As primary campaigns hot up, the tea-leaf reading gets more and more frantic, and the tiniest accident can look like deliberate planning by a campaign. So when campaigns book TV air time, is it hyper-targeted at individual audiences, or sheer accident. If so, what does it say about the audience the candidate is reaching out to?

In this wholly unscientific poll (i.e. sitting on the couch flicking the remote), Newsdesk noticed these airings in select slots on a cable channel near you.

The Daily Show - DA candidate Mindy Montford (Travis County DA candidate), Glen Maxey (running for Travis County tax assessor/collector), John Lipscombe (running for Travis County court at law no. 8)
The Today Show: Rosemary Lehmberg (running for DA)
MSNBC's Countdown: Hillary Clinton and John McCain
UFO Hunters on the History Channel: Ron Paul

Turn on KLBJ (590 AM) right now and listen to Rush Limbaugh having a meltdown over the fact that that communist John McCain will likely be the Republican nominee for president.

In communications theory, there's an idea called attribute agenda setting: As developed by UT Austin lecturer Max McCombs, it says the more the media talks about something, the more likely people are to think it's important. Where the media get its agenda? Sadly, mostly from press releases and PR people.

In presidential primary terms, big campaigns make a big noise and get big coverage. For small and independently-minded campaigns, the result is what Dennis Kucinich's people call "a conspiracy of silence." When the media stops talking about someone, people consider them less as a candidate.

A few months ago, when Karl Rove stood down from the White House, long-time Turd Blossom watcher Jim Moore told Chronic that "Karl's priority is to write his first draft of history." Now the man known as The Architect has a publisher for that history, having signed on the dotted line for a reputed $1.5 million with Simon & Schuster for right to his autobiography. Actually, it's with Threshold Editions, a well-funded outlet for right-wing jeremiads run as a vanity imprint for former assistant to President George W. Bush and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, Mary Matalin.

Threshold's short roster of authors contains familiar faces to Rove, including: Mary and Lynne Cheney (any coincidence their father/husband used to be Matalin's boss?); Bush's ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton; Bush-appointed Republican National Convention chair and White House counselor Ed Gillespie; Kissinger acolyte, former governor of Iraq, and McArthur wannabe L. Paul Bremer, III; and former State Department careerist Edward Djerejian. If that name sounds familiar, it may be because he was chair of the committee that, in Dec. 2002, wrote Guiding Principles for U.S. Post-Conflict in Iraq - the unofficial game plan for post-invasion reconstruction and privatization of Iraq.

There's been a lot of discussion about the proposed demolition in New Orleans of four public housing blocks, especially after 15 protesters were arrested, nine injured, and four hospitalized after clashes at City Hall yesterday.

"You know why people were arrested, stunned with Tasers,, and pepper sprayed. You have it on videotape," New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley is reported to have said. Can Riley explain this footage, taken by staff at NoLa.com?


0:25 mins.: Armed city staff shoving a woman on a walking stick.
0:48 mins.: City employees throwing the same woman to the ground.
1:03 mins.: The civil sheriff waving a live, clicking Taser at members of the press standing on public property.
1:24 mins.: The NOPD officer who, after law enforcement had several protesters on the ground, uses a riot-control-sized canister of pepper spray on the crowd and his fellow officers.

Journalists call it “burying the lead.” That’s when you take the most important fact about a story, and squirrel it away at the bottom.
To wit: this morning, the New York Times reported that Russian president Vladimir Putin has anointed first deputy prime minister Dmitri Medvedev as his chosen successor in next March’s presidential election.

The Times leads with the fact that Medvedev a noted legal scholar and a proponent of stronger links with Europe: unlike former KGB man Putin, he is not a creature of the reactionary intelligence system. He is also not a cosmonaut, a trucker, a ballet dancer or an orange juicer. He is, as the Times slips in right at the bottom of the story, chairman of JSC Gazprom.

Wells Dunbar makes his own dang Missed Connection headlines.

UPDATE: The sordid saga continues. Is it the mayor chiming in?

The increasing viewership for MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann proves that there's still space in the media market for a New York-based liberal. But who's not watching Olbermann's evening show? Seemingly, MSNBC's Saturday morning host Chris Jansing. This weekend, she began a piece with the following:

"An outspoken critic of the war in Iraq is backing off a statement he made while visiting troops there. Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha now says that his statement Thursday that quote 'I think the surge is working' might need further clarification.'"

Which is sort of true, but only if you don't realize that Murtha wasn't back-pedaling, but asking journalists like Jansing to run the full, nuanced quote:

"I think the surge is working but that's only one element. It's working because of the increase in troops, but the thing that has to happen is that the Iraqis have to do this themselves."

His argument was that, without the political reconstruction required (and proven to be essential by minor examples like, oh, the long-term pacification of Germany and Japan after WWII) this was just boots on the ground creating the illusion of progress. And who was one of the first members of the mainstream media to point out that Murtha's stance was being misrepresented? Keith Olbermann on Friday night.

Something we should have posted hours ago, but better late than never: Infamous radio curmudgeon Sammy Allred has been canned from his position at KVET, which he has held for 35 years. The Sammy & Bob Show is no more. I guess for now it's just the "Bob Cole Show." We'll bring you details as we learn them.