THE INTIFADA IS OVER: Michael Totten notes a major victory in the war on terror that deserves more attention.

POLLS: Yesterday, I wrote that I was skeptical regarding state-by-state polls showing Kerry doing badly. Today, I have to say, I’m skeptical about the way Kerry is plummeting in the IEM and TradeSports futures markets.

IS THE BLOGOSPHERE ELEVATING THE POLITICAL DEBATE? I just had an interesting conversation with a journalist who’s writing on that question, and who pretty clearly seems to feel that the answer is “no.”

If “elevating the debate” means a sort of good-government, League-of-Women-Voters focus on where candidates stand on health care, etc., that’s mostly true, I suppose. But I think it misconceives what blogs are about. There certainly are bloggers posting on healthcare and other issues — see, for example, Jeff Jarvis’s Issues 2004 posts and this post by Ann Althouse on medical malpractice — but the political blogosphere is to a large degree about media criticism. If the Big Media were talking more about issues, and less — to pick Ra^therGate as the example which I think inspired this conversation — about Bush’s National Guard service, probably bloggers would be talking about issues more, too.

Of course, what’s striking about Ra^therGate is the absolutely incredible degree of ineptitude, arrogance, and outright political manipulativeness that it has revealed. In light of that, I can understand why members of the media would rather talk about other things.

But, all blogger triumphalism aside, the media criticism matters. And it matters because Big Media are still the main way that our society learns about what’s happening, and talks about it. A serious breakdown there, which seems undeniably present today, is very important. In many ways, as I’ve said before, it’s more important than how the election turns out.

Meanwhile, I don’t recall much tut-tutting about bloggers focusing on Trent Lott’s racial remarks, instead of his position on national health insurance. Were we elevating the tone then, but not now?

UPDATE: Ann Althouse, on the other hand, points to someone who isn’t elevating the tone. As you might expect, she manages to deflate him, without using improper language. Plus, she comes up with a cool new blog name. [LATER: My linking of Althouse has apparently turned her into one of my “minions.” Minions? It sounds so very Ming the Merciless. “Minions! Sieze him! We’ll see if Professor Leiter can maintain his trademark self-regard after a few months of grading exams in the bluebook mines of Kessel!” Okay, we’re in Frank J. territory, now. . . .]

ANOTHER UPDATE: Interesting Gallup data on public attitudes toward the media in the wake of Ra^therGate. Apparently, it’s not just bloggers who care.

MORE: Reader Tucker Goodrich has these thoughts on “the issues:”

The issues the blogs have been addressing are issues the press and the Democrats would rather not address, because (in my opinion, and I guess, by their omission, on theirs) they’d lose.

We’re in a war. The character and suitability of the commander-in-chief is a valid issue. A partisan media trying to throw the election by releasing forged documents to throw the character and suitability of the CinC in doubt is an issue. Whether or not the new CinC would prefer to win or lose the war is an ISSUE!

But the Democrats and the press are trying to win the debate by framing those as not “issues”, but as partisan carping. Nice try, but sorry. They are issues, and are every bit as important as healthcare or the economy, if not more so.

They’d simply like to frame a debate where they, the press, define the issues in such a way that they’ll win. The real impact of blogs in this election is that the press can no longer frame the debate to their liking. And this is a huge win for people who don’t agree with how the press tries to frame the debate. And competition in framing the debate can only be good for our democracy and our republic, even if it’s bad for the Democrats and the Republicans.

And the press. As reader Bill Gullette emails: “Where did Rathergate originate? And most certainly even in the most favorable terms, the story was hardly an above the belt effort in terms of what CBS or Rather/Mapes intended the story to achieve.”

Reader Merv Benson adds: “Blogs are the letter to the editor that the editor does not want to print.”

STILL MORE: A positive spin:

All the MSM really needs to do is be the professionals they have falsely claimed to be all these years. A real news organization which was devoted body and soul to getting the truth out, chips fall where they may, would embrace the new world that is growing up around it. . . .

The real story is a happy one. The MSM is on the verge of a new golden age. If it would just learn to do its job, take advantage of these new developments, quit trying to be “gatekeepers” and drop the ideological and partisan shilling, good things would start to happen sooner rather than later.

Indeed.

MORE STILL: Hmm. Compared with Lewis Lapham, who’s charging Bush with “treason,” maybe bloggers are elevating the tone!

FINAL UPDATE: This article on the contributions of blogs is worth reading, too.

OKAY, REALLY FINAL UPDATE THIS TIME: Virginia Postrel has more thoughts, and says that the real issue is that reporters aren’t interested when blogs elevate the debate:

Reporters and media critics are bored, bored, bored by the very sort of discourse they claim to support (a lesson I learned the hard way in 10 long years as the editor of Reason). They, and presumably their readers, want conflict, scandal, name-calling, and some sex and religion to heighten the combustible mix. Plus journalists, like other people, love to read about themselves and people they know.

That’s no doubt true. Virginia also thinks I sound “defensive” in this post. Maybe, though I’d say “reactive” — the interview, with a guy who warned me up front that I wasn’t likely to like his story, seemed driven as much by unhappiness over RatherGate as anything else.

DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES: There are a lot of blogs out there besides InstaPundit, and you should be reading them.

AUSTIN BAY, just back from Iraq, has a new column up:

According to the Times, the report from the National Intelligence Council “outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war.”

Wake up the Beltway bureaucrats: The Iraqi civil war started in summer 2003, when a group hard-core Baath (and Sunni-dominated) holdouts decided their route to personal survival — and possible track back to power in Baghdad — was relentlessly savage violence.

Savage violence is the daily routine of the criminal gangs who run dictatorships large and small, so virtually everyone expected some degree of post-Saddam thug resistance. However, no one knew the Baath hardcore had so much money. [Money? Where could that have come from? — Ed.]

The biggest mistake the Iraq coalition made, however, was underestimating the power of criminal arrogance. That’s a mistake we Americans make repeatedly — whether the thug is Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam, Osama bin Laden or one of our own mob chieftains like John Gotti. . . .

When does arrogance turn to desperation?

I don’t know — perhaps Mohammad Bogy could give us an opinion. I do know the Baath thugs are attempting to manipulate the U.S. political cycle. If they continue to murder, they believe America will wilt and leave the new Iraqi government in the lurch.

Read the whole thing.

MORE ON KERRY’S WOMAN PROBLEM:

Democratic and Republican pollsters say the reason for the change this year is that an issue Mr. Bush had initially pitched as part of an overall message – which candidate would be best able to protect the United States from terrorists – has become particularly compelling for women.

I’ve been saying that for three years.

HMM. This ad on Kerry looks a lot like this one. I guess we’ve established a theme.

TOM MAGUIRE doubles down on Nick Kristof. I agree with Maguire that for Kristof to complain about mudslinging is “a bit rich.”

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudi Rosett pulls no punches on Kofi Annan’s involvement with the Oil-for-Food scandal.

And Roger Simon says that Annan is engaged in the mother of all stonewalls.

IT’S INTERESTING to read these thoughts on technological change from Terry Teachout in conjunction with this column by Anne Applebaum on Ra^therGate.

OUCH: “It would be like an American today meeting with the heads of al Qaeda.”

UPDATE: Heck, even Chris Matthews saw this one coming.

ANOTHER UPDATE: But it wasn’t secret — well, it may have been when it happened, but not later.

YOU KNOW, the “pajamas” remark just won’t go away: Part-time pundits in pajamas find CBS asleep at the switch. Heh.

And interestingly, look at what’s number two on Google when you search “pajamas.’ Heh, again.

MORE ON THE INTERNET, cocooning and customer revolt: My TechCentralStation column is up.

THE NEW CLIMATE OF FEAR IN AMERICA seems to have claimed another victim:

A local soldier back from the war in Iraq said he was beaten at an area concert because of what was printed on his T-shirt, NBC 4’s Nancy Burton reported. . . .

According to a Columbus police report, six witnesses who didn’t know Barton said the person who beat him up was screaming profanities and making crude remarks about U.S. soldiers, Burton reported.

Not anti-war. Just on the other side.

UPDATE: In response to a later link back to this post on August 8, 2006, Reader Ted Gideon emails that this report turned out to be false.

I don’t promise not to link to stories that turn out to be wrong (how could I?) just to correct errors when they appear. And, actually, I’m glad this looks not to have been true.

RA^THERGATE UPDATE: DAN RATHER’S COCOON:

These days, network news survives in hermetically sealed cocoons—free of commercial pressures and calls for financial viability. CBS News has more cocoons than any other network. There’s Evening News, which languished in last place for years; Face the Nation, another ratings disaster; Sunday Morning, which remained unchanged even after the death of anchor Charles Kuralt; and 60 Minutes, which is profitable but has an employee-retirement program similar to that of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The CBS cocoons engender a kind of madness. Rather is paid an outsized salary—he makes $7 million per year—that is in no way commensurate with the number of viewers he delivers. Where most prime-time shows have a few weeks to prove their viability, newscasts often are given years and decades. The network’s former glory allows Rather to shroud himself in the aura of Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. “I’m confident we worked longer, dug deeper, and worked harder than almost anybody in American journalism does,” Rather told the Washington Post Sunday, when in fact CBS spent less time verifying the Guard documents than most bloggers.

Indeed. Don’t miss the conclusion.

UPDATE: Read this transcript and this one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here: “Rather appears to have been guided by the belief that he was doing his institution a great favor by holding out instead of retracting the story. Why any institution should believe that shirking the truth in the short run is a path to strength in the long run is beyond me.”

Meanwhile, Patterico observes:

These are not people who were duped. And the problem is not how they handled it once they were caught — though they handled that part badly. Their main transgression was in ignoring the evidence staring them in the face before the story ever ran. At the very least, they could have given some time on the broadcast to the dissenters.

But they didn’t. And I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: don’t fool yourself believing that this is the first time this has happened. Come on. If you have watched “60 Minutes” then you are familiar with that feeling you have at the end of a segment, when you think to yourself: “Wow, everything seems to point to one conclusion.” You thought that was because everything really did point to one conclusion?

Nope. It’s because everything else was left on the cutting room floor.

We’re just seeing one very notorious example where they got caught.

Yes, it’s a thirteenth chime of the clock.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Larry Walsh emails: “More to Patterico’s point, as another pundit once noted, ‘crisis doesn’t build character, it reveals it.'”

DAVID BERNSTEIN notes that Reuters is reporting dishonestly. It’s also creating incentives to threaten its reporters’ lives. This doesn’t seem very smart to me.

GREG DJEREJIAN blogs on Bush’s speech to the United Nations. Here’s the text of Bush’s speech.

TOO GOOD TO CHECK? I wish there were photos with this report of a protest at CBS headquarters, but I do like this bit: “the protest is notable because all of them were dressed in pajamas.”

Like Dan Rather, I want the story to be true. Unlike Dan Rather, I’ll wait for confirmation before pronouncing it genuine.

UPDATE: Ah, I think it was this protest.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Photos here — but not everyone is in pajamas.

WOOHOO! Just got the new Neal Stephenson book, The System of the World, today. Blogging may be halfhearted and distracted while I read it.

WOW:

Polls show the president is tied or slightly behind in New Jersey and trailing Senator Kerry by only some six to eight percentage points In New York. GOP Governor George Pataki introduced the president at a reception with 1,000 people by saying, “Welcome back, Mr. President, to the swing state of New York.”

It’s really hard for me to believe that Bush is doing as well, and Kerry as badly, as these state polls seem to suggest.

“REALLY, THOUGH, THIS IS ALL JUST A COINCIDENCE:” John Cole posts a Ra^therGate / “Operation Fortunate Son” timeline.

This NPR report features talking-heads saying that this story — which involves the release of forged documents in order to influence a Presidential election, and back-channel conversations and what sure looks like collusion between a major television network and a political campaign — isn’t all that important.

No doubt the nabobs of the journalistic ethics establishment would be giving Fox News and the Republicans the same benefit of the doubt, were the facts reversed.

FREDERICK TURNER ON RA^THERGATE:

A week or two before the issue of the supposed National Guard memos on President Bush’s military service came up, I speculated on this site about the emergence of a new cyber-public in response to the discrediting of many of the traditional news media. Luck made me a prophet: the exposure of the memos as forgeries was a textbook example of what I had been talking about. . . .

What we saw was an extraordinary example of what chaos and complexity theorists call spontaneous self-organization. Out of a highly communicative but apparently chaotic medium an ordered, sensitively responsive, but robust order emerges, acting as an organism of its own. Suddenly a perfectly-matched team of specialists had self-assembled out of the ether.

Read the whole thing, which is very interesting. (But InstaPundit is “venerable?” In Internet years, yeah!) It’s also worth reading this piece by Cathy Young from the Boston Globe, and this essay by Andrew Sullivan from Time.

Pajamas are mentioned in all three.

I ALMOST FEEL SORRY for the tag-teamed Nick Kristof. I am actually acquainted with Yoshi Tsurumi, having edited one of his articles back when I was on the Yale Law & Policy Review in law school. While he was pleasant enough to work with, I wouldn’t bet the farm on him. On the other hand, these quotes sound out of character — and I wouldn’t bet the farm on Kitty Kelley, either. . . .

IT’S NOT ABOUT IRAQ OR DAN RA^THER: Perhaps reason enough to check out this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists?

IRAQI BLOGGER ALI RESPONDS TO ROBERT NOVAK:

What does Mr. Novak know about Iraq and the decision makers in the USA? If his information about how decision makers in America are thinking, is similar to his information about Iraq, then I guess we are safe and there’s no need to worry.

Read the whole thing. I’m with Ali on this one.

UPDATE: Greg Djerejian has more thoughts, which are very much worth reading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: So is this column by Jonah Goldberg. And read this post from Soxblog.