Is the media really revolting?

By Libby

I've certainly done my share and more of media bashing but I'm hoping I see a new trend here. Court TV's Catherine Crier posting at HuffPo, joins in what seems to be an incipient Greek chorus of professional journalists who are openly expressing disgust with their less savory colleagues.

I could harp on the trivial or tabloid character of the material that passes for news, but that beef is for another day. Instead, it is time for serious revolt by the many journalists who cringe at the current product they are selling. I applauded yesterday as Brian Kilmeade walked off set when his companions on Fox and Friends blathered on insanely about Wright and again when Chris Wallace chastised them for their diarrheic oratory on the subject. This response should be repeated on the other outlets as well.

Amen to that and long overdue. I've been wondering for a very long time how the more ethical members of legacy media were able to look at themselves in the mirror every morning in the full knowledge that they were contributing to a failure to inform, even if only by their silence over the alarming malfeasance of their colleagues.

Devil with a blue dress

By Libby

I didn't get around to blogging this earlier but I'm still fuming over this ABC story. It's not like we're lacking for examples of the failures of the major media, but this one is surely hits the gold standard of tabloid journalism. After agitating endlessly for Hillary Clinton to release her White House schedules, the most important story in the tiny depraved mind of Brian Ross is where Hillary was when Monica and Bill were fooling around? If this is material to her ability to be president, then I think Mr. Ross should be equally diligent in tracking down where John McCain's wife was while he was cheating on her. That actually would hold some relevancy, since John is the one running for president and it would speak to his lack of character.

Meanwhile, my anger about this has rendered me practically incoherent so I'm going to outsource my outrage to Susie Madrak who posted an articulate rant along with the information on how to contact Mr. Ross directly to let him know what you think of his journalistic skills and ethics.

Iraq, aims and evaluation

I am an evaluator and analyst by training and profession. When I have an initial meeting with the stakeholders who want me to do an interim or a post-facto outcome evaluation of a big project I ask three initial questions.

1) Is it okay to park where I parked?
2) Where's the coffee?
3) What were the reasons/objectives that this project/program was started and what are the desired end-states?

The third question allows me to start building an analytical framework to see whether or not the project was able to achieve desirable outcomes. Any action has to be fitted into a matrix of past history, surrounding environment, capabilities, constraints, worldviews, resources, and value based outcomes. Actions should be taken that further goals, and these goals should fit into a comprehensible and coherent strategy of change. Benchmarks, way points, quick-look dashboards, indicators of some sort should be built into every phase of a project so that the basic question of 'does this action make sense in relationship to a larger goal' and ' is this doing what needs to be done' can be asked and quickly answered.

A good indicator of a program in trouble is one in which the benchmarks frequently and randomly change, low accountability is rampant, individual actors are engaged in activities that are mutually contradictory to any strategic outcome and evaluation does not occur or is a farce. This basic policy analysis framework can and should be applied to most public policy problems and programs, including an analysis of the war in Iraq.

Tigerhawk, a proud 24%-er is kicking the goal posts so far that soon American football will be played on a cricket pitch as he engages in both objective re-setting and evaluatory punting

other than to say that the many contemporaneous objections to OIF -- including fatuous assertions by presidential candidates and their surrogates that it was the greatest foreign policy mistake in American history -- will shrink into nothingness upon the full rendering of the verdict of history. That will depend on one result and one only -- whether the Persian Gulf and the Arab world are much changed in the time elapsing before the writing of that history and whether that change has a salutary impact on the many in competencies of that region, or not. And who will write that history? A young scholar who was born too late to have experienced the passionate arguments and sharp politics of the last five years.

He is arguing that we can not evaluate properly for at least another ten to fifteen years (figure a 10 year old in 2003 will be finishing up his dissertation when he is between 27 and 30) and only if we assess against one, often unstated, metric of success that was not central except to a bunch of fringe bureaucratic infighters. And also while we ignore any concept of opportunity cost. Wow, Tigerhawk had a reputation a couple of years ago as a 'smart' warhawk.

Let's go back to the tape and see what the stated war aims were. Let's see what case Congress thought it was authorizing, what President Bush stated in his biggest address to the country concerning Iraq, and what was stated the night the war started. I think this is a fair collection of documents to read to discern the stated intentions of the United States government.


From the March 19, 2003 pre-war speech by President Bush ---

My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the
early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to
defend the world from grave danger....
The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.

Okay, so we got the precursor of 'fight them over there so they don't come here' as well as fear mongering on WMDs. We also get a hint of liberating the Iraqi people, although as soon as they wanted early local elections in the summer of 2003, we quashed that notion of local autonomy. But the primary stated purpose of this war was disarm Iraq. Iraq was already effectively disarmed years ago and the UN was able to verify that this process was nearing completion. Whoopsie!

From the 2002 Joint Authorization to Use Military Force (CSPAN PDF)

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) AUTHORIZATION.—The President is authorized to use the
Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary
and appropriate in order to—
(1) defend the national security of the United States against
the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council
resolutions regarding Iraq.

The pre-amble full of Whereas... is not legally binding but it mostly contained statements on disarming Iraq, enforcing UN sanctions or allegations (cleverly worded of course) on the connections between Iraq and Al-Queada. Again, this is being framed as a war of self-defense against a terrifying threat of a secretly re-armed Iraq.

Let's move to the next selection to see what the stated war aims are.
2003 State of the Union

America is making a broad and determined effort to confront these dangers. We have called on the United Nations to fulfill its charter and stand by its demand that Iraq disarm. We're strongly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency in its mission to track and control nuclear materials around the world.....
The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses.
Iraq is blocking U-2 surveillance flights requested by the United Nations. Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say. Intelligence sources indicate that Saddam Hussein has ordered that scientists who cooperate with U.N. inspectors in disarming Iraq will be killed, along with their families....
If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him....
And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies -- and freedom.

Again, the war aims here are disarming Iraq and assisting the United Nations in enforcing its resolutions and sanctions. Nothing is written in the official war aims as promogulated by both Congress and President Bush in his two biggest speeches about the war concerning the creation of a cascade of positive externalities (which btw we aren't seeing) in the entire region.

Furthermore his analytical framework excludes both opportunity cost and the closely related concept of the counterfactual which are some of the core tenets of anything that vaguely wants to be called high quality policy analysis. As an whimper of begging for intellectual mercy, Tigerhawk and the sentiment he expresses of neglecting the next twenty years so that it can be properly analyzed while continuing on the same path is a joke, and not even a particularly funny one at that.

Encourage the Conservative ID

Kevin Drum is looking at the National Review's Corner reaction to the Obama speech this morning, and is making a political error of grievious magnitude:

See? Barack Obama's just another race hustler. I suspect that the "official" conservative reaction in columns and op-eds will be more restrained, but the longer that race stays front and center in the campaign, the more time the real conservative id will have to ooze into the forefront. Obama can't be looking forward to that. [my emphasis]

In the past couple of years, one of the most reliable indicators of a winning Democratic issue is when the conservative movement ID is at the forefront of the public debate. It is ugly, repulsive and oozing with pus, and it alienates marginally attached Republican voters and winnable for the GOP Independent and Democratic voters. We want more of the conservative Id in the forefront of the conversation.

It is the same analysis that would have led one to conclude that caving in on Schiavo was a good idea. Instead the American public reacted harshly against this massive federal inteferernce into a painful and personal decision process.

It is the same analysis that would have led one to cower as the economic Id of the GOP was on full display during the privatize and destroy Social Security debate. Contrasting this Hobbesian vision with a collective security provided by the common effort led to a rapid squandering of any political capital that Bush may have thought he possessed for overt actions.

It is the same analysis that has made anti-immigration rhetoric the tough new thing from both the GOP and the DLC wing of the Democratic Party despite knowing that this rhetoric will piss off a massive and growing swing voting bloc. And also despite significant evidence that this rhetoric is not moving exisiting voters effectively into the anti-immigrants' camp.

It is the same analysis that has encouraged Democrats to cave on any national security fight until recently. It is the analysis that has given rise to massive liberal, progressive and activist disenchantment with our nominal politcal leadership. The conservative Id will try to insist that the boogey man hides under every bed and will robocall and attack ad alive any Democrat who opposes them but give a pass to collaborators.

The conservative Id is ineffective and counterproductive to advancing the GOP's political fortunes, and it is not something that should inspire fear in Democrats. Instead it should be welcomed as a golden opportunity to create a sharp and sustained politics of contrast that works.

Lowered Expectations

Great News --- the housing bust has bottomed

Psyche!

CNN.Com is reporting some good news in housing, or at least that is how it is being perceived --- housing starts came in above expecations.

Privately owned housing starts fell to a seasonally adjusted 1,065,000 annual rate in Feburary, according to the Census Bureau. The rate was down 0.6% from January and off 36% year-over-year.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected 995,000 new starts.

Permits for new building declined 7.8% to 971,000, well below the 1.02 million Briefing.com consensus forecast.

So being down 36% Year over Year, and running at a level we have not seen in 16 years, and this is good news... wow it is amazing what lowering one's expectation is. Next week's paycheck will be grand as I am expecting that I will only be earning minimum wage, so I'll enjoy the shock to the upside...[/snark]

Improvements - If You Pick Your Timeline

By Cernig

The latest ABC/BBC poll from Iraq is out and ABC are doing sterling work as pro-occupation stenographers by insisting that the only relevant time period to be compared is from the height of violence last Summer until now.

Fifty-five percent of Iraqis say things in their own lives are going well, well up from 39 percent as recently as August. More, 62 percent, rate local security positively, up 19 points. And the number who expect conditions nationally to improve in the year ahead has doubled, to 46 percent in this new national poll

There's a lot more, and it's all being lapped up by conservative pundits. But ABC hardly gets to the really relevant metric - the differences between now and the last time violence was this low. After all, the last time these same levels of violence were enough to cause the breakdown of iraqi civil society. It would not bode well if Iraqi confidence in their society was even lower post-Surge than in 2005. Here's about the only mention ABC gives it:

In almost all cases, however, the improvement since August and March still has not brought Iraqi sentiment back to its pre-2007 levels. While 46 percent now expect improvements for the country in the next year, that's still far below its level in November 2005, 69 percent. While 55 percent say their own lives are going well, that's down from 71 percent in late 2005.

Ah.

Here's the ABC PDF version - but in many respects the BBC's PDF is clearer, in that it simply presents the data in a nice big type without adding ABC's commentary and charts, which all concentrate on the August-to-now period. The BBC also adds some much-needed perspective:

BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson says the continuing divisions make it "pretty meaningless to talk about 'Iraqi' opinion."

"What counts is how the individual groupings, Sunni, Shia and Kurdish, feel - and especially the Sunnis, since much of the violence is from that quarter," he says.

While 55% of all Iraqis believe that their lives are good, only 33% of Sunnis are happy with their lives, compared with 62% of Shias and 73% of Kurds.

"In spite of all the improvements, the Sunni population of Iraq clearly remains deeply alienated, and deeply hostile," our correspondent says.

...The poll suggests that Iraqis are sceptical about political progress.

Only 21% believe that the increase in US forces has made conditions for political dialogue in Iraq better, while 43% think the surge has made conditions worse.

And 38% want American forces to leave immediately, compared with 35% who want the troops to remain until security has been restored.

A look at the responses to questions now and in 2005 is instructive. In every case, Iraqis are more pessimistic than they were back then, with the percentages answering "much better" or "have great confidence" markedly down. One of the biggest changes in the poll numbers is in those who said they felt "very safe" in their own neighbourhoods - down from 63% in 2005 to 37% now. And 69% of Iraqis think things wouldn't get any worse if US forces left now.

A good day for The Grey Lady

By Libby

The NYT is on a roll today. As Cernig noted this morning they had a good editorial on Bush's criminal circumvention of the rule of law on domestic surveillance, but they didn't stop with that. Another editorial accused him of lying about the economy. And even more surprising, MoDo actually took a break from her usual vacuous sniping at Democrats to do a little Bush bashing of her own.

I agree with Avedon that this doesn't absolve MoDo or the Times for their past transgressions but nonetheless it is nice to see them doing their job for a change and calling out the president on his contemptible conduct.

Bush's Karaoke Moment Hits You-Tube

By Cernig

Libby, I'm happy to tell you that you were wrong - someone did leak footage of Dubya's karaoke moment at the Gridiron Club. Thanks very much to "The Lede":

Did they really think it wouldn’t make You Tube? President Bush has turned up on the popular Internet site singing an off-key spoof of “The Green Green Grass of Home,” which he performed Saturday night at the supposedly off-the-record Gridiron Club dinner in Washington.

And so without further ado:

Restating the Obvious

A secular dictator who is in the bullseye of a major power whose internal political dynamics encourage foreign adventures and the same secular dictator sitting atop large oil reserves and a restive mixed sect population will ally itself with a group of sectarian fanactics whose strategic analysis and objectives is to strike the major power in order to topple secular dictators and authoritarian monarachies who sit atop large oil reserves. That is basically the strategic dynamic that would have to underline any active collaboration between Saddam Hussein and Al-Queda. Somewhat absurd but it was one of the main points of argument to invade Iraq as President Bush and other senior administration officials who knew or should have known better.

This claim due to the previous discussed incentive structure was farcical to anyone paying attention in 2002/2003, and believable only to the idiots at the American Enterprise Institute led by Laurie Mylroie. It is still a siren song on the dead-ender right that Al Queada has a long and established history in Iraq and will take over the place as soon as either the US stops showing resolve (@ $12 billion a month, and several hundred US casualties,) elects Democrats, or withdraws heavy combat formations.

The Pentagon disagrees on this assessment on several fronts. Al-Queada and other foreign fighters had never been a large component of the Sunni-Arab insurgencies, never more than 5% to 10% of the total fighters and they were often seen as useful idiots at best, and usually idiots (which is one of the prompts for the Awakening... the idiots overstayed their welcome and tried to collect smuggling taxes), and the only Al-Queada linked group in Iraq pre-invasion was Ansar al Islam which operated in the Kurdish zone that existed under American air cover.

Today, the DOD reports that after looking at over half a million documents, several thousand hours of interviews and interogations, that a secular dictatorship sitting atop of a bunch of oil was not actively collaborating with a bunch of religious nuts who want to topple secular dictatorships....

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were confiscated after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network....

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were confiscated after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network.

No shit

Spitzer And The Prositutes

By Cernig

Accusations against Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, after being caught on a wiretap arranging for a high-priced call-girl, are tearing up the blogosphere.

I'll repeat my own reaction in response to allegations that John McCain was having a relationship with a blonde lobbyist:

Sex is solely the business of the three people involved and the shop that sold them the equipment.

It should only become a matter for public concern if the individual has built his position of power upon a claim to the high ground in matters of sexual morality or where the sexual favors have been recriprocated by political or business ones.

A heckuva party

By Libby

The Gridiron Club held their exclusive soiree this week. I don't suppose we'll see any YouTubes coming out of this closely guarded insider tete-a-tete but I found some juicy descriptions of the festivities. Before I get to those though, I'm wondering if this is a Godwin violation?

There was perpetual attendee and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns comparing this dinner to those of years past: "The Clinton ones used to go on and on. Now there's a little more achtung to it."

Strange choice of words. Meanwhile the big hit of the night was the Commander Guy.

But Bush had the last word; make that song. With a gang of Busharoos, he crooned about his future back in Texas, singing: "I spend my days clearing brush, clear my head of all the fuss, like that big fuss you made over Harriet and Brownie. Down the lane I look and here comes Scooter, finally free of the prosecutor. It's good to touch the brown, brown grass of home." He even paid the news media a compliment: "When you are not writing stories, you are not half bad."

In fact, it appears Bush was just overcome with comity.

In the club's traditional closing, with the singing of Auld Lang Syne by performers and audience alike, Bush grabbed hands and rocked with one of his harshest critics in the press, the veteran wire service reporter and columnist Helen Thomas -- and he gave her a kiss.

I'd love to see the photo of that tender moment. I have a feeling it might resemble Bush's spontaneous show of affection for Merkel. However, I won't be holding my breath waiting for it. They do have their rules.

You won’t be able to catch the Bush song on TV or the Internet (unless someone was secretly recording it.) The Gridiron Club, founded in 1885, is the oldest organization for Washington journalists. Its 65 active members are slaves to tradition, one of which is that the dinner and show are officially off the record. No TV cameras are allowed.

I'd bet somebody got it with their cell phone though and it will be traded among the elite few who so cherish their insider status.

Clinton primary coattails

I've been tracking the PA-18 Democratic primary for a while now as I think the incumbent Republican, Congressman Tim Murphy (R-Upper St. Clair) is vulnerable to an aggressive challenge, as he has not had that since he took the R+2 district immediately after it was redistricted to favor him in 2002. I think Beth Hafer (D-Mt. Lebanon) is a pretty good Democratic challenger who has a decent range of party/institutional/good ole boys support, as well as progressive activist support. She fits the district, and she has a good political last name, as her mother, Barbara Hafer has been a fixture in moderate politics in SW PA for a while.

I just received a fundraising e-mail from the Hafer campaign (the first one I have received in months), and it has a couple of strong points in it. The one I liked was the attempt to focus most of her energies against the incumbent, and not her two Democratic primary challengers. She is framing Murphy as corrupt and out of control, which if she can make it stick, is a powerful frame. There is enough supporting evidence circulating that enough people have heard/seen that this charge should stick if aggressively pursued.

Another aspect that is interesting in her e-mail is the assumption that the energized Democratic Presidential Primary vote will help her campaign. I think this is very likely as I am projecting PA-18 will go heavily for Hillary Clinton on April 22nd, and one of Clinton's strongest groups of support are older female voters. Hafer should get a significant boost from down ballot waterfall voting, and in a three way primary, that will be a decisive factor. I wonder if there are other districts that will see Democratic Primary Clinton coattails?

However there is one thing that I really don't like the e-mail and it is who she is using for her polling/strategy:

We have raised the most money of any Democratic challenger. And have put that money to good use. Our campaign team includes nationally renowned firms Penn, Schoen & Berland, Adelstein Liston media services, and JMG 360 direct mail. Moreover, our new campaign manager comes from Joe Sestak’s 2006 Congressional campaign and is familiar with unseating a corrupt Republican incumbent. [emphasis mine]

Bragging about Penn is never a good idea among Democrats. It is a statement with no real value add to it unless the message is being aimed at high money, DLC/Emmanual aligned donors, but this e-mail is targeted at small and medium size donors ($50 to $250 is probably the quartile range that they want to get from this segment of the donor base). Even the people who think what he does is valuable don't like him. The Clinton campaign team, for whom he works for, has buried several battle axes into his back already this month. Most of the activist base of the party thinks that he is a net negative at best. Just don't brag about bringing in the microtrending, school uniform, anti-video game violence, myopic Penn.

Rezko and Obama - much ado about nothing

By Libby

I didn't pay much attention to this story. It struck me as one of those overblown media feeding frenzies from the beginning. In terms of any misconduct by Obama, as the 'story' unfolds, it's clear that there's simply no 'there' there. However, I ran across this item this morning that suggests the case as a whole may end up tarring everybody in sight, including Clinton.

Since the name of Chicago defendant Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko has come up in national debate, it seems fair to look at donations from other defendants in Chicago’s “Operation Board Games.”

Of the other five defendants, three have donated to the Clintons or to Clinton supporters, three have donated mostly to Republicans, and at least two have donated to Obama’s political opponents. None have donated to Obama.

This is the famed Chicago political machine folks. They wrote the book on dirty politics in that city. Plenty of grist for the rumor mill for all, on both sides of the fence. Before this is over, I have a feeling both parties are going to wish that they never heard the name Rezko.

The bottom line is there is not a shred of evidence of misconduct on Obama's part. This is just another empty narrative built on rumor and innuendo, as Glenn points out, eerily reminiscent of Whitewater. You would think that Hillary, having lived through that would have restrained herself from making Rezko a central part of her smear campaign. It's rather disappointing that she didn't.

Clinton's latest trick

By Libby

I really don't want to be forced into Clinton bashing, but for the love of all that is holy, how much more Rovian can you get than this?

The Clinton campaign's latest tactic in Ohio is, apparently, a radio ad that tries to make listeners think it's a news report until the very end. Here's the script:

"This is an election news update with a major news story reported by the AP. While Senator Obama has crisscrossed Ohio giving speeches attacking NAFTA, his top economic advisor was telling the Canadians that was all just political maneuvering. A newly released document from the Canadian government shows that Obama’s senior economic advisor met with the Canadian Consul General and made clear that Obama’s attack on NAFTA were just, quote, “political maneuvering,” not policy. Political maneuvering, not policy. In fact, the document shows that Obama’s advisor also assured the Canadians that these attacks against NAFTA would not continue. Obama would not want to be, quote, “fundamentally changing the agreement.” As Senator Obama was telling one story to Ohio, his campaign was telling a very different story to Canada. How will Ohioans decide whether they can believe Senator Obama’s words? We’ll find that out on election day. Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President."

Remind you of the current administration much? I'm sorry, but if Hillary's solution for America is to outsleaze the GOP, I'm not buying the snake oil. It seems to me if you have to resort to such smarmy trickery to acheive victory, you don't really deserve to win.

Blogging in the boy's room...

By Libby

While we're waiting for the tallies to begin, here's an amusing item that may be the funniest campaign story of the season. Apparently pressed for space, the traveling press corps assigned to the Clinton campaign were housed in a men's room in Texas where they were served dinner in immediate proximity to the stalls and urinals. [Supply your own Larry Craig joke here.]

No gender bias involved, as Karen Tumulty reports, along with some priceless photos. I only wish she had been able to capture the expression on the unsuspecting civilian's face when he innocently entered the men's room expecting to use the facilities.

I wonder if Emily Post has a rule of etiquette that covers this situation?

Air Afghanistan

A bad movie is being set up to be made in fifteen years. The Yorkshire Ranter has been tracking several interestingly shady arms dealing aircraft registrations for several years now and hears quite a few interesting things including the following:

Something else that’s interesting; I occasionally mention that I heard from a source that Aerocom’s shortlived Australian operation (Air Bridge Group - used the same registry and the same aircraft) “wanted to start flights between South-East Asia and Australia with aircraft with a rear cargo door that could be opened in flight”. Why on earth could anyone want that particular capability on that route? Who knows, eh.

They just want that capability for script viability research and absolutely nothing nefarious.

Obama winning YouTube war

By Libby

While the Democrats fight it out on the ground in Texas, the YouTube battles are raging on the intertubes. There's a brand new one uploaded yesterday by the same guy who did the much admired "Yes We Can" video. "We Are the Ones" is done in the same style but I think it's even better. It's sparer and more subtle. I was thinking as I was watching it that Obama has a real edge in the YouTube wars because his name is so melodious. It begs to be made into a song lyric. Clinton just doesn't have the same lilt.

Obama also appears to have more creative and prolific supporters. "The fight for the Latino vote has inspired several Spanish-language music video tributes to Obama on the Internet, including a reggaeton tune, a corrido and a cumbia." I found two, "Viva Obama" and Obama Song Spanish Reggaeton. Both were really good.

Contrast those with these from the Clinton campaign. Here's "Hillary, Hillary Clinton" and "Oye Hillary." I don't think they're nearly as good. They're not as well produced and the format feels contrived and dated while Obama's videos feel spontaneous and fresh.

If I were to predict the outcome on Tuesday solely on the basis of the YouTubes, I'd call it an easy win for Obama.

Speaking for herself...

by shamanic

Two web pages of stereotypes only to conclude that women are "kind of dim." Yes, I think she just demonstrated that admirably.

I think Charlotte Allen needs a better class of women friends. Clearly, her own circle is giving her the wrong impression. I recommend lesbians. Brainy ones. We're awesome. And I've never had a car accident.

Why I loved William F. Buckley, Jr.

By Libby

It may seem strange to those who know how politically left I lean, but I loved William F. Buckley and I'm truly saddened by his death. Of the the three conservatives that caught my youthful fancy, the other two being George Will and James J. Kilpatrick, Buckley was the only one that held my admiration and affection to his last day. As I matured, neither Will's devotion to my bowtie fetish nor Kilpatrick's grandfatherly demeanor held my interest or respect. I came to see them both as somewhat devious and exceedingly pompous prigs, but Buckley, he was a warrior to the end.

NEW YORK - William F. Buckley Jr. died at work, in his study. The Cold War had ended long before. A Republican was in the White House. The word "liberal" had been shunned like an ill-mannered guest.

I think they could have ended his eulogy right there. In a way it says everything that needs to be said. He died, as he lived, believing so passionately in his own vision that he spent his last breath trying to change the world to conform to it. I was surprised to see him described as some kind of debonair figure though.

Yet on the platform, he was all handsome, reptilian languor, flexing his imposing vocabulary ever so slowly, accenting each point with an arched brow or rolling tongue and savoring an opponent's discomfort with wide-eyed glee.

Ugh. I found him physically repellent and the rolling tongue thing made me queasy. Reptilian is certainly the right word to describe it but despite that, I found him fascinating. He struck me as an oddly classy jerk. Much as I hated what he said, I loved the way he said it. I've always had a weakness for a good linguist and I found it impossible not to be impressed with his command of language. I have to admit I haven't paid a lot of attention to him in the last decade or so, but nonetheless, I'm going to miss him. May he rest in peace.

When Matt Outed Harry

By Cernig

Being a Brit, I suppose I should write a few words about the cross-pond scandal of Matt Drudge outing Prince Harry's deployment to Afghanistan.

I'm a wee tad conflicted on the Harry end - I'm no great fan of the concept of having royals in general and would rather think of Harry Windsor as just another second lieutenant from a privileged background who will either turn out to be one of the good guys or one of the banes of the squaddies lives, depending on whether he has sh*t for brains or not. He gets no slack from me just for being a Windsor - but that said, kudos for going within a million miles of the shooting when he could've used his birthrate to stay safe in the UK. His uncle Andrew got the same kudos in the Falklands.

Still, I understand why he has now been withdrawn. As the BBC's Jon Williams explains, and 2nd Lt. Windor's nickname "Bullet Magnet" suggests, it's not just about him.

this was never just about Prince Harry's safety, it was also about the security of the soldiers serving with him. No editor wants to be responsible for increasing the risk they already face from the Taleban. Nor do I think our audiences would have thanked us for doing so.

On Matt Drudge, I'm not in the least conflicted. What a low, unprincipled, headline-chasing slimeball.

Try a thought experiment. Replace "Harry Windsor" with, say "James McCain" and imagine his dad is president. Now imagine Drudge had leaked the location and unit of said presidential son on deployment in Iraq. Can you imagine the outrage? Drudge would be finished, if not in jail.