OBLIGATORY CALIFORNIA RECALL POST: I don’t have very strong feelings about it, which is why I haven’t blogged on it all that much. I think that anybody is probably better than Davis, except maybe Bustamante. [Even Arianna Huffington? — Ed. Sadly, yes.]

The too-cleverly-contrarian pundit point is that this is like running for captain of the Titanic, and that an Arnold victory will be bad for the Republicans. Though too-clever, it may actually be true. Will Arnold, if he wins, be able to cut spending enough to balance the budget? I don’t know, but I kind of doubt it. (The really-too-clever contrarian pundit in me wants to predict that the recall will fail, just because that would be the most perverse outcome of all, and that seems, somehow, entirely fitting with the proceedings to date.)

If Arnold does wind up as Governor, he could do worse than look at Tennessee’s Democratic Governor, Phil Bredesen, who took over in a fiscal crisis that — while nowhere near California’s magnitude — was pretty serious. Bredesen has won respect from pretty nearly everyone by being honest, and doing what he said he’d do. Hey, it’s worth a try in California!

Internet Ronin has more thoughts, as well as a list of things to watch. And the Indepundit reminds us why Gray Davis is in this fix.

Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus, PrestoPundit, Calblog, and Daniel Weintraub are blogging up a storm, so I don’t have to!

I’ll close with this, my favorite photo from the recall.

UPDATE: The L.A. Weekly provides stunning evidence of the L.A. Times’ partisan hackery. This is yet another reason why campaign finance “reform” is a joke — this is effectively a huge secret campaign donation that just happens to be exempt from the law.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Robert Tagorda will be offering continuous coverage, too.

I’VE MADE FUN OF THE NEW YORK TIMES for taking eight years to correct an error involving me. But this is more dramatic:

An article in The Times Magazine on Sept. 22, 1974, about the movie actor Charles Bronson, who died on Aug. 30 this year, misstated his military record. Publicity material asserting that Mr. Bronson had been a B-29 gunner in World War II, called into doubt by the article, was indeed correct.

Better late than never, I guess, but sheesh.

Thanks to reader Joshua Kreitzer for the pointer.

UPDATE: Reader John Tuttle emails:

It’s pretty bad when Hollywood flackery is more accurate than NY Times hackery. . . . “Publicity material asserting that Mr. Bronson had been a B-29 gunner in World War II, called into doubt by the article, was indeed correct.”

I’m a Watergate baby, being in High School and watching the hearings. Today, politicians like Bush and Blair are MORE trustworthy than the media. I would never have believed that I would feel this way.

Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.

ANTITERRORISM DROPPED BALL: If this story pans out, it’s a major screwup by someone. Will it? Beats me. These stories keep popping up, but never seem to get traction.

ANOTHER BLOGGERCON FOLLOWUP POST: Hey, I couldn’t blog then, so I’ll have to put these up as time permits.

Jeff Jarvis and I talked about someone saying that bloggers should disclose their prejudices — my comment was that a blog is one long disclosure of prejudices. I was being sort of cute, but it’s true. Everybody has blind spots and biases. Bloggers seldom pretend otherwise (though of course we all have some biases of which we’re entirely unaware). But when you read a blog for a while, you know a lot about the blogger. And it’s easy to get the other side by visiting other blogs, written by other people with different biases and blind spots, especially with the help of cool tools like Technorati, etc. That’s different from a monopoly newspaper, or a semimonopoly broadcast outlet, where there aren’t that many alternatives (though even there things are improving, thanks to the Internet and new TV alternatives). Dave Winer said that he thinks the blogosphere as a whole is the relevant unit, not the individual blog. I think that’s about right.

PLANS FOR A FRENCH NEWS NETWORK to compete with CNN and Fox have produced various suggestions for logos and set design over at Fark.

JUST BECAUSE THE PRESS IS, ahem, overly negative on Iraq doesn’t mean that everything there is rosy. It just means that it’s hard to tell how things are going, and one of my fears has been that press negativity might actually cause the White House to start ignoring actual bad news. That doesn’t seem to be the case, as this story reports that Bush is unhappy with progress in Iraq and Afghanistan and has tasked Condi Rice with fixing things.

The good news is that the White House is responding with a change in approach. As Jonathan Rauch notes:

The fact that the Bush administration keeps adjusting its course, often contravening its own plans or preferences, is a hopeful sign. . . .

Only trial and error, otherwise known as muddling through, can work in Iraq. There is no other way. Muddling through is not pretty, but never underestimate America’s genius for it. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington never enjoyed the luxury of planning, but they were two of the finest muddlers-through the world has ever known, and they did all right.

As Rauch also says, the 2004 election is perfectly timed for the American people to judge how things are going in Iraq. I think that Bush’s presidency will, and should, depend largely on that answer. Sounds like Bush feels the same way.

The big question: Does this make a Condi Rice VP slot more, or less, likely? That probably depends on how things go, too.

HERE’S A BLOG OFFER that you can’t refuse. Well, maybe you can. I think that I see Pejman’s influence in this. Er, good luck, and I hope it pays off for you!

SO MUCH FOR THE CLAIM that U.S. corporations control Iraqi rebuilding contracts:

Iraq’s U.S.-led government awarded licenses Monday for firms to set up mobile phone networks, rebuffing calls by some American lawmakers to use U.S.-backed technology to restore shattered communications.

Iraqi Communications Minister Haidar al-Ebadi said Iraq’s three regional networks would use the GSM system, already adopted across the Middle East. U.S.-backed technology is based on the CDMA system.

The licenses are among the most potentially lucrative and high-profile contracts to be offered in postwar Iraq.

In a way this makes sense — GSM is more common around the world, and particularly in neighboring countries. Unfortunately, it’s an inferior technology, according to Steven Den Beste, a knowledgeable if not entirely disinterested commentator. Oh, well.

PAT ROBERTSON WAS ONE OF THE ORIGINAL IDIOTARIANS. Here’s proof that he belonged there:

“He started off playing a chauffeur in ‘Driving Miss Daisy,’ and then they elevated him to head of the CIA, and then they elevated him to president and in his last role they made him God. I just wonder, isn’t Rush Limbaugh right to question the fact, is he that good an actor or not?”

— Pat Robertson on his “700 Club” television show, using the example of black actor Morgan Freeman to defend Limbaugh’s jab at Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb.

Note to Robertson: Freeman’s a better actor than you are a, well, whatever it is that you are.

UPDATE: Reader Bill Long emails: “Robertson is a lot better idiot than Freeman is.”

Everyone has to be good at something. Reader Bill McCabe emails:

Robertson needs to get his dates straight. He was President (Deep Impact, 1998) before he was head of the CIA (Sum of All Fears, 2002). As for his acting credentials, I challenge Robertson to name one movie in which Morgan Freeman has turned in a bad performance; even in absolute garbage like “Dreamcatcher”, he imbues his characters with a credibility and believability that Robertson can’t match on “The 700 Club”.

Well, Robertson is certainly flunking with the important “readers named Bill” demographic!

IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING that there would be no math.

KHOMEINI CALLS FOR a U.S. invasion of Iran. No, really.

I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I suppose I could be wrong.

HOW TO GET AN ACADEMIC TO BLOG: Sounds about right to me.

ERNIE THE ATTORNEY wonders:

Does Novak know who the person who leaked the information is? He’s not saying, claiming the need to protect his source. I don’t have a problem with him protecting his source. I’m all for the press needing their internal sources so that they can ferret out corruption and political misdeed.

But this isn’t Watergate, and the press isn’t ferreting out political misdeed; it is –from what I can tell– willingly participating in pure political retribution. And, if that’s the case (and I’m not saying it is because I don’t know), I wonder why the press should have special protection? Just exactly what sort of behavior are we trying to reward by giving them protection in cases like this?

I’d say it’s more a case of bowing to the press’s political power than rewarding useful behavior. This is the equivalent of textile tariffs or pork-barrel spending: an industry extracting special treatment based on its ability to reward friends and punish enemies.

A USEFUL CAUTIONARY NOTE from James Bovard, regarding the D.C. sniper case:

The feds and local police, instead of using common sense and analyzing excellent leads, brought in Pentagon spy planes to canvas the entire Washington area. The use of the RC-7 planes may have been a breach of the Posse Comitatus Act (which prohibits using the military for domestic law enforcement) but all that mattered was assuring frightened people the government cared and was taking action. The planes provided no information that aided the apprehension of the suspects.

Federal agents and Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose sought to keep a tight grip on key information regarding the case. But it was a cable television leak regarding the license plate and car description that directly led to the apprehension of the suspects.

The bungling response to the snipers is a reminder that nothing happened on September 11, 2001, to make the government more competent. Neither of the two sniper suspects would have qualified for admission to med school to become brain surgeons. Far more damage could have done by a clique of savvy, well-trained foreigner snipers.

True enough. Here’s a related piece that I wrote last year.

THE WILSON SCANDAL just jumped the shark. Or maybe it ran into Emily Litella.

A FIRESTORM OVER JOURNALISTIC SECRECY? I predict one, over at GlennReynolds.com, and judging from Romenesko’s front page this morning, I may be right.

UPDATE: Reader Ric Manhard emails:

If I could have one question answered, it would be this:

Why does “The People’s Right To Know” stop at the newsroom door?

That’s the question bloggers keep asking, isn’t it?

MY GOODNESS, a fight between a man who buys ink by the barrel, and a man who buys pixels by the bushel. Who’ll win this one? Besides the phone company, I mean.

TIM BLAIR WRITES THAT Michael Moore is “practically swimming in evil Saudi cash!”