Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Preschoolers preferred the taste of burgers and fries when they came in McDonald's wrappers over the same food in plain wrapping, U.S. researchers said, suggesting fast-food marketing reaches the very young.

"Overwhelmingly, kids chose the one that they perceived was from McDonald's," said obesity prevention expert Dr. Thomas Robinson of the Stanford University School of Medicine, whose work appears in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

-- JULIE STEENHUYSEN

After consulting his gut last month about future terror attacks, Michael Chertoff is now trying to wrench ours.

The voluble Homeland Security Chief teamed up . . . with ABC News, the new locus of wet-their-pants journalism, to deliver his latest irrelevant scare story about a year-old threat and his magnificent working in thwarting it.

. . . ABC of late has been juicing up its evening news with such items as a terrorist graduation video supplied by a “Pakistani journalist” and an enthusiastic but pointless report on the resurgence of bank-robbing in the U.S. emphasizing how few perps get caught.

Chertoff’s puffery is a natural fit for this new kind of enterprise journalism to get viewers’ attention at all costs. He prattled for the camera about a “heightened risk” but not “mathematical certainty” of attack based on his reading of news reports from Pakistan and Europe.

If Homeland Security has something to tell Americans that they should do to help avert attacks, let’s hear it by all means. Meanwhile, they and the too-eager media might want cut down on the color-coded self-promotion.

-- ROBERT STEIN

Like Bill Murray's hapless weatherman in “Groundhog Day,” America is locked in a perpetual September 12, 2001. How else to explain this weekend's frenzied passage of a sweeping amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), effectively authorizing the program of extrajudicial wiretaps first approved in secret by President George W. Bush shortly after the terrorist attacks of 2001? How else to make sense of a Democratic Congress capitulating to the demands of a wildly unpopular executive for yet another expansion of government surveillance powers, mere months after the disclosure of the rampant abuses that followed the last such expansion?

-- JULIAN SANCHEZ

It's obviously true that the Democratic Party is on a roll, feisty, and reveling in its own success. And no one can dispute that the number of Democrats willing to call themselves "liberals" has been on the rise, in step with a decline in the percentage of Democrats who call themselves moderate or centrist. Seven years in opposition to a president you have regarded as illegitimate from the outset will indeed increase partisan solidarity, which in turn reduces the need for internal differentiation, such as between "New Democrats" and old. Put it this way: If you're a Democrat and the administration of George W. Bush hasn't brought out your inner liberal, nothing will.

-- TODD LINDBERG

Congress’s failure to secure a timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq has split anti-war activists on the tactical question of whether to attack Democrats, who now control Capitol Hill.

The split has also underlined accusations among some activists that MoveOn has abandoned its credentials as an issue-based advocacy group and now instead provides cover for Democratic Party leaders.

Anti-war activists throughout the country are united in spending August pressing lawmakers to bring U.S. troops home. But tensions within the movement have been bubbling for months over tactics and whether their fire should be aimed exclusively at Republicans.

The divisions underscore the tough position Democrats are in — short of the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass binding restrictions on the war and far shy of the two-thirds majority in both chambers required to override a presidential veto.

-- MANU RAJU

Zoe Margolis has a best seller in England and is preparing to write her second book. Journalist Daniel Lyons' satirical novel published by Da Capo Press will hit the bookshelves in October.

Both were former successful anonymous bloggers whose identities just happened to revealed around the time their books were about to be published.

This could be a coincidence, or it could be a new but very viable marketing strategy being used by publishers to garner extra attention for their writers.

You may know these blogomists under the nom de plumes Abby Lee and The Fake Steve Jobs.

-- ELANA CENTOR

The state of Oklahoma offers 145 different vanity (automobile license) plates . . . I’m certainly wondering if they have a Pat Tillman plate. And something that tastefully expresses solidarity with the victims of the Oklahoma City bombings. I assume they didn’t pass up the opportunity to issue an Anna Nicole Smith memorial plate, but have they thought of a Danielynn plate? JonBenét Ramsey must have been a no-brainer, though. As also Paris Hilton.

Why not branch out into political statements too? Hillary Clinton’s cleavage or John Edwards‘ haircut should be good for few bucks, surely? And aren’t there people dying to pay $36 a year to express either their solidarity with dear old Buttercheeks, or their contempt for him? That would be novel — to offer "for" and "against versions.

-- SARABETH

Back in 2006 Google Labs launched one of its more intriguing products, Google Trends, which allows you to see what countries, regions and cities are searching on certain keywords.

It's a fascinating glimpse into what's on the minds of the world's internet users and also what seems to obsess certain cultures.

For example Australia ranks third in the world when it comes to searches on the words cars, education, football and marriage, second in the world for money and just ninth for sex.

However, we come first for searches on the words beer, suicide, rich, depression and God, which tells me we may be a little conflicted about the path to happiness.

-- SAM de BRITO

The coolest blog ever produced by someone at one of the traditional media companies is The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a stealth spoof penned by Daniel Lyons, a senior Forbes editor whose efforts evidently were unknown to the magazine until the New York Times unmasked him last weekend.

Playing catch-up, Forbes.Com, to its credit, acted quickly to promote the Fake Steve diary on its site, where it now appears incongruously amid the buttoned-down coverage of fed rates, hedge funds and, ironically, the authentic Apple CEO.

The question is whether Real Forbes can sustain the magic of Fake Steve. Or will Fake Steve fans flake when they realize their secret pleasure has been hopelessly co-opted?

-- ALAN MUTTER