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That’s right: just 75 years ago today (and not very far from where I work…) was “Black Tuesday”– the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. While no particular market panic is scheduled for today, next week is… a whole other week!!! I’m reopening the “electoral vote/popular vote” guess contest; closest guess gets lunch care of moi at New York’s Bouley restaurant… Take your best shots!

Well, it looks like we have “the facts” as to what happened at the unfortunately named Al Qa Qaa weapons complex in Iraq: as shown in a video taken by a crew that came in with the 101st Airborne, the shit was all there when we got there, and it was US that fucked up the security measures. Game. Set. Match. George W. Bush’s alleged strength for those who believes that gratuitous wars of aggression are a good thing was that “at least” he kept weapons out of the hands of terrorists. Only at Al Qa Qaa, we put bad-ass...

That’s it. 9-11 did change everything. It’s been nearly twelve hours now, and the universe has not been destroyed, despite the Boston Red Sox prevailing in an inconceivable eight game winning streak starting with being down 4-3 going into the 9th inning down three games to none against the New York Yankees to come back and sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 World Series. Many in New England will now lose a sense of their collective identity: the bitter taste of bizarre means of defeat, heart-crushing late inning errors or opponents’ home runs, somehow made the long,...

Palestinian strongman Yasir Arafat is in serious medical condition, described cryptically by different sources as “critical”, “life-threatening”, “serious”, or “stable”, and ranging from “a bad case of the flu” to “stomach cancer”. Both Israeli security forces and Palestinian Authority security apparatuses are on a heightened state of alert (where do you go from already high alert?) in anticipation of violence in the event Arafat’s health deteriorates, or if, in fact, what ails him is terminal. With six days until American elections, this is just part of the complete wild card that the Middle East is; Sharon’s Gaza pullout plans are...

Even your somewhat partisan talking dog was somewhat taken aback during one of the presidential debates when the moderator asked the President and Senator Kerry about the looming shortage of flu vaccine. I didn’t really think an unfortunate contamination was a political issue; until you realize that, as Mark A.R. Kleiman tells us, ONLY the United States will suffer a vaccine shortage, because our government dithered while others arranged alternative supplies (and thanks to the on-fire veep for the heads-up). Surprise, surprise. Another catastrophic cock-up from the Bush Administration that will unquestionably result in thousands of additional American deaths. As...

In honor of Hillary Clinton’s birthday (the Empire State’s junior senator and America’s former first lady turns 56 today) and my own birth 42 years ago today (smack during the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis), we’ll give you a triple play from peripatetic former talking dog running mate Bruce Moomaw: (1) Andrew Sullivan — who endorsed Bush enthusiatically last time and has been on the fence all year this time, before finally deciding to endorse Kerry today: “QUOTE OF THE DAY: ‘The commander of the first unit into the area told CBS he did not search it for explosives...

What’s most surprising about this story of Bush incompetence in not guarding weapons in Iraq, summarized here by dog run member Josh Marshall (via Julia writing in The American Street where you can read some of my own musings about our legal system on Mondays, along with a nice smattering of some of the best damned writers in blogdom…) is not that it took so long to come out at all, but that the Bushmen couldn’t suppress it completely with just over a week to go until the election. The story, of course, is of over just how 350 tons...

Another day, another tale of human carnage coming out of Iraq, in this case, the gruesome discovery of 49 bodies of graduates of Iraqi army military training, shot at close range, discovered east of Baghdad. Insurgents have targeted men in the new Iraqi army in an attempt to deter others from joining. Of course, in many cases (by no means not all), as in the United States, it is a weak economy and non-existent prospects that lead many to take the risks associated with military service and sign up. Adding to the tragedy, of course, as these men were often...

This week’s visit to our friends at Pravda gives us this somewhat disjointed piece (I have no idea who does Pravda’s Russian to English translations… but I LIKE them!) about various nasty effects from global climate change, including a lengthy discussion about shifting magnetic poles that borders on the stuff of the National Examiner, culminating in a discussion of the well understood global changes (all, to this day, still denied by the Bush Administration). This being Pravda (part of why you get your weekly dose) the payoff comes in the form of a punchline: global warming will doubtless be good...

We got trouble right here in Tigris River City. Margaret Hassan, the director of CARE International in Iraq, kidnapped by militants believed to be associated with Al Zarqawi’s terrorist movement, was seen on a videotape shown on Al Jazeera television, pleading for, among other things, her life, and for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq (and certainly not moved into the Baghdad area, which PM Blair has just agreed to do). The stakes of our adventure, which is no longer being managed for military or strategic or even geo-political advantage but entirely for domestic political reasons is that more...