Let's All Scream for Edvard Munch

Over the weekend, bold, armed robbers broke into the (lightly guarded?) Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, and stole "The Scream," a renowned and previously stolen-but-recovered painting by Edvard Munch. That singular act of thievery catapaulted the late painter past the ongoing Swift Boat-related controversies to prominence in today's BlogPulse results.

Robbery-related links include coverage of firsthand accounts by visitors who were in the museum when the robbers burst in, ripped the paintings off the walls and sped off in car...their actions caught on videotape. The same robbers also stole Munch's "Madonna."

OK, so the robbers didn't make the Swift Boat issue go away entirely, but today's links and postings begin to present a cross-section of claims, counterclaims and coming-out-of-the-woodwork testimonials for vets who, until now, have refrained from commenting on the whole smelly affair. Among them, Chicago Tribune columnist William Rood, who commanded one of the boats with Kerry and who supports Kerry's recollections of those days.

Meanwhile, while the Bush campaign has been consistently poo-poohing any ties to the Swift Boaters, turns out the Bush-Cheney campaign's volunteer advisor on veterans issues just so happened to show up -- live, and in person -- in the latest Swift Boat TV ad. Col. Ken Cordier, the B-C campaign explained quite quickly, suddenly is no longer a volunteer.

And maybe it's just kismet, but on the weekend that I moved my 19-year-old son into his dorm room, we found his old, plastic Leonardo calculator in a drawer ( the same drawer that also hid a Pinewood Derby scouting pin from third-grade and a 1990 Chris Sabo baseball card). Anyway, who should show up in in BlogPulse results but those good ol' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Takes me back....Cowabunga, dude!

It's nice to see fellow bloggers picking up on BlogPulse's functionality. Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine blog nicely tests andf eatures some of the trending capabilities built into BlogPulse. Try building a trend graph on your own!

TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Presidential conveyances, which pits a Swift Boat against Air Force One.