"The well-coordinated series of terror attacks on Paris left more than 129 people dead..."

That's from a CBS News article, "ISIS claims 'blessed invasion' of Paris." Obviously, "blessed invasion" is inflated propaganda from ISIS, but I want to question the characterizations we're seeing from our own politicians and journalists. I keep seeing expressions of respect for the sophistication of the Paris attacks, and I want to question it, because there is a temptation to say, when attacked, that the enemy must be very smart and strong and determined.

But was it really so difficult to send a bunch of men out all on the same day to hit soft targets — 4 restaurants, a concert hall, and a stadium? There are so many restaurants, completely unguarded and accessible, predictably full of people. Men with guns/explosives hit 4 restaurants in one city, not 100, not 1000.

The concert venue was another soft target, and the scene was chaotic. Many escaped. If the building were sealed up before anyone knew they were under attack, it would have been sophisticated, or if the entire building were demolished, killing everyone. But it was only men with guns rushing in, causing what damage they could, with (apparently) absolutely no plan for their own escape.

The stadium was the big target. The president, François Hollande, was in attendance. The attackers got nowhere near him. In fact, the attackers apparently scuttled whatever big plan they might have had, blowing themselves up at the gates. The huge crowd didn't even know there was an attack. Hollande slipped out and the crowd watched the game to the end.

What's scary isn't that the attacks are sophisticated, but how easy it is to hit a bunch of soft targets in one city, and how big a deal it is even when it's sloppily done and mostly unsuccessful. That's how it looks to me.

The end of the daily student newspaper.

UW-Madison used to have 2. Now, none.

"Students form a perimeter around the #ConcernedStudent1950 tent village and ask media to leave."

"This is what civic-level censorship looks like at a university with the largest and oldest public college for journalism."



ADDED: The protesting students are making many rudimentary PR mistakes here and could use some training in basic protest technique. They end up looking repressive and brutish, right in front of a camera, and they keep cranking up the intimidation. The photographer knows he's getting video that he'll be able to put up on the internet, and he's using a very effective technique of remaining calm and standing his ground in the face of what looks like scary intimidation. I have walked with a camera into big, passionate protests here in Wisconsin, and — with a few exceptions — the protesters were much better prepared to resist making the photographer seem like a sympathetic victim.

As for the First Amendment: The students and the photographers have free speech rights against the government, but not against each other. At 1:43, the photographer calmly cites the First Amendment, which, he says, gives all of them all "right to be here," in the public space, which is true. One of the black female protesters says "We do have our space as human beings," to which the photographer responds, emphasizing each word: "There's not a law about that." The woman then makes what I think is the most interesting statement in the video: "Forget a law. How about humanity? Respect?" He says, "How about documenting this for posterity?"

That's right where a good conversation could have begun. The law is not the beginning and end of how people treat each other. There is etiquette and there is respect. There is even love. As human beings, we want all of that. Please respect our space is an understandable request that a person should evaluate in ways that go beyond legal rights. The photographer did engage on that level when he offered a counter-value, documentation for posterity.

Unfortunately, that one-to-one conversation ended when another woman barged in and started yelling, precluding the development of the issues about photographing people who don't want to be photographed, and the crowd —which probably didn't notice the touching moment when Respect and Documentation stood face to face —  got going with the old "Hey hey ho ho" chant format: "Hey hey ho ho/Reporters have got to go."

And now, it's really too late for Jeb Bush.

On October 22, I said "It's time for Jeb Bush to withdraw and endorse Marco Rubio":

You may think it's a little early for this, but... somebody needs to emerge as the political mainstream candidate, and I think that person will be Rubio, sooner or later. Jeb Bush should figure that out and do something to help now, when it would be most helpful. Jeb's candidacy has failed. Not completely, not yet, but he hasn't built his poll numbers, he's lost ground, and his self-presentation has been weak. I like his mild manner, but it's "low energy," as Trump puts it, and, as I'd put it, just not competitive and forceful enough to gain ground in this field. Rubio, by contrast, has some combative heft....

Jeb can...  embrace and throw his full support to Rubio when Rubio needs it to get traction for the hard climb to the nomination. Do it now, Jeb, when it matters so much. 

The next day, after when the news came out that Jeb had to drastically cut back his campaign spending, I repeated my plea:

Hey, I said it yesterday: "It's time for Jeb Bush to withdraw and endorse Marco Rubio." Don't fight him. Help him. It's too late and too dire for anything else. Now's your chance to help the moderate GOP cause. Fighting Rubio is not the answer! Be practical and realistic.

It's too late and too dire for anything else... and now, after last night, it's too late even for that.

Jeb blew his chance to embrace Rubio, to be central to Rubio's emergence as the serious mainstream frontrunner. I couldn't believe it. Jeb, who knew he needed to do something to stand out, chose to butt in — it was not even his turn — and pile onto Rubio over a pointless question from the CNBC moderator Carl Quintanilla, who brought up the Sun-Sentinel editorial telling Rubio he "should resign, not rip us off... Floridians sent you to Washington to do a job...you act like you hate your job, do you?" (Everyone running for office who holds a current position is avoiding doing that job. I don't know why it's accepted, but I don't really care to see one individual lambasted about what has been the norm for as long as I can remember.)

Rubio answered very effectively and got a big, positive response from the crowd:

RUBIO: Let me say, I read that editorial today with a great amusement. It's actually evidence of the bias that exists in the American media today.

Quintanilla lamely tried to repose his question: "Well, do you hate your job?" How does that deserve an answer?

Rubio, obviously prepared, gives a great answer, detailing Democrats who've run for President while Senator, the percentage of votes they missed, and the absence of calls for their resignation — Bob Graham, John Kerry, and, finally, Barack Obama. The Sun-Sentinel endorsed them all.

RUBIO: So this is another example of the double standard that exists in this country between the mainstream media and the conservative movement.

Great answer. Perfect answer. This man is doing exactly what he needs to do, showing what it's like to speak forcibly, directly on point, not defensively, but persuasively. And this is when Jeb decides to butt in:

BUSH: Could I -- could I bring something up here, because I'm a constituent of the senator and I helped him and I expected that he would do constituent service, which means that he shows up to work. He got endorsed by the Sun-Sentinel because he was the most talented guy in the field. He's a gifted politician. But Marco, when you signed up for this, this was a six-year term, and you should be showing up to work. I mean, literally, the Senate -- what is it, like a French work week? 

That must be a scripted joke. French work week?

You get, like, three days where you have to show up? You can campaign, or just resign and let someone else take the job. There are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck in Florida as well, they're looking for a senator that will fight for them each and every day.

You say you "helped him" and now you take an unforced shot at him... over a dumb, made-up issue?! Where is the judgment? I guess getting behind Rubio and helping him again is not one of the really cool things you can do instead of running for President.

And now, since Bush attacked Rubio, Rubio has a right to respond. Seeing that his erstwhile friend has decided to try to wreck him with that "French work week" joke, he takes a clean, fact-based shot:

RUBIO: Well, it's interesting. Over the last few weeks, I've listened to Jeb as he walked around the country and said that you're modeling your campaign after John McCain, that you're going to launch a furious comeback the way he did, by fighting hard in New Hampshire and places like that, carrying your own bag at the airport. You know how many votes John McCain missed when he was carrying out that furious comeback that you're now modeling after?

Jeb says, "He wasn't my senator." As if we took it seriously when Bush said he needed to insert himself into this (non)controvery because "I'm a constituent of the senator." Rubio ignores that and continues:

RUBIO: No Jeb, I don't remember -- well, let me tell you. I don't remember you ever complaining about John McCain's vote record. The only reason why you're doing it now is because we're running for the same position, and someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you.

Jeb should have realized that he should already be helping his old friend, but "someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you." It's not going to help him, and what's really sad is that it's closed the door to his helping Rubio.

Bush blithers "Well, I've been..." and Rubio says "Here's the bottom line," which gets big applause, and...

I'm not -- my campaign is going to be about the future of America, it's not going to be about attacking anyone else on this stage. 

.... leaving his old friend in the dust.

RUBIO: I will continue to have tremendous admiration and respect for Governor Bush. I'm not running against Governor Bush, I'm not running against anyone on this stage. I'm running for president because there is no way we can elect Hillary Clinton to continue the policies of Barack Obama.

And so ends the sad tale of Jeb Bush, the man with cooler things to do than to help the man with the best hope of returning the Presidency to his party.

"I am convinced... that the way the Drive-Bys and the Democrat Party and the left are attempting to reconstitute their media monopoly is via Twitter and Facebook."

"In a way, the sewer of Twitter and Facebook is the left attempting to corral everyone into their playground, their way of thinking, and create a new legacy media to replace what the big three networks had back in 1988. You populate Twitter and Facebook with enough political activists disguised as citizens in their underwear in their basements just tapping out comments and posting left-wing news stories from AP, Reuters, Washington Post, New York Times, and that's how you reconstitute your monopoly.  You don't constitute a network media monopoly, but you constitute a mode-of-thinking monopoly by transferring your polluted, perverted way of thinking to social media to infect as many minds as possible who are incapable of critical thinking anymore, because it isn't taught."

Said Rush Limbaugh on his show yesterday, in a monologue his website titles "The GOP Establishment Comes Undone: Romney Pines for the Days Before Rush, the Alternative Media, and Conservative 'Insurgents.'"

It's interesting when Rush turns on new media, because often he presents himself as the original new media person, leading the way. The line "citizens in their underwear in their basements just tapping out comments" jumped out at me as I was listening to the podcast last night. That's the classic image used to diminish bloggers and other self-publishers of the internet. But, reading the text this morning, I see he's accusing people on Twitter and Facebook of fakery, only pretending to be citizens in their underwear in their basements. He's diminishing them by saying they're not just citizens in their underwear in their basements tapping out comments.

Well, that's funny, because Rush likes to act like he's just some guy thinking out loud into a microphone. He's just the "little fuzzball," alone in his little room somewhere in Florida, shuffling papers around, sharing snippets from from AP, Reuters, Washington Post, New York Times, and reacting, telling you what he thinks. He's "disguised" as your extra-smart, chatty friend, watching the news with you and sounding off. He knows all about "transferring your his polluted, perverted way of thinking to social media radio to infect as many minds as possible who are incapable of critical thinking anymore, because it isn't taught."

I'm quoting him. I wouldn't say "polluted, perverted way of thinking." It's just political ideology. You locate yourself at the extreme if you look across the spectrum and see the other guy as "polluted" and "perverted." It would be nice, wouldn't it, to live in the imagined golden age when people were capable of critical thinking, because people were taught critical thinking? But in the real world, ideas and attitudes have always spread through intuitive responses to other people expressing ideas. That's the core experience of human life. One of the standard expressions that works in transferring the ideas is to convey the feeling that your ideas are sober and reasonable and the product of critical thinking and those other people are oozing some horrible disease. Ugh! Toxic! That's how Rush haters would like you to react to Rush. Don't even listen, you might catch it. And that's what Rush is saying about the foul, unwholesome liberals. 

Did I slight Adam Liptak? His NYT Supreme Court piece is titled: "Supreme Court Prepares to Take On Politically Charged Cases."

My first post of the day — my first-Monday-in-October post — focuses on the Washington Post article "because the headline so perfectly sums up the reason mainstream media think you could or should care: 'Supreme Court faces politically charged election-year docket.'"

But now I see the NYT article has nearly the same headline: "Supreme Court Prepares to Take On Politically Charged Cases."

Politically Charged!!!

Is that some kind of secret code or do court-focused reporters just naturally end up there? The idea — as observed in the earlier post — is, I think, that ordinary reader will only be interested in the court if they feel that it's really politics. That's simple titillation. But, of course, I must also suspect The Washington Post and The New York Times of continually massaging its readers into voting for liberals, and creating anxiety about the Court's effect on political issues is the longstanding convention.

But "politically charged" is a great phrase, one I'm going to watch. It lets you call things political without taking responsibility for charging anyone with responsibility for the politically charge. For example, it was said that the Pope's visit to the U.S. was "politically charged," but that didn't mean the Pope is a politico. He might be, but the headline wasn't saying so.

ADDED: The New York Times celebrates the tweeting expertise of Donald Trump in "Pithy, Mean and Powerful: How Donald Trump Mastered Twitter for 2016."

In an interview at his office — interrupted repeatedly by Mr. Trump’s picking up his Samsung Galaxy cellphone, loading new tweets with his index finger and marveling at his nonstop mentions (“Watch this!” he implored) — the candidate compared his Twitter feed to a newspaper with a single, glorious voice: his own.

“The Ernest Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters,” he said, quoting a fan.

In the past, Mr. Trump said, when dealing with a dishonest rival “there was nothing you can do other than sue.”

“Which I’ve done,” he added. “But it’s a long process.”

Now, he simply tweets. Caustically, colorfully and repeatedly.

Suddenly, he said of his foes, “I have more power than they do. I can let people know that they were a fraud... I can let people know that they have no talent, that they didn’t know what they’re doing. You have a voice.”

Much more at the link.