Congrats to my bro Mike and his wife Cary on the birth of Edith Elizabeth yesterday morning. She’s freakin’ adorable.

With Senate debate this week on Iraq, Kilo shares a George Allen press release that asks a very good question: Why the silence James Webb?

J’s Notes will be hosting next week’s Virginia Blog Carnival. Get all the gory details here and send in them submissions! I loves me some submissions…

Maxthon: China’s hip browser

Maxthon, a browser made by a tiny Beijing company of the same name, has attracted millions of users in China for functionality that can funnel traffic through a Web proxy and circumvent government controls on information in search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Baidu.com and other popular sites or Internet service providers in that country.

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According to Maxthon research, about 14 percent of the Chinese Web population has used the browser and 17 percent employs it for Web search.

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Of course, Maxthon does not promote the proxy feature openly–it’s merely a shortcut that has spread virally among Chinese Web surfers. People who download the browser must be fairly technically savvy to activate it, but according to Jacobsson, various bulletin boards in Chinese instruct people how to do it.

Interesting development and great news for the people of China. But how long before Maxthon finds itself under some serious pressure from the CCP?

Althouse picks apart Kos’s response to the New Republic article. Kos now seems to have declared war against The New Republic for simply reporting on a letter that Kos does admit to existing.

223pm UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein has more here. He also summarizes his previous day’s post:

In yesterday’s post on this story, I noted that what was being slowly revealed here—moreso, perhaps, than any evidence of wrongdoing on Kos’ part—was a progressivist mindset that is fanatical about controlling the narrative, and especially about defining the parameters of identitarian “authenticity”. Of course, little did I know at the time that Kos would be so eager to make my point for me.

Many bloggers feel that they are in a great position to dictate the news, whether it’s by determining what in the MSM deserves their attention or debunking or by starting the stories that the MSM are too “scared” or “biased” to touch. But when a story comes out of the MSM on one of their own they go into damage control.

How care the MSM try and change the way the blog works by targeting one or us or revealing some of the inner workings? The nerve…

255pm UPDATE: And it seems Mickey Kaus over at Slate has some thoughts as well. It’s traditional media bloggers versus the “progressive” bloggers.

US has to win to have a shot to advance. And considering they haven’t scored a goal in the whole tourney yet…

1025am UPDATE: Ghana’s up 1:0 after a 22nd minute goal.

1030am UPDATE: 30 minutes in and Ghana’s got three shots to USA’s one. US, with the fewest goals of any team in the tourney, now needs TWO to win and have a chance to advance. Eesh.

1032am UPDATE: Italy’s up 1-nil over Czech in the 33rd minute of that game.

1035am UPDATE: Yay, we took a second shot! And Ghana’s fouling the crap outta USA, 12:5.

1044 am UPDATE: GGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!! 1-1 tie.

1045am UPDATE: USA’s first woal was the World Cup’s 100th this tourney. Whatever that’s worth.

1048am UPDATE: Goal for Ghana on a penalty kick, they’re now up 2-1.

1050am UPDATE: Half time, Ghana leads 2-1, leads shots 5-3, and fouls 14-7. USA has one more half to score two goals and keep Ghana out of the net. Italy’s still up 1-0.

1055am UPDATE: Seems US captain Reyna hurt his knee during the play where Ghana made their first goal.

1107am UPDATE: Game on.

1116am UPDATE: Ghana’s been holding US off. EVERY US sub is warming up on the sidelines.

1122am UPDATE: SIX Ghana fouls in the last three minutes. And Eddie Johnson is in for USA.

1128am UPDATE: Aw, damn, header off the post by USA in the 66th minute. So close…

1137am UPDATE: In the 74th minute USA has used all three subs.

1144am UPDATE: Italy’s up 2-0.

1157am UPDATE: TIME - US loses to Ghana, 2-1. That’s it for USA.

BAH. I anyone needs me I’m going to be outside tipping cars and setting fire to stuff.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has a post up with plenty of links concerning Jerome Armstrong, Markos Moulitsas, and what appears to be an effort by blogs to smother MSM reports with silence. If blogs can impact MSM coverage by widening the discussion and sometimes breaking and doing the groundwork on a story, can they also kill a story just by ignoring it?

630pm UPDATE: Shaun’s got a brief take on this.

Also, to tie this in with Virginia, Jerome Armstrong heads up the internet strategy side of of Mark Warner’s Forward Together PAC.

6/22 922am UPDATE: Chad had some good info on this back on Tuesday as well as it’s potential impact on Warner.

White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen was kinda upset the other day:

Angry with a recent column by Mariotti critical of Guillen’s handling of recently demoted relief pitcher Sean Tracey and upset with Mariotti with columns of the past, Guillen said to reporters when referring to Mariotti before Tuesday’s game with the Cardinals, “What a piece of [expletive] he is, [expletive] fag.”

In his defense:

Guillen said that in his native Venezuela, that word is not a reference to a person’s sexuality, but to his courage. He said he was saying that Mariotti is “not man enough to meet me and talk about [things before writing].”

Guillen also told Couch that he has gay friends, attends WNBA games, went to a Madonna concert and plans to go to the Gay Games in Chicago.

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Wow.

In summary:

He didn’t quite hit that mark Tuesday, though he took a heck of a whack at it in the form of a particularly expressive attack on one of his favorite media targets. In the span of 102 seconds, Guillen leveled 25 words one generally cannot read in a family newspaper at the Sun-Times’ Jay Mariotti.

For those scoring at home, there were 14 variations of the f-word, five s-words, three a-words, a b-word, a G.D. and the straw that broke the camel’s back, a three-letter reference either to Mariotti’s sexuality or British slang for a cigarette.

It also means he’s a coward in Venezuelan slang. They forgot that part.

Majority Votes to Legalize Whaling

A slim majority of nations on the International Whaling Commission voted Sunday in support of legalizing commercial whaling.

The vote—33 for and 32 against, with one abstention—fell short of the three-quarters majority needed to overturn the 20-year ban on commercial whaling.

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“Many species and stocks of whales are abundant and sustainable whaling is possible,” the motion read.

Pro-whaling nations argue the abundant whale populations are depleting fish stocks important to the livelihood of small island nations.

“That carries virtually no scientific credibility,” Read said.

I’m Not Emeril’s hosting this week and yours truly shall play the barker next week. Woo doggie.

What is the VBC? Well you can get your hands on all those juicy details right here.

Wanna submit? Shoot me an e-mail with VBC somewhere in the subject by 6pm EST Sunday evening with the following information:

* Name of your Blog
* URL to your blog
* Your name (or the name you blog under)
* Where in Virginia you live
* The title of your post
* Permalink to your post
* Astrological sign
* Pet peeves
* Favorite Beatle

Those last three are optional. Gimmie what you got!

Someone’s aiming for the 14-20 year old votes. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but campaigning via MySpace seems a little juvenile. Probably because when most people think “MySpace” they think “kiddies and the sick men that lust after them”. It’s an outlet, sure, but is it a viable one? MySpace does give you a means to target people in specific areas by searching with a zip code.

I dunno. It’d be one thing if it was a supporter jumping up and down in support of their guy. But a candidate?

Frighteningly hilarious. Found via Home Slice.

At another site I fiddle around with I had someone tag me for this:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your livejournal along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.

1. “Roads” by Portishead - What a slow, creepy, amazing song.

2. “Various Stages” by Great Lake Swimmers - With the opening line “I have seen you in various stages of undress” I was hooked.

3. “Butt Ugly Slut” by Roger Alan Wade - With the opening line “I want a butt ugly slut with a bad drink’ problem and a jealous old man in jail” my mom was hooked. Seriously. She asked why I hadn’t played it on my show yet. So I dedicated it to her. On Mother’s Day.

4. “The Denial Twist” by The White Stripes - Just a rockin’ little ditty.

5. “Lucky” by Radiohead - Another slow, creepy kinda song, very mellow, very moody, very good.

6. “What Sarah Said” by Death Cab For Cutie - Man, I need to listen to happier music. Moving song, utterly depressing. “Love is watching someone die. So who’s gonna watch you die?”

7. “You Could Be A Model, Goodbye” by Herman Dune - This one’s available for free online. I’ve really gotten into this guy’s work lately and this is a fun song.

And I won’t tag anyone to do this, simply leave it open ended and invite everyone else to play if they’d like. (Honestly, I’d be hard pressed to name seven people who read this site regularly enough to play.)

Todd Alcott has some very interesting thoughts on super villany.