More in an irregularly occurring series...

"The Colbert Report"'s Stephen Colbert played host to the annual White House Correspondents' dinner, and he made headlines in savaging Bush, who started out by chuckling, and ended the performance stone-faced, according to reports, as Colbert slammed him on Iraq, NSA wiretapping, low poll numbers and much more. (New York Times, Editor & Publisher, Crooks and Liars)

What's even more incredible is the news that Bush has declared himself above the law, selecting to circumvent more than 750 laws, according to a thorough report from the Boston Globe. When the laws are inconvenient, he goes around Congress, despite the fact it's Congress' job to determine the laws, and the President's role (traditionally) to enact them. (Boston Globe)

The Sacramento Kings defeated the San Antonio Spurs in game 4 of their first-round series, tying it at two games apiece. Though I don't mention the Kings here nearly as much as I do the A's, I have followed the team for decades, and remember tuning in to their radio broadcasts when the team could muster up 27 or 29 wins a year. Now, they are perennially playoff bound. (ESPN, Sactown Royalty)

Guy Kawasaki follows on the top ten lies of engineers with an equally astute piece on the "Top Ten Lies of Marketers". While amusing, not all match my personal history, likely because he's more focused on markets where I've not had experience.

Much noise is being made about Yahoo! possibly taking on CNET in the technology news and product review space. I'm not exactly overwhelmed by their initial entry, finding it to be a big shell for ads, but it's getting good press thus far. (TechCrunch, GigaOM, New York Times)

Listening to ''Revolt - Freighttrain'', by Bedrock Rec. (Play Count: 3)

The A's are 4-1 so far in the middle of what will have been a seven game road trip. (Eight if you count the rain-out) With the team away, they've had a chance to reevaluate what's working, and what's not. We check in to see their progress.

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ANtics Archive: 2005/06 ANtics | PDF | Take the Poll

While focused in Las Vegas, and without my trusty PowerBook, there were a number of announcements that warrant mentioning.

1. We've seen Bush make a lot of noise around breaking with his "oil man" background, and calling for lower gas prices amidst dramatic energy company profits and record lows in popularity. Guess what? The two are linked. As Business 2.0 notes, the president's popularity is inversely proportional to the price of gas. And here I thought spending $34.00 at the pump was patriotic.

2. Google released Sketchup, a new 3D modeling tool. While it's Windows-only for now, a Mac version is in the works.

3. Which brings us to Guy Kawasaki's excellent post on "The Top Ten Lies of Engineers". Number 6 is that the Macintosh version will be done just after the Windows version ships.

4. Microsoft continues plummeting. The company's stock got trashed to the tune of more than 10% Friday after announcing disappointing earnings projections. Meanwhile, Google is now showing ads for Firefox on the company's front page, when visited by Windows users running Internet Explorer.

5. BMW is planning on releasing an environmentally friendly car, expected to run up to 100 miles per gallon. I haven't seen it, but I probably want one.

6. You Tube continues to grow dramatically. According to Forbes, the video site is spending more than $1 million in bandwidth costs a month.

Listening to ''Dark Heart Dawning'', by BT (Play Count: 2)

It's as if the game never happened. But we were there. We saw some things that were out of the ordinary. Yet we also witnessed things that were all too ordinary, in a game the A's were trailing 6-1, but will never count.

According to "The Little Green Book", the last time the A's had a game postponed was against the Philadelphia Phillies in June of 2003. That also led to the last time the A's played a doubleheader, against the same Phillies the following day. Unfortunately, we ended up losing both games, 7-1 and 8-3. Now, our calendar says August 18th we will play two against the Royals and hope for a different outcome.

Today's outcome really never looked like an A's win was in the cards, rain or shine. After a top of the first that saw two A's go down on strikeouts, Esteban Loaiza continued his struggles, loading the bases for Reggie Sanders who cleared them with a grand slam. Amidst two outs, Loaiza loaded the bases a second time in the inning, before giving up a fifth run on an infield hit. In all, adding two walks to start the bottom of the second, Loaiza had faced 13 batters. 10 of those batters reached base, six by way of the walk.

The 2006 debut of Ron Flores, like the slam by Reggie Sanders, will be washed away. But he closed out the second, and teased us with what real pitchers do - get outs, something Loaiza has been baffled by so far in his early starts with the A's. Having seen him pitch in person at the Coliseum, his outings have baffled the imagination. The velocity is missing, the control is off, and those that make it over the plate have been hit. The A's, while good on paper, cannot withstand injuries to key players like Harden, Crosby, Street and Loaiza and be expected to excel.

We were given a gift with today's rainout. The division thus far is giving the A's a gift in that nobody is pulling away. With Texas' win today, the A's fall 1/2 game behind, into 3rd, but remain only a game out of first, pending the Angels game. It's early, but today's shortened outing leaves us all lacking for confidence. We cannot expect the rain to bail us out all season long.

Listening to ''Personal Jesus (Pump Mix)'', by Depeche Mode (Play Count: 6)