CHEAP BEER, EXPENSIVE BOTTLES: Jeff Jarvis has some thoughts in response to my MSNBC item on the media. He’s right, to a degree — though I believe that the cost-and-quality cuts started before the competition from new media really kicked in.

MICKEY KAUS: “Who needs a VNR when you’ve got the NYT?”

HERE’S AN INTERESTING ABC POLL OF IRAQIS:

A year after the bombs began to fall, Iraqis express ambivalence about the U.S.-led invasion of their country, but not about its effect: Most say their lives are going well and have improved since before the war, and expectations for the future are very high.

Worries exist — locally about joblessness, nationally about security — boosting desires for a “single strong leader,” at least in the short term. Yet the first media-sponsored national public opinion poll in Iraq also finds a strikingly optimistic people, expressing growing interest in politics, broad rejection of political violence, rising trust in the Iraqi police and army and preference for an inclusive and democratic government. . . .

On a personal level, seven in 10 Iraqis say things overall are going well for them — a result that might surprise outsiders imagining the worst of life in Iraq today. Fifty-six percent say their lives are better now than before the war, compared with 19 percent who say things are worse (23 percent, the same). And the level of personal optimism is extraordinary: Seventy-one percent expect their lives to improve over the next year. . . .

Iraqis divide in their rating of the local security situation now, but strikingly, 54 percent say security where they live is better now than it was before the war.

Read the whole thing. Doesn’t sound like the “huge disaster” that Spain’s new Socialist Prime Minister, Jose Zapatero, calls it.

Begging to Differ has more thoughts, and points out, correctly, that it’s not all good news. No, it’s just a lot better news than you’d think based on, er, the news.

UPDATE: More here. And Jeff Jarvis has some observations.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This Michael Barone column is worth reading, too.

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL REPORTERS AND BLOGGERS ON THE WEB? I’m skeptical, but what the hell.

WHY THE NEWS MEDIA ARE LIKE CHEAP BEER: All is explained, over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: Er, you should bear in mind that I like cheap beer. As long as it’s good cheap beer.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “I guess that makes blogs the micro-breweries of the media biz.” I like that — idiosyncratic, yet flavorful!

I DON’T BELIEVE THIS BACKTRACK by Boston Globe reporter Patrick Healy on the Kerry “Foreign Leaders” story:

“Listening to the audio recorder now, in the quiet of my house, I hear ‘more leaders’ and I am certain that ‘more leaders’ is what Senator Kerry said.”

But if that’s true, how do you explain this Kerry statement:

Kerry declined to name any leaders who have voiced support for his candidacy, but said it’s clear to even casual observers of foreign policy issues that this country’s standing has sagged internationally.

“I’m not going to betray a private conversation with anybody,” he said Sunday. “I have heard from people, foreign leaders elsewhere in the world who don’t appreciate the Bush administration and would love to see a change in the leadership of the United States.”

Pressed on the campaign trail and by reporters to name the leaders, Kerry declined, although he said they were U.S. allies.

“I’m talking about people who were our friends nine months ago,” said Kerry. “I’m talking about people who ought to be on our side in Iraq (news – web sites) and aren’t because this administration has pushed them away.”

(Emphasis added.) But Kerry wasn’t talking about foreign leaders? Something sure sounds funny here.

UPDATE: Then there’s this story, courtesy of Henry Hanks:

The Bush administration cast doubts on John Kerry’s credibility Monday, strongly suggesting that the presumptive Democratic nominee lied when he said some foreign leaders privately backed his presidential bid. Kerry denied the White House’s assertion, saying “I stand by my statement.”

“I’m not making anything up at all,” Kerry told The Associated Press. “They’re just trying to change the subject.

(Emphasis added.) Looks like he’s talking about foreign leaders to me. What’s Healy about here?

MORE: Fritz Schranck is reminded of 1968.

And here’s more:

“If Senator Kerry is going to say he has support from foreign leaders, then he needs to be straightforward with the American people and say who it is that he has spoken with and who it is that supports him,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters on Monday.

If not, the spokesman added, “Then the only alternative is that he is making it up to attack the president of the United States.”

Kerry refused on Sunday to name names. “No leader would obviously share a conversation if I started listing them,” Kerry told reporters.

If Kerry hadn’t said “foreign leaders,” wouldn’t he just be saying “Er, I said ‘more leaders,’ you know, not ‘foreign leaders’?” I find Healy’s claim very hard to understand.

Hugh Hewitt has some thoughts on why this issue is so damaging for Kerry.

FRANCE IS JOINING WITH CHINA in an effort to intimidate Taiwan:

China and France will hold rare joint naval exercises off the mainland’s eastern coast on Tuesday, just four days before Beijing’s rival, Taiwan, holds presidential elections.

China’s official Xinhua news agency made no link between the exercises off Qingdao — about 780 miles from Taiwan’s northernmost point — and the election.

But the show of military strength and solidarity signaled China’s desire to isolate the self-governing island before the vote and its first-ever referendum, which Beijing views as a provocative step toward independence.

Don McArthur observes: “Either the world is insane, the French are insane, or I’ve gone insane . . . the French are joining the Chinese Communists in an attempt to intimidate a Democracy?!?!”

There’s apparently no limit to what the French are willing to do in order to feel important on the world stage. That’s a form of insanity, I guess, though I suppose it’s possible that these exercises were entered into without thought of the Taiwanese elections, at least on the part of the French.

Of course, it’s unclear how intimidated the Taiwanese will be by the French navy. I wonder if the Charles De Gaulle will be there. . . . Heh.

UPDATE: Reader Kelion Kasler emails:

Don’t the French-Chinese Naval Exercises once and for all put the lie to John Kerry’s implicit assertion that the French are “people who were our friends nine months ago” and are “people who ought to be on our side in Iraq and aren’t because this administration has pushed them away”? This is getting ridiculous.

Indeed it is.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

THE NATIONAL DEBATE has won its battle with The New York Times. The announcement appears on Public Editor Daniel Okrent’s page; I don’t know if he had a hand in it (though I suspect he may have) but I’m very happy to see the Times do the right thing.

The Times’ lawyers are now happy with a disclaimer on the parody page. That’s as it should be, and the example to other lawyers who have issues with bloggers (and most other folks) is that it’s better to start with a reasonable request than to proceed with threats and bluster from the get-go. Those almost inevitably make you look bad when they’re published.

MARK STEYN WRITES that the death of Europe is getting closer. I hope he’s wrong, but I was pessimistic about Europe before 9/11, and subsequent events haven’t done a whole lot to inspire confidence.

“ANOTHER HAMA” in Syria?

EARLIER, I mentioned Colin Powell’s spanking of John Kerry for his refusal to name the unnamed foreign leaders who support him. But I missed this spanking over Libya:

WALLACE: Senator Kerry has also suggested that the Bush administration held up the agreement with Libya for it to give up its nuclear weapons program to help in the president’s reelection.

This is what Senator Kerry had to say, and you can see it on the screen: “Gadhafi’s been trying to get back into the mainstream for several years now. There’s evidence that we could’ve had that deal some time ago.”

POWELL: It’s absurd. I don’t know what Senator Kerry’s talking about. It’s just absurd. That took time to bring that deal together. And I’ve been following it very, very closely for a number of months. And when finally the United States and the United Kingdom negotiators got a deal with Libya, we acted on that deal and we announced that deal. It was not held up for any campaign or political purpose.

WALLACE: You seem offended by it.

POWELL: Well, it is offensive because it’s a political charge in a political year. And I expect that we will be hearing and seeing many more charges and many more such video clips. But I don’t know what basis Senator Kerry is using to make such a statement. I mean, what is his evidence for this, other than an assertion on his part? It’s not accurate.

Ouch.

“MORE THAN SIXTY PEOPLE” protested the war, and to CNN that’s news. (It’s currently at the top of their main page.)

I wonder how many people would have to march in favor of the war to get this kind of notice? 60,000? Apparently 4,000 wasn’t enough.

UPDATE: Roger Simon notes that while CNN is reporting that protest, it’s missing these. Eason Jordan, call your office! Oh, wait. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Darren Brewer emails: “The CNN headline now says ‘more than 100 people.’ Of course. that makes ALL the difference.”

So, um, where’d the extra ones come from?

MORE: “Countless Dozens Protest CNN Coverage of Iraq.” Heh. Where are the cameras?

STILL MORE: Tim Blair: “The report, incidentally, contains around six times as many words as there were protesters.”

CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL BILL LOCKYER: Ventriloquist dummy for the MPAA? Sure looks that way:

“We do not wish to make any comment at this time on any document that the office of the attorney general may or may not be developing,” said Tom Dressler, spokesperson for Bill Lockyer in Sacramento. “But we remain concerned about the potential dangers posed to the public by peer-to-peer file-sharing technology.”

However, the metadata associated with the Microsoft Word document indicates it was either drafted or reviewed by a senior vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America. According to this metadata (automatically generated by the Word application), the document’s author or editor is “stevensonv.” (The metadata of a document is viewable through the File menu under Properties.)

Sources tell Wired News that the draft letter’s authorship is attributed to Vans Stevenson, the MPAA’s senior vice president for state legislative affairs.

Maybe Lockyer’s just distributing a pirated copy. . . .

THE PARTY OF YOUTH? According to this ABC poll, 12-17 year olds favor Bush over Kerry 47-31. (Via BoiFromTroy). More support for the notion that the Left is losing its teen spirit, I guess.

UPDATE: Reader Erik Fortune points out this NPR commentary on the staleness of Vietnam and the importance of the war on terror. It’s worth a listen.

LOTS OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS BLOGGING, over at this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists.

IS OUTSOURCING REALLY A NON-ISSUE? Daniel Drezner gathers the evidence.

MY COLLEAGUE JOAN HEMINWAY, whose exquisitely timed law review article entitled Save Martha Stewart? was mentioned here earlier, has been getting a lot of attention. Here she is in the Boston Globe, (and again here) and she’s been on the radio, etc., a lot too. She’s even been quoted alongside Stephen Bainbridge, and you can’t get much more famous than that. At least, not without a blog of your own.

JACOB T. LEVY says that the negative take on the Spanish elections is all wrong: “[W]ithdrawing peacekeeping troops from Iraq just isn’t such an out-of-bounds policy. A party that proposed to withdraw from Andalusia and hand it over to bin Laden for the restoration of the Caliphate would be something else entirely; that’s nothing at all like what’s going on in the real world.”

UPDATE: Bryan Preston says that Levy is missing the context here. See also Steven Den Beste’s uncharacteristically terse comment.

ROBERT POLLOCK:

A year ago John Kerry described the nations that would liberate Iraq as a “coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted.” It turns out that may be a better description of his own antiwar camp. From Jacques Chirac’s and Vladimir Putin’s political cronies to Tony Blair’s own Labour Party, many of the most vocal opponents of enforcing U.N. resolutions turn out to have been on the take.

Read the whole thing.

MORE BLOG BLOWBACK FOR THE TIMES — Robert Cox of The National Debate emails that he will be on Tony Snow’s radio show talking about their efforts in a few minutes. You can listen online here.

UPDATE: It’s on now — Snow just welcomed InstaPundit readers, suggesting that someone in his office reads blogs — and he and Robert Cox are happily repeating New York Times quotes about the importance of press freedom and suggesting that they “get the legal department together with the editorial board.” They’re also noting that the page is being mirrored all over the place, and likening efforts to pick on bloggers to trying to squash a handful of mercury.

IT’S NOT JUST PEOPLE AT TOWN MEETINGS WHO ARE CHALLENGING KERRY TO BACK UP HIS CLAIM about foreign leaders preferring him to Bush:

BETHLEHEM, Pa., March 14 — Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran into some tough questioning Sunday — from, among others, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell — about his assertion last week that he had met with foreign leaders who support his candidacy over President Bush.

Powell, who rarely makes overtly partisan comments, challenged Kerry to name one such official.

“I don’t know what foreign leaders Senator Kerry is talking about,” Powell said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s an easy charge, an easy assertion to make. But if he feels it is that important an assertion to make, he ought to list some names. If he can’t list names, then perhaps he should find something else to talk about.”

The story seems to have legs. Here’s an interesting tidbit from the Los Angeles Times report:

“Were they people like the president of North Korea?” Cedric Brown, 52, shouted at Kerry during an eight-minute exchange Sunday afternoon. “I need to know that.”

Ouch. If Kerry doesn’t want to talk about this, why did he bring it up in the first place? I’ve got more thoughts on Kerry’s temperament over at GlennReynolds.com.

WINDS OF CHANGE has its regular war news roundup posted.

UPDATE: Rich Galen has posted another report from Iraq, too.

NICE ARTICLE ON BLOGADS in The Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, it’s pay-only. Jeff Jarvis has an excerpt. But here’s my favorite quote, from a guy who sold a lot of CDs via blogads:

“I don’t think the bloggers realized how much these ads are worth,” he says. “Next year it will be much more expensive.”

Let’s hope!

REVOLT IN SYRIA? The Free Arab Forum has interesting pictures of an what was being called a “soccer riot” earlier but is now being termed an uprising. (An emailer from the Free Arab Forum says, “sources tell us nearly 250 are dead and 10,000 Syrian soldiers moved from Damascus. This is big.”) Strangely, the UN human rights committee has yet to condemn the massacres.

JEFF JACOBY ON EUROPE:

What the world should already know but so often forgets is that Jews are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. Anti-Semitism is like cancer; unchecked, it can metastasize and sicken the entire body. When civilized nations fail to rise up against the Jew-haters in their midst, it is often just a matter of time before the Jew-haters in their midst rise up against them.

Read the whole thing. (Via Volokh, where Randy Barnett has further thoughts.)