Two Americas

Esteemed commenter AMac tipped me to this thought-provoking column from Asia Times:

Hockey moms and capital markets

Asian capital markets cannot absorb Asia's savings.

What does America have that Asia doesn't have? The answer is, Sarah Palin - not Sarah Palin the vice presidential candidate, but


Sarah Palin the "hockey mom" turned small-town mayor and reforming Alaska governor. All the PhDs and MBAs in the world can't make a capital market work, but ordinary people like Sarah Palin can. Laws depend on the will of the people to enforce them. It is the initiative of ordinary people that makes America's political system the world's most reliable.

America is the heir to a long tradition of Anglo-Saxon law that began with jury trial and the Magna Carta and continued through the English Revolution of the 17th century and the American Revolution of the 18th. Ordinary people like Palin are the bearers of this tradition….


Provincial America depends on the initiative of ordinary people to get through the day. America has something like an Education Ministry, but it has little money to dispense. Americans pay for most of their school costs out of local taxes, and levy those taxes on themselves. In small towns, many public agencies, including fire protection and emergency medical assistance, depend almost entirely on volunteers. People who tax themselves, and give their own time and money for services on which communities depend, are not easily cowed by the federal government or by large corporations.

RTWT. It is a surprisingly positive take on Palin and the America that produced her.

In most big cities, a different pattern and ethos prevail. The best (i.e. worst) example is New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS: "THE MOST DEADLY CITY"

Yet, even among these five killing capitals, only Caracas had a higher murder rate than New Orleans.

In part, the magazine blames "grinding poverty, an inadequate school system, a prevalence of public housing, and a high incarceration rate" for New Orleans' world-class murder rate.

What the magazine didn't mention was that the city is run by crooks and charlatans. The mayor can't keep his foot out of his mouth long enough to complete a sentence and his only skill set seems to be begging the federal government for more money. The DA was forced to quit last year because he was an incompetent boob. The city's U.S. Congressman, Bill "What's that money doing in my freezer?" Jefferson, is under federal indictment. A well-known local political hack reported to federal prison this week to begin a five-year stretch for his part in a million dollar city contract skim ...

In New Orleans, nothing ever changes.

While New Orleans is an extreme example, many other big and small cities share similar symptoms and suffer from the same deep-seated problems. Here in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia has a murder rate four times the national average. It, too, is plagued by corruption, bad schools, and political futility.

When a provincial outsider looks at Philly or New Orleans, he does not underestimate the problems they face. Yet three facts stand out in stark contrast to the America described by Spengler in the Asia Times.

1. Political leadership rarely confronts the desperate problems in a systematic or thoroughgoing manner. Instead, their policies amount to little more than evasion and passing the buck.

Faced with violent crime and street gangs, they demand more gun control for citizens outside their city. When their schools fail abysmally, they propose that the state and federal governments give more money to those same schools. At every turn they do not solve problems, they redefine them so that some one else is to blame.

2. Like New Orleans, these urban areas hold elections but nothing changes. When it comes to positive change, the new boss is the same as the old (failed) boss. No matter how passionate the run-up to election day, the ballot box seems to ratify the status quo. Politics in these failing cities is trapped in a sticky equilibrium that confirms the flawed policies of the past.



3.

Hey diddle diddle
Distribute the middle
The premise controls the
conclusion

Frederick Winsor, The Space Child’s Mother Goose

A big reason for this stagnation is the fact that these cities have a political mono-culture that is actively hostile to new ideas.

The establishment Democrats, the rump Republicans, and the major media outlets all share the same world-view. While there may be cosmetic differences among candidates, no one is willing to offer bold alternatives that offer real change. Campaigns never address the real problems that plague the city. The parties and the press serve as mediators who ensure that the prevailing consensus prevails.

Over time this mono-culture has sapped the life and hope out of the electorate. Politics resembles the flawed systems of Asia instead of the vibrant provincial systems that Spengler celebrated and Palin personifies.

The Tasergate hatchet job

Beldar is the man to read when it comes to Palin in Alsaska. He slices and dices the latest attempt to smear the governor for her actions in office:

Branchflower report on Tasergate: Just one guy's opinion that contradicts itself and ignores the relevant facts and law


Democratic state senator and staunch Barack Obama supporter Hollis French of Alaska boasted in early September that he would provide an "October Surprise" which would upset the McCain-Palin campaign. Indeed, he originally planned to time it for October 31, four days before the election, for maximum impact, until other legislators forced him to abandon that particular strategy.

Today, however, in an episode of political theater that would make Josef Stalin blush, French gave it his very best shot: The investigator he hired and directed, Steve Branchflower, has labored mightily and given birth to a bloated and redundant 263-page report which boils down, for purposes of the ongoing presidential campaign, to two paragraphs that completely contradict one another. And the one of them that's unfavorable ignores the most important — indeed conclusive — evidence on point, but goes on to provide Branchflower's guess as to whether Gov. Palin has done anything improper.

What role did RE-regulation play in the banking meltdown?

Regulation and “Mark to Market” Accounting Rules

Few people realize how much of the present damage to markets is caused by the new regulations imposed by Sabannes Oxley and the “mark to market” rules imposed by FASB. How do you mark to market when there is no market? The market for troubled loans has dissolved for two reasons: no one knows what they are worth, and if an investment bank takes the loans into its portfolio it must mark them at the market price. The market is illiquid and facing not mere risk. They are facing uncertainty. No one knows what the values are or what the probabilities are.

The man who knows more about American politics than anyone alive today sez it ain't over

Michael Barone:

The Race Isn't Necessarily Over for Barack Obama and John McCain

Why i usually ignore the polls

I don't waste much time with political polls. Like all survey tools, they are at best a snapshot of a point in time and election cycles are all about movement. After all, it wasn't that long ago that the media was polling the Hilliary-Rudy general election race.

Plus, it is hard to tell if a survey was done competantly or in a slipshod fashion.

Also, i know for a fact that respondents lie. I work in marketing and i've used market research and analysis for many years. Time and again i've run into results where customers answer questions contrary to the facts: Credit card customers who claim they never carry a balance even though the survey sample was drawn only from people who had carried a balance for six straight months. Farmers who claimed to buy only John Deere equipment even though we were surveying people who had purchased Case implements in the past years. Etc. etc.

Sometimes the results are a matter of simple confusion and low involvement. For example, the last time i was phone surveyed i had a hard time remembering if i bought my last printer at Office Max or Office Depot. I know which store i went to, but i can never remember the name. Being the scrupulous, honest sort, i answered "I don't remember". At least i think i did. Maybe i just picked one so i didn't sound stupid.

At other times, the reponses are shaped by perceived social stigma. Many people do not want to admit that they carry a credit card balance. Hence, they tell the surveyer (pollster) they do not. In the right environment, Walmart shoppers will claim they never visit the big store. There is perceived social pressure even in an ephemeral survey encounter.

Knowing all that, i don't get bent out of shape about something that could be incorrect today or irrelevant two weeks from now.

Where journalism is headed?

The End of Dailies

Hastened by the economic and credit crisis, we are moving ever closer to a moment of catastrophe for one or more major daily newspapers. Sometime in the next few months, we're going to lose one–or it's going to be changed so radically as to be barely recognizable under the current definition of daily newspaper. And given the lemming-like tendencies of the newspaper industry, once one newspaper goes, others will quickly follow.

Note to bloggers and pundits: Long faces lose elections

Yeah, it looks bleak now, but there are many days before the election.

Blogger, both left and right, sure are naive and trusting when it comes to polls.

Hey, attitude matters. That's not just happy talk induced by GOP talking points. (I stopped caring about what the party insiders think long ago). Attitude is a survival tool:

Attitude: More Important than Exercise

I never fail to be amazed at how much attitude matters. It sounds so squishy and lame, and yet… Again and again, research and real life prove that attitude is the single biggest determinant of almost everything.

I saw it in researching THE UNTHINKABLE (in studies and stories showing that people with a healthy attitude recover more fully from trauma), and you can see it again today in the New York Times. In a study mentioned on the front page, people who a positive attitude about aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer (a bigger increase than those associated with exercising or not smoking).

Politics is certainly not war (thank God). But even in the harsh cauldron of deadly conflcit, attitude matters. Here's Lt. General Harold Moore's lessons he learned from the battle at Ia Drang:

First, never quit. Three strikes and you're not out. Put that on your refrigerator. Number two - there's always one more thing you can do to influence any situation in your favor. There's always a way. Number three - trust your instincts.

So come one, suck it up. What's the point in wallowing in fauz-despair now?

This is really sad on so many levels

So a dying paper decides to waste resources on a columnist who writes whiny little items like this:

Sarah Palin, the classic schoolyard bully

Those of us with vivid memories of middle school have seen Gov. Sarah Palin's type before. She was the girl who was always the first to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and the last to stop instigating fights in the cafeteria.

Most people think that carrying around all that "trauma" from middle school is a good reason to enter therapy. The editors of the Post-Gazette think it makes for good journalism.

But the really sad thing is that it ran in the Pittsburgh paper. That's a city that prides itself on toughness and resiliance and its blue collar heritage. It does not deserve to be shamed by newspaper that is so happily wimpy.

Credit where due

The Miami Dolphins have now doubled their win total from last year. There are no doubt many reasons for the improvement, but i think Joey Porter deserves a chunk of the credit.

Two weeks ago he was ridiculed by the sports yakkers when he announced that Miami was going to treat New England's QB like the career back-up he was. It was big talk from a guy whose team had one win in its last eighteen games.

Big talk. Bigger performance. Porter had three sacks in the improbable Dolphins's victory.

They did it again Sunday when they upset the Chargers. The Charger's had averaged over 34 points a game but the Dolphins defense held them to 10 points.

JP was a yapper and a trash talker when he played for the Steelers. But he knew how to back it up. (See Jeremy Stevens and Super Bowl XL). He's a good guy to have around when you're trying to change a locker room culture.

Troy Brown retired a few days ago. I should hate him because he knocked the Steelers out of the playoffs more than once. I have to say though, he was the greatest big game player of his generation.

Other players might have racked up better stats. No one else can match his versatility or his ability to perform in crunch time. He was a wide receiver, defensive back, and kick returner. He was also a smart, smart player in all those phases. I think two plays are emblematic of his greatness. In the 2001 AFC Championship Game, Brown recovered and returned a blocked field goal. Just as he was tackled, he lateraled the ball to Antwan Harris who took it in for the touchdown. In 2006, in the playoffs against the Chargers, he stripped Marlon McCree after an interception, thus opening the way for a Patriot's comeback win.

Wide receivers are the most vocally selfish and self-promoting players in the NFL. A WR can be famous for his antics, or his tantrums, or his highlight reel. Troy Brown was not very good at those sorts of things and so he rarely gets mentioned in the company of TO, Ocho Cinqo, or Steven Smith. On the other hand, he has three rings which is three more than those guys have combined.

Notes on the campaign

I do not watch the presidential or VP debates. I cannot imagine worse television than a joint press conference with two highly programmed candidates answering questions from a smug, preening, 'highly respected journalist." Nothing said at the debate is going to change my vote. Watching the show in order to critique the performance of the candidates strike me as a more miserable experience than the worst Oscar party a guy can imagine.

********

Reading bloggers reading polls is a classic illustration of Michael Crichton's Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect

Day in and day out bloggers criticize, dissect, fisk, and refute the MSM and their flawed polls. Yet, come election time, they exult, despair, with each turn of the same flawed surveys and the often cluesless "analysis" that accompany them.

Even if the polls were accurate (an impossible "if" given how frequently the polls differ among themselves) they are a static snapshot of a dynamic event. It's four weeks from election day and a single week is a long time in politics.

****

Scientific civilization ... has one rather particular defect; it is perpetually tending to destroy that democracy or power of the ordinary man.

Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better.

G. K Chesterton, Heretics

I wonder what G. K. would make of our modern presidential campaigns. We seem to have gone beyond even what he imagined.

What kind of democracy do we have when faceless operatives in Washington make so bold as to tell voters if their vote matters?

"We're pulling out of Michigan. It's out of reach."

Why would any campaign say such a thing?

I can understand spending money where it will do the most good. I am mystified that a campaign would publicly write off states before election day.

Maybe it happens because political operatives want to build their insider cred with reporters.

Or maybe they want to make sure that losses do not end up on their resume.

Of course, it is pretty hard to build a party or a political movement if no one wants to campaign in marginal or difficult states.

Worth a look

Political Origins of the Financial Crisis

It's a nice round up of articles written by economists.

Quite good

There is no end to it — everyone gets the version of Obama that perfectly fits his own world view. It is not hypocrisy. It’s fraud. Whatever he told or shared with Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, or Pfleger counts for no more that what he told or shared with other now inconvenient groups and individuals. He’s sold the same piece of political real estate to multiple buyers for multiple, conflicting uses.

But one thing has been consistent. He has never, ever attacked political corruption, whether in Chicago or Washington. To the contrary, at the Woods Fund, the Annenberg Challenge and the U.S. Senate he’s laddled out earmarks and goodies to a long list of friends and associates — Wright, Pfleger, Will County (home of FBI target Larry Walsh), Allison S. Davis, ACORN, etc. The one consistency has been his fidelity to political supporters. Everyone else and every political position were disposable.

Now is precisely the time for firm convictions, strict ethical propriety and the firmness to turn away those who put private interests above the public good. We may be on the verge of electing a candidate who lacks any of these traits.

RTWT

I do find it interesting that BHO is allowed to pretend that he did not know much about Ayers and Dohrn. I doubt that there is a history class in any college in America that does not cover the Weathermen and Dohrn as part of the 1960s.

Ignorance has its uses, i guess. But how do you get to be considered brilliant while claiming not to know many basic and obvious things about your political allies?

The Weekly Standard has a good piece on Billy A and the MSM's attempt to whitewash his crimes and background.

Stanley Kurtz dismantles the New York Times latest piece of creative journalism.

Powerline is also quite good:

During the years when Obama was "palling around" with Ayers, as Sarah Palin accurately termed it, Ayers was proud of his attempt to kill nine-year-old John Murtagh and his family. He said, for publication, that his only regret was that he and his murderous colleagues hadn't tried to kill more people. This unrepentant would-be mass murderer was the one person (along with his bloodthirsty wife, the only public figure, to my knowledge, who expressed enthusiastic approval of the Charles Manson murders) whom Barack Obama chose, over all other friends and acquaintances, to host his inaugural Democratic Party political fundraiser. And Ayers was Obama's close collaborator in trying to "reform" Chicago's public education system by drenching it in radical politics and anti-Americanism.

This article from the Hill last years notes BHO's vulnerability on the crime isssue. I find his stance on gangs quite telling:

In 1998, Obama was one of only three senators to vote against a proposal making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang.

And this:

Obama, at the time, said the bill would unfairly target minorities, stating, “There’s a strong overlap between gang affiliation and young men of color … I think it’s problematic for them to be singled out as more likely to receive the death penalty for carrying out certain acts than are others who do the same thing.”

Another good question

What is it about Cheney that makes him such a bogeyman? Parents apparently frighten their children by threatening to call in Cheney to discipline them if they don't mind.

Here.

Biden vs. Palin

Betsy's Page has a round up of Biden's mistakes, misstatements, and sef-serving lies. As usual Mark Steyn says it best:

By contrast, Biden was glib and fluent and in command of the facts – if by "in command of the facts" you mean "talks complete blithering balderdash and hogwash."

If Sarah Palin had committed one-quarter of these whoppers, the talking heads would still be frothing at the mouth. Instead we get garbage like this:

To the contrary, it is hard to count any objective measures by which Biden did not clearly win the encounter. She looked like she was trying to get people to take her seriously. He looked like he was running for vice president. His answers were more responsive to the questions, far more detailed and less rhetorical.

I share Scott Chaffin's disgust with the press reaction.

Must read

Check out this transcrip from This American Life. It provides an extraordinary look into the mortgage crisis.

Giant Pool of Money(small .PDF)

Great question

How come people who are so pleased to think that they might have seen another country "like a native" are so willing, or even proud, to spend their whole lives as a tourist in their own?

RTWT

Notes on the current crisis


Jamies Gorelick is emblematic of a large part of the problem.

Mistress of Disaster: Jamie Gorelick

Making sense of the economic crisis

It is bad enough that insiders like her bounce from failure to failure while collecting huge paychecks. What is really galling is the lack of scrutiny people like Gorelick receive from the “watchdog press”.

No surprise. When her conflict of interest on the 9-11 Commission came to light, she did not lack for defenders. Establishment pundit David Ignatius raced forward to denounce criticism of his “friend” as partisan smears. In such an environment, you cannot expect the MSM to look into the actions of sharp operators like Gorelick, Raines, or Johnson.

The greater sin of the elite media is the fairy tale version of Washington they foist upon their readers/viewers. In their telling of the story, the Party of Free Enterprise wages a vicious, partisan war against the Party Opposed to Big Business.

The reality is something far different. Liberal Democrats like Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, and Barney Frank received huge sums of campaign cash from Freddie and Fanny. Joe Biden watches out for the interest of credit card giant MBNA while his family dabbles in running hedge funds.

The fairy tale has been obsolete for decades. The Democrats made their peace with Big Business in 1975 when Phil Burton and Tip O’Neil realized that they could use corporate money to preserve their post-Watergate majorities.

The Beltway and Wall Street seem so connected that the ethos of crony capitalism prevails. The Republican Secretary of the Treasury, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs, crafts bailouts with the input of the current chairman of Goldman Sachs. Should anyone raise questions about the propriety of this cozy deal-making, both men can count on a ringing defense from a past Democratic Treasury Secretary and the Democratic Governor of New Jersey. Oddly enough, both men are Goldman alums.

The fairy tale conflict and cozy bipartisan reality is a negative by-product of the “mediated democracy” Powerline discussed.


There seems to be a fatal contradiction in free market theory when it comes to financial services. On one hand, “too big to fail” is cold unpleasant reality. The terrible thing is that it encourages big firms to take too much risk because the Feds will have to save their bacon to avoid a financial meltdown. Right-wingers hate this.

At the same time, they hate anti-trust action. Therefore, they permit more and more financial services companies to reach that “too big to fail” threshhold.

‘Tis a puzzlement.

In our market research in consumer banking we ran into a concept called “the moralization of credit.” A certain segment of the population looks at how their neighbors manage their money through a prism of “right and wrong” not “prudent or unwise”. I hear echoes of that in many conservative commentators.

Frequently, these moralists seem most offended by the borrower who cannot pay, not the banks who encourage the borrowing (and turned a tidy profit for a time.)

Yet these same conservatives recognize that the drug dealer is a bigger villain than the addict. How is credit different from dope?

I think a sensible conservative has to add a little Niebuhr to his Hayek. We cannot expect men in groups to behave as morally and as responsibly as men will as individuals. That does not change just because the group is a for-profit corporation.

A sad quirk of fate is that McCain did more than most senators to address these problems before they became a crisis. Yet, he does not get credit for his foresight. Instead, the economic bad news will probably cost him the election.

In the aftermath of this crisis, many companies will fail, or merge, or be taken over in a shotgun marriage. Nearly everyone will blame the unforeseen credit crunch, market meltdowns, etc., etc. in many cases this is just a new form of failure laundering. The true cause of their problems are bad strategies or poor management. The broader economic problems just provide a convenient fig leaf to hide these executive failures.

There is a special class of market victims in these sorts of bubbles and they get almost not attention. These are businesses who tried to manage prudently while the irrational exuberance was rising toward flood tide. In the Hayekian/Darwinian fairy tales of the Right, these firms will step forward to pick up the pieces. The reality is that many of these firms have disappeared. What now looks like prudence was formerly condemned as stodgy, unimaginative, and out of touch. Their lagging stock price made them takeover bait for the glamorous high rollers who then crashed and burned. Other once prudent businesses replaced their “underperforming” executives with aggressive charismatic executives who drank freely of the bubble Koolaid.

The Bush-Cheney administration has worked assiduously to restore the power and prerogatives of the executive branch. They have been curiously loath to wield those powers at critical times. We saw it first in their lackadaisical efforts to win the Iraq War. We saw it again in the present economic mess.

Hmmm, jealous of its prerogatives yet indolent in governing. That sounds more like a decadent monarchy than a vigorous Jacksonian chief executive. I think the Right got Bush wrong. Today, he seems more like G.W. Bush II of Connecticut than he does the forceful W from west Texas.

A religious war fought out every day in the headlines and at the newsstands

I came across an interesting quote by historian Johann Huizinga:

[the newspaper] fulfills in America the cultural function of the drama of Aeschylus. I mean that it is the expression through which a people-- a people numbering many millions-- becomes aware of its spiritual unity. The millions, as they do their careless reading every day at breakfast, in the subway, on the train and the elevated, are performing a ritual. The mirror of their culture is held up to them in their newspapers.

cited in Brown and Duguid, The Social Life of Information, (2000)

Huizinga was writing circa 1926. I doubt that he would see it this way today. Newspapers no longer reveal our "spiritual unity". Instead, they emphasize and exacerbate deep spiritual faultlines. On one side we see the worldview of the papers themselves: urban, secular, drenched in an upper middle-class liberalism. They are still confident in their elect status and the rightness of each and every one of their positions.

On the other side we have a large chunk of their current, former, and potential readership. They reject large portions of the worldview. Certainly religious faith and values issues mark faultlines. But you see the same divide on issues like gun control, crime, immigration, and multiculturalism.
The main issue is not so much the difference in viewpoint. It is that the newspapers rarely debate or seek to persuade those on the other side. Instead they ignore, dismiss, denigrate, and mischaracterize their positions.

Then there are the equivalent of agnostics: those (mostly the young) who will never participate in Huizinga's ritual of careless reading because they do not read much of anything.

MSM to public: "Sure we're in the tank for Obama, whatcha' gonna do about it?"

Welcome Ace of Spades and OTB readers. While you're here, why not check out the archives and blogroll? And maybe add this blog to your RSS reader (pretty please?)

See updates at bottom of post.

Patterico and Michelle Malkin have details on the latest outrage:

Moderator of Palin Debate Has Pro-Obama Book Coming Out on Inauguration Day


A debate “moderator” in the tank for Obama; Update: McCain campaign didn’t know about book

This is nothing new. David Gelernter has this story from 1996 in his Book Drawing Life:

Today's elite loathes the public. Nothing personal, just a fundamental difference in world view, but the hatred is unmistakable. Occasionally it escapes in scorching geysers. Michael Lewis reports in the New Republic on the '96 Dole presidential campaign: 'The crowd flips the finger at the busloads of journalists and chant rude things at them as they enter each arena. The journalists, for their part, wear buttons that say 'yeah, i'm the Media. Screw You.' The crowd hates the reporters, the reporters hate the crowd-- an even matchup, except that the reporters wield power and the crowed (in effect) wields none.

Their power might be waning, but they still seem to have enough to keep pushing their agenda. (At least the ones who still have jobs.)

This old post has a hypothesis for why this is so:

MSM: Shrinking Audience, Leftward Drift

UPDATE: Howard "Howie the Wesel" Kurtz defends Ifill here.

It really is a perfect case study for the corralled rebellion school of media criticism.

Kurtz makes race an issue ("In The Post interview, Ifill said that as the daughter of a minister who marched in civil rights demonstrations") and then let's Ifill level a bogus racism charge against her critics ("She added: "No one's ever assumed a white reporter can't cover a white candidate."). He touts her MSM credentials ("Ifill, who has worked for NBC News, the New York Times and The Washington Post") as though that proves she is not biased. He goes out his way to slam the first website to point out the conflict of interest even though they had their facts right.

UPDATE 2: As if to prove the point, a whole lot of "media critics" flack for Ifill:

MSM starts throwing its ethics under the bus to cover for Gwen Ifill

UPDATE 3: This transcript from Washington Week right after the GOP convention shows Ifill's attitude toward any conservative who questions anything she and her friends do:

MS. IFILL: Speaking of fired up, ready to go, right? Okay, since we are representatives of the eastern media elite - (laughter) - we have to address the question - speak for myself, yes - we have to address the question that was raised at this convention and was used with great effect by not only Sarah Palin, but many of the other speakers, which is we're at fault essentially.

[snip]

MS. IFILL: We've got tough, tough hides up here on this stage, so - (laughter) - hack away at us. Plus, when we get some sleep, we'll even be able to give it back to you.

UPDATE 4: Powerline believes that Ifill has "a shocking conflict of interest. I think that is true and it has nothing to do with left vs. right.


During the 1960 campaign, T. H. White considered writing a book that looked at presidential politics from the inside. When he broached the subject to his wife, she told him, "It's probably a good book if Kennedy wins. But if Nixon wins, it's a dog." JFK did win, and The Making of the President became a classic book. His wife may have been onto something because his later election books never had the same sizzle.

White, unlike Ifill, had played no journalistic role duing the campaign. He certainly did not pretend to be an impartial moderator during one of the debates.

A similar conflict of interest permeates Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Every one knew that the best ending for the book included a description of the hanging of the two killers. It could no be finished until the appeals finished. Yet, Capote had befriended Smith and Hickock during their incarceration and they looked to him to help them fight the death sentence. Both recent movies on the matter (Capote and Infamous) recognize that this put the author in a morally compromised position.

Nonetheless, many members of the MSM "defend" Ifill by treating the whole matter as "right wing talking points."

Others resort to aristocratic disdain:

(A personal note: we've met Ifill and she's a terrific person and journalist.)

Really? So people in the guild get a pass because other members of the guild think they are "terrific". That recalls a defense of Jamie Gorelick during the 9-11 Commission hearings.

This guild mentality lies at the heart of many of journalisms problems. As Power Line noted a few days ago:

We live in a political system that has not yet been adequately described, but one might call it a "mediated democracy." Mediated by a self-appointed, generally ignorant but highly opinionated "elite" that is not elite by any conventional measure--income, intelligence, education, social position--but that successfully dictates the terms of political discourse even though it no longer controls (exclusively, anyway) the means of production of the news. Someday, social scientists may be able to explain this. For now, we appear to be stuck with it.

UPDATE 5: Howie the Weasel likes flacking for Ifill so much, he did twice. This time in his regular column.

Extraordinarily good

Innocent Until Reported Guilty

The simple prescription for reducing wrongful convictions: better journalism about crime and punishment.

One solution for wrongful convictions, however, has not been explored in a sustained, meaningful manner. It is a solution that cannot be legislated or even come from the government. The solution requires writers and editors for newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations, Web sites and books to practice preventive journalism rather than after-the-conviction, too-late journalism.

HT: Abb at Liestoppers.

Ugly loss

Ron Cook spares no one:

Coaches need to take some heat

The worst part wasn't the 15-6 loss or the nine sacks by the Philadelphia Eagles or the fact the Steelers' offense could have played the game all night and still not threatened to score a touchdown.

The worst part yesterday was that the Steelers didn't have a clue what hit them at Lincoln Financial Field.

I'm talking about the players, sure. All of the offensive guys -- everybody from the quarterback to the running backs to the wide receivers and tight ends to the poor, beleaguered offensive linemen -- were truly awful.

But make sure you don't overlook the contributions to this sporting nightmare from Mike Tomlin and his Steelers coaches. They couldn't have had a more rotten game.

Where were the adjustments to Philadelphia's all-out blitzing defense? Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson is good, but he shouldn't be that much smarter than Tomlin and his guys.

Based on what i saw this week, Dallas has the inside track to its sixth Lombardi Trophy.

Making sense of the economic crisis

Two good artices

Michael Lewis-- Let the Heads Roll


Jack Shafer-- Fannie Mae and the Vast Bipartisan Conspiracy

Lewis has has harsh words for the Wall Street executives who have cratered their companies after pocketing huge bonuses. However, he is also asture enough to nothe the market dynamics that drove their actions.

But interestingly, if any of these men had behaved well and resisted the pressures and temptations of the moment, his firm would have, for several years, dramatically underperformed the competition. Probably he would have lost his job.

This passage from Shafer stopped me in my tracks

Next up is Jamie S. Gorelick, whose official résumé describes her as "one of the longest serving Deputy Attorneys General of the United States," a position she held during the Clinton administration. Although Gorelick had no background in finance, she joined Fannie Mae in 1997 as vice chair and departed in 2003. For her trouble, Gorelick collected a staggering $26.4 million in total compensation, including bonuses. Federal investigators (PDF) would later say that "Fannie Mae's management directed employees to manipulate accounting and earnings to trigger maximum bonuses for senior executives from 1998 to 2003." The New York Times would call the manipulations an "$11 billion accounting scandal." Gorelick, it should be noted, has never been charged with any wrongdoing.

Gorelick was responsible for hindering counter-terrorism efforts in the Reno Justice Department. The Wall she helped erect may have contributed to the 9-11 disaster.


Now we find out that she was hip-deep in the largest economic disaster of our time. Yet despite her sorry track record, she was selected to serve on the 9-11 Commission.

Gorelick is interesting in another way. She has exactly the sort of "elite" resume that lights David Brooks's fire. Given the results she's produced (almost uniformly bad), Sarah Palin's "Limited experience" looks like a powerful point in her favor.

Hmm. Could there be a connection?

McClatchy to Reduce Staff, Cut Dividend

Then check out how a senior McClatchy editor deals with public criticism:

This just gets better (and sadder)

Sic transit gloria mundi

Michael Hammer, the father of reengineering, died on September 3. His passing received surprisingly little attention in the press. He was, without a doubt, one of the most influential business thinkers of our time.

His 1993 book, Reengineering the Corporation, was a best seller. Fortune magazine named him one of the 25 most influential Americans (along with Martha Stewart and Oprah.)

The term reengineering soon went out of vogue after it became synonomous with layoffs and out-sourcing. In most cases, the corporate bureaucrats were simply using "reengineering" as a fig leaf to cover-up old fashioned cost-cutting. Very few were following Hammer's advice that they start with a clean sheer of paper to redesign their corporate processes.

Is The Atlantic trying to become the print version of the HuffPo?

First they let Excitable Andy peddle his vile rumours on their blog. Now there is this interesting sidelight to the McCain cover photograph.

How Jill Greenberg Really Feels About John McCain

When The Atlantic called Jill Greenberg, a committed Democrat, to shoot a portrait of John McCain for its October cover, she rubbed her hands with glee.

[snip]

Given her strong feelings about John McCain, we asked whether she had any reservations about taking the assignment in the first place.

“I didn’t,” she says. “It’s definitely exciting to shoot someone who is in the limelight like that. I am a pretty hard core Democrat. Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.”

9-11: Why we did not connect the dots

and what we must learn now.

Extremely important article by Walid Phares:

9/11 and Future Jihad

Since the early 1990s, jihad-inspired attacks had taken place against Americans, America, and other countries around the world. After the 1998 declaration of war, more strikes took place, including against the USS Cole in Yemen. But on September 10, 2001, the United States had not declared war against al Qaeda.

RTWT.

9/11/08

Read this:

Remembering Not to Forget 9/11

I wrote this last year. I don't really have anything more to add:

9-11-01: Remembrance

It's the end of the MSM as we know it. Reason 39,751 why i feel fine about it

A journalism profgessor has written a scholarly paper on the Duke lacrosse case. The ideology-addled poseur (Varbara Barnett) argues that Duke was too concerned about due process and ignored the problems of campus rape.

As one who took a close interest in the case from the beginning, i have to ask: what color is the sky in Professor Barnett's world?

KC Johnson, as per usual, has an outstanding analysis.


See also:

Duke lacrosse: auto-de-fe

Football is back

And the Steelers look good. 38-17 and it was not that close.

Pittsburgh played close to a perfect game. That's a pretty big deal even though the Texans were only 8-8 last year.

In recent seasons, Pittsburgh has had a tendency to play down to the competition. They let inferior teams hang around. A couple of times a year it bit them in the backside as they lost games to they should win (like the Jets last season.) This year they have the toughest schedule in the NFL. They cannot afford to toss away any games. There was no danger of that on Sunday.

One of the big plays of the game came on the Texans opening drive. They went for it on fourth and 1 on the Pittsburgh 48. Brett Keisel and Casey Hampton stuffed the QB sneak and the Steelers got the ball on a short field.

In training camp Hampton was in the dog house because of his weight. I hope he came off the field after that play yelling "How do you like my fat ass now!"

The reaction of the sports yakkers was predictably wrong-headed. They focused on the rushing yards and proclaimed that the Steelers won by running the ball.

Any knowledgeable fan who watched the game knew that this was a case of correlation without causation. Pittsburgh jumped to a 21-3 halftime lead even though the running game was uninspiring. (Willie Parker carried 14 times for 46 yards in the half). The big story of the game was Ben Roethlisberger's almost perfect play at quarterback. Big Ben even had the best run of the half: a long scramble for a first down.

The sad fact is that sports pundits have little time to think or study. They have to opine on dozens of subjects every day. Therefore, they fall back on clichés and conventional wisdom. Once an idea enters the pundit-stream it gets repeated endlessly. It takes a bold and well-informed observer to break with the bloviating masses. But the sports media isn't made up of knowledgeable independent thinkers. It's full of Tony Kornheisers.


BTW, Cold Hard Football Facts has a great post up on Kornheiser. A taste:

But he's also typical of the modern celebrity "pundit" of the cable age. He knows little about the history or the intricacies of the game (the latter, to his credit, which he readily admits). He grew up professionally in the ESPN age, and if Chris Berman never gave the guy a chintzy nickname, Kornheiser apparently doesn't even know he existed.

What kind of person makes the pronouncements that echo into received opinion? I discussed that in this post. (Hint: it is not the best informed or most thoughtful).

Fortunately, sports opinion is mostly just noise in the ether. I wonder, thought, if the same dynamic is at work with political punditry. Do Andrea Mitchell or David Gregory do their own thinking? Or are they just articulate sheep following along behind some ur-pundit?

That's going to leave a mark

Their work finished investigating Tony Rezko and William Ayers, media descend upon Wasilla

HT: Scott Chaffin

He belongs there

Cold Hard Football Facts looks for the most underrated players in the NFL. #2 on the list is Aaron Smith (#91) of your Pittsburgh Steelers.

Nice to see a great player get some credit.

An important piece of history

Patterico lays out the record on John McCain and the surge.

Apparently to work for the MSM you need a Ph. D. in "Not Getting It"

Howie the Weasel does his thing:

Sarah Storms St. Paul

It's a target rich environment for a blogger. Unfortunately, i'm pressed for time. Fortunately, the MSM is so stuck in its ways that old posts never lose their relevance.

Journalism: Worst of all worlds


MSM: Shrinking Audience, Leftward Drift


Media criticism and corralled rebellion


What is the true function of a public editor?


Howard Kurtz

UPDATE: This post gives Kurtz and Friends the fisking they richly deserve:

Media Still Doesn't Get It

BTW, Ace is still on fire

Go here so you don't miss anything.

This one is not to be missed.

Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin

she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there.

Here.

Ain't that the sad truth

In 72 hours, the media has subjected Bristol Palin to more scrutiny than they've given to Barack Obama in two years.

Here.

The byline says Howie

But it is the same old weasel writing this crap.

Pregnant Pause

After defending the way the MSM covered for John Edwards, Kurtz now thinks the rumor-mongering about the Palins is understandable and probably OK. (Wow, what a surprise.)

Gee, i wonder if that means that the Post is now ready to dig into BHO's commie rapist mentor? Or his half-brother living in squalor?

UPDATE: Powerline has the goods on the flexible standrds at the new York Times:

Getting Less Squeamish By the Minute

100%

Agreement.

Every word, every drop of visceral, righteous anger.

Ace and Scott Chaffin do the talking for me tonight.

Steyn on a roll

The hostess with the moosest

Over in the Frumistan province of the NR caliphate, our pal David is not happy about the Palin pick. I am - for several reasons.

First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

More here.

As for Frum's hysterics--- that's a feature not a bug for this voter.

That was fast

Little known Sarah Palin facts

Well, i guess the chickenhawk mantra won't be making an appearance this campaign season

Beldar on fire

Obama over the top

Events may prove me wrong. But I believe that in hindsight — even, say, a year from now — the high point of the failed Barack Obama presidential candidacy will be recognized as having occurred a few seconds before he spoke these lines in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention tonight:

You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell. But he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives.

What a nasty, vile statement. What a palpable, obvious, and deliberate lie. What a calculated insult, in a speech guaranteed to have been combed over in advance for anything that might generate misunderstandings, in a speech guaranteed to receive more national attention than anything Obama has said to date in his entire life. What a great insight into the shallow, immature thinking and overweening, craven opportunism of this man who's never done anything, never risked anything, never shown an ounce of even political courage (much less physical courage) — but yet would be the Commander in Chief of the United States of America.

RTWT

An important distinction

From Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette:

This is what we've been fighting in Iraq...

...not teenage girls with explosives strapped to them - but the people who would strap explosives to teenage girls.

Good stuff on overlooked (ignored?) poll data

The Biggest Missing Story in Politics

Provocative question about the future of journalism

How can society continue to receive the benefits of journalism, given the current media environment? Also, which players might provide those benefits, and how?
Probably that solution (or more likely, set of solutions) won't look or work like traditional journalism. It might not be done by "professional journalists" or "news organizations." It may have different values and standards. It might not even be "a business." And yes, the big risk is that society could experience harm during this transition. But society also can participate in finding new solutions.

RTWT

I love this story

Kan. university fires mooning debate coach

For one thing, these is something wonderful about a hippy-dippy, Gramsci-spouting professor losing his composure after being accused of racism and exercising his “white hegemony”.

Second, Dr. Moon provides a wonderful window into the leftist academy with this gem:

"Obviously it got out of control, but to be honest I thought I was in a safe house," Shanahan said. "I thought I was part of a community that handled its problems internally and that recognized the dangers of exposing ourselves - no pun intended - to the rest of the country. It is so difficult as a non-participant to understand what is going on in the debate round." .

Translation: Tax-payers and parents are to be treated like mushrooms. They can foot the bills, but they are not supposed to know what happens on campus

We also see how stuck in the past our universities are:

A Fort Hays official described the pony-tailed, bearded Shanahan -- who routinely goes barefoot -- as a "nonconformist" and provocative teacher.

Fifty years ago Shanahan would qualify as a nonconformist. Now he is just one of a vast, crude, shaggy herd.

The real mavericks on the contemporary campus are the ROTC students and officers.

Finally, it is worth noting that the good professor seems to have anger management issues that extend beyond his “safe house” of the debate room.

Shanahan's Outbursts Not Limited To YouTube

Thomas Sowell: National Treasure

The gratingest generation

If our era could have its own coat of arms, it would be a yak against a background of mush. This must be the golden age of endless and pointless talk.

Every sports events seems to be preceded by all kinds of talk - whether by athletes repeating cliches we have heard a thousand times, announcers making pseudo-profound sociological observations, or fans rambling on incoherently.

Maj. Ed (Too Tall to Fly) Freeman, RIP

Farewell to an American hero

For the better part of 60 years, two old Army pilots who loved each other argued over many a meal and drink as to which of them was the second best pilot in the world.

The two shared the cockpits of old Beaver prop planes and Huey helicopters; they shared rooms in military hooches all over the world; they shared a love of practical and impractical jokes and they shared an undying love of flying and soldiers and the Army.

They also shared membership in a very small and revered fraternity of fewer than 105 men who are entitled to wear around their necks the light blue ribbon and gold pointed star that is the Medal of Honor, America’s highest decoration for heroism above and beyond the call of duty.

Not all pictures are created equal

Images of War

since shortly after September 11, 2001, the television networks have refused to show footage of the terrorist attacks or the collapse of the twin towers. They have done this on the ground that the footage would be too upsetting to Americans; therefore they are sparing our sensibilities. What they really mean, I think, is that if Americans could see that footage their anger against the Islamic terrorists would be rekindled and they may be more likely to support aggressive actions to defeat them. They might conclude, for example, that two or three minutes of waterboarding is a small price to pay to avoid such attacks in the future.

So, if we're going to have a debate about when it is necessary to show graphic images of violence so that Americans can be better informed about the consequences of government policies, by all means let's go at it. But let's not pretend that the only time the issue arises is when a newspaper wants to publish photos of dead and dying soldiers for the purpose of turning public opinion against a military conflict.

RTWT

Good news

Steelers' Farrior agrees to new contract

He does not get a lot of press attention, but he may be the Steeler's best defensive player over the last four years. Hampton, Smith and Troy are great, but each have lost time to injuries. Farrior has been there game in and game out.

Plus, he's versatile. You expect the ILB to lead the team in tackles, but last year he was second in sacks. He's also pretty good in coverage.

Solzhenitsyn

A lot to ponder in this Harvey Mansfield article:

Man of Courage

More on politics as D&D for sociology majors.

Now from Ace:

Actually, now that I think about it, it's a bit like a game of Dungeons & Dragons without dice or graph paper. Like a role-playing game, each participant agrees to indulge the others in their shared mutual fantasy; each player agrees "You are a mighty warrior, and I am a rogue, and this kid over here is a wizard." The "game" works to the extent that each participant buys into, and reinforces, the conventions and assumptions of the agreed-upon fantasy world.

The only difference, really, is that they're all playing the same character -- persecuted rebels for truth, hounded at every turn by an Evil Tyranny bent on killing them or shipping them off to the Salt Mines of Outer Tenubiah.

And they get very pissy when someone comes in and disturbs their communal fantasy "political" cosplay, by speaking to them "OOC" (out of character).

Previous post here.

Insight into the "reality-based community"

The Caitlin Flanagan piece illustrates how political correctness squeezed out truth when progressives seized control of the education system:

As Avery Island is to Tabasco sauce, so were 1970s Berkeley and San Francisco to white liberal guilt. When I was a fifth-grader in the Berkeley public schools (the first school system in the nation to integrate without a court order), I was taught—as part of a two-year course in Black History—that the word picnic had derived from the days of lynching parties, that it stood for “pick a nigger” and for the basket lunches that white women would pack for their families to eat while they enjoyed the spectacle. I happened to mention this to one of my parents’ academic friends, who sputtered in outrage—the word had originated from the French verb piquer and had nothing to do with American lynching. But it would not have occurred to her, the mother of two children in the schools, to complain about it. Black History, as it was then taught, was perhaps not academically rigorous, but it was understood by those white parents who even knew about it (in those days, middle-class parents did not carefully track their schoolchildren’s education like a rising or falling stock) to be part of some larger enterprise, some settling of an old debt.

Patty Hearst: Born in a bad year

The latest Atlantic has an intriguing review essay by Caitlin Flanagan on Patty Hearst:

Girl, Interrupted

I have never understood why the Ford Justice Department went all out to prosecute Hearst. Her "membership" in the SLA was always a dubious concept in light of the ordeal she suffered after her kidnapping. By prosecuting her, the DOJ threw away their best witness against the remaining SLA terrorists and their accomplices.

Maybe it was something in the air or in the water of San Francisco Bay. Plenty of people sympathized with the Symbionese Liberation Army, accepted its absurd intellectual pretensions, and justified its brutal and murderous actions. Flanagan is not one of them and her sharp mind slices through the BS:

The SLA was probably the first band of revolutionaries to marry a commitment to radical feminism with the use of systematic rape as a means of recruitment.

That sort of cold-eyed realism was in short supply in 1976. Patricia Hearst had the bad luck to be kidnapped, rescued, and then tried when America was out-of-its-mind crazy.

Had the events happened a few years earlier, the residual common sense of the public would have cut through the illusions that surrounded the SLA. The reality of Hearst's ordeal-a naïve teen-ager kidnapped and brutalized by ex-cons, thugs, and fanatics-would have stopped the prosecution.

A few years after Hearst's conviction, the legal system and juries began to accept the 'battered woman" defense. If ever a woman could claim that she had been battered into submission it was Patty Hearst.

At her trial, the Republican prosecutor made common cause with New Left radicals. Both were intent on minimizing her physical and psychological ordeal. The US Attorney did so in order to undermine her defense. The radicals did so in order to obscure the guilt of their vicious friends.

Like politics, high profile trials make for strange bedfellows.

To give credit where it is due: Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence in 1979; Bill Clinton gave her a pardon when he left office in 2001.

The real Bret Favre

Last season the Packers were 13-4, and they came within an overtime of going to the Super Bowl. How many Green Bay players from that team can you name, other than Favre? His constant media antics had the effect of denying recognition to his teammates. In June, Tom Pelissero of the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported, "There is a substantial faction of younger players who are eager to play with Aaron Rodgers. Favre is at least a decade older than all but six guys on the roster. He dressed in his own locker room. He had minimal social interaction with teammates. Rodgers is one of the guys, and plenty of them are pulling for him." He dressed in his own locker room? In the past few seasons, Favre has been all about Favre, as if his teammates didn't exist. A man who wanted to maximize his own celebrity and income, at the expense of his teammates, would behave in that manner.

RTWT

ESPN's Sports Nation: A republic of idiots and stoners

Franchise Players: Best all time for every NFL team - NFL

So ESPN asks their viewers to pick the best player ever for all 32 NFL teams. Most are unobjectionable. Others are laughable and portray a profound ignorance on the part of the voters/drooling viewers.

For Pittsburgh, they picked Terry Bradshaw instead of Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, or Franco Harris. Probably because they see Bradshaw on TV each Sunday in football season.

Anyone who ever saw those Steelers teams play knows that the only choice is Greene. The Steel Curtain starts with Greene and his freakish talent. Jack Lambert could play middle linebacker as a 225 pound rookie (the first Superbowl year) because Greene played in front of him. Lambert sat out most of the second half of Superbowl IX, yet the Greene-led defense set records for dominance.

Bradshaw was a great big game QB, but he only got to the big games because the defense made the Steelers a perennial playoff contender. Moreover, Bradshaw made quite a few mistakes in those big games. The defense bailed him out many times.

The clincher, to my mind, is that Greene was the acknowledged leader on that team. As Rocky Blier puts it: "If Joe didn't like something, none of us liked it. If Joe says we should do this, we all did it." It was Greene who kept the Bradshaw/Gilliam controversy from becoming a black-white issue in the locker room. Greene's ferocious desire to win helped Chuck Noll change the culture of losing that surrounded the franchise. Joe's influence kept the team together when the WFL started raiding players.

The selection of Joe Greene in 1969 changed the fortunes of the franchise. Other great players followed, but Joe was first then, and he is first-among-almost-equals today.

Blog comment not to be missed

At Ace of Spades on Excitable Andy

Having Sullivan accuse you of being a drama queen is like Bozo the clown accusing you of having big feet and bad hair.

An interesting take on a familiar idea

From American Thinker:

The Clueless White Guy Vote

Previous thoughts here and here.

Of partners, vendors, and pirates

A post over at Ad Age sounds the familiar refrain: agencies want to be long-term partners with their clients, not just vendors who can be tossed aside easily:

Are You a Partner or a Vendor?

It's a great idea, but one of the biggest barriers sits in most agencies's creative department.

Creative types love to be iconoclastic and independent. They subscribe to Jay Chiat's idea that they should be "pirates, not the navy." That impulse is antithetical partnering with a client. A marketer building a brand or growing market share wants to work with a disciplined naval squadron not an undependable, easily bored bunch of ragtag buccaneers.

Good post with indisptable facts

TV's Contempt For Marriage

Old but timely

Dimitri K. Simes in an article i noted over two years ago:

What if Russia takes the predictable position that what is good for Kosovo should be good for other unrecognized but de facto independent states such as Nagorno-Karabakh or the transdniester Republic? What of separatist regions like South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which share borders with Russia and where local populations overwhelmingly do not want to be a part of Georgia? In the latter case, the United States would face a series of unpleasant choices. Would the United States, in the name of principle, compel a pro-American Georgian regime to abandon its desire to restore the country's territorial integrity? Or would Washington side with Tbilisi, especially if it decides to use force to recapture these regions? If the latter, the United States could find itself embroiled in a major dispute with Russia that could effectively end cooperation on other matters of vital importance to the United States.

Web tools

I've long thought that blogs and other web tools had real potenital for project management. This article has a lot of interesting details on how SAP put them to work:

How SAP Seeds Innovation

SAP's collaborative Web sites and discussion forums give its customers ways to learn from SAP business partners as well as from each other

Anthrax: Sen. Grassley has some questions

I hope he gets answers.

GRASSLEY SEEKS ANSWERS TO FBI’S AMERITHRAX INVESTIGATION

'Roid rage, paramilitary policing, and "unfortunate accidents"

That's an idea that deserves some attention when we read about a SWAT raid gone bad like the one in Prince Georges county Maryland. According to Wikipedia steroid use is associated with "high levels of aggressiveness, hostility, anxiety and paranoid ideation".

Here's a couple of posts that discuss the use of steroids by police-- especially SWAT team members.

Question: Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?

Cops On Steroids

Congress had time to investigate Roger Clemens and the DOJ has spent years chasing Barry Bonds. I'm much more concerned about steroid use by the guys who kick in doors while toting automatic weapons.

John Edwards, Rielle Hunter


The most interesting post i've seen is on Patterico:

The AP on John Edwards and Integrity

DRJ lays out a textbook case of press bias.

I also agree with this one from Power Line:

My last word on the Edwards affair


Piling on public figures after they are brought low by their human frailties is unseemly whatever the political affilation of the offender and whatever the ideological affiliaton of the critic.

I think Steve Sailer just called me dull

Occam's Butterknife always more popular

The unmasking of Bruce E. Ivins as a mad scientist who, with a high degree of likelihood, carried out the 2001 anthrax attacks, most likely singlehandedly, has not proven popular. People want to hear that Bush did it, Saddam Hussein did it, the cigarette-smoking man did it, whatever.

Maybe the FBI is right to conclude that Dr. Bruce Ivins mailed the anthrax letters. OTOH, after Hatfill, Jewel, and the Duke lacrosse team, a certain sketicims seems warranted when looking at law enforcement's claims.

This blog is interesting. It is written by a scientist who works in the field and knew Ivins professionally before he was named a suspect:

Anthrax Vaccine

The Raleigh News and Observer has learned nothing

I've posted a lot on the Duke lacrosse fiasco. many of those posts have focused on the News and Observer whose reporting did much to launch and prolong the hoax.

One might expect the paper to learn their mistakes. They have not. The latest proof is this bizarre post on perp walks.*

Dan Barkin writes:

There is a good chance that the perp being walked today will never see the inside of a prison cell when all is said and done.

The feds know this, in the back of their minds, which may be one big reason for the handcuffs and the cameras. Because even if the accused win in court, they'll still have to live down the images of being perp walked being seen on CNN by everyone who went to high school with them.

The N&O still hates the presumption of innocence when it comes to politically correct defendants. Just like the "privileged white athletes" in the hoax frame, rich white businessmen can never be truly innocent to the N&O. That makes it OK to ruin their reputation before the trial and after an acquittal.

* I first wrote about perp walks long before the lacrosse case. See here.

Where have all the real men gone?

If you've ever wondered that, Lileks has the answer for you:

It’s not that they vanished; it’s just that they don’t want to hang around with you anymore.

The wheels of justice still turn

A federal judge denied the motions to dismiss the case against Nancy Grace in the lawsuit stemming from the suicide of Melinda Duckett.

Attorney Jay Paul Deratany Expects to Depose Nancy Grace in Wrongful Death Suit

As for Nancy Grace, she has said publicly that she does not believe the suit has any merit. She believes Melinda Duckett knew where the child was, and what caused her suicide, was guilt.

Although Grace and CNN asked the courts to dismiss the suit, a federal judge recently ruled that it can forward.

“The case is not really about the interview itself,” says Deratany. “It is about the deception used to get her on the show.”

“In the next six months,” Deratany says,”depositions with the show producers will demonstrate that.”

I wonder if CNN will settle now.

Discovery will lead to a host of embarrassing disclosures. Not to mention, there are more than a few ex-employees of the show who have no great love for the La Grace. I have to think that CNN will cough up some money to prevent the airing of all that dirty laundry. They don't want the public to see how Nancy concocts the rancid stew that CNN calls a news program.

Anthrax doubts

This thread over at Liestoppers is an informative analysis of what we really know. There are some sharp minds at work who honed their skills demolishing the Duke lacrosse hoax.

The lax case is a cautionary tale for journalists. It illustrates how not to cover a criminal investigation. Unfortunately, reporters and pundits are repeating those same errors with Dr. Bruce Ivins. (Hey, that might make a good post some time.

One big mistake the MSM made in Durham was to probe “deeper meanings” before they ascertained “what really happened”. Pundits are now doing this in the anthrax case.

The narrative taking shape runs something like this:

The Bush administration falsely pointed the finger at Iraq after the mailings as part of their irrational drive for war.

There are some big problems with that formulation. Perhaps the gravest error is the implication that the Bush administration ginned up the possible Iraq connection out of whole cloth. The fact is the Clinton administration was worried about Saddam’s anthrax which is why they ordered that all US troops be vaccinated against anthrax back in 1997. (See here.)

When the anthrax letters were sent in October 2001, they seemed to confirm the worst fears of the counter-terrorism community. Those fears were of pre-dated Bush. The Clinton administration had endorsed them and sounded very public warnings.

This article provides a picture of our pre-9/11 thinking:

The Phantom Menace

The anti-terrorism campaign has been led by President Clinton and Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, who warn that terrorists might unleash a doomsday weapon that could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.

[snip]

Appearing on ABC's "This Week" in November 1997, Cohen plopped a five-pound bag of sugar on the table and claimed that an equivalent amount of anthrax could kill 300,000 people. Five months later, a team of four experts demonstrated in the Archives of Internal Medicine that it would take more than 100 pounds of anthrax to kill far fewer people.

Doomsday scenarios in the media have been equally sensational. Jessica Stern, a former staffer at the National Security Council, begins her book The Ultimate Terrorists by asking: "What if terrorists exploded a homemade nuclear bomb at the Empire State Building in New York City?" In graphic detail, she describes the devastation that would follow, leaving up to 200,000 people dead. Richard Falkenrath, a terrorism expert at Harvard University and co-author of America's Achilles' Heel, warns that "deadly chemical warfare agents can quite literally be manufactured in a kitchen or basement." Similar warnings have been issued in prestigious journals like Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy.

Suitcase bombs and anthrax-laced water supplies have become staple fare in Hollywood screenplays and best-selling fiction. A bioterrorist took center stage in Mission: Impossible 2, and fictional descriptions of chemical attacks on New York City in Richard Preston's The Cobra Event helped galvanize President Clinton into demanding action on terrorism. In an interview with the New York Times last year, Clinton called the novel "pretty credible to me," adding that he considered a terrorist attack using chemical or biological weapons "a near certainty" in the next few years.

There is an irony in the attacks on the FBI for speculating about an Iraq connection. On one hand, the Bureau was lambasted for “not connecting the dots” pre-9/11. Now they are castigated for investigating if there was a connection between Iraq and a terror attack.

Deep Throat’s Felony

Mark Felt’s conviction for authorizing illegal FBI break-ins is usually treated as an ironic footnote to his role in Watergate. It is glossed over and few reporter or historians are interested in using it to draw any inferences about the personality, character, or motives of the most famous secret source in history.

Amy Goodman did an interview with one of the targets of the FBI harassment who described what Felt’s men did to her:

JENNIFER DOHRN: I was aware of a lot of it. I was certainly aware of being followed a lot. I wasassumed that perhaps my phones were tapped, and I had no idea of the level of extent under which I was being surveilled. I had no idea that break-ins were repeatedly happening into my apartments. I remember when I was pregnant with my first born feeling extremely vulnerable because I was being followed a great deal of the time, and then it was revealed when I received my Freedom of Information Act papers, over 200,000 documents, that there actually had been developed by Felt a plan to kidnap my son after I birthed in hopes of getting my sister to surrender. So, my imagination
AMY GOODMAN: The F.B.I. plans?
JENNIFER DOHRN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: To kidnap your son?
JENNIFER DOHRN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: How did it say that in the documents?
JENNIFER DOHRN: It said that this was a plan that had been developed and ultimately was not implemented.

The operation went way beyond over-zealous police work. G. Gordon Liddy might have had second thoughts about some of Deep Throat’s tactics. Did the fevered, paranoid Nixon White House ever ponder kidnapping a new born infant? No wonder Bon Woodward skipped over the facts in The Secret Man.

That Deep Throat was presented with a pair of panties as a trophy from the illegal operation is another critical bit of information. It suggests that some parts of the Bureau thought and acted like a bunch of thuggish frat boys who reveled in their invulnerability.

If Dohrn is telling the truth, it is hard to picture Felt as a tortured patriot who only broke the rules when his sense of duty allowed him no other choice.

What we do see is the product of Hoover’s FBI: a man who answered to no authority beyond J.E. Hoover himself.

This Time magazine piece gives a good picture of how the FBI stonewalled the investigation into Felt’s operation. The Nixon White House never came close to pulling off this kind of determined and unified cover-up.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, RIP

One of the great men of our time is dead.

From the Telegraph:

“Gulag Archipelago” was a three-volume denunciation of Stalin’s system and the ideology that powered it. It was a masterpiece of literary endeavour, language and polemic. Once read, it destroyed any argument for accommodation with the Soviet Union beyond that of realpolitik. That was all that remained until Mikhail Gorbachev ended the need for even that by presiding over the country’s collapse.

Achievements like this would be enough for most lives. (And Solzhenitsyn lived one of the greatest lives of the last century: war service, imprisonment and survival in the Gulag, literary renown, expulsion, exile and then an extraordinary return home to a totally different country.)

The New Scientist on the anthrax suspect

Was Ivins the anthrax killer?

Every reporter who covered the US anthrax attacks of 2001 has been over the list of possible suspects in their heads hundreds of times. It would probably be an anthrax scientist who'd worked in US military labs, and before the attacks, there weren't that many. So it was probably someone we'd met.

But I don't know anyone who suspected Bruce Ivins of mailing anthrax spores to US media outlets and senators, killing five people. He committed suicide this week, apparently because he was about to be accused of precisely that.

Why we read newspapers

What's Really Killing Newspapers

People this brave deserve to be remembered




On 1 August 1944 the Polish Home Army launched a uprising in Warsaw against the German occupiers. They had few weapons but possessed an abundance of courage. The time was right: the Red Army was at the gates of Warsaw and Allied armies were advancing against the Germans in France. Wehrmacht officers had nearly killed Hitler on 20 July. It seemed that end of the Nazi state was at hand,

Moscow radio had even broadcast a call to arms to the Poles on 29 July.

In the first days, the uprising had success. The Home Army gained control of central Warsaw. Then they were betrayed by their allies and their allies ally.

The Red Army took no steps to aid the Poles. They even refused to allow British and American planes to use Soviet airfields in airlift and bombing operations. Churchill and Roosevelt had no military options and only a few diplomatic ones. Churchill wanted to put pressure on Stalin but FDR refused. The Warsaw Uprising was a potential embarrassment to a man running for his fourth term. He had already acquiesced to Stalin’s plans for Poland but dared not admit it for fear of losing the votes of Polish-Americans and other Catholics. The Uprising threatened to make Poland an issue in his last campaign.

Many in the West believed the Uprising was hopeless and tragic from the very beginning. The Home Army disagreed. They sent this message to London on 24 August:

Hello.. here is the heart of Poland! Hear Warsaw speaking!
Throw the dirges out of your broadcasts;
Our spirit is strong it will support even you!
We don’t need your applause!
We demand ammunition!!!

They did not get their ammunition but still the Poles fought on. They held out for 63 days-- fighting house to house and hand to hand against tanks and professional soldiers while under continuous bombardment from artillery and the Luftwaffe. Over 200,000 Poles died. It was the equivalent of a 9/11 a day for over two months.

Just before the end, Warsaw radio broadcast a searing message:

This is the stark truth. We were treated worse than Hitler’s satellites, worse than Italy, Rumania, Finland. May God Who is just, pass judgment on the terrible injustice suffered by the Polish nation, and may He punish accordingly all those who are guilty.

Your heroes are the soldiers whose only weapons against tanks, planes, and guns were their revolvers and bottles filled with petrol. Your heroes are the women who tended the wounded and carried messages under fire, who cooked in bombed and ruined cellars to feed children and adults, and who soothed and comforted the dying. Your heroes are the children who went on quietly playing among the smoldering ruins. These are the people of Warsaw.

Immortal is the nation that can muster such universal heroism. For those who have died have conquered, and those who live on will fight on, will conquer and again bear witness that Poland lives when the Poles live.

It is a sad fact that the only party to behave honorably toward the Home Army was the Wehrmacht. After 63 days the Poles were still fighting though they had no hope of success. They agreed to surrender to the regular army on the condition that they be treated as POWs. Those terms were granted and, amazingly, the Germans upheld their end of the bargain.

I don't know what to make of this

Apparent suicide in anthrax case

Previous posts here.


UPDATE: Between naivete and conspiracy-mania lies skeptical realism. That's my mindset as i read this story. Maybe the evidence against Ivins is stronger than the case against Hatfill. But i am troubled by the fact that a dead man cannot mount a vigorous defense. Unless the FBI makes its evidence public, we cannot know if Ivins was the perpetrator or a convenient scapegoat.

The information cited in the news story is skimpy. I don't see the connection between his rule-breaking in the lab and the anthrax mailings. That he lived three and a half hours from the mailbox in Princeton is true of everyone at Fort Detrick (and tens of millions other people).

His suicide may be evidence of guilt. It could also be the act of an innocent man driven to despair by wrongful persecution.

But most of all, i hate it when the first rough draft of history is written by officials who are afraid to put their name behind it.

UPDATE 2: This American Thinker piece is very good on these issues.