Bloggers delve into John Kerry’s academic and military records, ponder the implications of Google’s $82 billion market capitalization, and weigh the results of a mental-health survey.
Doing a 180: Former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has signed the Standard Form 180, releasing his military records to the Boston Globe. His academic records from Yale were included, and Kerry detractors revel in the fact that he was a less-than-stellar student at Yale who received four D’s his freshman year. For his part, mystery novelist and blogger Roger L. Simon is unsurprised. “Kerry was clearly not the brightest bulb, but we knew that. One of the more interesting obfuscations (deliberate and otherwise) that went on … about the last presidential campaign is that Bush was the dumb one. In actuality, I always thought one of the reasons for Kerry’s famous flip-flopping, possibly the key reason, was that the Senator didn’t really understand the issues.” Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters points out the similarities between President Bush and Sen. Kerry (mediocre grades, entering the military, etc.), noting: “The key difference, of course, is that Bush never pretended to be a great student at college, just as he never pretended to be a war hero.”
Liberals are left wondering what could have been had Kerry released the records sooner. Democratic favorite Daily Kos highlights part of a Globe story showing that vets who campaigned against Kerry had actually issued him commendations. “Jesus, they had additional substantive evidence that the Swift Boat Liars were full of shit and refused to release it,” Markos Moulitasas writes. “The incompetent way that matter was handled knows no bounds. … By not releasing them, they gave the impression that they were trying to hide something, further fueling the Swift Boat fantasies.” At My DD, another popular liberal group blog, Chris Bowers laments, “Having following the polls every day during the campaign, I am pretty darn certain that without the Swift Boat controversy, Kerry would have emerged victorious in November.”
Conservative Polipundit has been tracking Kerry’s promise to release his records since January. He and a few other blogs, including Power Line, USS Neverdock, and Just One Minute wonder if records are still missing: “There’s ‘some more stuff’ in the records that Kerry doesn’t want out there,” Polipundit writes. “That’s why he didn’t release the records before - he’s been trying to suppress information that’s in the record.”
Read more about Kerry’s records here.
Worth a googolplex: The Drudge Report has been tracking Google’s market cap like an anxious day trader, pointing out that at $82 billion the online search engine is currently worth more than media giant Time Warner. At Dinoblog, new blogger Rushabh Jhaveri mourns the opportunity lost. “If I had bought 100 shares during Google’s IPO on August 19, 2004, at a price of $85/per share, my initial investment woud’ve been $8,500. At today’s closing price, my investment would be worth $29,100. Thats a 242% increase in 10 months. Shit, missed out on another IPO.” It makes perfect sense to “Liberal Slayer” Aaron at Aaron’s cc: “It’s hard to go an hour without Google when I’m online. Can’t remember the last time I opened a Time magazine.Yup, Google is worth more than Time to me.”
Steve Bowbrick, a dot-com veteran, is wary: “At $280 Google is valued at $78 Billion. That’s 50% more than the combined value of all the publicly traded newspaper groups in the US combined,” he writes at Bowblog. “Any of this seem familiar? People I speak to (I mean people who are supposed to know what they’re talking about) say this is all cool because Google has so much room for growth in its core business (advertising) and lots of new, as-yet-unimagined businesses lined up ready for launch. It gives me sweaty palms, though.”
Read more about Google.
Am I crazy? The New York Times reports on a survey that says that most Americans will suffer mental illness in their lives. Chuck at Just a Bump in the Beltway is skeptical: “[D]on’t you think most of us with the ‘hangnail’ type of problems should stop trying to come up with a diagnosis for them instead of dealing with them head on? And maybe if this many people are having problems, we as a nation should take a long hard look at what is going on in our society.” Thomas Phillips, a commenter at the Huffington Post, writes that “people think that the instant they feel sad or lonely or something else, that they have some sort of illness. Look at nature and no other species has anything even close to this. Look at the rest of the world and not even the poorest crappiest countries out there have anything close to this.” Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine asks a good question: “Well, if more than half of us will [suffer mental illness], doesn’t that make it normal? We’re just screwed up, we humans.”
Read more about the mental-health survey.
