On the other hand if we didn’t also get rewards from being so blog-obsessed, we’d be, well, not blog-obsessed.

I watched Chris Matthews tonite and Debra Saunders was on. That was a reward because it was nice to see her on tv. I liked her. She’s pleasant and seems to have just the right touch of an ironic sense of humor.

But the reward is the fact that she writes for the San Francisco Chronicle plies its wares across the country from me. If it weren’t for the bloggers and their links I wouldn’t even know who she was, let alone have read as many of her pieces as I have.

That’s sweet.

Another tie-in to tv. I don’t remember ever seeing Tucker Eskew though I probably have. He works for the Bush campaign and shows up to do battle with DNC mouths.

He just started a blog recently and my reward was reading his statement of the campaign’s feeling when Kerry picked up on the NYTimes story:

So, the Stentorian Senator wants to talk about Iraq, Saddam’s weapons, and our safety in the world.

Ok, fine by us at the campaign.

That’s sweet times two!

Honestly, Kerry, keep reminding Americans that Iraq was a very nasty place with dangerous weapons and they’ll gladly vote…for Bush.

So these sweet rewards are very very addictive. I really don’t care anymore if my head explodes.

Public Announcements, also called blogs, are a means to disseminate information about the latest media threat, posing as “exclusives” and other relatively short-term and/or trans-national conditions posing significant confusion. (i.e. Missing Weapons that were supposed to be missing) These Warnings are made any time there is a perceived threat and usually have so called Independents, Undecided and Minorities as a particular target, especially around elections. In the past, Public Announcements have been issued to deal with short-term “stories”, forged memos, violence by serial demonstrators and anniversary dates of specific fanatical events. Earth Day is often cited as an example.

Web blogs are available for nearly every country of the world. (China has intricate gate keepers) Blogs include such information as How to get your copy of – insert title here. Links to safe havens (see Lileks), minor political disturbances (see Free Republic), unusual currency and entry regulations (see Rush Limbaugh), crime and security information or theories (see Loftus), unusual migration practices (see Andrew Sullivan), If an unstable condition exists in a site that is not severe enough to warrant a Warning, a description of the condition(s) may be included under an optional section entitled “Archives”. On limited occasions, bloggers also restate from this section any Oldie but Goody Posts for perusal as refreshers. Some sites such as Drudge generally do not include advice, but present information in a factual manner so the traveler can make his or her own decisions concerning links to a particular site.

Essential cerebral blogosis eh? perhaps I too am a sufferer of this subtle scourge. After reading about FCC’s Chairman Michael Powell ambush by Howard Stern I went to the Department of State Travel Warning page and this is the result.

This is utterly disgraceful. It will severely hurt our economy and embolden the terrorists. We will almost certainly suffer a severe recession. These people are vile and disgusting. The Democrat Party of Terry McAuliffe is a political organization of low lifes. Anyone with even a minimum sense of moral values can no longer support these morally challenged individuals. Is the national Democrat Party as evil as the Nazis or the Communists? No, that would be an exaggeration. But they are, however, only a few steps below in the ranks of pure evil.

I hate to admit my profession, but I’m a lobbyist here in DC. We’re mostly a repub firm, but have some dems working with us as well. I was talking to one of my dem colleagues today who is actively involved in the KE campaign. (In fact, he will be on the road for them in battleground states for the rest of the week.) Long story short, he predicted that with the legal strategies in play, the outcome of this election will not be finally decided until December. He is a bit prone to exageration, but he was serious about this. And he is definitely on the inside.

Brought to mind the title of Hugh Hewitt’s book — If it’s not close, they can’t cheat (or litigate!). All the more reason to vote and urge others to do the same, even if it looks like Bush is pulling ahead.

And (from Drudge) Democrats begin suing in Florida; Charge discrimination in voting law.

This election better not be close.

Vanderleun does capture the essence of the intensity and that occurs whether you post blog entries or comments. Actually that intensity occurs if use Poser or Bryce too. But I digress. (But, believe me, there are parallels.)

It’s when you get in the zone and the world disappears. All that matters is what’s in front of your eyes and you focus like a laser.

But the beam bounces off and hits you back, right between the eyes, when the phone rings or a voice from the distance asks ‘what’s for dinner?’

If you can snap out of your trance, you’ll live another day. If you can’t, you explode.

No, it’s not fatal…yet. Just a slow death of the mind. You find you’re always at the computer, even when you’re walking down the aisle of the grocery store with the talking points of the day’s news cycle bouncing around your brain.

You can’t wait to get back online to see if Roger has posted on it yet, whatever today’s ‘it’ is, or if the Kerry spike has dropped off Rasmussen.

That in itself is not the real disease though. You are in mortal danger when your thoughts only traverse little loop-de-loops. Once that happens you’re trapped forever.

but it is, as noted, a rare ailment, confined to those exceptional bloggers, like our host, Glenn Reynolds, and others, who are at the very top of the game.

But as a physician I want to call attention to the (somewhat) less serious but much more widespread essential cerebral blogosis, or ECB which afflicts millions who are not, properly speaking, “bloggers,” but are rather consumers of the product the bloggers produce.

The symptoms of this condition include sleeplessness (which the victim tries in vain to alleviate by frequent returns to the laptop to read “updates”), heightened irritability (often progressing to actual yelling at laptop screens or monitors), neglect of proper diet and exercise, and — in extreme cases &mdash a tendency to converse solely in strings of characters, e.g.,

“IIRC, Darling, ANTPTFAPOI, YMSADWYM, AHOSA?”

(“If I recall correctly, Darling, and not to put too fine a point on it, you mentioned something about dinner with your mother, an hour or so ago?”)

Finally, as the news cycle shortens to an interval which approaches the clock speed of the fastest available processors, we can anticipate that ECB cases will worsen, and evolve generally into advanced HCB…

But fortunately, John Kerry has a plan.

Jamie Irons