"'Well, well, well,' went the general line in the Russian media, 'look what we have here.'"

I guess that's a pretty rough translation, printed in "Fake News as ‘Moral Imperative’? Democrats’ Alabama Move Hints at Ugly 2020" by Jim Rutenberg in the NYT.  The Russian media, we're told, "were downright gleeful over new reports that a group of Democrats had used online disinformation in the campaign against Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama in 2017."

Their reaction was understandable, given the news that American political operatives had tried the same kind of troll operations that United States intelligence officials believe the Russian government used in an attempt to swing the 2016 presidential election to Donald J. Trump.

The Russian news outlet Sputnik jumped on the news, saying last week that the Alabama operation “seems to cast Democrats’ Russiagate accusations into further doubt.”

Maybe you want to talk about the "drool" flowing from the corners of Joe Kennedy's mouth as he delivered the Democratic response to Trump's SOTU.

I'd like to know who thought it was a good idea to pose a Kennedy in front of a car in a place called Fall River?



I know it's a vocational high school where the students work on cars, but the hood up on a car is a roadside signal of distress, and the words "fall" and "river" had us thinking about Mary Jo Kopechne.

As for the "drool," I think it's obvious that Kennedy overlubricated his mouth, perhaps out of fear that he'd make the devastating Rubio mistake and experience an overwhelming need for water as he gave the response to the SOTU. To me the "drool" is a symbol for what's bad about partisan politics. One party has its problem — too dry!! — and then the other party comes in and instead of correcting to a moderate position goes too far the other way — too wet!!!

And speaking of too wet... if you drive your car badly in Fall River and fall in the river, you'll get too wet and you might drown. And no matter how much the Democratic Party thinks we might love another Kennedy — another Clinton not good enough for you? we got another Kennedy! — the Kennedy brand is badly tainted by Chappaquiddick. And Chappaquiddick is due for further examination in this time of #MeToo and The Reckoning. Let's go through all of the story of the Kennedy dynasty from the point of view of enlightened women today.

Democratic Party, you need to process your Kennedy material into the present day, where we do not accept the subordination of women anymore. And when you're done with all that, you can roll out your new Kennedy. The Kennedy brand, right now, is a broken down car with its hood open, signaling distress.

ADDED: The first time the NYT ever noticed this blog was on October 13, 2004, when I was liveblogging the presidential debate:

"Just after 10 p.m., the Democratic Web blogger Ann Althouse wrote . . . : 'A glob of foam forms on the right side of [George Bush's] mouth! Yikes! That's really going to lose the women's vote.' "

I was all:

Oh, I'm blogging as a Democrat? Well, I read it in the New York Times, so it's probably true. Did Rutenberg read enough of my blog to see that I'm voting for Bush, or is he just concluding from the fact that I don't mind saying that I observed spittle in the corner of Bush's mouth that I must be opposed to him? Maybe Rutenberg is assuming that these bloggers are all so partisan that if they say one thing against a candidate, they must say everything against that candidate.

Who needs norms when Trump is not normal?

I'm reading "Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism," by Jim Rutenberg. He's examining a topic I've been following for some time, the idea that Trump is not normal and the consequences of believing that idea. These are not normal times, some people are saying, and therefore the normal rules do not apply to me. That is, in my view, a dangerous, despicable turn of mind, but let's see what Rutenberg has to say:

If you ["you," the "working journalist"] view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.

Key word: normal.

But the question that everyone is grappling with is: Do normal standards apply? And if they don’t, what should take their place?

Boldface added. 

Covering Mr. Trump as an abnormal and potentially dangerous candidate is more than just a shock to the journalistic system. It threatens to throw the advantage to his news conference-averse opponent, Hillary Clinton, who should draw plenty more tough-minded coverage herself. 

Yes, yes, I know. Journalists already routinely threw the advantage to Democratic Party candidates. It's not some new threat. It is the norm. So what's he talking about? What's this new threshold the journalists are crossing? Why talk about this now? To excuse the failure to cover stories about Hillary? Rutenberg worries about the journalistic value called "balance," then tries to discount it:

But let’s face it: Balance has been on vacation since Mr. Trump stepped onto his golden Trump Tower escalator last year to announce his candidacy. For the primaries and caucuses, the imbalance played to his advantage, captured by the killer statistic of the season: His nearly $2 billion in free media was more than six times as much as that of his closest Republican rival.

But he had 16 rivals, and they were all, in sequence, attacking him. Even if he got 6 times as much as his closest rival (presumably Ted Cruz), what was the total amount his 16 rivals got as they all chose the strategy of hitting him? And what about the Democrats who got free media to attack him? I don't have enough numbers to do the math, but it sounds as though more free media was used attacking him than he himself received. I'm not convinced "Balance has been on vacation"! The balance has gone against Trump from Day 1. How the hell did he fight through all of that?

Rutenberg (and the journalists he's talking to and about) must be dumbfounded by the power of this man to survive the months of brutal beating he got in the media. What if journalists don't have the power to destroy? What if Trump gains power from their opposition?

It must be terrifying to stand naked. But there is cover if Hillary can only be carried to the finish line. They won't cover her, but she can cover them.

"I want to jump-start America and it can be done and it won't even be that hard."

Said Donald Trump, offering up his economic plan in Detroit today.

I chose to link to BBC.com after rejecting the NYT article that ran under the headline "Donald Trump, Hoping to Change Subjects, Says He Will Bring Prosperity." How does the NYT know what hope lurks in the dark heart of Donald Trump? This is the NYT, which is also running an article today called "Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism." I'm going to deal with that in a separate post, but I just want to say that I'm finding most of the articles about the election completely unclickable these days. I realize there has always been plenty of bias, but I'd try to read through it. Now, the headlines are tawdry clickbait... clickbait for somebody else.

In the NYT: "Just after 10 p.m., the Democratic Web blogger Ann Althouse wrote...: 'A glob of foam forms on the right side of his mouth! Yikes! That's really going to lose the women's vote.'"

That was Jim Rutenberg writing about me and other "livebloggers" back in October, 2004. I said:

Oh, I'm blogging as a Democrat? Well, I read it in the New York Times, so it's probably true. Did Rutenberg read enough of my blog to see that I'm voting for Bush, or is he just concluding from the fact that I don't mind saying that I observed spittle in the corner of Bush's mouth that I must be opposed to him?...

The NYT also got my URL wrong and used the term "Web blogger," with doesn't make sense, because "blog" comes from "web log."  Why the second "b"? (But, then, why the second "g" in "blogger"?) Back in the old days, discussions of the word "blog" were insanely common. Many people disliked the sound of the word and felt compelled to say so.

I was thinking about the perverse recognition I received long ago because, watching last night's debate, I recoiled at a blob of spit that bounced forward and then retreated on the right side of Bernie Sanders's mouth. Too bad I don't — I can't! — live blog like I used to. I could even have made a little video clip of the moment, which I can't find now, because the word I remember him saying, the only word I could search for in the transcript, is — of all words! — "the."

I'm fascinated to see that the old NYT article was written by Jim Rutenberg, because the NYT just gave him the position — "media columnist" — that had been empty since the death of David Carr.

“Our hunt for David’s successor has been exhaustive, and we were privileged to have had extraordinary candidates from both inside and outside The Times,” the newspaper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, and its business editor, Dean Murphy, said in a memo to the staff. “Jim brings to the job a passion for the story, a track record in covering the industry and the experienced eye of an astute observer.”

Well, he called me a "Web blogger" and a Democrat, got my URL wrong, and boxed me in as a person concerned with saliva 12 years ago, but I await his columns, none of which have yet appeared.

Of course, I am still a blogger concerned with saliva.

"Woman Said to Have Felt Hostility at Work After Complaining About Cain."

That's a hell of a headline. For an article by Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny at the New York Times. If the woman had been named, it could have read:

Jane Doe Said to Have Felt Hostility at Work After Complaining About Cain.

There'd still be that "said to." So imagine if there had been direct evidence, and if could been:

Jane Doe Felt Hostility at Work After Complaining About Cain.

There'd still be that "felt." So let's add another degree of solidity:

Jane Doe Subjected to Hostility at Work After Complaining About Cain.

There'd still be a lack of agency behind the hostility. If we knew who was sending out that hostility, it might have read:

Co-workers Subjected Jane Doe to Hostility After Her Complaining About Cain.

There'd still be correlation without necessary causation. Let's eliminate that for the purpose of further demonstrating the vagueness of it all:

Co-workers Subjected Jane Doe to Hostility Because of Her Complaining About Cain.

Even the article were bolstered with information that would support these 5 added degrees of specificity, the weakness of the story would remain: Which co-workers? What did they know about the complaint? What form did this hostility take? For how long? And the all-important: What connection did any of this have to something Cain actually did?

The new anti-Romney ad "shows that Priorities USA Action... will work as something of a roving hit squad."

Says Jim Rutenberg in the NY Times:

The spot focuses on Mr. Gingrich’s suggestion on “Meet the Press’’ on Sunday that the Medicare overhaul approved by House Republicans last month represented “radical change’’...

Examining why there is an attack on Romney coming so early, Rutenberg quotes Paul Begala (who is an adviser to Priorities USA):

“The man, the moment the place, the characters, it all came together... Any good political player sees defining moments happening and helps to form them.”

The spot shows that Priorities USA Action, like the conservative group it is seeking to counter, American Crossroads, will work as something of a roving hit squad. As an independent group, it is unencumbered by the political sensitivities that a candidate has to worry about, and is free to pick its shots as long as it can afford them.

Jerome R. Corsi's #1 bestseller "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality."

Jim Rutenberg and Julie Bosman discuss the book and interview the author, who also wrote "Unfit for Command" (the notorious "Swift Boat attack" that hurt John Kerry so much in 2004).

Corsi openly admits his "goal is to defeat Obama," which seems to mean it should be read as a polemic, but Corsi calls his book "investigative" and denies that he set out to write "a political book." And his editor — Mary Matalin — calls it "a piece of scholarship."

Though books are generally viewed as loftier than journalism, NYT journalists Rutenberg and Bosman look down on books like this. It seems especially galling to them that books gain prominence via the NYT bestseller list (or as they say in the NYT "best-seller list"):

[B]ooks like “Unfit for Command,” which remained for some 12 weeks on the Times best-seller list, and, now, “The Obama Nation,” have become an effective and favored delivery system for political attacks.

Ha ha. Books are a "delivery system for attacks." The pen is mightier than the sword, and the book — look out! — is a veritable missile.

There have been anti-Clinton (both Bill and Hillary) and anti-Bush books too numerous to name. The sensational findings in these books, true or dubious, can quickly come to dominate the larger political discussion in the news media, especially on cable television and the less readily detectible confines of talk radio and partisan Web sites.

Fact-checking the books can require extensive labor and time from independent journalists, whose work often trails behind the media echo chamber.

Imagine! A book is able to get out in front of the usually nimble "delivery system" of the newspaper. And isn't it annoying that book authors get into the media and say things that require fact-checking? Who are these people? Who let them in? How dare they impose extensive labor on journalists!

This is a long set-up for showing us the results of the imposed fact-checking task that Rutenberg and Bosman apparently find so irksome. Let's have it:

... Mr. Corsi writes that Mr. Obama had “yet to answer” whether he “stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended to his law school days or beyond.” “How about in the U.S. Senate?” Mr. Corsi asks.

But Mr. Obama, who admitted to occasional marijuana and cocaine use in his high school and early college years, wrote in his memoir that he had “stopped getting high” when he moved to New York in the early 1980s. And in 2003 The State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill., quoted him responding to a question of his drug use by saying, “I haven’t done anything since I was 20 years old.”

In an interview, Mr. Corsi said “self-reporting, by people who have used drugs, as to when they stopped is inherently unreliable.”

So the statement that he hasn't answered is wrong, and Corsi's point should have been that Obama once used drugs, and we might want to be suspicious of the assertion that he stopped when he says he did. In saying this, Corsi reminds me of those Bush antagonists who speculate that he still drinks or that he is somehow dogged by the "dry drunk" effects of not drinking. Let's see if all the bloggers can be non-hypocritical. Treat Obama exactly the way you've been treating Bush on the substance-use issue.

In exploring Mr. Obama’s denials that he had been present for the more incendiary sermons of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Mr. Corsi cites a report on the conservative Web site NewsMax.com that Mr. Obama had attended a sermon on July 22, 2007, in which Mr. Wright blamed “the ‘white arrogance’ of America’s Caucasian majority for the world’s suffering, especially the oppression of blacks.”

Mr. Obama, however, was giving a speech in Florida that afternoon, and his campaign reported he had not attended Mr. Wright’s church that day.

William Kristol, a columnist for The New York Times, had cited the same report in a column, and issued a correction. “There is a dispute about the date, and Kristol chose to side with Obama,” Mr. Corsi said. “We can nitpick the date to death,” he added, saying his “fundamental point” was Mr. Obama’s close association with someone ascribing to “black liberation theology.”

So Corsi is faulted for citing a report that the campaign disputes and — perhaps, I can't tell — not also stating that the fact is in dispute. (I need to look at the book, which I don't have at hand.)

Mr. Corsi described most of the critiques of his book as “nitpicking,” like a contradiction of his claim that Mr. Obama had failed to dedicate his book “Dreams of My Father” to his family; Mr. Obama dedicated the book to several family members, in the introduction.

And that's the third and last of the picked nits Rutenberg and Bosman report. Are there more? Why isn't this article more of a fact-check by the NYT? It can't be enough that Media Matters is fact-checking the book. I'm inclined to assume the NYT didn't find any more mistakes or they'd have told us about them. That looks pretty good for Corsi. He is such a huge target. He destroyed Kerry and his book on Obama is #1!

Mr. Obama’s campaign has yet to weigh in heavily on Mr. Corsi’s accusations. It appears to face the classic decision between the risk of publicizing the book’s claims by addressing them and the risk of letting them sink into the public debate with no response.

But the Obama campaign made a big deal about how they were not going to let themselves be "Swift Boated." The "Fight the Smears" web site was supposed to jump on everything right away. Now, they're weaseling about not wanting to draw attention to the book? That's a complete contradiction.... which has to make us think that they don't have answers to the charges.

ADDED: If you want to buy the book, buy it by clicking here, and you'll support this blog (without paying any extra).

MORE: Roger Kimball has a post titled "NY Times tries to torpedo anti-Obama book; succeeds in spreading its message."

For more Althouse, see Instapundit.

I'm writing over there too for a few days. Feel free to comment over here on this morning's posts. So far:

"I GUESS MAKING ONESELF VULNERABLE to two negative stories in forty years is the price of a lifetime of public service."

LAWRENCE LESSIG'S RUN FOR CONGRESS. "The district, south of San Francisco, runs straight through the heart of Silicon Valley, where Mr. Lessig is considered a celebrity, though one who wears glasses and uses phrases like 'net neutrality.'" If you're "considered a celebrity," doesn't that make you a celebrity? Is there some deeper lever of genuine celebrity that I just don't understand?

"IS JOHN MCCAIN BROKE?"

"JIM RUTENBERG, MARILYN W. THOMPSON, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and STEPHEN LABATON all show the kind of journalistic chops that made Us such a must-read in doctor's offices and lavatories around the world." Says Captain Ed.

MAJORING IN MIRACLES. Did Obama get sick on the eve of the big debate? Does Huckabee think this is the miracle he'd been hoping for? Unlike Huck, I didn't "major in miracles," but like the Virgin Mary on the grilled cheese sandwich, these works are uninspiring.

AND: Three more:

A BIG CIGAR? THERE?! That seems so wrong.

APHASIA IN THE COMICS.

"IF REPUBLICANS ARE MAKING TOO MUCH of Michelle Obama's gaffe that 'for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country' -- and well they might, because it could win them the election -- Democrats are making way too little of it."

"G.O.P. Decides to Embrace War as Issue."

What a strange turnaround!

Just a few weeks ago, some Republicans were openly fretting about the war in Iraq and its effect on their re-election prospects, with particularly vulnerable lawmakers worried that its growing unpopularity was becoming a drag on their campaigns.

But there was little sign of such nervousness on Wednesday as Republican after Republican took to the Senate floor to offer an unambiguous embrace of the Iraq war and to portray Democrats as advocates of an overly hasty withdrawal that would have grave consequences for the security of the United States. Like their counterparts in the House last week, they accused Democrats of espousing "retreat and defeatism."

How did that happen? Jim Rutenberg and Adam Nagourney write:

[P]eople who attended a series of high-level meetings this month between White House and Congressional officials say President Bush's aides argued that it could be a politically fatal mistake for Republicans to walk away from the war in an election year.

White House officials including the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, outlined ways in which Republican lawmakers could speak more forcefully about the war. Participants also included Mr. Bush's top political and communications advisers: his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove; his political director, Sara Taylor; and the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett. Mr. Rove is newly freed from the threat of indictment in the C.I.A. leak case, and leaders of both parties see his reinvigorated hand in the strategy.

The meetings were followed by the distribution of a 74-page briefing book to Congressional offices from the Pentagon to provide ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections: that the withdrawal being advocated by Democrats would mean thousands of troops would have died for nothing, would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire and would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam.

Republicans say the cumulative effect would be to send a message of weakness to the world at a time of new threats from Iran and North Korea and would leave enemies controlling Iraq's vast oil reserves, the third largest in the world. (The book, including a chapter entitled "Rapid Response" with answers to frequent Democratic charges, was sent via e-mail to Republican lawmakers but, in an apparent mistake, also to some Democrats.)

Great strategy... except that last part. (Email is always breaking loose.) And let me say that it's not just a good political strategy, it's actually the correct analysis of the war.

A senior adviser to Mr. Bush said the White House had concluded that it was better to plunge aggressively into the debate on Iraq than to let Democrats play upon clear, public misgivings about the war. "This is going to be a big issue in this election," said the adviser, who was granted anonymity in exchange for agreeing to describe strategic considerations about the war. "Better to shape and fight it — as good and strongly as you can — than to try to run away from it."

Interesting the way the attitude toward political strategy resembles the attitude toward fighting the war itself. It seems to reinforce the impression that the Republicans are the ones to trust on national security. And, apparently, this impression was clear enough that it shocked the Democrats out of a position that they thought was great.

So, that email escaping into Democratic hands... was that an accident? The Democrat who got the the email was Nancy Pelosi.

Me and those precious bodily fluids.

My reference to bodily fluids in this post has gotten a lot of attention, but do you know this isn't the first time I've gotten a strange amount of attention for talking about bodily fluids?

Let me reminisce about last year's bout with the fluid. It was the day after one of those presidential debates that we paid such close attention to back then:

I noticed from my Sitemeter that I'm getting referrals from the Washington Post, so I check over there and see:

Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times watched television commentators and "livebloggers" last night. ...

"Just after 10 p.m., the Democratic Web blogger Ann Althouse wrote . . . : 'A glob of foam forms on the right side of his mouth! Yikes! That's really going to lose the women's vote.' "

Oh, I'm blogging as a Democrat? Well, I read it in the New York Times, so it's probably true. Did Rutenberg read enough of my blog to see that I'm voting for Bush, or is he just concluding from the fact that I don't mind saying that I observed spittle in the corner of Bush's mouth that I must be opposed to him? Maybe Rutenberg is assuming that these bloggers are all so partisan that if they say one thing against a candidate, they must say everything against that candidate.

Why no referrals from the New York Times on Sitemeter? WaPo made my name into a link, but the Times doesn't do links. In fact, where WaPo has the ellipsis above, the Times has "on Althouse.com," which is neither the name of this blog nor the URL. And why two b's in "Web blogger"?

For all the thousands of things I've written about the election, the big recognition I get is for seeing spit in the corner of Bush's mouth? Ah, I suppose I deserve to get picked on for something small since I was picking on Bush for something small, which of course, for MSM, symbolizes what small, small, pajama-wearing, ankle-biters these bloggers--b-bloggers!--are.

Then:

[T]he Washington Post and the NYT are paying attention to my paying attention to a glob of foam that formed in the corner of President Bush's mouth last night.

Me and presidential bodily fluids, talked about in the big newspapers! I feel like the new Monica Lewinsky!

Fascinating though this high-level MSM attention is, it's the Belmont Club that is linking to my spittle-spotting and saying something interesting about it. Is it "vacuous," as one of the commenters on that post says, to judge people from their faces or are we tapping into some deep, subconscious skill that evolution has built into our eyes and our brains?

Maybe I'll put in a Google Alert for the various bodily fluids and pursue this line of blogging in earnest, since it's worked so well in the past. Any other bodily-fluids blogging? -- you may wonder. Well, there's this, from back when this blog was young:

I was annoyed when the mango juice sold in the Law School snack bar changed its name from Fantasia (no connection to American Idol) to Naked. When I'm consuming liquid, I don't want to contemplate nakedness. That's just wrong: why are you making me think of bodily fluids?

Why? Just to get to you!

The New York Times notices "Althouse.com."

I noticed from my Sitemeter that I'm getting referrals from the Washington Post, so I check over there and see:

Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times watched television commentators and "livebloggers" last night. ...

"Just after 10 p.m., the Democratic Web blogger Ann Althouse wrote . . . : 'A glob of foam forms on the right side of his mouth! Yikes! That's really going to lose the women's vote.' "

Oh, I'm blogging as a Democrat? Well, I read it in the New York Times, so it's probably true. Did Rutenberg read enough of my blog to see that I'm voting for Bush, or is he just concluding from the fact that I don't mind saying that I observed spittle in the corner of Bush's mouth that I must be opposed to him? Maybe Rutenberg is assuming that these bloggers are all so partisan that if they say one thing against a candidate, they must say everything against that candidate.

Why no referrals from the New York Times on Sitemeter? WaPo made my name into a link, but the Times doesn't do links. In fact, where WaPo has the ellipsis above, the Times has "on Althouse.com," which is neither the name of this blog nor the URL. And why two b's in "Web blogger"?

For all the thousands of things I've written about the election, the big recognition I get is for seeing spit in the corner of Bush's mouth? Ah, I suppose I deserve to get picked on for something small since I was picking on Bush for something small, which of course, for MSM, symbolizes what small, small, pajama-wearing, ankle-biters these bloggers--b-bloggers!--are.

Tainting the 9/11 commission's conclusions? Jim Rutenberg in today's NYT:

Democrats and Republicans alike have raised concerns about the degree to which [the 9/11] commission members are discussing their deliberations on television and, even, in newspaper columns — to the point that they are spinning their views like the politicians that many of them are ....

The accessibility of the commissioners to the news media, not to mention the openness of their views, is a departure from similar independent commissions of the past. Its members' openness troubles some officials here, who say they worry that it is giving the panel an edge that will taint its conclusions — especially when coupled with what some have called a partisan tone to members' questions at the hearings here.

"Taint"? Only just a worry that there might be a taint?? We are so far beyond mere taint, it seems pointless to pay any more attention to them than to the next political TV ad. It seems to me that some commission members are using that status to procure free airtime for what is essentially political advertising. Why should anyone take their conclusions seriously? What a shameful display!