Daily Digest: Kos and Rove, Cats and Dogs, Living Together

The Web on the Candidates

• Earlier this week DailyKos’ Markos Moulitsas announced that he’d been hired as a commentator for Newsweek through the 2008 campaign, but promised that the magazine “is ‘balancing’ me out with someone that should make heads on our side explode.” He couldn’t have been more right. Newsweek announced that Karl Rove will be Moulitsas’ ideological counterweight. What a ride this should be.

• Yesterday NBC’s Chuck Todd noticed that a post on the liberal media watchdog site Media Matters offering “don’ts” for the moderators of last night’s Democratic debate was not so balanced in its advice, and seemed to be striking blows against John Edwards and Barack Obama for Hillary Clinton’s benefit. “[Media Matters’] ‘don’ts’ read more like facetious attacks on Edwards and Obama — right out of the oppo,” Todd writes. Todd helpfully points out that Clinton helped start and supports Media Matters, which may not make it the most objective watchdog group. Media Matters responded this morning, though they're upset that Todd didn't mention the first post's criticism of his colleague Tim Russert, who was the subject of three "don'ts."

• In a welcome change from poll-driven stories about the primary race, the Iowa Independent analyzes the campaigns in Iowa and predicts the winners. As they see it, John Edwards will win thanks to the organization he's been tirelessly building for about a year. Second place will got to Obama, and third to Clinton. We will see.

• Fox News hunter Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films has produced a new video attacking Fox and Bill O’Reilly for showing gratuitous sexual imagery while simultaneously railing against it. While the video features a number of hyper-sexualized scenes showing scantily-dressed women doing all sorts of sexualized things, it’s all been shown on Fox News. So why did Digg temporarily ban Brave New Films from posting on the site? It seems the group had been penalized for submitting “Adult Content,” which violates Digg’s Terms of Service. More at the Huffington Post, complete with snippets of emails between BNF and Digg.

The Candidates on the Web

• MTV and MySpace have confirmed that John McCain will be the next participant in their Presidential Dialogue series, which will be simultaneously aired and streamed on MTV, MySpace.com, MTV’s ChooseOrLose.com, ImpreMedia’s LaVibra.com and MTV Mobile on December 3rd at 7pm. He’s the first Republican to participate, following Democrats John Edwards and Barack Obama. We’re looking forward to the event; it will be interesting to see how McCain’s straight style and sense of humor translate in such a bleeding-edge, multi-mediated event.

• The Democratic Convention will be even more open to bloggers than in 2004, reports DailyKos blogger Joan McCarter. They are reserving 56 credentials for local and state bloggers alone, in addition to an undisclosed number of credentials for national and “niche” bloggers. Will the GOP be as blogger-friendly? Beltway Blogroll’s Danny Glover spoke to GOP convention spokesman Matt Burns, who told him that they “anticipate having a considerable blogger presence,” but they aren’t yet releasing any details.

• Upset about the Clinton campaign’s comment that Obama supporters “look like Facebook”? Then show your Facebook pride and get your very own “We Look Like Facebook” t-shirt, produced by the Obama campaign.

• Barack Obama’s technology policy, which he unveiled this week but had only posted online in PDF form, is now available in convenient, accessible HTML. Enjoy.

In Case You Missed It…

In our favorite videos of the week, Mike Huckabee stays consistent on taxes, the (Not the) Daily Show stays funny despite the writer’s strike, Tom Tancredo strikes with an over-the-top ad, Rudy Giuliani makes controversial use of old imagery of New York, and more.

Mike Huckabee is the latest candidate to agree to participate in 10Questions! He follows John Edwards and Ron Paul.

Voting on 10Questions closed yesterday with a huge surge in participation…and a number of last-minute submissions, including one that appears to have climbed into the top ten. And that raises an important question, was the process fair? Patrick Ruffini, who created the last minute video, pipes in the comments along with a critic of his actions.