HUGH HEWITT looks at the GOP’s “indifference to new media.” He observes: “Occupying the White House leaves certain political muscles undeveloped.” They’re way behind.

UPDATE: But Rudy Giuliani is catching up: Chris Cilizza reports that he’s hired Patrick Ruffini as his online guy. Good hire.

“CLICK ON THE ADS, PLEASE.”

RECRUITING POLICE IN FALLUJAH: A report from blogger Bill Ardolino in Iraq.

WILL HDTV PORN LOOK TOO REAL? “The high-definition format is accentuating imperfections in the actors — from a little extra cellulite on a leg to wrinkles around the eyes. Hollywood is dealing with similar problems, but they are more pronounced for pornographers, who rely on close-ups and who, because of their quick adoption of the new format, are facing the issue more immediately than mainstream entertainment companies.”

New spin: “Some cellulite is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s kind of sexy.”

CORRECTING Nicholas Lemann.

BOGUS REPORTS ABOUT HILLARY, OBAMA, AND A MADRASSA: Howard Kurtz has a roundup. More background here.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey: “This is no different than the Jamil Hussein embarrassment at the AP.”

It will be played differently, though.

SNOW ON IWO JIMA: Mary Katharine Ham is photoblogging.

SPACE COMPETITION HEATS UP: “In a pathbreaking event heralding its arrival as a space power with capability to recover an orbiting satellite, India today successfully brought back a spacecraft to earth, giving a new impetus to the proposed manned mission to space in the next decade.” We’ll see more of this.

UPDATE: Read this column from Rand Simberg, too.

JAMIL HUSSEIN UPDATE: More embarrassment for AP, in this video report from Baghdad at Hot Air.

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE in the Pajamas Media Presidential straw poll.

UPDATE: So far it’s a win for Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani.

SO I’VE BEEN READING NAOMI KRITZER’S Fires of the Faithful, and its sequel, Turning the Storm, which I’ve nearly finished. She’s created a pretty interesting alternate world — something like Renaissance Italy, except that the established religion seems to be a version of Wicca, only with an Inquisition of its own. I’m a fan of her work, and I’ve enjoyed these books, too. Fires is actually her first novel, I believe, and though her later work is more polished, these are quite good.

A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ON TERRORISM: “Maybe Sen. Clinton can begin her Conversation With America by explaining what she thinks of her husband’s pardon of 16 FALN terrorists in 1999 (which Clinton’s former advisor Dick Morris has said was done to help HRC politically with New York’s Puerto Rican vote in her 2000 run for the senate). She might then follow with her views of Pres. Clinton’s last official act: pardoning Weather underground terrorists Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans.”

On the other hand, Paul Mirengoff thinks Hillary might be more ruthless against terrorists than the other Democratic contenders. (“Ask yourself which contender would be most likely to approve the next terrorist surveillance program or harsh interrogation tactic. My money is on Hillary.”) I think he’s probably right.

A LOOK AT BUSH’S HEALTH CARE PROPOSAL, from Arnold Kling. And Greg Mankiw observes, “Note that some Democratic economists have made similar proposals in the past, so there is hope that this idea will command bipartisan support.”

ANDREW SULLIVAN WONDERS WHAT I THINK ABOUT THE SURGE: I thought I’d been fairly straightforward, but sometimes my thoughts, scattered across a lot of short posts, come across as more cryptic than I realize, so I appreciate being prodded to pull them together in one place. As I’ve said before, I don’t think the number of troops is nearly as important as what we’re doing with them, and that’s not so clear. There’s room for optimism that we’re going to take a more aggressive line against insurgents in Iraq, and against Muqtada Al-Sadr in particular. There’s also some reason to think we’re putting the screws to Iran. On the other hand, I’ve been disappointed a number of times by the Bush Administration’s inexplicable unwillingness to deal with Iran’s fomenting of insurgency — it’s really a proxy war — in Iraq, and with its waffling on Sadr. You win a war by making it too unpleasant for the other guy to keep fighting. The additional troops, such as they are, won’t make a difference in that; only a change in approach will. I don’t have a clear sense of whether we’ll follow through.

I’m not as disappointed in Bush as, say, Bill Quick, but I’m disappointed. As I’ve noted in the past, the Iraq invasion was supposed to be the first step in transforming the region, but once we got there we seemed to lose all momentum, and all interesting in putting pressure on Iran and Syria. As Talleyrand said, you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.

I also think that Bush’s loss of support on the war stems from the loss of visible forward motion. The casualties per se aren’t the problem (we’ve lost fewer troops in nearly four years than we were expected to lose in the initial push to Baghdad), so much as the sense that we’re taking casualties and nothing is happening. This impatience is perhaps unfortunate, but it’s a well-known characteristic in the Pentagon (where people were talking about the “three year rule” on support for wars back in 2003) and the Bush Administration doesn’t seem to have had a strategy for dealing with it.

When I made these observations back in this post, I got an email from an anonymous but informed reader who said that the lack of progress is more apparent than real. TM Lutas agreed. Even if so, the Bush Administration has not paid adequate attention to the problem of maintaining political support at home.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t read it yet, I recommend Mohammed’s take as worth reading, especially as he’s a lot closer to the situation than I am. Ditto for Michael Yon and the troops, who seem to think that things remain very winnable. In fact, as Yon notes, the troops seem most worried about morale on the home front. And things are very winnable, I think, but in order to win, you have to fight to win.

UPDATE: Heh: “Once Instapundit gets done explaining to Andrew Sullivan what Instapundit’s position is on the surge, perhaps he can tackle the thorny question of telling Andrew Sullivan what Andrew Sullivan’s position on the surge might be.” Nope. Not going there. A man’s gotta know his limitations.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some of Ace’s commenters say that the surge is one of the war issues on which Andrew has been consistent, so I apologize if the link above is unfair. I wouldn’t want to misrepresent Andrew’s position on troops, as has been done to me in the past, but I don’t actually read Andrew much any more, and so haven’t kept up.

WAL-MART wins a round.

SOME MODEST HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRESS at the United Nations. Dave Hardy comments: “We’re not to next international right stage yet, but it may be moving that way.”

MICKEY KAUS: “Is state maternalism any less annoying or demeaning than paternalism?”

CHEAP GAS HAS GM WORRIED: I’m actually not entirely overjoyed to see it so low again. We’d be better off if the price stayed up long enough to encourage behavioral changes, which we need to make anyway.

UPDATES: Some useful related thoughts from Andy Grove.

“GHOST SOLDIERS:” More Iraq reporting from Bill Ardolino.