"The Fallacy of Success" in All Things Considered (1908)
Poles honor Reagan, John Paul II with new statue
Polish officials unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II on Saturday, honoring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago.The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organizing or taking part in strikes against the communist regime.
Jesse Jackson Jr’s office: He’s being treated for a “mood disorder”
They might be giants, but Dana Milbank wouldn’t know
Milbank being Milbank, his incarnation of the “where have all the giants gone” lament is largely a vehicle for attacking conservative Republicans. Orrin Hatch and John McCain might be giants, he concedes, but for the fact that McCain now acts consistently like a Republican and Hatch no longer pals around much with Democrats. To Milbank, this means they that Hatch and McCain have “stooped to joined the Lilliputians,” by which Milbank means Senators with whose ideology he disagrees.
This month, in the Kimberlin v. Walker affair, we saw how a technologically illiterate and constitutionally indifferent judge could ban a blogger from writing about a public figure, requiring the intervention of an appellate court.Does that happen all the time? Or was it — as a lawyer would say, if the lawyer were trying to annoy people — sui generis?Well, I don't know about "all the time." But it looks like it has happened again.
Hot Air: Aaron Sorkin's Underwhelming Newsroom
HBO has taken us to some fanciful places during its recent ratings resurgence, from the vampire-blood-stained bayou of True Blood to the violent kingdom of Westeros on Game of Thrones. But in terms of pure fantasy, neither holds a candle to The Newsroom, the new series from writer Aaron Sorkin and producer Scott Rudin. Although the program — which focuses on the backstage shenanigans at a popular cable news show — is ostensibly set in the real world, the true backdrop is one that should be familiar to fans of The West Wing (not to mention survivors of Studio 60). It’s pure Sorkinstan, an overwritten utopia where all names are alliterative, all dialogue is charged, and the call sheet runs wild with all manner of mythical creatures, including the Liberal Republican, the Gun-Toting Manhattan Lefty, and a preponderance of Twentysomethings Who Reference Musicals. But the biggest flight of fancy here is the one Sorkin seems most invested in: that television audiences are desperate not only to relive recent history, but to watch him attempt to pompously rewrite it.
THE BACKLASH ERA: SMELLING SORKIN BLOOD
The knives are out. With the bloodlust-crazed Twitter lynch mob prowling the streets, fresh blood must be provided. It has been several days since Adam Carolla offered himself as a human sacrifice so a new victim was needed. And there is no more backlash-ready target than America’s Bard of Smug and Safely-Distant Meritocracy, Aaron Sorkin.
Generally, I think the West Wing is pretty funny
For years, the dominant narrative of Watergate has been that the dogged reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for the Washington Post revealed the crimes that forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency in August 1974.
That’s also a media-driven myth — the heroic-journalist myth, as I call it in my 2010 book, Getting It Wrong.
I note in Getting It Wrong that the media-centric heroic-journalist construct “has become the most familiar storyline of Watergate,” serving as “ready short-hand for understanding Watergate and its denouement, a proxy for grasping the scandal’s essence while avoiding its forbidding complexity.”
When I left the Washington Post’s gala celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Watergate story on Monday night, I had mixed emotions.I felt great pride in what reporter Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had accomplished in the early 1970s — helping to bring down a corrupt president, Richard Nixon — but I felt puny by comparison.
It was a cultural event, a class reunion, a celebration—not just of the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, but of journalism itself, of that brief moment when newspapering was hailed as a noble profession.
[In 1931] two-thirds of American counties -- 66 percent! -- had exactly 0 bookstores. It was a relatively tiny business centered in the urban areas of the country. Did some great books come out back then? Of course! But they were aimed only at the tiny percentage of the country that was visible to publishers of the time: sophisticated urban elites.
Please Excuse My President
Some of these critiques are plausible. Edwards, for example, provides historically informed, data-driven arguments to fortify his claim that Obama overreached in attempting to impose an ambitious liberal agenda on a center-right nation. Then Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously articulated the Obama strategy when he said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” But the public was less malleable and persuadable than Obama and his top aides believed. His victory in 2008 was not a mandate for wholesale change.The other explanations for Obama’s failures are simply wrongheaded, however. The charge that the stimulus bill was not large enough is strangely beside the point. It was a failure because of its very design. Less than 15 percent of the stimulus was spent in fiscal year 2009—and only about 5 percent of the money appropriated was intended to fund items such as roads and bridges. Even Obama later chuckled that his much-hyped “shovel-ready projects” were “not as shovel-ready as we expected.” The bill actually served as the legislative embodiment of a 40-year liberal wish list. Had it been twice the size, it would simply have included more wish-list items.
The tone and direction were set by the hyper-partisan Rahm Emmanuel: “never let a crisis go to waste.”
The administration was almost eager to move the economic crisis to the back burner while they and the liberal Congress pushed forward with long-standing items on their wish list (cap and trade, health care reform, immigration reform, etc.). Inside Washington, it might seem smart to see a crisis as an opportunity to pass progressive legislation. To the people who are bearing the brunt of the recession, it seems like an abdication of leadership or a heartless betrayal of trust.
No surprise, then, that the stubborn economic weakness has been a drag on Obama’s approval numbers. It is not just that the public is impatient; many voters rightly sense that the White House felt little urgency to fix what was obviously broken.
For the first two years of his presidency, Obama had his way with the stimulus package, the Affordable Care Act, the GM-Chrysler bailouts, “cash for clunkers,” financial regulations, release of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds, credit-card price controls, the endless extension of jobless benefits, and more. As the Wall Street Journal put it, “Mr. Obama has been the least obstructed president since LBJ in 1965 or FDR in 1933.”
Obama has routinely used rhetoric that is, by presidential standards, hyper-partisan and splenetic. He has accused Republicans of being members of the Flat Earth Society, of being “social Darwinists,” and of putting “party ahead of country.” He has portrayed them as cruelly indifferent to the suffering of autistic and Down syndrome children and the elderly. And as the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel has pointed out, the administration has gone so far as to engage in implicit intimidation and threats against private citizens in order to frighten them away from giving money to Mitt Romney. To believe that Obama is at heart an irenic, unifying political figure requires an almost clinical level of self-delusion.
The cable news audience has peaked
Related:
There’s so little news in cable news – especially during prime time – that it’s a bit of a misnomer to keep calling it “cable news.” As currently programmed, the networks best resemble political talk radio, in which people chat about the news instead of report it.
Cable news, vox populi, and professional sleaze
Cable news: get it fast, get it wrong
Media's Shifting Business Model
Additional Forensic Investigation of 2001 Anthrax Attacks
The major implication of this study, as the authors note, is “that the evidentiary spore material was not diverted directly from RMR-1029.”1 This fact means that if the anthrax spores used in the attack were taken from RMR-1029, their preparation would have required extra steps prior to mailing. That type of purification would have required specialized machinery and likely would have left traces of the material on machinery. No such material was found, though, and in a recently settled civil case in Florida, the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged that the specialized machinery was not available at USAMRIID.
The case that shouldn’t go away
The story doesn’t go away, because it has become a symbol of the ongoing struggle for control over the philosophical and political direction of the United States. It is a battle between collectivism and individualism; between centralized planning and local/state authority, and between rule by administrative fiat and free markets.
Barack Obama has insulted 38 million Poles with his crass and ignorant 'Polish death camp' remark
President Obama has a long track record of insulting the Poles. In 2010 he chose to play golf on the day of the funeral of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who perished in the Smolensk air disaster. Eight months earlier he humiliated Warsaw by pulling out of the agreement over Third Site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. And last night Barack Obama caused huge offence in Poland by referring to a Nazi death camp in Poland as “a Polish death camp” while awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a Polish resistance fighter.
Poland: First to Fight
Tone deaf diplomacy
Free speech blogburst: Show solidarity for targeted conservative bloggers;
Did Congress Pass a Law Stripping Citizens of the Right To Mention Brett Kimberlin's Felonious Past?
Convicted Bomber Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, Ron Brynaert, and Their Campaign of Political Terrorism
This desecration of that holiest of sacred texts raises the question: What about the rest of the book? If we can't believe the assertions about Deep Throat -- and there is much there that is demonstrably untrue, of which the flower pot is only the beginning -- and we can't believe the portrayal of Informant Z, then what can we believe? How might the rest of All the President's Men -- indeed, the entirety of the Woodward-Bernstein canon -- fare under such strict Haldemanian scrutiny? It is, for honest and courageous researchers, a future avenue of enormous scholarly potential.
New Questions About Deep Throat in ‘All the President’s Men’
Yet Deep Throat, far from being principled, was consumed with ambition and leaked only for the most self-serving of reasons: to subvert the acting FBI director, L. Patrick Gray. Nor was Felt even a truth teller. His boundless contempt for the press—and even Woodward admits Felt was no fan of the fourth estate—is illustrated repeatedly by the numerous outright lies and half-truths he told Woodward in the year following the break-in, and simultaneously, the damaging facts he knew but consciously withheld from the cub reporter.
Our Story So Far
Apart from transforming Mark Felt into an undeserving hero, Woodward and Bernstein, via their account, have distorted the true history of how the Watergate scandal unfolded and who deserves the credit for cracking it. To believe Woodstein is to believe that the original federal prosecutors “missed the real story” when the truth is these same U.S. attorneys handed the Watergate special prosecutor a literal road map to every single successful prosecution of a higher-up.
What was the role of the press in all this? At best, during the unraveling of the cover-up, the press was able to leak the scheduled testimony a few days in advance of its appearance on television. IF Bernstein and Woodward did not in fact expose the Watergate conspiracy or the cover-up, what did they expose? The answer is that in late September they were diverted to the trail of Donald H. Segretti, a young lawyer who had been playing "dirty tricks" on various Democrats in the primaries. The quest for Segretti dominates both the largest section of their book (almost one-third) and most of their "exclusive" reports in the Post until the cover-up collapsed later that March. Unidentified sources within the government gave Bernstein and Woodward FBI "302" reports (which contain "raw"-i.e., unevaluated-interviews), phone-call records, and credit card records, all of which elaborated Segretti's trail. Through ~ the FBI reports and phone records, they located a number of persons whom Segretti had tried to recruit for his "dirty-tricks" campaign. The reporters assumed that this was all an integral part of Watergate, and wrote that 11 the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage.... The activities, according to information in FBI and Department of justice files, were aimed at all the major Democratic Presidential contenders." They further postulated that there were fifty other Segretti-type agents, all receiving information from Watergate-type bugging operations.
As it turned out, this was a detour, if not a false trail. Segretti (who served a brief prison sentence for such "dirty tricks" as sending two hundred copies of a defamatory letter to Democrats) has not in fact been connected to the Water, gate conspiracy at all. Almost all his work took place in the primaries before any of the Watergate break-ins in June 1972; he was hired by Dwight Chapin in the White House and paid by Herbert Kalmbach, a lawyer for President Nixon, whereas the Watergate group was working for the Committee for the Re-election of the President and received its funds from the finance committee. No evidence has been offered by anyone, including Woodward and Bernstein, that Segretti received any information from the Watergate group, and the putative fifty other Donald Segrettis have never been found, let alone linked to Watergate. In short, neither the prosecutors, the grand jury, nor the Watergate Committee has found any evidence to support the BernsteinWoodward thesis that Watergate was part of the Segretti operation.
Howie the Weasel never disappoints
The high utility of myth and ignorance
On leaks, bias and truth
Woodstein gets played: Deep Throat, Gray, and Hunt's notebooks
Deep Throat: The irreconcilable differences between image and fact
Duke lacrosse: Custom, interest, and the pursuit of truth
'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'
George Orwell, 1984
Media and Permanent Political Class Attempt to Rewrite 2008 Election
POLITICO reported on a memo, "Shield Steve Schmidt From McCain Blame," put together in the waning days of the 2008 presidential campaign by associates of Schmidt to absolve him of campaign mismanagement. The memo lays out a strategy to shape conventional wisdom by targeting mainstream journalists and Republican talking heads and to blitz the media landscape with friendly talking points that would make it seem like even Ronald Reagan could not have won in 2008.The obvious purpose was to absolve the professional operatives of all blame, allowing them to get hired again and sell their “snake oil” magic to the next politician. The quid pro quo was simple: we give you exclusive “gossip” and minutiae and you get exclusive reporting and access.
If the mainstream media is not stupid, then it deliberately plays along with false narratives, knowing they are being spun, because reporters need scoops and access in the future from the permanent class of political operatives.
Playing nice is not a strategy (at least not a winning strategy)
Moran's bogus history lessons are part and parcel of the "permanent campaign" mode that now defines our politics. That mode goes beyond starting the next election cycle as soon as the last vote is cast. It also has a retrospective component as partisans try to re-write the history of past campaigns to gain useful talking points or to neuter issues that hurt their party.Thus, Willie Horton becomes evidence of Republican racism instead of the liberalism of Michael Dukakis. The Swift Boat Veterans become partisan liars even when they present unchallenged facts about John Kerry. John McCain lost because of Sarah Palin.
Gehry belongs to a small and exclusive club of "starchitects," who specialize in designing buildings that stand out from their surroundings, so as to shock the passerby and become causes célèbres. They thrive on controversy, since it enables them to posture as original artists in a world of ignorant philistines. And their contempt for ordinary opinion is amplified by all attempts to prevent them from achieving their primary purpose, which is to scatter our cities with blemishes that bear their unmistakable trademark. Most of these starchitects-- Daniel Libeskind, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas--have equipped themselves with a store of pretentious gobbledygook, with which to explain their genius to those who are otherwise unable to perceive it. And when people are spending public money they will be easily influenced by gobbledygook that flatters them into believing that they are spending it on some original and world-changing masterpiece.
David Frum’s new novel is awful
Frum is a former conservative who is now trending liberal and may in fact be headed for the netherworld of Andrew Sullivanville; he has written many good nonfiction books about politics and culture, including my favorite, “How We Got Here: The 70s: The Decade that Brought You Modern Life — for Better or Worse.” The man knows how to write. But “Patriots” is a stinker. The thing is so filled with clichés, bad dialogue and obvious plotting that I’m not sure where to start....In short, “Patriots” is an alternate take on The David Frum Story. It tells the story of a clueless rich guy who comes to Washington (although Frum was never stupid), is mentored by the conservative movement, and then rebels against that same movement.
Why airport security was right to stop four year old Isabella?
The incident strikes at the very heart of the issue of profiling at airports and border crossings. We know from history that when terrorist profiling is used (the deliberate selection of people who resemble most closely the profile of a probable terrorist) that terrorists adapt. During the Battle of Algiers, the French pursued a policy of stopping and screening native Algerians at checkpoints, but allowed European settlers through with little or no monitoring. The terrorists responded by planting their bombs and other weapons on European looking women, who were easily able to infiltrate across the checkpoints, moving weapons across at will. In recent years, the Chechen insurgents have attempted to adopt similar practices through their use of ‘black widows’: women suicide bombers (usually the grieving relatives of Chechens killed by the Russians) who they believe are less likely to seem suspicious to Russian officials.
The Folly of Heather MacDonald
Good article on the perils of profiling
The effects of this non-accountability: those who engaged in misconduct (or worse) in the lacrosse case are free to offer repeat performances. Take, for instance, so-called sex crimes expert Wendy Murphy. Fresh from being deemed not merely an expert but an appropriate instructor for a Poynter seminar—even after a Poynter representative was informed of Murphy’s fabrications—Murphy was interviewed by AP education writer Justin Pope, who labeled her a “victims’ advocate who has filed numerous Title IX complaints on behalf of victims.”
What is the true function of a public editor
Media criticism and corralled rebellion
How One Left-wing Academic Star Portrays Lillian Hellman as a Role Model for Today
When she concludes that we should celebrate Hellman because she was proud of opposing only the opponents of Communism and rationalizing the Communists as well-meaning individuals, Kessler-Harris reveals that rather than being an impartial, above-the fray scholar, she is simply another member of left-wing academia whose members talk to themselves, bemoan the American victory in the Cold War, and eulogize apologists for Communism like Lillian Hellman as heroic.
'A Struggle Ensued': Lynch Mob Justice In Florida
The affidavit she has filed in support of this claim reveals she has no new evidence of a dispositive, persuasive nature to justify overruling Wolfinger's action.
Reaction to the George Zimmerman Bail Hearing
"What stood out to me was the number of disclosures that suggest the state's evidence is speculative, at best."
"Gilbreath acknowledges he has no evidence Zimmerman "confronted" Trayvon as opposed to that the two just met up"
"The state has no evidence contradicting that Zimmerman started to walk back to his car after the dispatcher told him he didn't need to follow Martin."
"He never claims Zimmerman attacked Trayvon or Trayvon didn't attack Zimmerman."
Unless forensics comes back with some smoking-gun evidence, it’s hard to see at this moment that Zimmerman’s guilt could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.This case may turn on poor police forensics work on the night of the shooting. But that’s not George Zimmerman’s fault.
NBC: We deeply regret our error that made George Zimmerman sound like a racist, and now you should leave us aloneAnn Althouse:
"That is the most outrageous, truly evil editing I've ever seen."
NBC Calls Its Deliberate, Frame-Up Editing of George Zimmerman an "Error;" Washington Post Then Calls It A "Screw-Up"
Trayvon Martin - Is Everything You Think You Know Just Media BS?
How Can We Trust the Media?
Matt Gutman and the mainstream media’s anti-Zimmerman bias
David Frum: Trayvon Martin, and the backlash against the backlash
Trayvon: How the Case Was Spun
Wolfe does not win literary prizes and is despised by many of the biggest names in the literary pantheon. (Check out "My Three Stooges" in Hooking Up). But Wolfe has this going for him: if the mark of greatness is having something to say about "where we are and where we are going", he trumps everybody on the list. Does anyone is Denver look up from her Sunday paper and say "this sounds just like a John Updike novel"? How many people turn on the cable news programs and think "Is Philip Roth scripting this"? Yet from Tawana Brawley to the Duke Lacrosse case, Tom Wolfe scouted the territory before anyone else.
Mayor Warns of the Pitfalls in Social MediaThose elections are so annoying for philosopher kings like Mike Bloomberg. Also, Bloomberg stood up for poor, abused Goldman Sachs.
“We are basically having a referendum on every single thing that we do every day,” he said. “And it’s very hard for people to stand up to that and say, ‘No, no, this is what we’re going to do,’ when there’s constant criticism, and an election process that you have to look forward to and face periodically.”
Mayor Bloomberg, who didn’t throw his support behind the Occupy Wall Street protesters last year, visited Goldman’s headquarters to give the firm a pat on the back after Smith’s manifesto hit.
“The mayor stopped by to make clear that the company is a vital part the city’s economy, and the kind of unfair attacks that we’re seeing can eventually hurt all New Yorkers,” Stu Loeser, a spokesman for hizzoner, pointed out.
Loeser failed to mention that Goldman is a prominent part of the financial community which pays dearly to use the trademark Bloomberg terminals. These are coveted machines which offer finance-industry professionals and others a dizzying array of data and information about all kinds of financial instruments.
The Kennedy assassination: Did Castro know in advance?
A new book by former CIA analyst Brian Latell details evidence that Cuban intelligence knew beforehand of JFK’s assassination.
Roach[director]: I make a deal with the audience when we say it's a true story. I know the audience is expecting that. It would be not a very good story if it was deliberately one-sided. The best stories are layered and complex.
In this story, there are no real heroes and no real villains and - because it's all told within one campaign. And our commitment was only to the truth.
- - - - -
Strong [screenwriter] I also want to respond, though, to the allegations that the film is based on a false narrative of a couple of people. That's totally inaccurate. The film is based on, you know, not only the book "Game Change," but interviews that I and Jay conducted with 25 people, and, you know, the stories that we heard were corroborated by 10, 12, 15 people.
The idea that at any point that Gov. Palin expressed any uncertainty as to who were the various sides in World War I or World War II, or any other war, is absolutely untrue. She was incredibly intelligent. She asked very informed questions. She was very interested and she wanted to understand John McCain's view of foreign policy because she wanted to be the best possible vice presidential nominee.
Each change from the book (presuming, of course, Heilemann and Halperin's reporting is accurate) moves the story in a particular direction. Palin becomes dumber. McCain becomes more craven, cynical, and desperate to win. McCain's campaign aides are sloppier, more panicky, a mess. What director Roach and screenwriter Strong are portraying is recent history as they wish it had been.
Kurtz: But, look, Jay and Danny, you both know that you are seen as liberal Hollywood guys. You both contributed to Obama's campaign last time around, as did Julianne Moore. Does that not create a perception problem for you, and were you aware of that going in?
STRONG: Yes. Now, look, I understand how there would be that perception. I think it's completely fair to talk about, and I think it's good for the audience to know those sorts of -- that contributions like that have been made. But that doesn't enable us to be fair, and it doesn't enable us to portrait the events as accurately as possible.
Why do journalists love twitter and hate blogging?
Blogging was a direct attack on MSM hegemony at both the micro (fisking) and macro levels (explanation space). I just don't see Twitter as the same threat. It is a flood of unmermorable chatter that is easy to ignore. Blogging had the potential to break the power of the MSM guild. Bloggers, at their best, presented arguments. Arguments can both change minds on the immediate subject and undermine the credibilty of those establishment pundts who present weak cases on a regular basis. (Yes, i'm looking at you Brooks and Frum).
At a minimum, blogging brought a lot of outsiders to the pundit/editor game. Twitter seems more useful as a way for insiders like Kurtz to extent their brand and magnify their voice.
Stop Tweeting Soledad_OBrien
What made Deep Throat leak?
Leak overturns once and for all the romantic, popular interpretation of the Watergate saga of one inside source risking it all to save democracy. “Nixon’s downfall was an entirely unanticipated result of Felt’s true and only aim,” Holland writes. Although Holland never disparages the enterprise of Woodward and Bernstein, acknowledging the impact their reports had on Judge John J. Sirica and the senators who formed an investigative committee, neither does he bow to them. “Contrary to the widely held perception that the Washington Post ‘uncovered’ Watergate, the newspaper essentially tracked the progress of the FBI’s investigation, with a time delay ranging from weeks to days, and published elements of the prosecutors’ case well in advance of the trial.”
Leak, to be published Mar. 6, vindicates journalist Edward Jay Epstein, one of the earliest critics of Woodsteinmania. In a Commentary piece published in July 1974, about a month after the Woodstein book came out, Epstein eviscerates what he calls the “sustaining myth of journalism.” Naïve readers believe that intrepid reporters expose government scandals by doggedly working their confidential sources. Of course such scoops do occur, but the more conventional route to a prize-winning series is well-placed leaks from well-oiled government investigations, which Holland maintains was the case with Watergate.
Howie the Weasel never disappoints
The high utility of myth and ignorance
On leaks, bias and truth
Woodstein gets played: Deep Throat, Gray, and Hunt's notebooks
Deep Throat: The irreconcilable differences between image and fact
Duke lacrosse: Custom, interest, and the pursuit of truth
J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Spy? No. But a Communist Once? Yes.
That only one of these eight biographies of Oppenheimer accurately assessed his relationship to the CPUSA reinforces the themes we discussed in our 2003 book In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage. By and large, American scholars and historians cannot bring themselves to write dispassionately about the elephant in the room, domestic communism, anticommunism, and Soviet espionage
In Denial: Round 11
[I. F.] Stone, however, is an icon in certain journalistic precincts, and to his devotees those six pages are the only ones in Spies that matter. Their responses match in distortion, whitewashing, spinning, and ad hominem viciousness any that we have received over the years and give us a better understanding of what Weinstein and Radosh had to put up with. The history of communism and Soviet espionage have never been fields for those seeking the scholarly quiet life, but the displays of rage (real and faux) in regard to Stone have been impressive.
A herd of independent minds
James Taranto, David Limbaugh Draw Jennifer Rubin's WrathRelated:
Why Letterman matters (Part I)
David Frum had no comment
Question for the anti-Delay Republicans
Playing nice is not a strategy (at least not a winning strategy)
The Chump Effect
Yet the allure of “science” is too strong for our journalists to resist: all those numbers, those equations, those fancy names (say it twice: the Self-Activation Effect), all those experts with Ph.D.’s!
To their credit, the Stapel scandal has moved a few social psychologists to self-reflection. They note the unhealthy relationship between social psychologists and the journalists who bring them attention—each using the other to fill a professional need. “Psychology,” one methodologist told the Chronicle of Higher Education, “has become addicted to surprising, counter-intuitive findings that catch the news media’s eye.”
That’s a scandal, all right. Stapel’s professional treachery is a scandal, too. But the biggest scandal is that the chumps took him seriously in the first place.
Luke 2:8-14
Tebow’s Religion, and Ours
In short, people aren’t upset at Tebow’s God talk. They’re upset that he might actually believe it.
One lesson to be learned is, DO NOT LOSE if you are in the dictator business. The US will borrow money to furnish the Brits, French, and Italians with the means to kill you. Understand that, and be sure that you have the means for defending yourself. The more strategic your country the more important it will be to have defenses including personal defenses. Another lesson is, do not renounce your nukes. Get some. Get at least one and let it be known that it will detonate if you don’t talk to it at daily intervals.
Why, for instance, would Iran give up its nuclear program if the result is to wind up the focus of a Libya-style bombing spree once they’ve capitulated?
"Old Pete” Handcuffs the Yankees
Boatlifters: The unknown story of 9/11
The captains and crew of the fleet of boats who rescued so many on 9/11 came together with no idea what they would be getting into and no idea whether Manhattan would be attacked again let alone their very own boats. All they knew were that desperate people were in need of help and they couldn’t turn their backs on them, even if that meant putting their own lives at risk.
History is inspiring. Bravery is inspiring. It is shameful we no longer teach this to our children.
David Gelernter, Drawing Life
R.I.P., America’s liberal-media elite
Someday, cultural historians will look back on the early 21st century and speculate about what killed the credibility of America’s so-called liberal-media elite.
They will ask, Were the wounds self-inflicted or the product of a methodical plot?
Make no mistake about it. We did this to ourselves.
The Democratic Party has had it both ways for nearly two decades since the ascendance of Rubinomics turned Wall Street into a powerful constituency for both political parties. Not coincidentally, Bill Clinton's installation of a Wall Street-friendly economic team also resulted in weakened Wall Street oversight, the actual prevention of oversight, and even an abandonment of it altogether in the case of Traveler's merger with Citigroup (which would go on to pay Robert Rubin $115 million for doing... well, not much).
Why did Treasury and the Fed allow Lehman Bros. to collapse after they'd bailed out Fannie and Freddie and facilitated the sale of Bear Stearns?This is one example of a recurrent theme in the financial crisis: a handful of men (in Washington and New York) grappling with the crisis on an ad hoc basis. As Lawler puts it:
Paulson does not say. The line at the time was that Treasury had no legal authority to intervene, but that was the extent of the information officials gave out. Paulson tells a long story (which has its own problems) about his efforts to coax different banks into buying Lehman, and then concludes with this: "Some in the group asked if we should revisit the idea of putting public money into Lehman, but Tim said there was no authority to do that."
Again, note the reduction of an impossibly complicated issue -- whether regulators had the legal authority to bail out Lehman -- into a impromptu conversation with a first-name-basis friend.
huge decisions determining the fates of endlessly complex institutions are gamed out in the crudest of terms by two pals in conversations depicted with a level of detail, dramatic tension, and moral awareness that would be better suited for a Sesame Street segment about cooperation.The common rationalization is that the mortgage and derivative meltdown was a "black swan event" that surprised the key players and caught them unprepared.
Across the government, there were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.
The most important failure was one of imagination.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower once observed, the principal value of military planning is not to produce ahead of time the perfect plan, but rather to train planners who can adjust and adapt to changing circumstances as they emerge.I hope some one at Treasury is gaming out some of the doomsday scenarios that stalk our nightmares. I said hope, because i've not seen any reports of such proactive preparations.
Both Tea Partiers and the Occupy rabble have a point. Politicians built the debt bomb (via SEC and Fannie) & then the bankers detonated it.
New Yorkers support anti-Wall Street protests
On the way home from the doctor today, though, on the radio news, I heard President Obama dropping the "g" sound at the end of his sentences the way he does when he thinks he's addressing working people. When he thinks he's addressing business people, he keeps in the "g" sound. That's politics. He could be a lot worse.HT: Sense of Events
Just so you know, we don't have anyone who can beat him. Get used to him.
what I noticed is that David Gregory doesn’t seem to understand the difference between state taxes and federal taxes....If Sarah Palin made such an error, it would be seen as proof that she was unfit for the national stage. For Gregory, well . . . draw your own conclusions.
Similarly, the gay male writers behind Sex and the City started with Fielding's spoof of "urban families" of stylish single women who undermine each other's chances of landing a husband by constantly gathering over drinks to nitpick their boyfriends, and turned these mutually-destructive circles into a fantasy about friendship.
It was never actually about female solidarity, but about female competition for alpha males like Mr. Big. Nevertheless, women hate to be seen as competitive, so "Sex and the City" displayed the nice side of cliquishness, minus the nasty side: these social X-rays wouldn't be seen dead in the company of 99 percent of their fans.
There are plenty of blogs that have good traffic and run on autopilot. They start out with the premise that Rummy is always right or that Bush is the worst president in history. They make liberal use of "wingnut' and "moonbat". They link to other sites just like their own blogs. Each community of blogs has a ready-made readership of intense partisans who like shallow arguments.
In his book The Fifth Discipline Peter Senge distinguishes between discussion and dialogue. Discussion (which is linguistically related to concussion and percussion) is about scoring points, winning, having our viewpoint prevail. Dialogue is a means of learning together. The blogosphere is increasingly about discussion and not dialogue.
Media Myth Alert
The Case for Right-Wing Tennis Elbow
You had well-known commentators on the right like David Frum, Kathleen Parker, and others
I have to recognize that my views are not very representative of the conservative mainstream.
When the gap between the number of job openings and the number of people who are out of work is so large, there are going to be a hefty number of unemployed people. Maybe these people individually could have done more to get themselves out of their situation, but at the macro level, that would just have meant that someone else was out of work and suffering.
The Woman Who Knew Too Much
Racist Republicans Flocking to Cain
Either a lot of Democrats have been slandering millions of American voters as racist, or the Tea Party hasn’t gotten the word that Herman Cain is African American. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn after a slew of recent polls shows that Cain is picking up the ‘teavangelical’ vote as former favorites like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry fade.
David Zurawik:.
I promised myself I was going to give CNN's new weeknight host Erin Burnett a full week of shows before I reviewed her.
It was hard keeping that promise Monday night when I saw her pay a visit to the Occupy Wall Street encampment so she could look down her nose and mock the folks there. I thought it downright cruel the way she and her producer cut one kid from the herd and then tried to make him look like a fool. This was cool kids mocking outsiders on the playground, and it made me angry
Erin Burnett Is Vapid, Occupy Wall Street MattersI have to question the big brains at CNN. In what altered state did it make sense to have CNBC's material girl take on OWS with snark and mockery? Come to think of it, given her ties on Wall Street and her own career path through some the worst bailout queens (Citicorp, Goldman Sachs), the Occupy Wall Street protests were a story best left to others.
Computer analysis has revealed that more than three quarters of the King James Version can be traced directly to Tyndale (83% of the NT and 76% of the OT)....
The King James Version is sometimes called ‘the greatest book written by committee.’ And I suppose there is something to celebrate about that. Yet, for the most part, those 47 scholars, working in peace and prosperity, could not improve on the work of a young evangelical who gave his liberty and his life for the gospel.
Thank God for William Tyndale.
UW Professors: Accused Anthrax Killer Couldn’t Have Done ItHT: Dr. Meryl Nass
"The scientific evidence clearly shows that the (anthrax) wasn't produced in our laboratory (USAMRIID)," the two UW professors say. "The FBI based part of its case on unusual activity that took place in our lab for one week. There is no way he could produce that amount of spores in our lab during that time."
A World of Brilliant Colors
In fact, the Middle Ages was the opposite of drab and dreary. It was distinguished for the vivid colors that enriched the streets of the cities, the workplaces and the battlefields.
Puritanism was a cutting edge which hewed liberty, democracy, humanitarianism, and universal education out of the black forest of feudal Europe and the American frontier.
