I just watched Arianna (Huffington) on last night's Charlie Rose.

OK, I'm totally behind her. I think she would make a wonderful governor and would really shake things up. (Read her announcement speech here.)

I have these incredibly mixed feelings about celebs running for office, though. I watched the first 20-minute segment (from Charlie) of two journos discussing Ahnuld, and it made me want to retch. The celeb culture we have is bad enough, and these people already have too much political power by virtue of singing or acting well and/or looking beautiful. Beauty is fine (especially on someone like Reichen--heeheehee; I can squeeze him in anywhere), but I don't want it running the country. I hate the thought of celebrity being a stepping stone.

I did have a different view of it with Arianna, though. It's much easier for an outsider--whether they be millionaire businessman like Bloomberg in NYC, or millionaire actor or author--to clean house, without arriving with a lifetime of either favors owed or just entrenchment in the system. It's nice to have someone from a different walk of life arrive in with a different set of eyes. And celebrity or money are about the only plausible ways in for an outsider in the culture we're living in.

While Arianna's celebrity status is what's most likely to get her in there should it work, it's not really fair to judge her celebrity the same way as Ahnuld. She's not famous for building a huge body and then parlaying it into a career as a human action figure, she's famous for being smart. She married into a lot of money, but she also brought a lot of wit and brains to the table. She's been on TV so much because she's so sharp.

And hopefully that famous wit will help her stay on the TV enough to challenge Ahnuld. She was already on Charlie Rose last night and the subject of Tina Brown's column yesterday, and Warren Beaty is apparently behind her. It would be nice to see a thinking woman be able to take Ahnuld on on his own turf. Of course he's going to get the bigger, dumber shows, like Jay Leno, but a lot of people may see him as a bigger, dumber guy. Hopefully.

In a case similar to the one I covered last month for Slate, the Air Force has dropped charges against an officer on rape charges involving alcohol and disputes about consent:

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colorado (AP) -- The Air Force said it has dropped charges against an officer accused of raping an Air Force Academy cadet last year.

Second Lt. Ronen Segal was accused of attacking the cadet at his Colorado Springs home on August 25 after a night of drinking.

The charges were dropped after the investigating officer said the woman was capable of giving or withholding consent and "did not in any way object to or resist" sex, the Air Force said Thursday, according to The Gazette of Colorado Springs.

Segal, a 2002 Air Force Academy graduate assigned to the North American Aerospace Command, was the second man associated with the academy to be charged with rape since February, when dozens of female cadets began coming forward to say they had been attacked.

Segal had faced charges of rape, forcible sodomy and dereliction of duty by providing alcohol to a minor. . .

Here's an interesting coincidence.

Front page of the New York Times this morning:

Younger blacks tell Democrats to take notice Democratic strategists fear may be a growing problem: The party is perilously out of touch with a large swath of black voters — those 18 to 35 years old who grew up after the groundbreaking years of the civil rights movement.

News story posted just a few minutes ago:

Dean Campaign Gains [Carol Mosely] Braun Key Staffer

BURLINGTON, VT (Talon News) -- In a move that could foretell the end of one campaign and signify the growing chances of another, Democrat presidential contender Howard Dean announced Thursday the addition of Carol Moseley-Braun's campaign manager to his campaign staff.

The former Vermont governor announced that Andrea "Andi" Pringle had jumped from the former U.S. Ambassador's campaign. Pringle, who brings with her a wealth of connections to the African American community, has agreed to serve as Dean's deputy campaign manager.

Good timing. It's a big problem for the Dean campaign, as well as the rest of the Dems.

At my meetup in Denver Wednesday night, there was only one African American, and when we got to the end of the meeting, she was understandibly flabbergasted--and pissed--that our meetup leaders had not even mentioned the issue of reaching out to minority communities, which was on the official agenda set by the national campaign. The local leader just brushed it aside at first, but she pressed, and he said he would sit down with her at the end and discuss it. They did for several minutes and it looked fruitful, but what an inauspicious start.

It's definitely one of those situations where it's hard to for a volunteer base to reach out to a community when it has hardly anyone from that community to start with to guide it. I'd say the Dean campaign is a little behind.

It's understandable: When support suddenly starts erupting, you take it anywhere you can get it, and it's mostly been white. Props to the campaign for grasping the problem and focusing on it early. (It's still early.) Putting it on the Meetup agenda was good, hiring Braun's campaign manager better. We'll see what becomes of this. For Dean and for the party.

. . . And the new Carter, and Goldwater, and McGovern, and Reagan . . .

This Slate story/chart is hysterical. That's the headline above, here's the brief copy:

Brown may be the new black, but Howard Dean is the new Brown. Jerry Brown, that is: a former governor who seems impervious to the tempering influence of focus groups. Or maybe Dean's the new George McGovern: an anti-war candidate destined to destroy his party. Or perhaps he's the new John McCain: a tightly wound straight-shooter known for his (usually) winning candor.

Dean, the once-obscure Democratic presidential candidate who doubled up on the covers of Newsweek and Time this week, has officially gone mainstream. But it's not like Dean came out of nowhere, campaign-watchers agree. He came straight out of the history books—they just can't decide which one.

So, here's Slate's brief guide to the many faces of Dean.

For each person he's compared to, they list the number of Nexis hits, "Who said it best," "What he said" and "What he meant." Only 43 for Ronald Reagan and one for William Jennings Bryan. Click here for the chart.

Funny as this is, I do think McCain is a good comparison. Not on the issues, but it's the same feeling capturing both campaigns--the driving appeal.

Look up. Actually, wait until dark, wait a few more hours, then look up. It's huge, it's red, it's like nothing you've ever seen in the sky before. Actually, no one has ever seen this in human history, and they won't again for 60 thousand years.

Have you seen Mars? I enjoy the occasional astronomical event, but I don't usually get too worked up over them, but this is just amazing me. (I told you about it a week ago, did you look for it?) I finally tracked down the specific info. There's a very detailed story about it in Space.com (though spare yourself the nerdball intro and start after the first subhead "Start Tonight").

Both it and Jack Horkhemier, the big queen astronomer on PBS, offer explicit directions to find it, which is normally incredibly helpful, since I have trouble finding anything in the sky. For once, the idea of directions is kind of absurd. Just crane your head around between 10 p.m. and around dawn, and look for the huge burning object that has no business being up in the sky. A fraction the size of the moon, but many times bigger than any star. About half the width of a pencil eraser, and glowing the color of sunset. I have never seen anything like it. And it's just getting started.

The peak comes at the end of the month. A bit more on that from the Space.com piece:

On Aug. 28, Mars will reach "opposition," the moment when the Sun, Earth, and Mars form a straight line in space, with Earth and Mars on the same side of the all-important star.

When a planet reaches opposition, it lies exactly opposite the Sun in our sky: It rises at sunset, reaches its highest point in the sky at midnight, and sets at sunrise.

It's ridiculous to treat Chip & Reichen as stand-ins for the whole big gay cause. I know this, but I like doing it anyway.

Are the rest of the gayboys out there treating them like surogates? What about the lesbians, and gay-friendly straights. It's hard not to, especially while I'm watching the show. It sure feels that way: if they win, we win. It's delusional, obviously, but it's just nice to win something every once in awhile, even if it is imaginary.

And it would be nice to have someone less of a dick than Richard Hatch win something for our team.

I was practically in tears when they made the mistake driving at the end, and it looked like they might be eliminated. I was actually praying for them, and I don't even believe in God interceding in puny human contests. But I think it sort of does matter. For me they're surogates, for some straightguy out there they're hopefully ambassadors. Two married jocks just beating the straight jocks at most of the athletic events, acting like any ordinary married couple. I just wish they could stay on television forever.

They'll fade fast once they're off, though, except in gayland, where they'll be celebrities indefinitely. Just two more episodes, and they're in the finals now, so they get to stay married for both of them.

Interesting paragraph in this morning's USA Today story on its new poll showing Dean surging:

However, Dean shows weakness among female voters, a key voting bloc for Democrats. Men are twice as supportive of Dean as women.

Hmmmm. Very interesting data, definitely worth a story in itself, but what a half-empty way to look at it. Couldn't he--reporter Richard Benedetto--have just as easily said Dean showed remarkable strength among men, a key Democratic weakness over the past several election cycles? For a press all over Dean for his supposed unelectability against Bush, you might envision Karl Rove suddenly sweating that the Dems finally have a candidate that can challenge them on their solid male turf. The Dems tend to hold firm on their traditional voting blocks: blacks, Latinos, women, Jews, but they've been getting their butts kicked among white men. If Dean can follow that pattern and keep the women in November and grab some of those men, we could have a whole new ballgame on our hands.

Who knows. Dean could also lose the women and fail to grab the Republican men, but I really don't see the women suddenly rushing over to the Bush camp. Seems to me more of a plus than a minus, so it's odd that Benedetto would report it as a weakness.

Well not odd, really, given the Dean coverage all year, just annoying.

But what can you expect from a hack who writes a major story in a national newspaper indicating Lieberman as leading, without a word of explanation that early polls mainly reflect name recognition, and that movement is most of what matters, and Lieberman is moving steadily downward. Not one word about Lieb's decline, or the fact that anyone who knows anything about this would expect him to be ahead still, just much further ahead. The story makes it sound like he's doing great. Those irresponsible journalists and their irresponsible reporting on polls.

USA/TODAY/CNN/Gallup released a new poll tonight showing Dean surging 36 percent in ten days nationally among registered Democrats or Dem-leaners. He jumped from fourth place to a tie for second.

Mostly name recognition, surely, but that's mostly what he was lacking. The Time and Newsweek covers and all the followon publicity brought him to the attention of a lot more people, and they apparently liked him, or at least didn't hate him.

Of course it's important to keep the raw numbers in mind: he went from 11 percent to 15 percent, so he's got a long way to go, but 15 percent isn't bad for a nine-person field, especially against guys who most people likely to vote have heard of. (If you haven't heard of Lieberman, you were either in high school the last election, or there's very little chance you're going to vote. That guy has probably peaked already. He's still in first because he was already on the ballot, but he continues to drift downward. Dean cut his lead from ten points to three points in the ten days.)

Can't be pleasant news for Kerry either. Half the pack has been stuck in virtually the same spot all year, but four have seen dramatic changes, and except for Edwards, they're all accelarating. Dean has risen 150 percent since April, Lieberman dropped 18 percent in the same period, and Kerry plummeting 33 percent, 20 percent just in the past ten days. Edwards--christened early as the golden boy the press was sure would take it--has dropped the furthest, 38 percent, though most of it came in the first month.

(USA Today set up a separate page with a table of all the raw data since April, which you can access directly here.)

Kerry had finally arrested his fall late last month, and ticked back up a couple notches, but Dean grabbed all the coverage and whopped him back down in a week and a half. Dean's four-point rise nearly matched Kerry's three-point slide in the past ten days exactly. Sounds like a lot of soft Kerry support, who were only behind the man they thought was going to win it. (Read this wonderful Slate story for a some convincing anecdotal illustrations of that from right inside the Kerry campaign.)

Of course much of the new Dean support is probably soft as well, and Kerry or Biden or Clark or somebody else will surely grab some of it back again. It's a little early to pop the corks for your man reaching a lofty 15 percent.

But these campaigns tend to be about momentum, and the Dean momentum has been like a steamroller. The latest round of exposure brought him better poll numbers which mean more exposure and more money, which will help his poll numbers and lead to more exposure . . .

The big factor though, is that as people get exposed to Dean, a lot of them fall into a swoon. Now if he can just resist the urge to shoot himself in the head.