Anyone know what's going on with Salon stock? After years in the toilet, it is suddenly on an impressive gain this week. Granted, the stock price is still negligible. But it's an increase from just (I think 3 cents a share--or possibly 2 cents) to 10 cents a share at the close of trading today. But that's more than a 200% gain in under a week.

I couldn't find any stories on it, but there must be something going on. Who knows, it could go all the way to 12! (cents).

Disclaimer: I own some. I doubt it will ever be worth much, but I do hope they pull through. I hope this is a good sign.

Thursday Update:

It dropped 2 cents (20%) today, so maybe it's just in an odd volitle state. Still, it hasn't had this much upward movement in ages. Something must be up.

And then there's this story, posted by AP a few hours ago:

Iraqis negative about Bush's U.N. speech

Best line:

‘‘I did not see Bush's speech," said Kamal Taha, a university student in Baghdad. ‘‘The electricity was off because of damage done by the United States during the war. Bush should fix the damage so that we would be able to listen and see his speeches."

That's the banner headline across the Slate site right now.

The subhead is delicious too: Fred Kaplan on the president's awful speech at the U.N.

The Dufus in Chief is on one hell of a slide. Just sank to his worst approval ratings since his narrow election. This speech was supposed to buoy him again. Is there anybody who was impressed by it? (No telling with FauxNews: they'll lie about anything, so the fact that they're presumably all gaagaa about it over there doesn't mean they liked it.)

This dufus is going down next Novemeber. I have been trying to contain my enthusiasm about that, because it is still early and anything can happen, but I am dropping my odds lower and lower. As I have pointed out many times here, I think he's going to be in for a very rough re-election next year, and his outlook just keeps getting worse.

Thank God! 

Now, on to Kaplan on the speech:

Has an American president ever delivered such a bafflingly impertinent speech before the General Assembly as the one George W. Bush gave this morning?

Here were the world's foreign ministers and heads of state, anxiously awaiting some sign of an American concession to realism—even the sketchiest outline of a plan to share not just the burden but the power of postwar occupation in Iraq. And Bush gave them nothing, in some ways less than nothing.

In the few seconds he devoted to that subject, he cited only three areas in which the role of the United Nations (or any other nations) should be expanded: writing an Iraqi constitution, training a new corps of civil servants, and supervising elections. None of these notions is new.

Otherwise, Bush's message can be summarized as follows: The U.S.-led occupation authority is doing good work in Iraq; you should come help us; if you don't, you're on the side of the terrorists.

The speech seemed cobbled from the catchphrases of last year's playbook, as if Bush were trying to replicate the success of his previous appearance before the General Assembly—his September 2002 speech, which roused the Security Council to warn Saddam Hussein of "serious consequences"—without showing the slightest recognition that the old words have grown stale and sour. . . .

Drudge claims:

Campaign operatives are scrambling to contain full nude erotic photographs taken by controversialist Robert Mapplethorpe -- full nude photographs of Arnold Schwarzenegger!

The shocking nudes of Republican Schwarzenegger have been kept under lock at the Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe in New York, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Pretty damn funny. And I'd love to see them. I hope the estate lets them go.

(There was a report of Ahnuld's naked butt available on Drudge, but I'm not finding it there.)

Update:

Thanks to Robert for providing a link to an interesting piece on Ahnuld's run, which also includes a coupe nude photos. (Hopefully this will not brand me as a porn site. It's news people. I'm a scientist. (In my imagination.) That rationale is kind of a stretch, but he is running for Governor of the largest state.)

Anyway, my fave is the one where he's holding a strategically-placed towel almost covering the goods.

The wolves were all over Wes Clark last week for lack of specifics. Oddly, many of the attacks were coming from the same people accusing him of political ineptitude.

It's a pretty standard practice to open with broad themes, milk that for all the coverage it's worth, and then get more coverage every few weeks down the road as you unveil an economic plan, a foreign policy plan, an education plan . . . More coverage, and more focused coverage. Duh. I think most of them were just looking for any excuse to attack, and they just looked foolish in the process.

So less than a week out, and he has launched the economic plan.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Wednesday outlined an economic plan that he said would move $100 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy into "job creating funds."

"My job creation plan is a clear alternative to the failed policies" of President Bush, the retired Army general told supporters and reporters in Manhattan. "Tax cuts for the rich have made us poor."

Delivering a 20-minute policy speech at a park along the East River, Clark said he would take the money that Bush gave the wealthy in tax cuts and create three funds: for homeland security, business tax incentives and relief for state governments.

Nice. I like all that so far.

The Hillary rumors are really getting on my nerves.

For starters, only a Beltway Boy--or someone who has followed their work far too closely--would even entertain the idea. Such myopic people, lost in their own little world where she is a star and everything she says and does is exciting, and so the fuck what?

She did a great job as a behind-the-scenes strategist, just like James Carville, and they got the one with the (sort of) charisma (that would be Bill) elected, twice, and that's about as close as James or Hillary are ever going to get to the oval office themselves. They both have great big mouths on them, and neither one has close to the personality that would ever draw a big following.

The latest poll from NY provides a bit more evidence for the truly hard-headed, which will mean nothing to them, of course. The "news" of the poll was that more and more NYers don't want her to run in 2004. From AP:

In the latest Marist poll, 69 percent of New York voters, including 57 percent of Democrats, said they didn't want to see Clinton run in 2004. In an April poll from the Poughkeepsie-based pollster, 54 percent of New York voters said they didn't want her to run for the White House next year.

The more important finding:

New York voters are about evenly split on whether they would like to see Democrat Clinton run for the presidency someday.

Even in her home state, one of the most Hillary-friendly in the nation, the handpicked place she figured she was most likely to get elected, even there, half the people don't want her president. Or even to run.

What on earth makes any of those beltway boys think this country would ever embrace her? If they want a woman for president--and many of us do--try Diane Feinstein. Or try some up-and-comer. Just try someone with some chance of political popularity.

Yuck.

This passage from the AP story just amazes me:

Like the late Bob Hope, who hosted the show 18 times, Crystal is a favorite of TV critics who praise his easygoing style as master of ceremonies and the touch of class he brings along with the laughs.

TV critics. I tell you. Bottom of the barrel. (Except Heather from Salon, and Carina, their previous, who I believe is now at EW. Salon's original TV critic, Joyce Millman, was dreadful too, but they came to their senses awhile ago.)

The "touch of class" was the real whopper. Though the comparison to The Incredibly Unfunny Bob Hope was apt. (Though Joe B assures me he was once funny, long before I was born, which may well be true. So why did he keep hosting well into my lifetime?)

Bush gave about the lamest speech ever to the U.N. yesterday.

I guess Americans were ready to swallow anything after 9/11, even from that dufus, but the free ride appears over. Now he's increasingly seen as a dufus, even by Republicans. (Personally, I failed to see his presidentialness even after 9/11, with the lone exception of the memorial speech at the cathedral a few days after.) He is going to get so trounced next November.

Nice lead from the morning-after AP analysis just posted this morning:

Future of Iraq Reopens U.S.-U.N. Divide

NEW YORK Sept. 24 — President Bush resumed on Wednesday his wobbly drive for support of a methodical and deliberative transition to democracy in Iraq, lobbying German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a key critic.

The story ends with our two heroes, Howard Dean and Wesley Clark giving him the whump he deserves on the two main morning shows:

On Wednesday, Dean charged on ABC's "Good Morning America" that Bush "really poisoned the well with the allies on the way into Iraq and now, of course, he's going to have a hard time getting any help from them to get out."

One of Dean's Democratic presidential rivals, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, agreed with that assessment, telling NBC's "Today" show that "I think he (Bush) has really hurt us. ... We went in to Iraq on a lack of evidence ... Now we need help. No wonder he's having trouble getting it."

Great Bush quote at DailyKos (via link from TBOGG):

"Obviously, I think they're going badly for the soldiers who lost their lives, and I weep for that person and their family. But no, I think we're making good progress," he said.

Ugh. Even for him.

Really nice analysis of the speech at that Kos link. (Also there, the appalling revelation that Bush says he "insulates" himself by getting his news from "objective" sources--i.e., filtered by his staff. Sounds like another Nixon in the making. Fine with me. All the more likely he'll continue growing detatched from reality and get booted next year.)

My favorite headline on the speech came from MSNBC last evening: Bush UN speech persuades few.

Some interesting ideas in today's op-ed by Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post:

As Clark's campaign team begins to take shape, it seems likely that aides to Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and onetime Clinton and Gore staffers will get many key positions. That Clark's candidacy is in need of professional management is beyond dispute, but the general runs the risk of losing his insurgent appeal if he permits himself to be cast as the candidate from Party Central. . . . 

Exactly. I've been worrying about that all week. He can use the help, but the worst thing he can do is be seen as the bigwigs' stooge, especially when he really was drafted by wide popular support. Or perhaps that's the second worst possibility:

But if Clark ends up positioned as the anti-Dean candidate, the consequences could prove more severe.

That would be a hug mistake.

I'm not sure I'm buying Meyerson's extended analogy to 1968, but it's interesting:

Indeed, the relation of Clark's campaign to Dean's bears some resemblances to that of Robert Kennedy's to Eugene McCarthy's back in 1968, another year when antiwar sentiment swept the Democratic Party. It was McCarthy who plunged into that race first, when Lyndon Johnson was thought to be unassailable, and McCarthy who caught fire with Democratic liberals increasingly angered by Johnson's deepening involvement in the Vietnam War.

Clark now faces a challenge similar to Kennedy's: how to campaign as a largely antiwar candidate, and the more electable one at that, without estranging the legions of Dean supporters who believe, as Gene McCarthy's followers once did, that their guy is the genuine article. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination is going to need Dean's volunteers . . . Having his potential handlers proclaim that he's the Stop-Dean candidate, by contrast, would undercut his appeal to many of his own supporters, let alone Dean's.

And his closing is indisputable:

Clark needs to be concerned that the Clinton-McAuliffe insiders don't turn him into the last, best hope to stop the Dean hordes. The first Democratic candidate in decades to enter the race with support from all quadrants of the party doesn't need a diversionary conflict within its ranks.

The Dean blog reports that he'll be on between 7-7:30 a.m., Wednesday morning.

(And they're up to $819,000 in the drive there to raise $5 million in ten days. Three days down, seven to go.)

I pulled something in my shoulder pretty bad nearly a near ago, and put off seeing a doctor till a few weeks ago. (Because I was scared of what he would say, I guess. What? I hate people who do that. The thing that kept me putting it off though--the excuse--was that I had no idea what kind of doc to call, because I didn't know if it was bone or soft tissue. And for awhile I assumed it would get better itself, as all previous pulls had.)

He diagnosed it as a torn rotator cuff, which threw me into a bit of a depression. Looked like I would need surgery, which could imobilize one arm for 4-6 weeks (meaning typing with one hand, no way to drive my stickshift car . . .) and keep me from working out my upper body for a year. Ugh.

Plus I thought I did it just by reaching to wash my back in the shower. Ever start to feel your body is just disintegrating on you?

He prescribed physical therapy, but the therapist confirmed the diagnosis and admitted he was just postponing the surgery, so I made an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon and saw him yesterday.

Great news--maybe. He thinks it's probably just an aggravated rotator cuff--tendinitus/bursitus--and may well be treatable with physical therapy. But the X-ray showed a stray bone chip near the bottom of my shoulder, which was kinda scary. It probably caused the problem. And it probably happened in a spill I took last Halloween when a railing gave on a stage I was dancing on and my then-boyfriend and I were knocked off, pinned down by a huge beam.

Hopefully no surgury, and my body is not falling apart all by itself. He won't know for sure what's up until the MRI in nearly two weeks, but it looks much rosier today.