MICKEY KAUS: “It’s Kerry’s race to lose! … P.S.: He’s right, of course–ordinary Americans pay $250 bucks to go windsurfing all the time.” Well, yeah.

SHANTI MANGALA points to a blogger who could use some help.

CHAVEZ UPDATE: Massive turnout in the recall election.

UPDATE: Exit polls show Chavez losing badly. The big question is whether we can trust the official count, and whether Chavez will go even if he loses.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Chavez is claiming victory; opponents are charging election fraud.

HERE’S A ROUNDUP of news stories mentioning the Kerry-Christmas-Cambodia story this weekend. It seems to be taking off.

BAD NEWS for Germany. And this oped from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution seems right to me:

I wouldn’t dare predict the outcome of the presidential election in November, but there is one prediction I will make. Regardless of who wins, George W. Bush or John Kerry, an idealistic, interventionist foreign policy for the United States is over. In international affairs, our country will turn not to multilateralism but to isolationism. Partnership with Europe will be history.

Yes, as I’ve noted over the past couple of years, European politicians really don’t understand the extent of the damage they have done.

AT HOME ON THE RANGE:

It’s a cloudy Saturday in August. What’s a woman to do?

Yesterday, the answer for 45 women was: Leave the men at home, head for the hills of Loudoun County and learn to shoot. . . .

That’s a typical story, organizers said. Women, they said, are increasingly interested in shooting sports and hunting, and they prefer to learn without men around. Since the federation began offering memberships to its Women in the Outdoors program in 1998, the number of workshops offered annually has grown from 18 to 480 last year. Nearly 50,000 women are members of the program.

I keep seeing stories like this.

OUCH:

If Kerry is dogged and haunted by the accusation of wanting everything twice over, he has come by the charge honestly. In Vietnam, he was either a member of a ”band of brothers” or of a gang of war criminals, and has testified with great emotion to both convictions. In the Senate, he has either voted for armament and vigilance or he has not, and either regrets his antiwar vote on the Kuwait war, or his initial pro-war stance on the Iraq war, or his negative vote on the financing of the latter, or has not. The Boston Globe writers capture a moment of sheer, abject incoherence, at a Democratic candidates’ debate in Baltimore last September:

”If we hadn’t voted the way we voted, we would not have been able to have a chance of going to the United Nations and stopping the president, in effect, who already had the votes and who was obviously asking serious questions about whether or not the Congress was going to be there to enforce the effort to create a threat.”

And all smart people know how to laugh at President Bush for having problems with articulation. . . .

He still gives, to me at any rate, the impression of someone who sincerely wishes that this were not a time of war. When critical votes on the question come up, Kerry always looks like a dog being washed.

Probably the most negative assessment of Kerry we’ll read in the New York Times, though one consigned to the Book Review section.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

JERALYN MERRITT OF TALKLEFT is now credentialed to cover the Kobe Bryant trial. Cool!

GOOD NEWS:

The still waters just south of Centre Island were transformed yesterday morning into Cape Canaveral North, as a Canadian entry in the $10 million (U.S.) Ansari X Prize competition carried out a splashdown test of its crew cabin. It looked like something from the early days of NASA, except the cabin was unmanned. (Oh yes. And the U.S. navy wasn’t there.)

Nonetheless, the test takes Canadian Arrow one small step closer to making its first manned suborbital flight before the end of the year, and to eventually carrying passengers who’ll pay good coin to kiss the cheek of space.

“This is kind of like that last of six tests before you put human beings on board the vehicle,” said the team’s leader, Geoff Sheerin.

Everybody wins from this sort of competition.

HERE’S A REPORT from the South Dakota Blog Alliance — looks like they’re becoming a force in South Dakota politics and journalism.

BURNING COAL IS BAD: A reader sends this abstract of a recent study, born of last year’s blackout:

THE MASSIVE NORTHEAST BLACKOUT of a year ago not only shut off
electricity for 50 million people in the US and Canada, but also shut off the pollution coming from fossil-fired turbogenerators in the Ohio Valley. In effect, the power outage was an inadvertent experiment for gauging atmospheric repose with the grid gone for the better part of the day. And the results were impressive. On 15 August 2003, only 24 hours after the blackout, air was cleaner by this amount: SO2 was down 90%, O3 down 50%, and light-scattering particles down 70% over “normal” conditions in the same area. The haze reductions were made by University of Maryland scientists scooping air samples with a light aircraft. The observed pollutant reductions exceeded expectations, causing the authors to suggest that the spectacular overnight improvements in air quality “may result from underestimation of emission from power plants, inaccurate representation of power plant effluent in emission models or unaccounted-for atomospheric chemical reactions.” (Marufu et al., Geophysical Research Letters, vol 31, L13106, 2004.)

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the research, but I’ve always felt — as many people who live in TVA country do — that burning coal to generate power is an absolutely filthy and destructive habit.

BUSY WITH FAMILY STUFF this weekend. Back later. In the meantime here’s a call to the blogosphere for a worthy cause. And there’s lots of interesting stuff, including some very interesting photo-weatherblogging (weather-photoblogging?) here.

And the Kerry/Cambodia story is now getting straight news coverage in the Seattle Times and a number of other papers, though there’s still no coverage at the New York Times or the Washington Post. Is that because they’re busy investigating this story thoroughly, or are they just spinning their wheels? We’ll find out, I guess.

Meanwhile Kerry isn’t talking to the press much, according to Ryan Lizza. I wonder why?

JEFF JARVIS ON MCGREEVEY: “If all McGreevey had done was shtupped a guy named Golan Cipel, he would not have resigned. He resigned because this now explains why he put the guy on the state payroll at a high salary for a job he never should have filled. He wasted our money. Off with his head.”

UPDATE: Doc Searls: “Dude, if you’re serious about resigning, don’t just stand on the trap door for three months. Pull the lever.”

THE UNITED NATIONS, HARD AT WORK PREVENTING ETHNIC SLAUGHTER:

BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) – Dozens of attackers raided a U.N. refugee camp in western Burundi, shooting and hacking to death at least 180 people, witnesses and local officials said Saturday . . .

The camp sheltered Congolese ethnic Tutsi refugees, known as the Banyamulenge, who fled fighting in Congo’s troubled border province of South Kivu, Niyonzima said.

It didn’t shelter them very well.

MEDIA COVERAGE (OR NOT) of the Kerry/Cambodia story is analyzed in the Rocky Mountain News: It’s certainly possible to argue about whether this story tells us anything useful about Kerry — but it’s quite clear that it tells us a lot about the media.

UPDATE: More inconsistencies in the Kerry Vietnam narrative.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm. The self-checking nature of the blogosphere is asserting itself in the comments regarding the inconsistencies above — which is a good thing, as we try to figure out what happened. On the other hand, the folks at Democratic Underground feel threatened. Stay tuned.

MORE ON THE BLURRING LINES BETWEEN MAINSTREAM JOURNALISM AND POLITICS:

SANTA FE – Say you need a smashing introduction for your political speech. Who can you call?

Apparently you call three Albuquerque TV news reporters.

At this year’s Border Governors Conference, Gov. Bill Richardson got one of the most glowing introductions he’s ever received.

Monica Armenta, the longtime morning anchorwoman for KOB-Channel 4 bestowed the honors. Armenta was followed at the podium, at other times, by KOB anchorman Nelson Martinez and KOAT-Channel 7 anchorwoman Cynthia Izaguirre. . . .

Last but not least, Armenta said, Richardson “successfully and effectively represented the Democratic Party, New Mexico and the border region as the 2004 chair of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.”

After the applause died down, Richardson returned the favor, calling Armenta “the Katie Couric of New Mexico.”

But don’t worry:

“We watch very carefully how the news gets reported,” Burgess said. “Whatever the political leanings of our reporters, it damn sure doesn’t come out on the air.”

That’s a relief! (Via Michael Silence, who opines: “This is not good for journalism.”)

AS WE COME UP ON THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of last year’s blackout, security is still a problem:

A YEAR after the biggest power blackout in North American history, Canada and the U.S. still haven’t beefed-up overall security of the electricity supply, a new report reveals. The report, prepared by Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. Department of Energy and released yesterday, updates progress on efforts to prevent another blackout crisis in the future.

Here’s a link to the full report. Naturally, this led me to think of The Knowledge Problem, and sure enough they’ve got posts here (with lots more links) and here (noting that network reliability is a differentiated product). And it’s worth reading this column from Lynne Kiesling. And read this column on hardening systems against disaster, natural or man-made.

I never did get around to buying a generator, though.

SOME PRETTY GOOD ADVICE on what makes for a successful blog. (Via Michael Silence).

COLUMBIA UPDATE: Reportedly, it was a flaw in the foam-gluing process that led to the loss of the space shuttle Columbia:

The fault apparently was not with the chemical makeup of the foam, which insulates the tanks and prevents ice from forming on the outside when 500,000 gallons of supercold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are pumped aboard hours before liftoff.

Instead, Otte said NASA concluded after extensive testing that the process of applying some sections of foam by hand with spray guns was at fault.

Gaps, or voids, were often left, and tests done since the Columbia accident have shown liquid hydrogen could seep into those voids. After launch, the gas inside the voids starts to heat up and expand, causing large pieces of insulation to pop off.

Sometimes it’s the little things that get you. (Via Slashdot, which has some interesting comments.) And here’s an article on related issues regarding Shuttle safety.

THE ROOTS OF FRENCH FOREIGN POLICY: An interesting discovery.

THE COMMAND POST has lots of Charley news, links to webcams, and suggestions on how you can help.

HERE’S THE LATEST ON HURRICANE CHARLEY: Lots of property damage, but so far not very deadly, in spite of being about as strong as Hurricane Andrew. Let’s hope those early reports hold up.

UPDATE: My friend Larry DeWitte emails from Tampa:

We skated by as this thing ramped up to a Cat 4 but took a sharp turn east south of us. Incredible! It is always a waiting game and a crap shoot. I feel bad for all the folks that went inland for shelter and are now getting hammered.

He was always good at skating by trouble. . . .

ANDREA HARRIS IS HURRICANEBLOGGING FROM ORLANDO: She’s even posting pics.

HURRICANE POLITICS have already begun.

HERE’S A CRACK IN THE MEDIA BLACKOUT over the Cambodia story:

But like an old fish story in which the catch keeps getting larger with every telling, Kerry didn’t stop at telling tales of war crimes.

He also told the Senate, in 1986, that he was illegally in Cambodia.

Kerry said, “I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared — seared — in me.”

Utter lies, total and complete exaggerated lies, the Swift Vets claim. So, this fish tale stinks worse each time Kerry drags it out.

With accusations flying, Kerry’s version of free speech has shrunk down to only one veteran: himself. All others must be silenced.

This is called “damage control,” folks, and it’s in high gear because Kerry knows he’s in trouble here. Big trouble.

Of course, this whole matter could be cleared up if Kerry would release his Vietnam records and his personal journal. It’s a simple matter to release these records, requiring only a standard Form 180.

I think that Kerry should release those records. (Via John Weidner).

UPDATE: A frequent correspondent sends this:

Mr. Reynolds: In the (unlikely) event you decide to publish this e-mail on your blog, please don’t use my name on this one occasion, as I’m divulging some information about a close personal relationship. Anyway, last night I was talking to a friend who is a hardcore liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a first cousin of a very well-known Democratic Senator. He was very upset about the Kerry-Swift Vet-Cambodia controversy. He blamed Kerry for the whole thing, saying he had set himself up for this problem by making Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Two things struck me about this. First, this is a guy who gets all of his news from the biggies – the NYT, NPR, and CNN – and yet he knew all about the story. That means the Big Media filter isn’t preventing the story from reaching people. Second, he had concluded that Kerry deserves the criticism and is lacking in credibility. This is a guy who, if there were any yes-but talking points in defense of Kerry, surely would have stuck to them. This says to me that if Big Media is in the tank for Kerry, they may actually have hurt him by not covering this story. They’ve abdicated coverage of a story that is negative to Kerry to the Blogosphere, thus resulting in more damage to their favored candidate than if they’d reported on the story, but with an eye toward knocking it down. They can pretend the story isn’t there, but they can’t make blogs go away.

Yeah, and they’re damaging themselves as more and more people notice that they’re ignoring it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a link to a poll suggesting that the story’s having impact despite the Big Media’s treatment. Or maybe because of it. . . .