A gift for any true populist

Peter W. Galbraith is a gift that just keeps on giving.


David Warsh does a great job tracing his career and the scandal over his oil deal in Kurdistan.

Galbraith also helped push corruption in Afghanistan into the headlines in this country. Thus, he helped create the current impasse on Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's recommendations.

Inside the beltway, the deciders might want to downplay the issue because what's a little corruption among the right kind of people. (Hey, he's John Kenneth Galbraith's son, not some hick like Sarah Palin).

Warsh, though, shows why these peccadilloes have big consequences:

Galbraith’s enthusiasm for Kurdish independence always undermined Bash administration war aims in Iraq – there’s nothing new about that. But the the disclosure of his financial involvement in Kurdish affairs muddies the issue because it impairs American credibility in Iraq. Faisal Amin al-Istrabadi, one of the architects of the law that governed Iraq after the US ceded control in 2004, told the Times reporters, “The idea that an oil company was participating in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution leaves me speechless.”

Of course, the same thing happened with Russia during the 1990s (Warsh discussed that in his article). American interests took a hit while insiders tried to get rich.

Worst of all, the press largely ignored the story. (Lawrence Summers is one of the righteous DC elect you see). How bad is Washington's memory?

Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers provided some measure of cover for his old friend Shleifer when the Harvard scandal broke in 1997. After becoming president of Harvard University, in 2001, he again shielded Shleifer from the consequences of an ultimately successful Justice Department law suit. And as chief economic strategist for the Obama administration, he enlisted Nancy Zimmerman, Shleifer’s wife and a successful hedge fund operator, in a “kitchen cabinet” of informal advisers, according to a Times dispatch earlier this year. The story of Harvard’s Russia scandal is barely known outside a limited circle of specialists in foreign aid.

Yes, by all means. Let's have more stories about Carrie Prejean and her sex tapes. Let's set 11 journalists to work "fact checking" a book by a former VP candidate. Clearly there are no real stories to cover in Washington.

TV News: Biased is the new objective

Robert Lichter

Fox News: Fair And Balanced?

In fact, Obama received the most favorable coverage CMPA has ever recorded for any presidential candidate since we began tracking election news coverage in 1988. The totals were very similar--within a few percentage points--at all three networks. (These figures exclude comments on the candidates' prospects in the campaign horse race, which obviously favored Obama.)

Meanwhile, Fox's Special Report was dramatically tougher on Obama, with only 36% favorable vs. 64% unfavorable evaluations during the same time period. But McCain didn't fare much better, garnering only 40% favorable comments vs. 60% negative ones. So the broadcast networks gave good marks to one candidate and bad marks to another, while Fox was tough on both--and most balanced overall.

Why they hate Palin

R. S. McCain is on to something here:

What is it about Palin that sticks in the craw of liberal journalists? Perhaps the same thing that has always annoyed them about Rush Limbaugh: Sarah Palin doesn't need their help, and all their efforts to harm her appear impotent.

David Warsh describes the importance of dispensing favors to traditional journalists:

It is a commonplace among news reporters that they operate in an informal economy of favors. Participation in newsgathering, for example, is usually based almost entirely on the (usually shrewdly) calculated rate of gain. Government officials in particular are experts at deciding which phone calls to return and which to ignore.

A name in the paper, a theory floated, a pet project boosted, a rival quietly gored, a scrap of gossip, even a fistful of clippings from the newspaper’s “morgue” (of greatly diminished value now that the files have long since become digital databases!) — these are some of the favors that newspaper reporters are free to dispense, or attempt to dispense, as they go about their business.

The anti-Palin reaction is not the first time we've seen journalists fall victim to rage fueled by impotence. I discussed an attack on the Powerline guys back in 2004:

All of this helps to explain the vicious columns Jim Boyd of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. wrote in response to the op-ed piece by the guys at Powerline.

From Boyd's perspective, it is bad enough that blogging barbarians compete against him in "explanation space." Once, bloggers were easy to dismiss because their readership is small. The situation became worse when the collective weight of blogger opinion and reporting forced the MSM to cover the questions about Kerry, Cambodia, and his war record. That was a sign that his side was losing its ability to determine what was newsworthy.

Hindrocket and The Big Trunk went further. Their op-ed column usurped the journalist's 'rightful role" and appeared on the pages of Boyd's own paper. The barbarians had breached the walls and were roaming free inside the city. Boyd reacted like an Edwardian butler who discovered a group of Welsh miners gathered in the grand dining hall. It is not what they did; it is that they were there at all.

More foolishness from David Brooks

Obama is "the most talented political figure of the age."

Expertly dealt with by R.S. McCain and Ryan Cole.

David Brooks and the Obama man-crush

Brooks Again

This reminds me of all the pundits who raved about Bill Clinton as a politician ("the greatest of his time", "the best since FDR", yadda yadda yadda). This still gets repeated even though Clinton was way below average by the measures that count. (See here and here).

One of the biggest problems in Washington and in the MSM, is that pundits and political operators substitute consensus for analysis. Most of them just repeat conventional wisdom instead of thinking things through on their own or digging into the data.

The dangers of symbolic diplomacy

Three worthwhile posts about the presidential bow:


Macsmind:

After all I've lived with Korean/Japanese wife for 26 years, and lived for many years in the orient, and I'm not only familiar the custom of bowing, I actually do it from time to time. A bow can mean many things to the oriental way. However Obama's bow was "to the earth" with his eyes looking downward.

My wife gasped when she saw it, "It's a signal of defeat" she continued.

Flooding The Memory Hole

Fresh from their triumphant non-coverage of Obama's inappropriate "shout-out" to Dr. Joe Medicine Crow before addressing the nation about the Fort Hood shooting, the MSM (and especially the NY Times) can now not-cover Obama's comical, culturally insensitive bowing handshake to the Japanese emperor.

Neo-neocon

Behind Obama’s bow: making up to Hirohito for past humiliations

The last is a little speculative but interesting nonetheless.

The MSM has no time for such trivia, of course. The have to get to the serious issues like the fact that mean Sarah Palin accused Steve Schmidt of being fat.

Curses

Days like this i hate that i love football so much.

Swept by the Bengals. The only silver lining is that we still have a chance to beat the Ravens.

Good idea.

Too bad they are so obsessed with Sarah Palin's book and Carrie Prejean's sex tapes.

From Winds of Change:

At some point it would be nice if there was a decent amount of transparency around what Soros is doing; if he genuinely believes in open societies, he ought to lead it, but since he doesn't - perhaps a decent journalistic project would be to connect the dots and create a map of his involvement in US and foreign affairs.

My hackles go up not only because of the notion that a reclusive, ideological billionaire has decided to reshape the American polity, but because that billionaire makes his billions in part by investing based on changes in international markets - which are in turn effected by national and international politics.

Steven Pinker on Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective

An eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “saggital plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.

Ia Drang

They Were Soldiers


Forty-four years ago today, Nov. 14, 1965, 1/7 Cav of the 1st Cavalry Division choppered into LZ X-ray in the Ia Drang Valley in a reconnaissance in force that encountered three regiments of the People’s Army of Vietnam dug in on and around the Chu Pong massif.

What ensued was the first major engagement between U.S. and North Vietnamese regulars, and some of the bloodiest days in American military history; with up to 70 percent battalion-level casualties and some platoons almost entirely wiped out on the single bloodiest day of the Vietnam War, Nov. 17, 1965, when the troopers of 2/7 Cav thought it was over and the enemy was defeated. It wasn’t.

RTWT

Could it be the best one ever?

Smitty has the latest link-fest of the most interesting posts in the whole wide blogopshere:

Florida Manatee Joins Right-wing Alliance...

Can the First Amendment survive globalization?

Important story in the New York Times:

Two German Killers Demanding Anonymity Sue Wikipedia’s Parent

German law gives them anonymity. Wikipedia has complied with the law in their German language edition. Now, though, the lawyers want their names expunged from the English language edition.

Maybe Wikipedia is judgement proof because they have no assets or operations in Germany. Maybe there is no danger that they will face serious legal challenges in this country with the associated costs.

Here is my scary thought:

Could the lawyers go after telecoms and ISPs to make them block the offending articles? Could a foreign court force a multi-national company to enforce such blocks in all its operations?

(HT: AMSPECBLOG)

Anti-Palinmania

She just drives her enemies crazy.

For Palin Book Tour Coverage, Media Tarnishes, Smears, Repeats

My, if I didn't know better, I'd think it's 2008 all over again.

John Ziegler: “AP Blows it in Palin Book Analysis”

I have signed a nondisclosure agreement with Harper Collins regarding Sarah Palin’s new book so until it comes out I am limited to discussing only what is currently in the public domain. However, I simply must respond to the Associated Press “report” on Going Rogue.

Even grading on the “Palin Scale” of media bias, the AP’s synopsis is a joke.

Gee, I wonder if Ann Althouse feels dumb for relying on the AP's reporting for her attention-grabbing stunt?

UPDATE: Steyn is not to be missed:

No, the Associated Press assigned 11 writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book, and in return the 11 fact-checkers triumphantly unearthed six errors. That's 1.8333333 writers for each error. What earth-shattering misstatements did they uncover for this impressive investment?

I wondered the same thing

R.S. McCain wonders why Sarah Palin is dissing her natural allies and playing along with those who tried to destroy her:

Why is Sarah Palin dissing conservative media?

He notes:

Sarah Palin suffered so much last year because she was advised by the usual "media strategists," including the self-serving Nicolle Wallace, a torpedo from Team Bush. And yet she allows the P.R. geniuses at Harper Collins to pick and choose their favorites in the media roll-out.

Palin moved the health care debate with a Facebook post. She of all people should understand the power of new media and the pathetic decline of the MSM. Yet she goes the conventional route--- Oprah, Associated Press, etc.

The Couric interview was a disaster for Palin but a life raft for the floundering Couric. As Palin notes in her book, the Nicolle Wallace arguments in favor of CBS had little to do with the benefit to McCain campaign, and everything to do with helping poor Katie.

I wonder if the choice of Oprah is similar. Not that the Big O "needs" Palin, but it is a great "get" for her show. The kind of get that makes producers think highly of the publishers and publicists who arranged it. Those good relations could pay off big for other authors from that publisher even it it does not do much for Sarah Palin.

The view from inside the bubble

CNN is deperately trying to position itself as a straight, unbiased news channel. The New York Times uncritically repeats this spin in this article:

CNN’s Klein Explains the Departure of Lou Dobbs

Jon Klein, the president of CNN/U.S., said Thursday that Lou Dobbs had himself made the decision to end his long association with the cable news network after months of conversations about the direction of the channel away from the kind of opinion-based reporting that Mr. Dobbs preferred.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Klein said Mr. Dobbs had accepted and adapted in recent months to the idea that CNN wanted all of its programs to be free of personal viewpoints. “Lou embraced that but he came to me a few weeks ago and said he’d decided it wasn’t for him,” Mr. Klein said.

Cynical spin or sad delusion? Has to be one or the other because the facts are unkind to CNN:

CNN to Lou Dobbs: Don’t Let the Door Hit You….

UPDATE: Nice piece here:

I was Lou Dobbs's last guest

Speaking of Carrie Prejean

This is the best take on "scandal" i've read so far.

The Real Issue in the Carrie Prejean Fiasco

Gee. CNN and MSNBC have oodles time for Carrie Prejean

Guess they did not know about this:

No Blood For Oil. Well, Unless It Is For Democrats.

The NY Times front-pages a mini-debacle - Peter Galbraith, adviser to John Kerry and Joe Biden, has been getting rich off the advice he has been giving the Kurds

Or was some other agenda at work.

Nah. Everyone knows that a beauty queen's sex video is the most important issue in the world right now.

Not to be missed

From the annals of the struggle for decency and a return to civility. Rightwing Sparkle:

What Have We Come To When The President Slurs Those Who Disagree?

Of special note is the behavior of Ana Marie Cox. We all knew she was a crass attention whore. But now we can add indecent liar to her resume.

Hey, Howie Kurtz loves to use the aging coquette on Reliable Sources as. Maybe he'll ask her about her own ethics next time she is on.



Indecision in Afghanistan:

Someone Tell The Dawdler-in-Chief This Is Not A Term Paper


Will someone tell our President this is not a term paper. You don't get to move the paragraphs around, tweak the punctuation, and cut and paste until it reads just right.

Keep screwing around on this and there will be no Afghan government left to which we can turn over "responsibility."

Some useful context for the Hannity video kerfuffle:

Suddenly the left cares about honest visuals!


But let’s not pretend the left really cares about the truthful use of imagery in the media. Sorry, that claim just won’t fly.

UPDATE: I guess not all fake visuals are equal. Or did i miss the reaction to the MSNBC segment?

For Palin Book Tour Coverage, Media Tarnishes, Smears, Repeats

Another Palin book

Interview with the author

Fear of The Mother

In his eye-opening, astute new book, The Persecution of Sarah Palin, Matthew Continetti argues that the "story of Sarah Palin is the story of American political journalism's intellectual bankruptcy," and while Continetti's narrative does include plenty of lesser-known biographical detail it also contextualizes Palin into a fascinating case study of the politics of personal destruction as employed by the left-leaning cultural and media elites who constantly tsk-tsk…the politics of personal destruction. "It's not new for a prominent political figure to be hated," Continetti tells TAS. "But it is novel when a political figure becomes so hated so quickly, and for that hatred to be based on so little information." Appalled by this persistent knowledge gap, the Weekly Standard editor undertook the challenge of setting the record straight and answering, to his mind, "the most outrageous insults, myths, and exaggerations directed at her and her family."

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

Code Pink is unspeakably vile

From Big Government.com

Dressed as ‘zombie soldiers’ killed in combat, ‘ghosts of war victims,’ witches and healthcare fairies, members of Code Pink menacingly paraded in front of a captive audience of children one block from the White House, who waited along the sidewalk in front of Decatur House just off Lafayette Park for a Halloween party hosted by President Obama.