Youtube, cell phones, and other sorts of easily available recording technology have ruined the game for a lot of the Republican radio-TV demagogues. Their old game was plausible deniability -- they'd say something that sounded good one day, and the opposite thing a week later, and there'd be no record. Or they'd say something totally obnoxious and inexcusable, make a lame apology / denial the next day, and a week later it would be forgotten.

But now everything is recorded, and it's the same for public speakers as it is for the broadcast media. No more forgetting, no more deniability.

A lot of the Republican political campaigning has been directed toward what are called "low information voters " (what I call whim voters). These are people who don't pay close attention, and people for whom TV news and talk shows are a form of light entertainment like sports and screwball comedies. O'Reilly and Limbaugh entertain them and make them feel good, and they're not critical viewers at all. But with the new technology, it's possible to call the demogogues on their BS and play their mistakes and creepy statements over and over again.

O'Reilly apparently really believes that it's stalking and smearing if someone plays back on Tuesday what he said on Monday -- he flies into rages which I think are real, but which make no sense at all when you think about it. He's been spoiled for so long, and has worked with impunity for so long, that he has an insane sense of entitlement.

In oral culture, the past was always reworked to conform to the ancient myths and to the needs of the present. With writing, checking became possible. Youtube, etc., have transformed the broadcast media from an oral culture to a written culture.

He's not the most conservative Republican in the Senate, but he may be the slimiest. He's got all kinds of skeletons in his closet (graft, bisexuality, drug use) but he's made this a "character" election by dredging up Franken's old comedy routines. "Al Franken: Unfit to Serve" seems to be his whole campaign.

At a certain point he decided that everyone should quit negative campaigning, because he'd unloaded his whole load and Franken hadn't done much of anything yet. Franken still hasn't mentioned Coleman's non-moral-majority personal life.

When I first heard about it, I understood that Obama was just digging up all of Bush's executive orders and overriding them. I would fully support that.

I also think that every bill that Bush attached a signing statement to should be repealed, repassed verbatim, and signed without a signing statement. This could be done with one omnibus bill. (As far as I know, Bush only attached signing statements when he disagreed with the intent of a bill.)

Something like .009%. Seriously.

I don't necessarily see this as weakness on his part -- more like triangulation. Maybe he's determined to follow a centrist path on foreign policy and national security -- more moderate than Bush's but not anything that we would be happy with. With Lieberman at the head of the Homeland Security committee he has an easy excuse.

I agree with Glenn about the uselessness of the Democrats. Once the Franken recount is completed, my political pittances will be donated to "Accountability Now".

Only by replacing some key Democrats (and frightening the rest) can we get any leverage. Depending on events and the shifts of public opinion, that's a strategy that might work. The only one, really. If we're nice we'll just lose.

But based on the bad news coming out of shopping-mall owner General Growth Properties [GGP], it is no wonder Friedman is feeling crankier than usual. That’s because the author’s wife, Ann (née Bucksbaum), is an heir to the General Growth fortune. In the past year, the couple—who live in an 11,400-square-foot mansion in Bethesda, Maryland—have watched helplessly as General Growth stock has fallen 99 percent, from a high of $51 to a recent 35 cents a share. The assorted Bucksbaum family trusts, once worth a combined $3.6 billion, are now worth less than $25 million.

Without schadenfreude life there'd be no joy in life. He's still got a few million left, of course.

His money was in malls. That tells you a LOT about him. (Shouldn't major media have conflict of interest rules? )

The owners and managers of the media are knowingly doing what they're doing -- not just Murdoch, but all of them. The people who work for them know what's expected of them and willingly do it.

There are reasons why the media are more responsive to conservative pressure than to liberal pressure. Whatever the bylined authors and TV talking heads may personally think, their superiors (the business people) are conservative on the key issues -- above all, war and taxes. And the business people have no concern at all for journalistic professionalism.

There are liberals and Democrats with deep pockets, and there have been several new national media established in recent decades: CNN, Fox, and USA Today. But liberals are not entrepreneurs or innovators.

I've been arguing this point futilely with Glenn, DeLong, and Somerby for some time now. If people start talking about a new cable network or a new national newspaper, it might happen. If they don't, it won't.