IT’S NOT JUST THE LETTER I MENTIONED YESTERDAY: Ralph Nader is publicly calling for an intervention regarding Michael Moore’s weight:

“I’ve been at him for years, saying ‘you’ve got to lose weight,’ ” Nader said in the phone interview. “Now, he’s doubled. Private exhortations aren’t working. It’s extremely serious. He’s over 300 pounds. He’s like a giant beach ball.”

He’s unhappy with his politics, too.

BALDILOCKS NOTES some non-digital brownshirt action.

JEWS IN BAGHDAD: H. D. Miller says the Times is burying the lede in this story.

BOOKS FOR IRAQ: This sounds worthy, and — especially if you’re any sort of a professor — you should check it out.

INTERESTING THOUGHTS on security and the Iraqi transition, from Daniel Drezner and some of his commenters. I agree that the Sunnis will likely have cause to regret not coming to an accommodation with the United States before the transition.

URANIUM AND NIGER: Greg Djerejian notices some potentially embarrassing developments. Er, embarrassing for Joe Wilson, that is.

UPDATE: Djerejian has updated his post in response to a second Financial Times story, and suggests that it’s not just Wilson who may wind up being embarrassed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts here, and here.

JAMES RUBIN confronts his past.

SOME INTERESTING, AND DISTURBING, news about SpaceShipOne’s flight.

IS NATO A FRAUDULENT COALITION? Patrick Belton’s roundup of what to expect at the Istanbul summit is interesting throughout, but this is what struck me:

Of 1.4 million soldiers under Nato arms in October 2003, allies other than the US contributed all of 55,000. Nearly all allies lack forces which can be projected away from the European theatre. SACEUR General James Jones testified before Congress in March 2004 that only 3-4% of European forces were deployable for expeditions. Then there are the problems of interoperability: there is a recurring problem of coalition-wide secure communications which can be drawn on in operations. Allies other than the U.S. have next to no precision strike capabilities, although these are slowly improving. The US is generally the sole provider of electronic warfare (jamming and electronic intelligence) aircraft, as well as aircraft for surveillance and C3 (command, control, and communications). The US is also capable of much greater sortie rates than its allies.

Militarily, then, NATO just doesn’t bring a lot to the table nowadays. Then, as Belton notes, “The other problem is political will, which is most in evidence on the issue of terrorism. ” Indeed. Both problems call into question both criticisms of Bush for not getting the NATO allies more involved, and proposals for moving U.S. strategy in a more multilateral direction. Read the whole thing, though, for some criticisms of the Bush Administration that are more cogent, if less campaign-oriented, than that one.

UPDATE: Reader Eric Bainter says this is nothing new:

When I was assigned to NATO in the late 80’s/early 90’s, the standard joke was (and probably had been since NATO’s inception) that “NATO” stands for “Needs Americans To Operate.” (The alternate was “Needs Alcohol To Operate,” which wasn’t too far off the mark either). It was pretty clear that for any major event, you were gonna need a lot of Yankees doing all those things mentioned in the article — command & control, comm, especially airlift, and of course, actual fighting troops of any significant size.

One example of this came about during the first Gulf War – NATO’s response as a non-belligerent was called Anchor Guard, and was to protect Turkey from being attacked by Iraq. The NATO owned & operated E-3A Component sent AWACS planes, the Dutch sent some Patriot batteries, and the Germans sent Alpha jets. Chem warfare suits were cobbled together from American masks and German suits, because most NATO countries did not have NBC ensembles that were worth a damn (e.g. the Turks didn’t have any).

However, we needed more secure housing for the AWACS crews and ground support – they were living in hotels in Turkish cities — Turkey’s bases were no where near big enough to support a surge of troops (which seems to be another problem with most of our allies’ bases). The Germans offered up portable shelters that had recently come into their inventory when they took over the East German forces. However, there was no way to transport them within NATO – the US Air Force airlifters were completely booked up with Desert Shield/Storm. The Belgians had some C-130s, but had already refused to fly ammo for the Brits to use in Desert Storm (typical). NATO had three 707s, but they were maxed out rotating AWACS crews to Turkey, and didn’t have a lot of cargo space. The German Transall airlifters were probably too small. The solution – Aeroflot (yes, the former Soviet now Russian airline) was contracted to move them to Turkey! I thought it was both amazing and hilarious that the Russky’s were supporting NATO. Aeroflot moved the shelters to Turkey, but their airplane broke down on one of the missions and was stuck for 3 weeks while a part was located and flown in from way the heck off in the former Soviet Union somewhere.

The Russky’s also gave unofficial morale support – a Russion “exotic dance troupe” was on tour in one of the Turkish cities when well over a hundred NATO AWACS personnel came rolling in…the dancers immediately cancelled the rest of their tour and stayed for the duration of the war.

Interesting.

LUNCH WITH THE SOLDIERS: An interesting report.

NOT QUITE worldwide, really.

WAR AND PUBLICITY: The Belmont Club has some reflections that unfortunately resonate with Richard Aubrey’s comments on Darfur, below.

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.