drat fink

was that wrong?

CBS News: "Individually we may feel okay about our network, but the cumulative effect for viewers with 24-hour cable coverage is -- it may have been overplayed and, in fact, a disservice to Dean and the viewers."
-- Andrew Heyward, President - CBS News

ABC News: "It's always a danger that we'll use good video too much."
-- David Westin, President - ABC News

CNN: "We've all been wrestling with this. If we had it to do over again, we'd probably pull ourselves back."
-- Princell Hair, General Manager - CNN

Fox News: "It got overplayed a bit, and the public clearly thought that, too, and kept him alive for another round."
-- Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO - Fox News

trained bares

“About all we interview any more are professional talkers,” says Bob Schieffer, who tries to squeeze informational tidbits from those talkers every Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. The professional part, of course, stems from who his guests are, mainly public officials. But it also flows from the teachings of media trainers, a branch of public relations that originated at J. Walter Thompson in the mid-1970s. Media training was largely a dual response to the tough questioning of Mike Wallace and others on 60 Minutes and the needs of the new business-media outlets that called for a constant stream of corporate executives to chat on the air. Soon other p.r. firms established media training practices, sensing a lucrative sideline in coaching people to handle tough questions."

burning sensation

heres the (acknowledged) problem with wonkette. i dont ever want to think about james carville and his troll wife having sex.

nor

do i ever again want to examine the creases in john kerrys forehead for sign of life on mars.

notes from the undergrind

i should check in with abcs The Note more often. today they have a couple of memos written a few months back by outgoing kerry campaign staff to their replacements.

8. Keep up the fight for full engagement. Jordan wasn't wrong about taking on Dean. The more you throw at him the more something might stick. The research folks camped out in Burlington for weeks, and they have hits that are even better than that NRA questionnaire. Howard Dean has never had an unexpressed thought. This should work against him but it seems to be overshadowed by the fact that our campaign has never had an original thought.

swing, batter

despite what one would assume to be their mutual appreciation for a good piece of wood, i did not expect to be linking the words "baseball" and "g@y p0rn" in the same sentence when i woke up this morning.

poll to poll

"Survey USA joins Zogby with a poll showing Howard Dean gaining on Sen. John Kerry in New Hampshire. Kerry leads with 33 percent to Dean's 28 percent. Sen. John Edwards and Wesley Clark are battling for third place, 14 percent to 12 percent, respectively."

imperial yo-yo

"[T]he justices have voted to take up five cases that test the president's power to act alone and without interference from Congress or the courts," Savage explains. The description of these cases, as Savage has ably summarized them, is startling: "They involve imprisoning foreign fighters at overseas bases, holding American citizens without charges in military brigs, preserving the secrecy of White House meetings, enforcing free-trade treaties despite environmental concerns, and abducting foreigners charged with U.S. crimes."

"What the Supreme Court has placed on its agenda, in short, is the Imperial Presidency -- that is, the Presidency in which the Executive largely acts alone, pushing the Constitution to the limits and beyond. And how the Justices deal with this overwhelmingly important topic could affect the reelection prospects of the Bush presidency, for, as David Savage notes, at least four of the five rulings are anticipated to be handed down during the summer of 2004 -- right in the middle of the presidential campaign."

via pacific views

dove itch

interesting thread about a proposed saudi plan for peace between israel and the palestinians.

empire statement

josh marshall...the new yorker...perils of empire...

tri-lateral blogging

"I can't say I was surprised to find that this year's World Economic Forum included a session on blogs. If, as Ben Franklin says, (via Dick Cheney's Christmas cards) a sparrow can't fall to the ground without God noticing, then certainly a hot media trend like blogging can't go on too long without showing up on the agenda in Davos."

a bop on the head

heres a short exchange between atrios and andrew sullivan from the much touted christopher lydon radio show about the impact of blogs, etc. atrios certainly lacked sullivans polish as a talking head. despite his personal lack of transparency, at least his answers ring true, while sullivans truths tend to be opaque.

soon as i can find an archive for the whole show, ill post it.

on the tellyputer

"The BBC is developing a new web application that will let you watch TV programmes at any time via the internet."

reign gear

"Twenty years ago, on January 24, 1984, Apple Computer launched the Macintosh. It contained virtually unknown features, including simple icons, and an odd little attachment called a mouse."

press for details

"The answer, I think, involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst... the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for. So while the press likes being a player, it does not like being asked: what are you for?"

ette cetera

gawker dc = wonkette

fink del drat

df en espanol.

snoop dog

HEY YA, CHARLIE BROWN!

via largeheartedboy

roo the day

somebody is bound to blame this on dean -- captain kangaroo is no more.

face value

"Taken at face value it wasn't anger, it was a steam-letting, and an attempt to rally the troops, and totally understandable. The press, as usual, is making a big deal of catching a candidate being a human being. But that's what he is. He's not an actor, he's not a commercial, he's not a deodorant, he's not a product, and I'm glad we have a chance to have this discussion. I'm not a Dean supporter (yet, but I'm getting there) and they didn't ask me to say this, but please, it's time for the press to let us have an election, or maybe it's time for us to have an election without them."

root down

yadda yadda dems senate blog

poll position

latest arg tracking poll out of new hampshire has dean slipping to third. ill assume those are pre-debate numbers.

ministry of silly talk

"With just a few days until marijuana is downgraded from class B to class C in England, the attempts to scare people can get downright silly."

via talkleft

track marks

political wire tracks the tracking polls out of new hampshire. dratfink tracks political wire tracking the tracking polls.

voterrs

"That's sort of true. But it kind of reminds me of Senator Dale Bumpers, in his great defense of Bill Clinton in the impeachment trial, when he said, "When they tell you it's not about sex, it's about sex." When they tell you it's not about Me, but about The People, it's usually about Me. By talking about his campaign as if he were merely the corporeal representative of some mystical communal force, Dean neglected to do the more basic work of politics, which is to talk about himself, what kind of president he would be, and what he would do. It's been about process. It's been about talking about reaching voters instead of just speaking to them."

big bright green pleasure machine

do you have that not so groovy feeling? art does.

net point

"TRENTON, N.J. -- Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner has reached an agreement to buy the New Jersey Nets, a team official said Wednesday night.

Edwin Stier, president of Community Youth Organization, which owns the Nets, said the contract was finalized Wednesday afternoon. He said the board of YankeeNets, the holding company of the Nets and New York Yankees, must now approve the contract at a meeting Friday morning. The holding company is on the verge of being dissolved.

Ratner's bid was accepted over an offer from a group led by real estate developer Charles Kushner and Sen. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey."

good will bunting

talking points interviews george soros. also, josh is already up in new hampshire on his reader funded venture.

heart attack

big al hearts kerry and campaign narratives.

sleep cycle

i didnt catch deans iowa concession speech the other night but they were braying about it on charlie rose last night. sounds like more bs to me. this dean as angry thing -- didnt they pin that on mccain too. if only they were even keeled and compassionate like our fearless leader. oh yeah, nice job with the rebuttal last night, so soothing and without rancor. its like youre not even there at all.

registering imperceptions

anybody have any thoughts on iowa? im wondering why kucinichs people threw their support to edwards. i think dean and gephardt had "gone negative" in ads against the either so gephardts people going to edwards or kerry makes sense. but one would think that kucinich and dean would have more in common. the link heads to billmons latest. he still has a ready supply of kool aid.

...and ill set you free

the final list of nominees for the 2004 bloggies are up. looks uninteresting as usual. maybe dmtree needs to create its own awards so other people can say our taste in blogs is shit. (add category listings in comments) anybody have a name for the awards? The Golden Bough? Bow? The Bow Wows?

keepin' it surreal

the iowa caucus results might seem surreal but for the real fake deal one must turn on the tv and watch the wbs The Surreal Life. i wouldnt bother to even mention the show except for the presence of pornstar ron jeremy. how is it again that pornstars have almost crept up the ladder of legitimacy in the eyes of corporate america. obviously the answer is money as the companies that control the info pipelines make fat bank from porn-per-view. and as a result we now see pornstar exploits inching into the mainstream, into realm of sanctified celebrity culture.

oh yeah. it turns out ron jeremy is the most articulate person on the show. im not sure of what that is an indictment but someone assuredly should be put away for it.

workingmens blues

“The refuse of the rich man's kitchen is carefully stored by the cook, and sold to dealers in ‘second-hand’ food, who in turn retail it to the poor.” Excerpted. Originally from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 74, iss. 442, April, 1887. By Lee Meriwether.

diamond mind

clever stunt. clark is auctioning off his infamous argyle sweater for charity. the bidding on ebay is up above $5000.

remember me?

"The Guardian reports that Britain's Katherine Gunn may face two years in prison for whistleblowing on American dirty tricks at the United Nations. She made public a memo that reveals US intentions to spy on the UN delegations of the six "swing vote" nations in the run-up to a vote on the Iraq war."

shed his grace

"(AP) The federal government is planning to overhaul its employee drug testing program to include scrutiny of workers' hair, saliva and sweat, a shift that could spur more businesses to revise screening for millions of their own workers."

swingers

"There is a widespread misperception that the course of a presidential campaign flows directly from the candidate's persona. Naturally, a Howard Dean campaign would differ in style and atmospherics from one featuring Wesley Clark or John Kerry or Richard Gephardt. But with so little room to maneuver, the Democratic formula for victory will depend less than ever on the identity of the nominee. Instead it will be dictated by geographic and demographic necessity—how best to cobble together the necessary 270 electoral votes. The candidate must carry a sufficient number of swing states, and success in each one will depend on highly specific combinations of constituencies and issues—many of which can already be identified. In other words, just as the genetic blueprint for human beings and chimpanzees is 95 percent identical, the campaign blueprint for the Democratic candidates will be nearly the same, regardless of which becomes the party's nominee."

ken e bunksport

another article by ken pollack. this time for his peeps at the council on foreign relations.

mcgruff

"Jan. 16, 2004 | LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Howard Dean received significantly more criticism on network newscasts than the other Democratic presidential contenders, who were the subjects of more favorable coverage, according to a study released Thursday"

via campaigndesk

dean's list

"The second complaint involves Dean's personality. The argument is that he is too combative. This always struck me as odd. How can Democrats object to a combative person running against an incumbent president who tells the world: "Bring 'em on!" Do they think they can beat Bush with a wimp? With some guy who says, "On the one hand this, and on the other hand that?" I, for one, relish the sight of Howard Dean - his wrestler's neck bulging - taking on the president after Bush tries to tell us that record deficits don't matter, that Saddam Hussein bombed the World Trade Center or that a time of constant terror alerts is a safer world. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, in endorsing Dean, called him the Harry Truman of the 21st century. Truman was a feisty little plain-speaking man - and a great president."

via talkingpointsmemo

desk job

CampaignDesk: Critique and analysis of 2004 campaign coverage from Columbia Journalism Review

wlib

"The much-discussed liberal radio network, designed to challenge conservatives' dominance of talk radio, took its first steps toward reality yesterday, when newly formed Progress Media announced it had both signed comedian and author Al Franken to host his own talk show and completed its first distribution deal in a major market."

le cafe du schwag

mon dieu, j'espère qu'ils échouent malheureux.

just call me richard

i dont know what strikes me as more odd -- that parents whose last name is Held would name their son Richard or that someone possessing that name would refer to themselves as Dick. who goes through life proclaiming themselves to be Dick Held?

des moans

zogby poll has kerry "overtaking" dean in iowa

rubin sandwich

"brad delong explains how paul o'neill could have been as effective as robert rubin."

ass wholes

"When I ask him what the establishment is doing to stop Dean, Reed grimaces slightly, as if he's just taken a sip of castor oil. "What are we doing to stop him?" asks Reed. "From our standpoint, this has always been up to the candidates themselves." Reed and his colleagues at the DLC--often painted by liberals as a centrist Death Star, bulging with corporate money and insidious influence over party affairs--have published a few op-eds comparing Dean's candidacy to George McGovern's disastrous 1972 run. But that's about it. Some DLC operatives are working with Lieberman, others with Edwards. The New Democratic Network, a DLC-descended PAC, hasn't attacked Dean; instead, they've praised his use of the Internet to build a campaign organization. "Let's back up to your central premise," Reed continues, gazing wearily at a 7-inch-tall cup of Starbucks sitting before him on a conference table. "There is no establishment. We"--meaning Washington Democrats--"are a constellation of interest groups and ideologies and congressional voices. The evidence that there isn't an establishment is just the mere fact that we have so many candidates--and such a collective inability to choose between them."

via poorman

curbside service

"Suddenly it’s like—why not? It’s like, boom boom boom, an epiphany—quantum theory of sitcom! It was, like, nobody’s doing this! Usually, there’s the A story, the B story—no, let’s have five stories! And all the characters’ stories intersect in some sort of weirdly organic way, and you just see what happens. It was like—oh my God. It was like finding the cure for cancer.”

ordinary boys

wolff on brooks v. belle on everyone

dean doom

"But a look at the last half-year of media coverage -- from the contentious treatment Dean received on "Meet the Press" in late June, through the often harsh Time and Newsweek cover stories last week -- raises the question: Has his anger been so uncontrollable, his campaign miscues so frequent, are his political chances so unlikely as to merit the unrelenting focus on anger, "gaffes" and so-called unelectability that has come to dominate reporting on Dean? "

dont cry for me, ken auletta

"Ken Auletta writes about the George W. Bush Administration’s relationship with the American press, and about how the President manages to keep reporters at a distance."

new zoo revue

"In other words, Scarlett knows a thing or two about the ins and outs of the Bush administration's environmental policy. And as former director of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, she has strong opinions about the ideology behind that policy. Scarlett staunchly defends Bush's environmental policy as a shift toward more sophisticated environmental governance -- an approach she calls the "new environmentalism." Although aspects of this approach are ambitious and intriguing, it is based on some assumptions and strategies that environmentalists doubt, fear, and ridicule. In an effort to bridge the hostile divide between the powers that be and the environmental community, Grist tracked down Scarlett during a recent visit to her hometown of Santa Barbara, Calif., to discuss the philosophy of rollbacks, the invisible hand's "green thumb," her view on public comments, and life with her solar-activist husband."

college admissions

heres a link to the War College report which outlines the administrations failures with regard to iraq and the war on terror, in general. damn that "liberal" military. theyd better shut up or someone might cut their veterans benefits again.

kurtz so bad

"The Post's political editor, Maralee Schwartz, tells Auletta that Rove and former White House aides Karen Hughes and Ari Fleischer all suggested Milbank was in the wrong job. Initially, she says in the piece, "there was a lot of attitude in his copy" but this "got detoxed in the editing process and Dana has come to understand his role better." Executive Editor Leonard Downie is quoted as praising Milbank's reporting."

batter up

"There is no doubt about Howard Dean's abilities and qualities for being president," Mr. Soros said after giving a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sharply critical of the administration's foreign policy. "Other candidates are also qualified. I'm also a great advocate of Clark and Kerry."

All three, he said, had views very similar to his own. "I'm not picking one particular candidate," he added, "but I am keen on Dean."

crown thy good

"He protested that he was a journalist but they stuck a shoe in his mouth anyway. They also hurt his leg. One of the soldiers told him: 'If you don't shut up we'll fuck you.'"

giving liberals a bad name

all of tom m's favorite liberal hawks are virtually meeting at slate to explain away their war support. who will be the first to say that they wanted the war because they knew it would eventually lead to bushs ouster?

anger fucking moanagement

i cannot begin to describe how ridiculously fucking annoying some people can be. another day wasted on a moron. civilization has done itself a huge disservice by creating laws to protect people such as this from my wrath.

haze the newbie

"I’m as flummoxed as anyone else, but I do have a suggestion. Perhaps, for the architects of Bush military and intelligence policy, it’s all just another political campaign, full of the usual leaks and dirty tricks and backstabbing– except that these people, from the borderline-Strangelove Cheney to the evil-boy-genius Rove, don’t actually realize the consequences of conducting military/intelligence policy like a political campaign."

dynastics

"WASHINGTON — Dynasties in American politics are dangerous. We saw it with the Kennedys, we may well see it with the Clintons and we're certainly seeing it with the Bushes. Between now and the November election, it's crucial that Americans come to understand how four generations of the current president's family have embroiled the United States in the Middle East through CIA connections, arms shipments, rogue banks, inherited war policies and personal financial links."

eye swear

df psa -- continually stepping on your glasses is not a good long term strategy for eyewear maintenance.

quote machine

"If I can sell tickets to my movies like Red Sonja or Last Action Hero, you know I can sell anything." — Arnold Schwarzenegger

street fighting

another left of center superblog - the american street

label mates

"The International Unionist Weblog Association is a group whose purpose is to promote trade unionism by displaying a Union Label on its members' weblogs."

dick head

"This is the way Dick likes it."

rant a holic

pretty good explanation of the iowa caucus approach to deliberative democracy. i think could be a helpful tool for the democrats because lesser candidates supporters can if they choose move to support more popular candidates once their initial choice has been weeded out. but i could see that those campaigns with the best organization would have a decided advantage which might bias the results. so, theoretically, edwards supporters (about 10%) could tip the caucus if he is eliminated and his supporters decide that gephardt is their anybody but dean candidate.

meanwhile, this flap about dean dissing the iowa caucus four years ago is bullshit. unfortunately i saw him back away from it today. what he said was true, and his interlocuters if pressed would be forced to agree. its the same with his "we are no safer now" remark about saddam. but people can be remarkably obtuse. not that theyre entirely wrong about dean as the more i see the less impressed i am. he has two things in his favor, the movement and his willingness to occasionally speak truth to power. i cant say that he seems all that prepared to "run the country," especially with a howling opposition breathing down his back. if he thinks gentleman john f. kerry plays dirty wait until the conservatives and their nasties in the media dig in.

so, all of the blow dried members of congress are far smoother than dean. as has been stated elsewhere, dean has polled better with women despite his sort of gruff clinical demeanor. i would assume that has more to do with his "liberalism" and opposition to the war. because he should appeal to what are considered a valued block, middle class males. theres nothing sexy about dean. hes very matter of fact and his physical features and posture reflect that. by contrast i would say all of the members of congress possess a certain effeteness. i think that comes from living in the political hothouse and mediaspheric environment that is washington. which is why govenors can do well. their lack of polishcan actually be an asset. as with clark, his public persona is still somewhat clunky. although if maureen dowd mocks him, that should be a good indicator that people in the heartland might respect him. it actually reminds me of The Simple Life. the most interesting thing about the show is the image of middle america which is pretty much airbrushed from or for television. maybe you catch a glance of it here of there, especially if theres something to sensationalize for the news or newsmagazine/tabloid tv. but here is a family living in rural arkansas, more or less just getting by. but im guessing they would have to be fairly liberal minded to have agree to appear on the show. they are somewhat shocked and dismayed by the girls behavior but theyre just as intrigued and bemused at other times.

soooo, im placing them in the soft center. and i guess im playing my version of "who would you rather have a beer with," its "who would you feel most comfortable with in your living room?" now, is this the way to decide who should run the country? probably not, but it is often what it amounts to.

who do i think this family would vote for? i think the mother would vote for edwards and the father could go for clark. in a general election they might pull the lever for bush over dean at this point. nicole richie would vote for sharpton or the marijuana party candidate and paris hilton would either oversleep or vote for kucinich because she thought he was funny to look at.

whoops. lost track of time. missed john kerry on meet the press. i could really use that tivo. and a powerbook. an interior decorator. a trunk full of money.

caught a few minutes of the poobah roundtable on timmys show. they were all genuflecting to the power of the blog. russert even used the line, "are you now or have you ever been a blogger?"

end of rant

grade "a" moron

no need to ask how i did. lets just say, i performed somewhat better than bart did at the national grammar rodeo in calgary.

the threatening spin

been waiting for ken pollacks apologia?

garbage in, garbage out

"Waste Management of Arizona's Painted Desert Landfill, near Holbrook, was transformed into Mars for a NASA test site in 2002, says Vince Murphy, a company official."

and theyre off

this war wasnt about wmds, it was about the freedom to gamble. but dont we call it "gaming" in america, now? those iraqis, when will they every learn. such a backwards people, not even one reputable pr firm in the whole country. and remember, you dont have to eat the losing horses anymore, thats what the mcdonalds are for.

chill out

pretty chilly on this side of my apartment. last time i checked the thermometer said 56. once it gets below 20 outside, my windows basically stop trying. and the radiator is only marginally better. currently 7 degrees for those of you keeping score at home.

fools on the hill

ethel passes along a very potent "what liberal media" anecdote.

dean is to truman as...

"Doing without historical analogy would be like trying to do without metaphor--and in some ways, it would also be like doing without the empirical substance of informed policy making. We can only predict what might happen by thinking about what has happened: it is the only data we have."

dear penthouse nation forum,

"Over the years I have read with avidity various intellectual disputes in The New York Review of Books and other literary journals. But I have never imagined myself being a part of one of them. However, I found Eric Alterman's December 15 "Stop the Presses" column on my recent film, The Fog of War, so devoid of historical scholarship (despite his claim of having worked on his PhD for eleven years) that I feel compelled to respond."

moon unit zapper

"In the days to come, any administration official who says that a Moon base could support a Mars mission is revealing himself or herself to be a total science illiterate. When you hear, "A Moon base could support a Mars mission," substitute the words, "I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about."

the ultimate aphrodisiac

ill have to agree with low culture. this picture of dick cheney is creepy. im sure its just the type of gaze that gives lynne a woody before she rummages around under the bed for her "toys." or maybe its just a result of the viagra dispensers bob dole had installed in the senate chambers. if only they had a pill to stiffen spines as well.

immaterial girl

"Our greatest risk is a lack of leadership, a lack of honesty and a complete lack of consciousness."

dinner for two

bloggies v. koufax nominations.

free acid paper

"These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD -- part of a test conducted by the US government during it's dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950's."

red fight and blue

when i ask myself if dean is electable i have to look at this map and assume he could beat bush in new hampshire. the only other question is can he hold onto pennsylvania iowa wisconsin minnesota oregon washington and new mexico? or can he pick up something marginal but skewing republican like ohio louisiana arizona west virginia kentucky arkansas tennessee or missouri. and then there is a little place i like to call The Sunshine State. isnt a strategy that solidifies what you already control especially in the midwest the best way to go. maybe you can turn ohio missouri and/or florida.

----------------

"----------------"

shall i compare thee...

ny mets fans petition ownership to sign outfielder Vladimir Guerrero.

sabermets counts the ways.

con fab

republicons.org -- News, opinion, and building a strategy for the future through progressive thought and deed.

doctor W

just noticed that The Carnegie Endowment For International Peace are releasing a report today about the exploitation and obfuscation of WMDs intelligence during the buildup to war in iraq.

theres a live webfeed presentation by CEIP at 1230 est.

us news outlets have ignored the release although abc news did pick up the reuters (uk) wire story. i dont know if the fact that there is a quote from someone on Nightline has anything to do with that. the financial times has the most balanced report. they also refer to CEIP as a "moderately left of center" think tank which i would say is more apt than "liberal."

the new republican

the new republic endorse their irrelevance lieberman.

mcgoverning expectations

"The Democrats see a hobgoblin under the bed, and his name is George McGovern. Low-grade panic is beginning to set in as pundits forecast a repeat of 1972: "As Massachusetts goes, so goes the District of Columbia." The prospect of "another McGovern" whets the appetite of Bush partisans while generating gloom and shame among Democrats. Howard Dean, for one, flees the association, while other candidates tar him with it."

late night with dave

now be honest, if i got cable, how long do you think it would be before im twitching in front of the tv at 430 in the morning flipping back and forth between fantasy island and jabberjaw? extra credit - how many nearly empty poland spring bottles under the coffee table will i knock over on my way to bed that night?

save yourself

dont be an asshole...

bunny love

someone i know is getting paid three hundred dollars a day to dress up in a big yellow bunny suit costume. the job description said must be approximately six feet tall and not be afraid to jump around in bunny suit. no word yet on whether its for a childrens party or a harveyfetish film.

gawd bless you

"window-pounding jew disrupts local wedding"

decomissioned

"It's hard to say which Landis harmed more -- America's National Pastime, or its Common Decency. He was ghoulish even to look at, "a wasted man," wrote John Reed, "with untidy white hair and an emaciated face in which two burning eyes [were] set like jewels, [his] parchment skin split by a crack for a mouth -- the face of Andrew Jackson three years dead.""

chattle

clark internet chat with bloggers tonight at 5 est. i guess you need this to see it.

dem bums

new yorker profiles of dean and kerry. kerrys is from the summer of '02 while he was the annointed frontrunner.

rising son

"If you’re so inclined, you can probably go ahead and tell people you’ve read William Vollmann’s latest, a spry, seven-volume, 3,298-page examination of the ethical justifications for violence. You’ll probably get away with it—unless, that is, you end up talking to someone who was willing to shell out $120 for this unbelievably ambitious work, the aim of which is to "create a simple and practical moral calculus which would make it clear when it was acceptable to kill, how many could be killed and so forth"—an aim Mr. Vollmann admits is "coldblooded enough … but life cannot evade death.""

opinion urinal

and the brooks op-ed is the same type of shit as in the ny post just prettied up for the ny times. they really should be ashamed to print that.

post pattern

i usually dont bother with this type of toxic thinking but i couldnt pass this one up. its nice to see the pro-dean algorithmically challenged "sponsored" links subverting the text of the op-ed.

auletta time

"The New Yorker's media writer comes out with a new book and talks to mb about the business, his articles, and learning to talk to the bosses."

signal corps

finalists in moveons ad contest.

commie as you are

commie rag commie symp commie nest

traded winded

(un)fortunately im not smart enough not to overrate myself or come up with game theory conundrums.

looking up

"Software now emerging analyzes search results and automatically sorts them into categories that, at a glance, present far more information than the typical textual list."

he believed

knicked up

wow. i cant believe im getting a major sports update from matt yglesias. scooped again. i dont even have a joke at my own expense. will talk about the trade once ive checked it out. cant say im a stephon marbury fan though.

smellavent

my new neighbors to the north (aka upstairs) have commenced with the unpardonable sin of cooking non-foul smelling items within noseshot. will their treachery never surcease?

dilly dally

one of the powers of the blogosphere which can be used and abused is a collective hammering down on someone in the media for shoddy misuse of their office. it seems this nedra pickler has been the ire of many for some weeks now. i dont doubt that theyve made her somewhat uncomfortable, or at least one would hope.

willing and alba

sure, 2003 was a breakout year for bloggers but we wont truly have made it into the american collective subconscious until some bloggers are featured on Entertainment Tonight. well, that wont be long now as Oliver Willis has announced his secret marriage to hollywood siren Jessica Alba. no word yet on where the happy couple are spending their honeymoon, or whether Alba has been notified of the preceding nuptials. a toast to The Willises, may the annulment be quick and painless. just dont break her heart, O-Dub.

arresting development

im glad to see that Arrested Development has been picked up for next year. ive found the episode to be hit or miss but its still the only new sitcom thats worth watching. actually, i dont think i could name any other new ones. my one wish for the show would be more David Cross. and props to Liza Minnelli, shes actually funny as an actress when shes not being portrayed as a pathetic old diva in the tabloids.

but what inspired this post was the news that AD star portia di rossi is dating ringo starrs step daughter. and look, she has scruples. damn her. heres the girlfriends site.

times change

im liking this ny times ombudsm...ur, public editor. half the newspaper should be bs reporting and the other half should be used to deconstruct the articles.

les is less

"The company has begun laying the foundation for the first of four buildings it is putting up on land that has been the target of fierce dissension and the site of failed plans for decades. To be called Avalon Chrystie Place, its 708 apartments will be in buildings scattered across four irregular parcels sitting between East Second Street to the north, Stanton Street to the south, the Bowery to the west and Second Avenue and Chrystie Street to the east. The property, which measures more than three acres, is traversed by East First Street and Houston Street."

defensive posture

"There are two very large inferences that can be drawn from comments like these and, more broadly, from the current debate over national security issues in policy institutes, academia and professional journals. One is that the Bush administration stands very, very far from the foreign-policy mainstream: liberal Democrats, conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans have more in common with one another than any of them have with the Bush administration. The other conclusion is that the administration's claim that 9/11 represents such a decisive break with the past that many of the old principles no longer apply is right -- but the new principles need not be the ones the administration has advanced. A different administration could have adapted to 9/11 in a very different way. And this is why national security should be, at least potentially, such a rich target of opportunity for a Democratic candidate."

affairgate

"I actually think it's likely that the original source didn't know that Plame was a "NOC," because I actually don't believe that the people around Bush would have been sufficiently unpatriotic to burn a NOC, and all of her assets, in such a petty act of revenge and damage control. That was my first take on this story, and I haven't yet seen adequate reason to change it. I think that some of my Democratic friends are so taken with the general horribleness of the Bush Administration as to have lost sight of that fact that these people aren't Snidely Whipsnade melodrama villains, self-consciously revelling in the evil they do. In their own minds, they're good people, and above all, patriots. So it's much more likely that whoever called Novak would have had only a hazy impression of Plame's actual status than that he would have been deliberately revealing a still highly secret identity."

the unhappy recap

arod untrade wrapup.

bubble rap

george soros: the bubble of american supremacy

graph paper

"If the threat of taking boring pix hangs over every photographer of ambition, Diane Arbus was perhaps more conscious of it than any other photographer. Her photographs relentlessly tell us how interesting they are; they dare us to look away from them. If our favorite thing in the world is not to look at pictures of freaks and transvestites and nudists and mentally retarded people, this cuts no ice with Arbus. She forces us to acknowledge that these are no ordinary unpleasant pictures of society's discards. They are photographs only Diane Arbus could have taken. The question of whether they are also great works of photography remains undetermined thirty years after her death. Arbus is not universally beloved the way, say, Walker Evans is. Interestingly (and fittingly), she herself did not love Evans. Of the 1971 Evans retrospective at MOMA she wrote: "First I was totally whammied by it. Like THERE is a photographer, it was so endless and pristine. Then by the third time I saw it I realized how it really bores me. Can't bear most of what he photographs.""

narcosphere

narco news relaunches.

the weight im in

"Hence, the weight in the Senate is about to shift, to those Senators who can provide a wide bandwidth message that their partisans will not merely repeat, but amplify by finding new arguments in its favor. The internet is finally the place where main street America comes - indeed, it is witnessing the rebirth of Main Street America - a place which does not merely put thumbs up or thumbs down - but which takes information from a diverse array of sources, and funnels them through context - that is done by linking - and community - which is done by commenting, either on the original web site, or in the text around the link. In short, instead of a public life that consists of push down and push back - public life is going to be centered around campaigns and organizations - like Dean's campaign, and like Moveon.org - that can pull people in, and pull people together. The definition of this moment is when people in a movement begin talking to each other, and making distant connections."

pressing information

"Press think has terms of art, and one of them is "master narrative," borrowed from literary critics. I use it to describe a part of the press that too easily eludes attention: the big story, sometimes the back story, often a fragment of a narrative, that generates all the other stories, which are smaller pieces."