BLOG VIDEO: I’ve been experimenting with my cheap Sony digicam and Windows Movie Maker 2. That’s because I really think that the video-with-sound capabilities of digital still cameras are the key to success with blog video — it’s just so much easier to carry one of those around. Movie Maker 2 is pretty decent for rough-and-ready video in that setting, too — it supports exposure control, which I used, and titles, which I didn’t, and while I’m all for fancier video software, I believe in relying on stuff that’s simple and ubiquitous whenever possible. Here are two short segments that I shot with the Sony as examples. The first involves the InstaWife shooting at the range recently. (Small version for dialup here — no complaining about her form, gun geeks, because although she’s riding the recoil a bit, it was toward the end of the second box of ammo and she was tired; she was rock steady for the first several magazines’ worth).

The second was shot in my neighborhood sushi bar (small version here). In both cases the lighting wasn’t great, and neither was the sound situation, but I think the product is pretty decent. And these were shot on the “standard” setting, not the high quality setting. It seems to me that a local news-blogger with a couple of big memory cards could do some interesting stuff with this kind of a setup. For example, if I’d had the Sony with me instead of the Olympus, I would have done some video interviews along with the still pix when I visited the bullet-riddled Bush/Cheney HQ in Knoxville last week. And that would have been kind of cool. Those with ambitions toward news-blogging, take note.

UPDATE: Reader John MacDonald emails:

The video and sound came out pretty well albeit it was a short clip, but then nightly news isn’t much better. If someone wants to go to a lecture or a protest or fire, this will give readers a good idea of what’s going on. Now that you’re unleashing hundreds of thousands of videographers, how do they get it on a news feed or yahoo? MSM may not be able to do too much more filtering if there are hundreds or thousands countering their spin on a story.Now you just have to work out a few logistical kinks.

Well, blogs are okay for distributing video, but I agree that we need something better. One step at a time. . . .

SOMEBODY WROTE to ask for photos of fall foliage. It hasn’t gotten here yet, though I suppose the upper altitudes in the mountains are turning. But, sadly, I’m way too busy to get to the mountains. [I thought you were on leave? — Ed. So did I.]

Fortunately, the fall foliage has come to Wisconsin, and Ann Althouse has pictures.

MEDIENKRITIK REPORTS that George Soros is airbrushing things on his blog. That’s not cool.

I, FOR ONE, WELCOME OUR NEW SPIDER OVERLORDS: And I’d like to remind them that popular bloggers may serve as trusted voices in helping to recruit workers to toil in their underground fly caves. . . .

Is it just me, or are people making a bigger deal out of Halloween than they used to?

It sure seems that way, anyhow. Anybody got some Raid?

UPDATE: Many readers say that Halloween seems to be a bigger deal. And not everyone’ s happy about it. Shortly after posting this I noticed an announcement hanging on my doorknob, for an “alternative to Halloween” festival sponsored by some Baptists. There does seem to be this anti-Halloween backlash, too, which I regard as rather silly. But if people want to have alternative parties, it’s okay with me. Even if there are no giant spiders. Though you’ve got to love the giant spiders.

WELL, YEAH, BUT WHAT’S YOUR POINT? A comprehensive approach to the big issues of this election.

WALTER OLSON REVIEWS Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book, Crimes Against Nature, and finds much to dislike:

There’s a rich market for Bush-bashing books these days, but Kennedy’s jackhammer style leaves one yearning for Michael Moore’s suavity, Molly Ivins’ balance and Paul Krugman’s lightness of touch. If you find it novel and illuminating to compare today’s highly placed Texans with Hitler and Mussolini, then RFK Jr.’s your man. . . .

The man’s lack of ironic self-awareness is a marvel. In his media-criticism chapter, he has the nerve to blast the press for its absorption with celebrity culture. Yet this book, like Kennedy’s entire career, is nothing if not an artifact of that culture. It would never have been acquired by a major publisher, or sent out in quantity to bookstores or reviewed in this newspaper today, if its author’s name were Robert F. Snicklethwaite, Jr.

Ouch. The Amazon reviews are considerably more positive.

UPDATE: Reader Ernest Gudath says that a book is going nowhere until the prolific Henry Raddick has reviewed it. Um, his tastes are certainly eclectic. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

TIM BLAIR PRESENTS the terrifying face of forgiveness. Put down all liquids before following this link.

UPDATE: Response here. Heh.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST? James Miller wonders if InstaPundit will be better off if Kerry wins. Henry Copeland thinks my traffic would increase dramatically, and he’s pretty much always right about these things. Nonetheless, I think a Kerry victory would likely be much worse for the country.

UPDATE: We may never know: Latest Gallup likely-voter poll shows it Bush 52, Kerry 44, Nader 1. Of course, the polls have seemed unusually, um, volatile this year. Make of it what you will. Drudge has more, including the information that Bush’s favorables, in this poll at least, are up to 55%.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Power Line is skeptical of the Gallup poll. I’m skeptical of all of them, at this point.

A WHILE BACK, I wrote this:

I think it’s fair to say that if Kerry wins, he’ll win based on anti-Bush sentiment among Democrats and swing voters. But although the anybody-but-Bush vote might be good enough to get him into office, once he’s elected it will evaporate: the dump-Bush voters will have gotten what they wanted, and they won’t have any special reason to support any particular policy of Kerry’s — or even Kerry himself. . . .

So Kerry might find himself elected, but with support that rapidly fades away, leaving him subject to Washington crosswinds and a slave to his party’s interest groups. That’s pretty much what happened to President Jimmy Carter. He owed his election to backlash over Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, and the lingering residue of Watergate. But that turned out to be an insufficient base on which to govern. Carter’s own party (especially, though not only, rivals like Ted Kennedy) cut him to ribbons. We lost ground both at home and abroad as a result.

This week, The Economist wrote (via Prof. Bainbridge):

Because the election is largely a referendum on Mr Bush, he can claim, if he wins, a clear mandate for his policies—particularly cutting taxes at home and smiting terrorists abroad. If Mr Kerry wins, the only mandate he will have will be for not being George Bush. In 1993, Mr Clinton had a difficult enough time holding his party together despite laying out a compelling vision of a new Democratic Party. The singularly unvisionary Mr Kerry will have to deal not just with the same struggles (for instance, between health-care reformers and deficit hawks) but also with a new civil war between the party’s rabid Michael Moore faction and its more sensible Tony Blair wing.

Advantage: GlennReynolds.com!

UPDATE: Great minds think alike. Matt Welch, who probably never read the GlennReynolds.com post above, wrote this at the close of the DNC:

I can’t begin to fathom how that lack of specificity might play to the sliver of a minority of swing-state voters who haven’t already made up their minds. Maybe they just needed to know that John Kerry was 6’4″, served in Vietnam, and never much liked commies. Whatever the efficacy, this anti-Bush unity is almost certain to dwindle if and when the Dark Lord is dethroned, and I’ll bet the hot political story in 2006 and 2008 will be about how the governing coalition is in disarray while the Republicans are newly unified against the haughty, chin-secreting liberal. This may be deeply unsatisfying to my tiny and incoherent demographic of non-partisan internationalist free-market Bush opponents, but within this projected disunity lies a silver lining — if John Kerry presides over a divided government, backed by a bickering party that doesn’t have George Bush to kick around anymore, then we will see endless new variations on the concept of “gridlock.” Aside from not being slaughtered by Islamicist madmen, this may be the best thing we can hope for.

Well, that not-being-slaughtered bit is pretty high on my list, and it strikes me as Kerry’s big weak point.

A BLOGGER’S SPEECH at a convention of newspaper editors. It’s Alan Nelson of The Command Post, speaking to the Associated Press Managing Editors. Worth reading.

OOPS.

ROGER SIMON REVIEWS Team America.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HAS ENDORSED PRESIDENT BUSH:

A President Kerry certainly would punish those who want us dead. As he pledged, with cautiously calibrated words, in accepting his party’s nomination: “Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.” Bush, by contrast, insists on taking the fight to terrorists, depriving them of oxygen by encouraging free and democratic governments in tough neighborhoods. As he stated in his National Security Strategy in 2002: “The United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. … We cannot let our enemies strike first.”

Bush’s sense of a president’s duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry’s, more ambitious in its tactics, more prone, frankly, to yield both casualties and lasting results. This is the stark difference on which American voters should choose a president.

There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned. And there are reasons–apart from the global perils likely to dominate the next presidency–to recommend either of these two good candidates.

But for his resoluteness on the defining challenge of our age–a resoluteness John Kerry has not been able to demonstrate–the Chicago Tribune urges the re-election of George W. Bush as president of the United States.

I must say I’m surprised by this. Be sure to read the whole thing. (Via The Glittering Eye).

UPDATE: Several readers email that the Trib endorsed Bush in 2000, so that I shouldn’t be surprised. They’re right, and I apologize for attributing to the editorial page the slant of the paper’s news operation. I should have recognized that there’s a wall of separation between the two. . . .

DARFUR UPDATE:

China is trying to stop the United Nations imposing sanctions on Sudan over the crisis in the Darfur regionto protect its oil imports from the country, say western diplomats.

For the past six years Beijing has been the Sudanese government’s main backer, buying 70 per cent of its exports, servicing its $20bn debt and supplying the Khartoum government with most of its weapons.

Beijing oil imports jumped 35 per cent this year and its reliance on a growing number of rogue states to meet its needs is putting it on a collision course with the United States. Sudan and Iran together supply 20 per cent of China’s oil imports, and if economic sanctions were applied to either, Beijing would be unable to sustain its high growth rates.

Another reason why multilateral diplomacy via the UN is unlikely to address either problem.

NADER VOTE DOUBLES: No, really. The good news for Kerry — this may be an indicator that some voters are finding his tougher talk on the war credible!

Or, of course, it could be bad news for Kerry.

THE CLUB FOR GROWTH wants your opinion on a “draft” of a forthcoming TV ad.

INTERESTING BACK-AND-FORTH between bloggers David Kaspar and George Soros.

THIS POST BY CHARLES AUSTIN is, like so many of his posts, worth reading.

TONIGHT I WATCHED FAHRENHYPE 9/11, the Michael Moore expose. It’s quite striking, particularly in the way they followed up with people who were featured in Fahrenheit 911, and show those people, one after another, saying that Moore misrepresented them and that they don’t agree with the movie. This should be on network TV.

UPDATE: A reader writes: “Fahrenhype on network TV? How much would it cost? Where would I donate?”

“BECAUSE WE CAN:” The world’s first all-digital accordion, from Roland. “The FR-7 faithfully combines the familiar sounds and nuances of a traditional accordion with the versatility of a modern digital musical instrument.”

I’m guessing that next year’s Grammy winner in the coveted Polka category just might be playing one of these bad boys.

STEVEN DEN BESTE is back, sort of, with an interesting look at the poll numbers.

TOUR THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE at this week’s Blog Mela.

DONALD LUSKIN says that someone is trying to manipulate TradeSports.

UPDATE: As far as I know — and no farther — that doesn’t seem to be going on at the Iowa Electronic Markets.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Luskin posts a somewhat troubling followup that also explains my question above.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts here.

TIM BLAIR’S ONLINE INSURGENCY has brought his much larger foe to a standstill.

STEPHEN GREEN points out a case of creeping fascism. Or something.