This is how the world ends

Not with a bang but a tramp stamp

A Few Arguments Against Tattoos

Doctors traced an outbreak of skin infections back to bacteria in the ink.

An editorial in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine drew attention to the outbreak of skin infection caused by tattooing. The bacteria that cause the infection are of the same family as that which causes tuberculosis. They are difficult to detect, grow in culture, or treat.

The infecting bacteria can be transmitted even where the tattoo “artist” practices the strictest hygiene, for it is the inks that have been contaminated before use from sources such as water.

This calls to mind Tom Wolfe's great essay "The Great ReLearning". Jonah Goldberg discusses it here.

Years ago, Tom Wolfe wrote a wonderful essay called the "Great Relearning." He first came upon the idea while reporting on the San Francisco hippie scene in 1968. "At the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic," Wofe wrote, "there were doctors treating diseases no living doctor had ever encountered before, diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names, diseases such as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot."

The reason all of these diseases turned up is simple. The thousands of hippie migrants seeking free love and communal living had deliberately "thrown off" all the accumulated "bourgeois" hang-ups of their parents. Which meant giving up on showers, sex with people you know by name and other "old fashioned" concepts of hygiene. This in turn brought back creepy-crawlies not seen since the age of toga parties.

Wolfe's essay is here.

Ed Driscoll gets it

‘Operation Demoralize Is Working Just as Planned’

Physician heal thyself

The local paper ran the Cass Sunstein piece on polarization and information cocoons.

It's hard, but electorate can escape from partisan cocoons

I wonder if anyone in the newsroom understands that Sunstein's research applies to them?

Sanctimonious puffery

Clueless in the bubble

Cass Sunstein explains the root cause of Rathergate

The rotten heart of investigative journalism

Journalism and its watchdogs

Poynter is supposed to uphold professional standards and improve the practice of journalism. It's pretty sad when they turn to Wendy Murphy as an expert on covering sexual assault cases.

What Ebony story can teach journalists about covering sexual assault

This is not a one-time lapse in judgement. See this KC Johnson piece from earlier this year:

Poynter and The Serial Fabricator

The weakness of our current public intellectuals

Or "Our civic debates are getting dumber because our Thought Leaders are greedy and superficial."

Justin Fox:

Niall Ferguson and the Rage Against the Thought-Leader Machine

The path to lucrative thought-leaderdom blazed over the past couple of decades was to establish yourself with dense, serious work (or a big, important job) and then move on to catch-phrase manufacturing (I spent a few weeks following Tom Friedman around in 2005, and learned that he had made this transition very deliberately). Nowadays ambitious young people looking to break into the circuit often just aim straight for the catch-phrases. Speakers bureaus need pithy sales pitches, not complex erudition — and while speaking fees might be spare change for Mitt Romney, for journalists and academics they often represent their only real shot at a top-tax-bracket income.

The result is an intellectual environment that seems to increasingly reward the superficial, and keeps rewarding those who make it into the magic circle of top-flight speakers even if they don't have anything new or interesting to say.

I touched on this a while back in this post:

Conquest's Laws

One of the laws is "everyone is conservative about what he knows best." As i noted then:

In a business context Conquest's Law suggests that those who promote the Next New Thing-- be they consultants, IT salesmen, journalists, or would-be gurus-- fall into one of two categories:

1. Ignorant, naive amateurs whose knowledge of the subject is superficial but whose enthusiasm is genuine.

2. Cynical hucksters who know better but hope their audience does not.

As for the executives who fall prey to the charlatans and enthusiasts, this passage by Andre Maurois often fits:

Like all intelligent men who are not in any way creative, Sir Robert Peel was dangerously sympathetic towards the creations of others. Incapable of formulating a system, he threw himself voraciously on those he came across, and applied them more vigorously than would their inventors.

I hope this book makes it to America soon

The Spy Who Loved by Clare Mulley: review
Miranda Seymour thrills to The Spy Who Loved by Clare Mulley, about the intrepid agent Christine Granville.

Spies like her
A biography of a uniquely brave and complicated patriot

The Spy Who Loved:
The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville by Clare Mulley

Boring and biased is no way to go through life

The Harrisburg Patriot-News just announced that they will publish only three days a week beginning in January 2013. The editor, Cate Barron, discussed the reasons for this move with our local NPR station (listen here)

As Ms. Barron explained the new strategy, she focussed on forces beyond the control of the paper-- rising production and logistical costs, falling advertising revenue, demographic trends.

They did not discuss one of the few trends that journalists can directly influence: falling public trust in newspapers and journalists. According to Pew Research the credibility of major news organizations is at its lowest point ever measured (they started tracking this in 2002.

This seems important. Newspapers need more paying customers. Yet many potential and former customers view them with suspicion and think that the product is tainted.

The response of most journalists when faced with this problem is to explain it away. Journalism is fine, it is the public that's biased or stupid. This head in the sand posture is an odd stance for a profession that is supposed to look hard facts right in the eye.

They remind me of GM circa 1982. Faced with declining sales and evidence that the public was shifting to foreign cars, Detroit blamed everything and everybody but themselves. It was the high dollar, unfair trade practices, customers who did not know what was good for them, governmental regulations.....

The excuses kept coming while Detroit kept shrinking.

I expect that the MSM will share the same fate.

Most newspapers also suffer because they are boring. One that isn't is the UK's Daily Mail. Not surprisingly, it is enjoying growing readership both on paper and on the web. Its website has more readers that the New York Times.

Related:

A badge of honor, but maybe not the best business model

The newspaper today and tomorrow

Lots of good stuff here

Clarice Feldman

Media Madness, and the Reckoning

As it turned out, Mitt Romney headed out to flood stricken Louisiana at the close of the convention, and only after that became known did Obama cancel his fund raising plans elsewhere and head out there, too.

In fact, Obama has a history of ignoring all citizens suffering from catastrophe. In 2009 when an ice storm killed 42 and left millions of Americans without power or water or shelter, Obama hosted a lavish Super Bowl cocktail party with $100/lb Wagyu beef appetizers. Worse, as Chalian was leveling that mendacious, hate-filled charge, Obama was chatting online on Reddit with his supporters, not flying to the scene of the destruction.

RTWT

An Oldie but a goody

Jonathan Last:

American Narcissus
The vanity of Barack Obama

HT: Steve Sailer

Joe Paterno and the Freeh Report

The media narrative is running far in front of the known facts. Powerline has several excellent posts:

The case against Joe Paterno: Weak to non-existent on the current record

I am aware that a consensus exists that former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno acted improperly in connection with Penn State’s response to allegations of child molestation committed by one-time assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. This consensus led to the removal of a statue of Paterno, whose contributions to Penn State as a coach and financial contributor were enormous.

The consensus emerged from the report of Louis Freeh regarding Penn State’s actions related to the sexual abuse committed by Sandusky. But a friend of mine — a top-notch lawyer and former federal prosecutor — has carefully reviewed the Freeh Report. He concludes that the Report does not establish wrongdoing by Joe Paterno. Having now looked at the Freeh Report, I agree.

The case against Joe Paterno, Part Two

Unfortunately, I suspect that the journalists and talking heads who reported that Freeh’s report contains new, damaging evidence regarding Paterno read only the first part of the report. Once one reads the actual evidence, I think it becomes clear that the case against Paterno remains (for now) what it was before Freeh started investigating — that he should have done more, not that he concealed misconduct out of a bad motive. The more damning case that Freeh wants to make is based on speculation, not evidence.

The Freeh report challenged

Twenty-nine former chairs of the Penn State faculty Senate have blasted Louis Freeh and the NCAA in connection with their actions in response to the Jerry Sandusky child sex scandal. As to Freeh’s report, they state: “On a foundation of scant evidence, the report adds layers of conjecture and supposition to create a portrait of fault, complicity, and malfeasance that could well be at odds with the truth.”

Did the KGB smear Pius XII as "Hitler's Pope"?

Claims that Pius XII Was Framed Gaining Support

Part II

The battle that saved the West

Today is the 92th anniversary of the Miracle on the Vistula

In free Poland it also marks Armed Forces Day.

Jerry Pournelle on the Obama strategy

Of course the notion is to let a thousand skunk cabbages bloom, and those which become really foul can be disowned. Meanwhile, the steady beat will discourage voters and many of those who have decided they don’t want to vote for Mr. Obama may call a pox on both houses and stay home. The unions continue to get out the vote and the absentee ballots and whatever boxes of votes that can be discovered the day after election day – or a week after if needed – and this will result in the reelection.

It’s possible. Of course it works only if the voters let it. They figure that people who will be so disgusted that they’ll stay home were lost to Obama to begin with. That’s a desperation strategy and it is contemptuous of the American People.

Here.

He sounds surprised

Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals?
Scandals Reflect Failure of Business Education

We are dealing with a drop in ethical standards throughout the business world, and our graduate schools are partly to blame.

[snip]

The way to teach these ethics is not to set up a separate class in which a typically low-ranking professor preaches to students who would rather be somewhere else. This approach, common at business schools, serves only to perpetuate the idea that ethics are only for those students who aren’t smart enough to avoid getting caught.

C. S. Lewis covered this ground eons ago:

And all the time-- such is the tragicomedy of our situation-- we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that our civilisation needs more 'drive' or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. we laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the gelding be fruitful.

And:

I would sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics but bred to believe that 'a gentleman does not cheat' than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had be brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles at their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism (such as Gaius and Titius would wince at) about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule mere appetites by means of the 'spirited element'. The head rules the belly through the chest-- the seat as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The chest-- Magnanimity-- Sentiment-- these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.

VDH on Sir John Keegan

Remembering the Dead, from Selma

A far better man — in both the ethical and literary sense — died this last week, Sir. John Keegan. The Face of Battle is the most beautifully written and imaginative military history of the last 50 years.

Sir John Keegan, RIP

Sir John Keegan

Sir John Keegan, who has died aged 78, achieved an international reputation as a military historian, then discovered a talent for writing rapid analyses of international crises as the defence editor of The Daily Telegraph.

People this brave deserve to be remembered

First posted 1 August 2008


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.

Spies and shrinks

Looks like Stephen Schwartz was right after all.

Atomic Bombshell

New research uncovers a link between Freud’s inner circle and the Soviet atomic bomb

The capital for Eitingon’s philanthropies originated in his family’s lucrative international fur trade, which prospered thanks to a near monopoly on export of Soviet pelts that made it, through the 1920s, the largest private U.S. importer from the USSR and gave the Eitingons a strong motivation to cooperate with successive incarnations of Soviet intelligence. Another intriguing clue was the name of a leading chekist, Gen. Nahum, aka Leonid, Eitingon, who was responsible, among other exploits, for staging Trotsky’s assassination. The debate in 1988 over whether and how Gen. Eitingon was related to Max has since been resolved by his colleagues and descendants: The two men were cousins.

Little doubt now remains about the Eitingon clan’s collaboration with the Soviets—particularly by Max’s New York-based cousin (and his sometime brother-in-law) Motty, who shortly after claiming a dramatic escape from the Bolsheviks in 1918 was cutting million-dollar fur deals with them. Besides Motty’s support of pro-Soviet intellectuals, trade unions, and causes, his name has popped up in KGB documents that the journalist Alexander Vassiliev was allowed to copy in the chaotic days around the disintegration of the USSR.

HT: Intel news

More recent research on Eitingon here.

From his wiki page:

Eitingon was cofounder and president from 1920 to 1933 of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Polyclinic. He was also director and patron of the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag (1921-1930), president of the International Psychoanalytic Association (1927-1933), founder and president of the International Training Committee (1925-1943), and founder of the Palestine Psychoanalytic Society (1934) and of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Israel.[2]

A little shot of Chesterton

It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (such as bricklaying or writing books) there are only two ways (in any special sense) of succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating.

"The Fallacy of Success" in All Things Considered (1908)

The Poles do not forget

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.

HT: Ace of Spades

Line of the day

Headline:

Jesse Jackson Jr’s office: He’s being treated for a “mood disorder”

Ace: "Turns out he's not in the mood to go to jail."

Power Line takes Dana Milbank to the woodshed

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.

The First Amendment ain't what it used to be

Popehat:

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.

I'm not sure that this is going to get Meredith Nilan the "privacy" that she wants and that Judge Sanbria-Vega was so eager to give her.

HT: Patterico

Is Aaron Sorkin's preachy prophet shtick getting old?

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.

A blast from the past:

Generally, I think the West Wing is pretty funny

The Hayekian case to break-up the big banks

Too Big for Comfort

The Myths of Watergate

W. Joseph Campbell

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.”

Watergate: The last hurrah

The fortieth anniversary of the break-in lets Woodstein and the WaPo take another victory lap. The rest of the MSM decides to play along. Everybody parties like it's 1975.

Watergate at 40: A legacy of courage

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.

Watergate Remembered Four Decades Later at Washington Post Party

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.

No one has the bad taste to bring up the questions raised in the new books by Max Holland or Jeff Himmelman.

The end of a golden age is still pretty darn good

A Golden Age of Books? There Were Only 500 Real Bookstores in 1931

[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.

Standing up to bullies

Michelle Malkin:

Going dark to urge congressional action: Who will protect the freedom to blog?

Assessing Obama

Peter Wehner looks at three new books on the Obama Presidency:

Please Excuse My President

The cynicism problem:

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.

I wronte this back in 2010:

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.

The squandered opportunity

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.”

Unfortunately, the Administration chose to operate as a arm of the most partisan members of Congress instead of fashioning a program and platform of its own. On the really crucial issues, the president ratified the proposals of Pelosi, Dodd, Frank, et. al., rather than crafting his own, more centrist program.

The nonpartisan delusion:

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.

Is cable news now old news?

Jack Shafer:

The cable news audience has peaked

Shafer makes a good point here:

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.

Related:

Cable news, vox populi, and professional sleaze

Cable news: get it fast, get it wrong

Media's Shifting Business Model

Did the FBI close the anthrax case too quickly?

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.

HT: Dr. Meryl Nass

Getting the Cold War wrong

A new book on the Alger Hiss case:

The case that shouldn’t go away

The author, Christina Shelton, frames the case in a completely ahistorical manner:

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.

This ignores the basic facts of the domestic political struggle set in motion by Whittaker Chambers's revelations. Plenty of social democrats (e.g. Sidney Hook) and liberals (the AF of L and other unions) took a hard line against Stalinism at home and abroad.

Chambers himself was hardly a radical individualist. His review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review was less than glowing. As Buckley put it, "Chambers did in fact read Miss Rand right out of the conservative movement."

Faux pas

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.

Related:

Poland: First to Fight

Tone deaf diplomacy

Stand up to bullies

Michelle Malkin:

Free speech blogburst: Show solidarity for targeted conservative bloggers;

Ace:

Did Congress Pass a Law Stripping Citizens of the Right To Mention Brett Kimberlin's Felonious Past?

This is horrifying. RTWT

Convicted Bomber Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, Ron Brynaert, and Their Campaign of Political Terrorism

The lies of Watergate

James Rosen:

Why Bradleegate Matters: Woodward and Bernstein's Deception

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.

Getting Watergate Right

Max Holland rips the halo off Deep Throat:

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.

Related:

Our Story So Far

Holland also points out that All the President's Men has a host of other problems:

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.

The sad thing is, this is something that has been known for nearly forty years. Edward Jay Epstein made this point in his review of ATPM in 1974:

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.

Related:

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

A revealing look at how news gets made

'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'

George Orwell, 1984

An interesting piece by Tony Lee over at Breitbart:

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.

It's nice to that the professionals around McCain had their priorities in order.

Kind of funny that when it was crunch time, the only person still trying to win the election for McCain was Sarah Palin. The campaign professionals were already in CYA mode.

Lee makes a telling point here:

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.

Related:

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.

Starchitects

Roger Scruton:

Monumental Egos

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 goes from triumph to triumph

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.

RTWT

Uncommon good sense

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.

Related:

The Folly of Heather MacDonald

Good article on the perils of profiling

We need better press critics

It is bad enough that reporters still use Wendy Murphy as an "expert" source. It is more disappointing still to see press "watch dogs" and "ethicists" try to justify it.

KC Johnson

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.”

Related:

What is the true function of a public editor

Media criticism and corralled rebellion

The long shadow of the low, dishonest decade

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.

Trayvon Martin

Maybe it isn't impossible that the facts support George Zimmerman's version of events.

Clarice Feldman

'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.

Jeralyn Merritt

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."

Why is this impossible?

Rob Dreher writes:

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.

What evidence do we have (evidence, not the self-serving statements of lawyers) that the forensics work is poor? Or that the police investigation was slipshod?

Why is it inconceivable that the police work and the forensics evidence confirm the basics of Zimmerman's story?

I'm not saying that is the case, but isn't it possibile that Zimmerman is telling the truth?

NBC News makes Joseph Goebbels proud

Daily Caller:

NBC: We deeply regret our error that made George Zimmerman sound like a racist, and now you should leave us alone

Ann Althouse:

"That is the most outrageous, truly evil editing I've ever seen."

UPDATE:

Ace:

NBC Calls Its Deliberate, Frame-Up Editing of George Zimmerman an "Error;" Washington Post Then Calls It A "Screw-Up"

Malpractice or malfeasance?

Just a couple of guys doing the work that press critics won't (can't?) do.

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

A new low for David Frum

Given his history that's very, very low.

David Frum: Trayvon Martin, and the backlash against the backlash

 It is bad enough that Frum's "analysis mixes facts that are flat out wrong ("He was 100 pounds lighter than his killer.") and wild conclusions that are unsupported by real evidence ("Martin was hunted down by a trigger-happy bully").

What's especially interesting is how Frum-- rich, white, Canadian-born-- plays the race card to attack America's gun laws and Jacksonian culture.

He finds Florida's gun laws "peculiar" He implies that a majority of the states passed shall issue concealed carry laws as part of a post-Obama "backlash" by "fearful elderly whites in the South."

Is Frum lazy and ill-informed or is he dishonest? It is one or the other because anyone who spends 10 minutes with Google knows that the shall-issue movement has been active and successful for twenty years. It has nothing to do with Obama's election nor is it only a Southern phenomenon.

Tom Wolfe: Prophet

So says Steve Sailer:

Trayvon: How the Case Was Spun

I have to agree since i wrote this back in 2006

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.

Seymour Hersh

Good read:

The Deceits of Seymour Hersh

Related:

Seymour Hersh

Nanny Mike in the news

Mayor Warns of the Pitfalls in Social Media

“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.”

Those elections are so annoying for philosopher kings like Mike Bloomberg. Also, Bloomberg stood up for poor, abused Goldman Sachs.

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.

As Jon Friedman points out, Goldman might be good for the New york economy, but it is very, very good for Bloomberg's private fortune:

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.

What did Fidel know and when did he know it?

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.

Howie Kurtz goes in the tank for "Game Change"

In other news, I saw the sun rise in the east this morning.

On Reliable Sources, Kurtz did his best to help out the makers of HBO's docudrama. In his signature powder-puff style, he let them make their case that the movie was the real story of the 2008 campaign.

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.

Kurtz never pressed the issue with them. He ignores the numerous cases where key figures in the McCain campaign emphatically deny that the events portrayed in the movie really happened. For instance, Steve Schmidt flatly states that John McCain never told him "find me a woman" during the VP search. A.B. Culvahouse, who managed the vetting process, insists, and has insisted for years, that Palin was vetted in the same thorough way as all other potential nominees.


Most importantly, Randy Scheunemann, the man who ran the foreign policy briefings for the campaign, disputes every aspect of the movie's portrayal of Gov. Palin as an ignorant dunce who is unsure of Germany's location or its role in World War II.

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.

See: Top 10 Lies of HBO's 'Game Change'

Kurtz gave the filmmakers a pass and let their self-endorsement stand without serious contradiction. Nor did he confront them with a telling point made by Jim Geraghty:

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.

All in all, it was a typical day's work for Howie. He avoided the tough issues that make his buddies in the MSM look bad and, instead, gave them plenty of air time to brag about their devotion to the truth and their empathy toward Sarah Palin.


There was funny note that Kurtz missed completely. Jay Roach misspoke (Freudian slip or Kinsey gaffe) when confronted by the question of his ability to be even-handed in light of his contributions to the Obama campaign:

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.

 

MSM finds out that twitter is not so fun when audience argues back

Last fall i asked this question:

Why do journalists love twitter and hate blogging?

My tentative answer was:

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.

Soledad (D-CNN) now provides evidence that this theory is true. Tweeting was once all well and good for the news reader but she is out of patience now that listeners are arguing back about her attempt to obfuscate on Critical Race Theory. Ace has the details:

Stop Tweeting Soledad_OBrien

Look whose still fighting the Cold War

Left avoids minute of silence to communist victims

Andrew Breitbart, RIP

I think this Kaus tribute is the best I've seen

An important new book on Watergate

Jack Shafer's review:

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.

Related:

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

Pre-Venona minds at work

Historians and the press still refuse to face the facts of the Red Decade and the "Red Scare".

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.

Related:

A herd of independent minds

Jennifer Rubin earns her paycheck

The WaPo's resident resercon acts, well, like a resercon.

James Taranto, David Limbaugh Draw Jennifer Rubin's Wrath

Related:

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)

Emperor Romney has no clothes

Why Is Romney Seen as Electable?

RINO Romney Is the Least Electable

Previously:

Numbers that should scare Mitt Romney and the tools at Fox News

The naive faith of the MSM

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.

Merry Christmas

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2:8-14

Good Point

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.

Inexplicable

Obama Admin Bans US Aircraft Maker, Favors Non-US Firm with Ties to Iran on Light Aircraft Project

Almost a half century ago

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy – 48 Years On

Wisdom in 140 characters

　'The Kim Kardashian definition of 'forever' is 'when the check is cashed. '

Quoted here.

Tweeted here.

Not good

Secret MI6 documents warn about al-Qaeda-linked Libyan rebels

What is the lesson of Libya?

Jerry Pournelle:

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.

Verum Serum made this point back in July:

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?

"The most tragic figure ever to wear a Major League uniform"

also had one of the greatest World Series ever. 

Joe Guzzardi has the story.

"Old Pete” Handcuffs the Yankees

"I never want to say the word 'I should have'"

Words to live by.

Found here:

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.

The boatlift was larger than Dunkirk. It is a mystery to me why it is almost unknown.

History is inspiring. Bravery is inspiring. It is shameful we no longer teach this to our children.

David Gelernter, Drawing Life

Honest and astute

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.

Hmm........

"What do you call a man who wants to embrace the chimney-sweep?"

"A saint," said Father Brown.

G. K. Chesterton, "The Flying Stars"

A point that cannot be repeated too often

From the Columbia Journalism Review:

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).