FRITZ SCHRANCK gives a negative review to Michael Moore.

I’VE WRITTEN — both here and elsewhere — about the importance of a decentralized response to terrorism and disasters. Winds of Change has a post on disaster preparedness, and you might also find this earlier article of mine on the subject useful. You might want to read this, too. And go here, and scroll up, for personal survival tips from Amy Langfield.

(Langfield link bad before; fixed now. Sorry!)

HERE’S THE LATEST DARFUR ROUNDUP, from Passion of the Present.

James Moore notes that concern on this issue is thoroughly bipartisan.

UPDATE: Richard Aubrey emails: “It will be bipartisan until we actually start to do something. Woe be to George Bush if he takes some forthright initiative on this.” Sigh. I’d like to believe this is wrong.

CBS MAY BE IN TROUBLE WITH THE FCC for its Amazon Associates linkage with Clinton’s book:

CBS is part of the Associates Program of Amazon.com. Every sale of Clinton’s book — or of any other product listed by Amazon — will generate a commission of up to 10 percent of the total sale for CBS, according to Kristin Mariani, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com. . . .

That conflict of interest calls into question the objectivity of CBS. When it makes programming decisions about whom it interviews and how much publicity it generates for the events, without disclosing its vested interest in the book sales, it becomes ethics-challenged.

The FCC has rules about disclosure of business arrangements or other conflicts of interest.

“If there is a problem, it could be regarding the lack of sponsorship identification and payola,” according to an FCC source.

“If anyone complains, we will take a look at it,” said Ken Scheibel, an attorney in the FCC enforcement bureau.

“Payola” and “plugola” roughly translate into a broadcaster receiving something of value in exchange for playing a song or plugging a product, but not disclosing that information to the audience.

It’s not the Amazon linkage that’s the issue per se, but the tie to what’s broadcast. (Via RatherBiased.com). Arguably, of course, it is disclosed at the point that matters, on the website — if you look at the links, the Amazon referrer code is pretty obvious to anyone who knows anything. But I don’t think the FCC would buy that, as they’d probably feel the relevant disclosure is in the broadcast, not on the website.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis says that this is a bogus issue. As a matter of substantive ethics, he’s no doubt right. But surely he’s not arguing that the FCC deals in matters of substance? They’ve got rules about this stuff; they’re not in the business of ethical analysis. And while RatherBiased.com’s campaign on the subject has an element of “gotcha” to it, Sixty Minutes would hardly seem to be in a position to complain about that. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: In an update to the post linked above, Jeff is now razzing the columnist quoted above because there’s a Google Ad for Clinton’s book on the same page as the column. But I think that misses the point. Any idiot can tell that the Google Ads are ads. The FCC rules are about running ads that aren’t disclosed as ads — payola and plugola, as mentioned above. The audience is supposed to know when the broadcaster is getting paid to hype a product. Nobody’s suggesting that advertising is illegal or wrong, or that “commerce” is evil. I don’t think that RatherBiased.com is even suggesting that Amazon referral fees are wrong, and certainly I’m not. But CBS ran what was, essentially, a commercial for Clinton’s book, and CBS didn’t disclose that it was making money from the book’s sale. I think it’s de minimis, under the circumstances, but it’s wholly different from what Jeff’s talking about.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Q&0 says there’s no story here, and actually explains why. Seems persuasive to me.

FORGET PERFECTION: As Donald Sensing notes, in war, the winner is the least screwed up.

Read this piece on bumbling from The Belmont Club, too.

RALPH NADER WRITES that Michael Moore has sold out — to the Democrats. And he’s mocking Moore’s weight.

And here’s an earlier piece by Nader on the same topic.

UPDATE: Comments, and advice to Moore, here.

PUNK’D: Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh.

UNLIKE JAMES LILEKS, I don’t get around to watching DVDs as soon as I buy them. But I ordered the complete Lost in Space first season on DVD and managed to watch several episodes today while puttering around the house. I watched the reruns as a kid, but what I’d forgotten was the dark, Forbidden Planet ambiance of the early episodes. I’d also forgotten the meta-plot from the first episode, where the Robinson family is just the vanguard of 10 million American families heading to Alpha Centauri as part of an effort to remedy overpopulation.

The shows are better than I remembered, and there are some interesting bits — such as the one in episode 3 where Dr. Robinson (Guy Williams) thanks Divine Providence for their survival, after the fashion of old-time explorers. Surely this was the last possible cultural moment for something like that on network TV.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I just finished watching this complete set, an episode per day for the last month. I’ve been a fan of the series for over 30 years and have never seen it look so well. The DVD release further deepened my fondness and respect for the series. Be prepared for a pleasant surprise with the cliffhanger at the end of the last episode of the first season.

By the way, the fellow in that alien cyclops suit was Lamar Lundy, 1/4 of the LA Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome” of the 1960’s.

Rumor has it that 20th Century Fox will release the other seasons on DVD, as well as its sister series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Cool.

WORTHWHILE CANADIAN ELECTION: Colby Cosh has an article on the Canadian election, and what it might mean for ours: “To put things in a way that summarizes the dialectic neatly, Michael Moore has stopped by to urge Canadians not to vote Conservative.”

UPDATE: More here, from Collin May. And scroll for additional coverage. More here, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: From the Toronto Sun: Salim Mansur: “Canadian politics reek of anti-U.S. stench.”

AMIR TAHERI:

In London the other day the Iraqi national football team met a team made up of MPs, mostly opponents of the war, for a friendly match.

The Iraqis won 15-0.

Six months ago the team did not even exist. But in August, after defeating several opponents, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, the men will stand to attention as Iraq’s new flag is raised at the Olympic games in Athens.

Iraq today is no bed of roses, I know. I have just come back from a tour of the country. But I don’t recognise the place I have just visited as the war zone depicted by the Arab and western media.

Read the whole thing.

SEATTLE TIMES: “Bill Gates could join the ranks of bloggers.”

Well, when you’re the richest man in the world, there’s only one more mountain to climb. . . .

STEPHEN HAYES says that Bill Clinton was right, and we forget that at our peril.

PLEASE SEND YOUR CONDOLENCES TO MATTHEW YGLESIAS on the death of his mother.

DARFUR UPDATE: Arthur Chrenkoff comments on goings-on, and is unimpressed with the diplomatic community’s efforts so far.

FIRST IT WAS QUESTIONS ABOUT KOJO ANNAN AND OIL-FOR-FO0D. And now there’s this:

Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the late French president, has been arrested as part of an investigation into alleged money-laundering and arms-trafficking in Africa.

Miterrand’s behavior has been the subject of rumors among Africa hands for years. I hope that some people are looking into this.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

JOSH CHAFETZ says that the Kerry Campaign is sending out an “incredibly dishonest” email. “I’m not sure whether this is malice or incompetence on the part of the Kerry Campaign — and I suspect the answer is incompetence — but it doesn’t bode well for them either way.”

UPDATE: A couple of readers think that the real unfairness is in the Bush campaign’s use of a couple of fringe elements to suggest that the Democratic mainstream is comparing Bush to Hitler. The trouble with this argument, though, is that the Democratic mainstream is making such comparisons. Just ask Al Gore, or Guido Calabresi. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jared Walczak emails:

You wrote that some of your readers objected to the Bush campaign’s association of liberal fringe elements with the Kerry campaign re the Hitler ads. However, as an email from the Bush campaign today notes, there is a connection: Zack Exley, the man behind MoveOn.org, is now employed by the Kerry campaign as the director of internet operations.

Good point. Meanwhile reader Richard McEnroe emails:

Actually, doesn’t Kerry still have a link to DU on his campaign homepage? How long do we have to maintain the polite fiction that the Democratic Fringe is not driving party policy when MacAuliffe and Pelosi show up for the premier of F911? :-\

There’s a link on the blog page. I don’t know how much you ought to make of that. I certainly link to people with whom I disagree in my blogroll. But does Kerry? It doesn’t look like it, which suggests that the folks he links aren’t just there as a resource or a guide to various opinions, but are sites he endorses.

It’s certainly true that the ideas of the lunatic fringe have been showing up in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Personally, I think this is a mistake in terms of the campaign — and that it will seriously bite them on the ass if Kerry should get elected.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. And I’m told that the Bush people have updated their ad with more context, but I haven’t seen it yet. And don’t miss this response from the Bush blog: “Why has John Kerry not denounced billionaire and Democrat Party donor George Soros for comparing the Bush Administration to Nazis?”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Just watched it. It’s even more damning, and the Democratic complaints will just ensure that everyone watches it. Rope-a-dope?

MORE: A reader reminds me of this from January: “SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER CRITICIZES MOVEON.ORG FOR POSTING AD COMPARING BUSH TO HITLER:”

“Politics and preparing for a presidential election is one thing, but comparing the Bush Administration’s fight against Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein with the policies of Adolf Hitler is shameful, beyond the pale and has no place in the legitimate discourse of American politics,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Center’s founder and dean. “Adolf Hitler was responsible for the greatest crime in the history of mankind – the Holocaust. To compare Hitler to an American President is not only ludicrous, but defames the Holocaust,” he added.

“This ad is not about Democrats or Republicans – it is about lies and a distortion of history,” he said. “Move On.org has a responsibility to publicly repudiate such lies as do all political leaders,” he concluded.

This would seem to reflect poorly on the Kerry campaign’s hiring decisions.

STILL MORE: Jay Reding: “It’s incredibly effective, which is why the Kerry team is already complaining about it. . . . I hope the Bush team makes a national air buy with this ad.”

Tim Graham: “The chairman of the DNC is happily mugging at Moore’s DC premiere and applauding his movie as a campaign tool. Kerry has hired people away from MoveOn.org for his campaign. He has distanced himself from neither group, nor from Gore’s MoveOn-sponsored ‘digital brownshirt’ ravings. Meanwhile, Democrats quickly tied Bush I to his base of Buchanan and Robertson, who they thought were wild-eyed ideologues of hate. In every cycle, the media highlight the conservative base of the GOP and how the nominee will suffer from the ‘hard right’ associations. Now, Kerry and Terry have to embrace every Moore fan and MoveOn bake-saler to keep some Naderites in their camp, and it’s not fair to point out the ‘hard left’ base?”

INTERESTING NEWS FROM VIETNAM: Interesting, but somehow not surprising.

SPENT MOST OF THE NIGHT at the Secret City Film Festival, where the Insta-Wife showed a recut version of her film Six, with some additional footage of interviews with the murderers and people who knew them. It was nice to see it on a big screen, in a big theater.

There seemed to be quite a few other excellent offerings. I really liked Hell’s Highway, a documentary on the origins of those garish driver’s-ed scare’em safety films. (You can see a trailer here. It’ll be showing in New York and elsewhere starting next week.) I would have liked to see Martian in Motion, the Leo Szilard documentary, and Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea, but babysitting issues intervened.