Thomas Friedman, Buffoon

Matthew Yglesias writes:

Defending the netroots: Bloggers counter Jonathan Chait: Chait's notion seems to be that the netroots despises intellectual honesty and celebrates only shallow propaganda; but the fact is that the liberal netroots' favorite pundits are the ones who express liberal views: Who should liberals prefer? An institution like The New Republic, whose main institutional and emotional commitment is to right-wing Israeli nationalism (a commitment, I might add, frequently expressed through the sort of demagoguery, name-calling, and dishonesty Chait professes to find distasteful), infuriates the netroots even though individual TNR writers and articles garner praise. Similarly, it would be odd for liberal activists to like the DLC given that the DLC's central mission is to curb the influence of liberal activists over Democratic Party politicians. Other pundits the netroots love to hate include Joe Klein, whose work Chait also disapproves of; Thomas Friedman, a buffoon; and Maureen Dowd, who I'd hardly propose putting forward as the great apostle of seriousness about ideas.

P O'Neill Teaches Us a Language Lesson

P O'Neill writes:

Best of Both Worlds: 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007: Not just a game: A New York Times correction:

An article in Business Day on Monday about Mark Halperin, who stepped down as the political director of ABC News and will join Time magazine, misstated his role at both media outlets. He is a political — not a policy — analyst.

This distinction, between people like Halperin ("political") who can write stories about a John Edwards haircut after seeing a headline on Drudge, and a "policy" story analyzing e.g. John Edwards' healthcare plan, goes to the heart of why bloggers have so little faith in Halperin's side of the business. It's why, for example, Brad DeLong writes

I can recommend that someone interested in economic and budget policy read Atrios confident that Duncan Black is giving it the straightest shot he can. I can't say that about the New Republic's giving airtime to Greg Mankiw and Robert Samuelson, can I? And we all know that you learn a great deal more ideas and facts about the Middle East from reading Markos Moulitsas Zuniga's Daily Kos than from reading the New Republic.

Posted by P O'Neill at 1:07 PM

Comments on Jonathan Chait

John Emerson:

John Emerson: If you want specifics: Chait's Norquist comparison was nasty and overblown, his smug magisterial tone was highly annoying coming from an overpaid tool whose track record is mixed at best, and his description of the pre-netroots Democratic Party was dishonest. The DLC party was about selling favors to big business, enforcing a blindly hawkish message, and keeping the left at bay. It wasn't about civility, high principles, and thoughtfulness.

DLC Democrats would rather control a weak losing party than be a faction within a winning party, and in the 2000 election they got their wish. But in the 2006 election the Democrats dumped Lieberman and gained control of Congress. Chait is trying to reposition himself in the new landscape, but he isn't going at it right, and there are those who are disinclined to try to help him out much.

Kevin Drum:

The Washington Monthly: THE NOISE MACHINE....Jon Chait has a long article in the New Republic today about the netroots and how it's changing liberal politics. It's not a bad piece, though Chait obviously struggles to come to a firm conclusion about what the netroots is really all about. This is a predicament I can sympathize with, since I've been blogging for five years myself and I still have a hard time putting my finger on it. Is it about ideology? Sort of, but not really. Party loyalty? Yes, though not for everyone. Iron-fisted organizational discipline? Sure, except when it's not. In some way, the netroots is all about defining what it means to be a "good Democrat," but beyond that it's a helluva slippery phenomenon, one of those "I know it when I see it" kind of things.

So, bloggerlike, I'll skip the whole question for now and instead highlight this passage about the creation of the right-wing noise machine in the 90s:

Liberals made several attempts to recreate the conservative message machine — Jim Hightower, Mario Cuomo, and countless others attempted and failed to create talk-radio programs. Most people concluded from these failures that liberals simply didn't want partisan vitriol of the sort offered up by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. They wanted high-minded discussions of the sort found on National Public Radio. Nonconservatives, wrote The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg in 2003, "wouldn't think it was fun to listen to expressions of raw contempt for conservatives."

This analysis, shared by nearly all observers just a few years ago, turns out to be completely wrong. Maybe an audience for raw partisan liberal attacks existed all along but was ill-served by piecemeal forays into talk radio. Or maybe the audience was born suddenly by the shock of the Bush years. In any case, it is obvious that a sizeable liberal audience was not being served the red meat it craved. "People were hungry for strong, unapologetic liberals, and those were completely absent from the media landscape," Moulitsas writes. "I mean, who did progressive [sic] have supposedly representing their side? Joe Frickin' Klein. Is it any wonder blogs grew in response?"

I've heard variations on this theme too many times to count, but is it really true? Daily Kos, which is unique in the political blogosphere, gets about 500,000 readers a day, and after that there's a huge gap to the next most popular liberal blogs, which average 100-150,000 readers. By national radio and TV standards, that's not "sizeable" at all. It's puny — and it's not growing much either. So it seems to me that Hertzberg was basically right: in the context of what it takes to support mass media, there just aren't very many liberals who are interested in listening to hour upon hour of seething resentment and raw contempt. That seems to still be a mostly conservative vice.

But it's still early days, I suppose. It took movement conservatives a couple of decades to build up their audience, and maybe it'll take liberals that long too. Or maybe not. Olbermann is doing pretty well these days, isn't he?

Steve Clemons Tells Us About the Nelson Report: Impeach the Fools Now

Impeach the fools now, before something even worse happens:

The Washington Note: The Nelson Report -- 30 April 2007: Sometimes insider gossip seems to confirm what all us outsiders think we're seeing, so, for what it's worth. . . we're hearing that some big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he's doing things would be OK. . . etc., etc. This is called a "bunker mentality" and it's not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

Its relevance to various current issues is all too obvious, including the fate of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz. Ask anyone at or close to the Bank, and you know, just as a professional, that Wolfowitz's effectiveness is finished, no matter what. But there are now other issues in play, assuming you think that the US role in selecting the Bank leadership remains important. Here's a private comment summing up the entire situation, from a Loyal Reader out in the real world of the Rocky Mountains, who happens to be a lifetime Republican, and a business person. We pass it along, as it is representative of comments we get ALL the time from Republican friends. . . a mixture of hyperbole, irony, and angst. . . and is thus a cautionary tale in itself:

"You know, if Bush would stop his self-indulgent stubbornness for half a day, he could see plain as day that he has an opportunity to retain American control of the World Bank by easing Wolfie out. If he tries to keep Wolfie in that spot, American control could end. I really wonder whether his failure to distinguish between necessary toughness and catastrophically shoot-ourselves-(America)-in-our-foot pigheadedness results from biological anomaly. His inability to harvest experience, and so to think and form successful judgments, is just so inexplicable."

Assuming the Europeans want Wolfowitz out badly enough to compromise with the White House on his replacement, ARE there qualified Republican players available, at this point? One might be tempted to remind Bush that then-Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick wanted the Bank very much, and one might be tempted to add that Zoellick would have been a perfect choice professionally and personally. . . one who would never have embarrassed himself, the President, and his country, as Wolfowitz seems intent on doing. One would probably be wrong to remind Bush of all this, and in any event, indicators are Zoellick rather enjoys making a zillion dollars as a big time investment banker, and so maybe he's not available.

One might then be tempted to suggest the former Asia Subcommittee chair, Rep. Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican whose defeat last Fall came almost entirely due to the war in Iraq, and who would be seen by most of the rest of the world as a superb choice from his days as a Foreign Service officer, and his three decades in the House, during which he served on both Foreign Affairs and, if memory serves, the Banking Committee. Of course Leach is a "liberal Republican". . . an endangered species, and not one generally found south of the Pecos River. . . and he was a persistent critic of Bush North Korea policy until the White House finally took his advice, and let Asst. Sec. State Chris Hill actually practice diplomacy. Leach is probably still waiting for the thank-you call on that. But if temperament, talent, and training has anything to do with it, and with Wolfowitz now absolutely untenable, perhaps the White House might want to give Leach a call, over in his Wilson Center office. Just a suggestion.

Grim Old Party - New York Times

David Brooks says that Newt Gingrich is the Republicans' savior. Rather odd, because Newt was the person who defined Republicans as hard-right tax-cutting fundamentalists in the 1990s:

Grim Old Party - New York Times: The Republicans suffered one unpleasant event in November 2006, and they are headed toward an even nastier one in 2008. The Democrats have opened up a wide advantage in party identification and are crushing the G.O.P. among voters under 30. Moreover, there has been a clear shift, in poll after poll, away from Republican positions on social issues and on attitudes toward government. Democratic approaches are favored on almost all domestic, tax and fiscal issues, and even on foreign affairs.

The public, in short, wants change. And yet the Republicans refuse to offer that. On Capitol Hill, there is a strange passivity in Republican ranks. Republicans are privately disgusted with how President Bush has led their party and the nation, but they don’t publicly offer any alternatives. They just follow sullenly along. They privately believe the country needs new approaches to the war against Islamic extremism, but they don’t offer them. They try to block Democratic initiatives, but they don’t offer the country any new ways to think about the G.O.P. They are like people quietly marching to their doom....

The party is blessed with a series of charismatic [presidential] candidates who are not orthodox Republicans. But the pressures of the campaign are such that these candidates have had to repress anything that might make them interesting.... Mitt Romney created an interesting health care reform, but he’s suppressing that.... Rudy Giuliani has an unusual profile that won him a majority of votes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, of all places, but he’s suppressing that.... John McCain has a record on taxes and spending that suggests he really could take on entitlements. But... he suppressed that.... Fred Thompson may enter the race as the Authentic Conservative, even though deep in his heart he’s no more George Allen than the rest of them.

The big question is, Why are the Republicans so immobile? There are several reasons. First... the conservative movement has grown a collection of special interest groups that restrict its mobility... the Club for Growth and Americans for Tax Reform. Anybody who offers unorthodox social policies gets whacked by James Dobson.... Second... the corrupting influence of teamism... sticking together with other conservatives, not thinking.... Third, there is the oppressive power of the past... the sacred parameters of thought.... Fourth, there is the bunker mentality. Republican morale has been brutalized by the Iraq war and the party’s decline. This state of emotional pain is not conducive to risk-taking and free and open debate. In sum, Republicans know they need to change, but they have closed off all the avenues for change.

The tale is not entirely hopeless. McCain seems now to be throwing off his yoke. Newt Gingrich is way ahead of his colleagues when it comes to new ideas and policies. The libertarians and paleoconservatives have been losing for so long they are suddenly quite interesting. There are even a few of us who think it is time to revive the Alexander Hamilton-Theodore Roosevelt legacy. Change could, miraculously, come soon. But the odds are it will take a few more crushing defeats before Republicans tear down the self-imposed walls that confine them.

Condi Rice, Stupidest Woman Alive

This would drive anybody shrill:

The Raw Story | Rice backs off Iraq 'imminent threat' claim, then redefines term George Stephanopoulos asks Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice if Iraq ever posed an "imminent threat" to the United States. "I think that -- an imminent threat. Certainly Iraq posed a threat," Rice responds. "The question was, was it going to get worse over time or was it going to get better." Rice goes on to say that the Bush administration assessment was that the threat from Iraq was "getting worse" and had to be dealt with.

"But [Iraq was] not an imminent threat," presses Stephanopoulous.

"George, the question of imminence isn't whether or not someone will strike tomorrow, it's whether you believe you're in a stronger position today to deal with the threat or whether you're going to be in a stronger position tomorrow," replies Rice. "It was the president's assessment that the situation in Iraq was getting worse from our point of view."

Rice's redefinition of the term "imminent threat," comes just over a month after former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton appeared on CNN claiming that the President never made the argument that Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent threat." As RAW STORY reported last month, a number of Bush administration officials used the term in the run up to the Iraq war.

Glenn Greenwald Watches Journamalist Adam Nagourney

And Glenn is not a happy camper:

Suburban Guerrilla » Eat the Press: I’m not one who subscribes to the view that our Beltway culture is so irredeemably vapid and broken that the entire political system is doomed, but those who do believe that were bequeathed several new gifts today for use in support of that claim, including:

(1) This article by The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney, in which he recounts the central role he and the Times played in the “John-Edwards-Loves-His-Hair-Like-a-Sissy” story, by publishing anonymous “Breck Girl” smears back in 2004. The smears were from what Nagourney back then called “Bush associates” (but which he today describes as people at “senior levels of the Bush political operation”). That article granted anonymity to “Bush associates” to call Edwards a girl and to say that John Kerry “looks French.”

For some entirely indiscernible reason, it appears that Nagourney woke up recently and was hit with the realization that maybe one of the reasons why such petty and vacuous stories dominate our political discourse is because he and his esteemed colleagues at The New York Times eagerly offer themselves up as instruments for disseminating such personal smears. Announces Nagourney, as though he has discovered some sort of complex, previously unknown Truth:

"Our story may have had the result of not only previewing what the Bush campaign intended to do, but, by introducing such memorably biting characterizations into the political dialogue, helping it."

Really? So if the New York Times uncritically publishes petty, anonymous personal smear quotes about Democratic candidates in its front page section without printing any response or critical analysis of any kind, that actually has the effect of helping to introduce such smears into our political discourse? Apparently, it took Nagourney three years to discover that novel journalistic insight.

Most amazingly of all, Nagourney still is incapable of making the connection between his stories with the “Edwards-is-a-Girl” theme and the comments last month from Ann Coulter that everyone — just everyone — agreed were so very, very wrong. Other than the fact that Coulter used a prohibited word and Nagourney (and Maureen Dowd and The Politico and on and on and on) did not, the stories are precisely the same — both in design and in effect.

The Daily Background: Double Plagiarism at CBS News

The Daily Background watches as journamalist Katie Couric commits double plagiarism:

The Daily Background » Blog Archive » Double plagiarism at CBS News: By Arlen Parsa: Welcome, Raw Story and Reuters readers! Please consider subscribing to our RSS feed for more content like this...

Katie Couric’s news team has admitted to committing plagiarism... with an almost wholesale copy and paste job of a commentary written for the Wall Street Journal. Couric has a daily webcast segment which CBS calls “Katie Couric’s Notebook” which is regularly promoted on their website as well as an official YouTube account. The segments (typically lasting about a minute) are portrayed as Couric’s own personal opinions on various relevant topics. She signs off each one by saying “I’m Katie Couric, and that’s a page from my notebook.” On the CBS website, they are posted under the name “Katie Couric.”

But last week, Couric read nearly word-for-word a commentary piece published in the Wall Street Journal about libraries. The network promoted Couric’s segment as her own work- not the work of a producer or the Journal. “Only On The Web: Sales of juvenile books have risen dramatically in recent years, as kids skip the library and head for the store. Katie Couric says the local library still has much to offer,” a promotional description read. It turns out that Couric does not even write her own commentaries; CBS has admitted that they are written by her team of producers in first person to make it seem as though she is sharing candid thoughts. A CBS producer has been fired for plagiarism, although the company has not released the producer’s name.

Obviously, this type of situation would never have happened in the first place had Couric bothered to write her own brief commentaries instead of reading someone else’s work from a TelePrompTer.

Ironically instead of only portraying someone else’s work as hers in the library “Page from my notebook” as she normally does, Couric portrayed someone else’s work which was already being portrayed as someone else’s work: a double case of plagiarism.

Matthew Yglesias on General Petraeus, Plan F, and Phil Carter

Matthew Yglesias writes this:

Matthew Yglesias / proudly eponymous since 2002: Big Heel: Phillip Carter's coverage of Iraq continues to be enlightening, though his rhetorical pitch is far too kind. Consider this:

Gen. Petraeus and his brain trust have devised the best possible Plan F, given the resources available to the Pentagon and declining patience for the war at home. But the Achilles heel of this latest effort is the Maliki government. It is becoming increasingly clear to all in Baghdad that its interests—seeking power and treasure for its Shiite backers—diverge sharply from those of the U.S.-led coalition. Even if Gen. Petraeus' plan succeeds on the streets of the city, it will fail in the gilded palaces of the Green Zone. Maliki and his supporters desire no rapprochement with the Sunnis and no meaningful power-sharing arrangement with the Sunnis and the Kurds. Indeed, Maliki can barely hold his own governing coalition together, as evidenced by the Sadr bloc's resignation from the government this week and the fighting in Basra over oil and power.

The point about Achilles' heel, as you'll recall, is that he was invulnerable everyplace else. What Carter's talking about here is as if Achilles were a totally normally person. A nice guy, smart maybe, kind to kids and his "Achilles heel" was that he dies if you stab him. Political reconciliation isn't part of Petraeus-style counterinsurgency, it's the whole thing. His counterinsurgency field manual is all about trying to design military operations that can effectively support an effective political process. The "surge" is, at best, such a military operation. But if the political process isn't effective -- which, by all accounts, it isn't -- then there's nothing there.

Words of Power: Election Fraud As Information Warfare, And A National Security Issue

I have never seen a Republican explanation of this:

Words of Power: Words of Power #22: Election Fraud As Information Warfare, And A National Security Issue: In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent - a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country.(39) "When you look at the numbers, there is a tremendous amount of data that supports the supposition of election fraud," concludes Freeman. "The discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater proportions of African-American communities and higher in states where there were the most Election Day complaints. All these are strong indicators of fraud - and yet this supposition has been utterly ignored by the press and, oddly, by the Democratic Party." The evidence is especially strong in Ohio…. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Was The 2004 Election Stolen?, Rolling Stone, 6-1-06

Counterinsurgency

Frank Hoffman gets really medieval on Edward Luttwak:

Luttwak's Lament (SWJ Blog): Dr. Luttwak’s specious article. Dr. Kilcullen is too much of a gentleman to suggest that someone has not taken their medication.... Dr. Luttwak may long for the gruesome effectiveness of “the Roman model,” but he has badly misdiagnosed the disease and his overemphasis on kinetic solutions reflects poorly on his grasp of history and a bad use of history out of context. The Romans were smart enough to minimize their footprint and maximized local leadership and control over government, taxes, and religion. The benefits or “carrots” of Roman rule were more obvious than its costs, but clearly the “stick” (more accurately the gladius and pilum) was available when necessary. >But to overlook the lessons of Algeria, Vietnam, and various Middle East conflicts is remarkably selective use of history. Now that’s malpractice in my book.... What [the Field Manual] does not do is justify the need to “out terrorize the terrorist” because we recognized that such an approach is utterly incongruous with modern environmental conditions, in particular, a global media presence and an enemy that is facile enough to exploit even the perception of excessive violence to its twisted ends.... >The introductory chapter mentions religious identity and “religious extremism” as a modern day complication. But the manual offers few indications that our Classical approach, the product of the anti-colonial Revolutionary War era remains just as valid without any change. The manual alters its emphasis on non-kinetic factors and its numerous admonitions about violence with the admission that “killing extremists will be necessary.” This does not satisfy the blood lust of Dr. Luttwak apparently...

Mark Kleiman: "Conservative" = "Lying racist"? Who Knew?

Mark Kleiman trashes Ross Douthat and company:

The Reality-Based Community: "Conservative" = "Lying racist"? Who knew?: 1. Professional racist Steve Sailer writes a dishonest, bigoted anti-Obama screed for The American Conservative, in which he grossly misrepresents Obama's Dreams from My Father. 2. Assistant editor Alex Koznetski, having failed to convince his bosses not to print a piece of lying trash, quits The American Conservative in protest. 3. Ross Douthat makes fun of Koznetski:

If you're not at least somewhat conservative, you probably shouldn't go to work for a magazine called, um, The American Conservative. And if you do, you probably shouldn't get all outraged and resign in protest when they turned out to be, um, conservative.

So telling racist lies is a natural and expected part of being, "um, conservative"? (Douthat doesn't challenge Konetzki's careful account of the falsehood of Sailer's review, or Sailer's own solidly racist credentials as a contributor to the VDare website.)

Am I missing something, or did Douthat just imply that "conservative" connotes "lying racist"?

If I were a non-racist, non-lying conservative, I'd be offended. It will be interesting to see if there are any still around.

Remove the "Almost", Jason

Jason Zengerle writes:

The Plank: it seemed like some conservative commentators were almost hoping that the murderer was an Islamic terrorist. He wasn't. But that hasn't stopped some of these conservative commentators from trying to link Cho Seung Hui to Islamic terrorism. Witness Charles Krauthammer's performance last night on Fox News (via The Corner), during which he discussed the pictures Cho sent to NBC:

If you look at that picture, it draws its inspiration from the manifestos, the iconic photographs of the Islamic suicide bombers over the last half-decade in Palestine, in Iraq, and elsewhere. That's what they end up leaving behind, either on al Jazeera or Palestinian TV. And he, it seems as if his inspiration for leaving the message behind in that way, might have been this kind of suicide attack, which, of course, his was.

Or maybe the picture draws its inspiration from a South Korean movie. Or maybe there was no "inspiration" at all for what Cho did--other than his clearly severe mental illness. But I guess it would be unfair to expect Krauthammer--who only was once a practicing psychiatrist--to consider that possibility.

Michael Kinsley bears a very high karmic burden for inflicting Charles Krauthammer on an unsuspecting and innocent America. I'm just sayin'.

Journamalism Watch: Colbert King Sucks Up to Fred Hiatt

Colbert King's farewell memo:

Washington City Paper: The District Line: Colby King's Farewell Memo: A Post editorial stands for something, even when the desired action does not occur. A Post editorial is an expression of the considered opinion and collective wisdom and values of the best minds in the business. It is not the special province of any writer, no matter how prolific or dogmatic he/she may be in his/her views. Allow a Post editorial become the vehicle for the expression of one person's point of view--or a minority of the board's point of view--and the editorial loses its value, even though it might be selected to lead the page. I offer this thought because Fred has assembled a first rate staff--good minds that produce great work when they all contribute to an editorial, even though there may be one writer. Editorials simply must not be used to advance one individual's causes or views. That's what columns are for

So why doesn't he dare say the truth: the work Fred Hiatt's "first rate staff" has produced on Iraq in particular and on the Bush administration more generally has been a disgrace and an embarrassment, harmful to the profession of journalism and to the country.

Dan Froomkin on the Journamalism of Matt Cooper

From Froomkin's White House Watch:

Dan Froomkin - White House Blocks E-Mail Delivery - washingtonpost.com: Cooper's Tale: Former Time reporter Matthew Cooper writes in his new magazine about his own personal travails as a witness in the Scooter Libby case. He evidently sees himself as quite the martyr. (At one point, describing his thinking about the possibility of going to jail to protect sources Libby and Rove, he writes: "I could do the full Mandela.") Cooper describes all sorts of tensions involved in being a celebrity reporter for a corporate behemoth, caught between a special prosecutor and promises of confidentiality to top presidential aides. But he doesn't seem to have been the least bit troubled by his failure to do his job -- if you consider the job of a journalist to inform the public, or at the very least not willfully misinform the public. There is no sense in this piece that Cooper ever felt the urge to report his way out of his bind -- and find some way to tell the public what really happened. By contrast, in this October 2003 story, for instance, his magazine reported: "White House spokesman Scott McClellan said accusations of Rove's peddling information are 'ridiculous.' Says McClellan: 'There is simply no truth to that suggestion.'" Cooper (along with at least two of his fellow contributors to that story) knew that to be an utter falsehood. But they printed it anyway, without any context or -- as far as I know -- any qualms.