t-shirt that promotes Jonny for president in 2004 is just ridiculous. Everyone knows that 2008 is Stewart’s year, when he’ll be running against the Schwarzengroper. C’mon people, get real!

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I’ve been noticing that, not surprisingly, spammers seem to be getting yet smarter about their subject lines; I’m having to open more of the little buggers that get through the Thunderbird spam filter to see if they are in fact spams.

This morning, though, I got one with a twist I don’t understand. the subject line was “Don’t open this, I’m pushing cia!is.”

No, I didn’t open it.

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There’s a niche in the blogging/media ecosystem I hope someone fills.

Aggregators are wonderful, but I find using them makes me as lonely as a night watchman making his rounds.

So, between the solipsism of aggregators and the impersonalism of mainstream newspapers, I’d like a site where my friends and I can read stuff together. We suggest blogs and sites, and the aggregator surfaces the hot posts based on clever metrics and heuristics (mumble mumble handwaving). And we get to comment and annotate for one another.

That last point is important because I find that I often don’t leave comments on other sites because I don’t have a sense of who the readers are. On this site, I’d know with whom I’m talking.

Do such social reading sites exist?

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It’s in images that I find myself remembering those who died in the attack. Horrifying, heart-tearing images. But it’s with an intake of breath that I remember those who walked into flaming towers to save others.

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Looking at the course of this election, can you find anything left of our democracy?

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When candidates – or CEOs – lie about their service record, don’t they generally get forced to resign? Isn’t that the norm? Just wondering.

The following passage from Salon is merely coincidental:

In 1978, during an unsuccessful run for Congress in west Texas, Bush produced campaign literature that claimed he had served “in the US Air Force and the Texas Air National Guard.”

George W. Bush was never in the US Air Force.

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Political satire. (Thanks to Cory for the link.)

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From Micah:

Personal Democracy Forum, a new online resource focusing on the intersection of technology and politics, is seeking contributors for its website, blog and newsletter. We’re looking for seasoned journalists versed, ideally, in both the political and technology industries who are interested in covering a wide range of subjects, including: how the Internet is moving votes, money and perceptions; the digital political industry; tools and techniques of clued-in campaigns; and emergent technology-enabled democracy. Political or business journalism background a plus but not required. We’re looking for 800- to 1500-word features as well as shorter blog entries on ongoing beats. Will pay competitive freelance rates. Send resume, clips, blog info, etc to Micah L. Sifry at [email protected].

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