It's alarming that our intelligence agencies ignored some early warnings of the possibility of a 9/11 style hijack-suicide attack. But wouldn't it be more alarming if there hadn't been any early warnings that were ignored? (In other words, if nobody in the vast anti-terror bureaucracy had figured out the possibility?) ...  To avoid such a complete failure of imagination, Blogger N.Z. Bear  argues that science fiction writers should be called on to staff a government "dream team" to think of what terrorists might do next. (Better them than some Hollywood hacks!)  Bear notes some promising precedents, offers four novelist names, and calls for further nominees. ...kf's candidate: Thriller writer James (Six Days of the Condor) Grady. ... Update: Alert kf reader S.R. writes:

Why do you need to "staff a government dream team" to tap into the creative intelligence of the country. The Office of Homeland Security should put up a web site with an e-mail link: Send us your terrorist plots. Give a $1000 bounty to anyone who submits a new one, $250 to anyone who suggests a new twist on an old one..

That's thinking outside the box about thinking outside the box! Sounds good to me. ....

Sunday, May 19, 2002

On his  Le Show today, Harry Shearer noted that the David Frum bio on the Web site of NPR station KCRW  (on which Frum regularly appears) boasts:

"David Frum, former economic speech-writer for President George W. Bush, is credited with creating nearly all of the phrase 'axis of evil,' which made headlines and raised political hackles across the world when used in Bush's 2002 State of the Union address."

P.S: This morning's Le Show was a good one, but isn't yet online. ...P.P.S.: Which part of the three-word phrase was Frum not responsible for? Answer: "evil." Frum  had it as "axis of hate."  ... Hey, that means he wrote only 6 of the ten letters. OK, 7 of 10 if you give him credit for the "e" in "hate." ... Studies show that "nearly all" requires at least 8 of ten. ....

Harmonic convergence of misguided populism: Did you know that bad influence  Bob Shrum is behind Robert Reich's campaign  too? .. Shrum is also helping historian Doris Kearns Goodwin rehabilitate herself. ... Maybe if Reich loses his gubernatorial race Shrum can run a campaign to get Reich tenure at Harvard! [It would be easier to get Reich elected governor. Actually, it would be easier to get him elected Miss America--ed. I forgot -- at Harvard they know him].

Saturday, May 18, 2002

The joy of being able to blame others (blamenfreude?): John Ellis has a short, cogent analysis  of why AOL's incoming CEO Richard Parsons must be smiling inside, despite all his company's highly-advertised troubles:

AOL's stock price has hit rock bottom. The worst of the advertising recession has passed. Everything that went wrong is being blamed on someone else. ...The break-up value of just the Time Warner assets now exceeds the market capitalization of the merged entity. Barring scandal, a year from now we will be reading the "Parsons-led AOL Turnaround" story.

Speaking of blame, isn't it strange how all the Los Angeles Times's problems are now being attributed to ex-editor Shelby Coffey? Joel Kotkin's analysis of the Times' problems even uses the term "Coffeyism." But the LAT was an anesthetized, underperforming giant for decades before Coffey showed up. I remember a near-definitive California magazine anti-LAT  piece in the 1980s by Rian Malan. ... The LAT of that period always reminded me of the Land's Endcatalog: The products look like clothes, they're trying to be clothes, they're somebody's idea of what clothes should be --- but there's something off, they're too stiff and square cut, as if the people at Land's End were earnest, clean cut WASPs who decided to build a great clothing company but don't know the shmatte business.... Coffey was supposed to make things better, and I suspect that, overall, he did, despite the PC absurdities of the LAT's riot coverage. ...The LAT's new Chicago owners seem, at least, to know the shmatte business. ....

Friday, May 17, 2002

Hillary and Breaux's Do Si Do: There's been more about welfare reform on The West Wing recently than on kausfiles. That will not stand! ... A good place to start is with Amy Goldstein's WaPo report  on the House passage yesterday of a Republican bill to renew the big 1996 reform law (which expires this year). Goldstein says that the Democrats' alternative bill, which lost in a close vote, would have "expanded the education and job training that people on welfare could get." That's a highly tendentious, misleading description of what's at stake The issue isn't whether people on welfare can get training. Under either bill, as under the current law, welfare recipients can get all the training the states want to give them. The question is whether training can be a reason (or, more tendentiously, an excuse) for not working -- specifially whether more training and education courses can substitute for a minimum amount (24 hours a week) of work, or must come on top of thatpart-time work. ... The House Democrats' version of reform -- saying it's OK not to work for years if you're in some sort of vocational training program -- was tried before 1996. It flopped. Training and education courses became a swamp of delay -- a way, not to prepare for the labor market, but to avoid the labor market, much the same way graduate school was a way to avoid the Vietnam draft. It was only when Congress in 1996 abandoned the "train first" approach and required some actual work -- specifically refusing to count most training courses as "work" -- that reform produced results. ... It stands to reason that if people know they have to work anyway they'll take more seriously the training that can get them better pay for their labor. ...

P.S.: It's disconcerting enough that, in the Senate, Hillary Clinton signed on to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council version of reform, which is relatively tough on this "training vs. work" issue. (My fellow HRC-bashers can debate whether this makes her less objectionable or more insidiously cunning. But it works for me! And it really pissed off the NYT.) More bizarre is the behavior of erstwhile centrist Democrat, Sen. John Breaux.  Breaux was a pro-reform stalwart in the legislative fight of 1996, but now he's signed on to the more wimpy, training-oriented "bipartisan" Senate Finance Committee bill. In the NYT today we find Breaux whining like Marian Wright Edelman about how (in Robert Pear's paraphrase) the House bill "would force poor women to seek jobs with no assurance of child care." What's happened to him? ... [Is there enough money for child care?--ed. The states get the same amount of money they got when caseloads were twice as big, so there should be. If it's not enough, more can be added. That's just not a reason to make a big stink about the House GOP bill, and the old Breaux wouldn't have done it. It's possible, though, that Pear added some special spin to Breaux's words.]

Update--E.J.'s non-apology apology: WaPo columnist and 1996 welfare reform foe E.J. Dionne does the minimum necessary mea culpa, noting that he turns out to have been mistaken  when he predicted disaster back in '96, admitting that the "race to the bottom" he predicted never materialized and that the law has worked out pretty well. ... But then he says "I do not regret opposing the 1996 welfare bill," apparently on the grounds that even though he was completely wrong the bill could have been more generous to the working poor. ... Huh? What about the "sharp increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit" Dionne boasts about in this very column? Just because Congress raised the EITC a few years before it reformed welfare doesn't mean the two weren't seen -- and explicitly touted, by Bill Clinton --as part of a carrot-and-stick package to "make work pay" and require work. ... With the necessary faux-self-critical formalities over with, Dionne gets back to spouting the current paleoliberal party line, pushing training over "make-work" as if he'd never heard of the WPA, Franklin Roosevelt's highly successful "make-work" program. ... Why is cleaning up parks "make-work"? It's real work. It cleans up the parks! But it also threatens municipal employee unions,who are paid much higher wages to do things like clean up parks. Municipal unions (and equally-threatened construction unions) are a big Democratic constituency. So modern Democrats have perversely come to oppose FDR's solution. ... (Actually, unions opposed the WPA in FDR's time as well. Roosevelt even had to break a strike.) ....

Thursday, May 16, 2002

"Squabbling in G.O.P. Delays Welfare Vote" -- that's the hed on a front-page teaser in today's NYT. Why do I think that if Democrats were disagreeing it would be a "dispute," not a "squabble"? ... Let's go to NEXIS! Over the last 5 years in the NYT, the "GOP" and various permutations of "Republican" have been squabbling 8 times, while words made from "Democrat" and "squabbling" have been paired a mere 5 times. (Not counting Eastern European elections.) Meanwhile, conservatives have been "squabbling" once while "liberals" were "squabbling" not at all. ... It's bias I tell you!  ...(Now that's what we bloggers call reporting! Actually, the evidence is less convincing than expected. But NEXIS searches the entire text. It's the headlines --traditionally written quickly by editors, not reporters -- that are the real NYT Rorschach test.) ....

Wednesday, May 15, 2002

It's perfectly justifiable for CBS  to show some non-gruesome footage of the Daniel Pearl videotape so that, as Dan Rather put it, "you can see and judge for yourself the kind of propaganda terrorists are using in their war against the United States." But stories about "the kind of propaganda terrorists are using in their war against the United States" usually run about fifteen minutes into the news. They aren't the lede story. The only reason for making Pearl the lede was the sensational,  they're-not-going-to-show-that, ratings-gettingtease of the video . ... And Rather had been so well-behaved lately! ... P.S.: This is the third time I've linked, or wanted to link, to a Howie Kurtz story this week. Why's he so hot? Is it because he doesn't have a money-making hack side book project to distract him? ....

15 Minute Man: The University of Las Vegas pays Mass. governor candidate Robert Reich at a rate of $80,000 an hour to speak, and he only talks for 15 minutes! ... Reich also blew off a debate on "women's issues" at the University of Massachusetts in order to give a speech on "Getting Away with Greed" ...sorry, make that "Workforce in Transition" at accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers. ... The real scandal here, of course, is that Reich's seemingly obsessive buckraking is just a convenient cover story that lets him avoid deadly campaign events like debates on women's issues at the University of Massachusetts. If he's going to be governor, at least he should suffer. ....

Balkanization Watch;  The City of Chicago wants its road workers and construction crews to "mirror the racial makeup of the neighborhoods they're working in," reports the Chicago Sun Times. This is not affirmative action, which might require the city to employ more blacks in its construction work force. This is asking contractors to send white workers to white neighborhoods and black workers to black neighborhoods. The right word, I think, is segregation.... [Thanks to alert kf reader A.E.].

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

Having read Howie Kurtz's coverage, I'd say Andrew Sullivan is rather decisively winning his PR battle with Howell Raines. Sullivan, you'll remember, charges he's been banned from the pages of Raines' me-zine, the New York Times. It's hard to know exactly what Raines did, since the Times isn't talking. Nor is it clear why he did what he did if he did what we think he did. In the absence of anything from Raines, though, it's being assumed, by Kurtz and others, that Raines reacted against Sullivan's Webbish criticism of the Times. So Raines looks petty and vindictive, while Sullivan gets paeans to his "silky prose." (Grrr.) ... Remember how General Motors made Ralph Nader through its hamhanded efforts to get at him? Raines is creating a monster! ... Could Raines have a case? Until he deigns to defend himself, it's hard to say for sure, but I can't think of a reason to ban Sullivan. Over at the American Prospect, where they deeply believe in not biting the hand that feeds them, they seem to feel Raines was justified because Sullivan took "cheap shots" at the Times. Jeez, if you can get banned for taking a cheap shots, we're all in trouble! More to the point, while I can think of plenty of criticisms of Sullivan's writing, is it a good precedent to bar someone from your pages because you don't like something he's written somewhere else? Don't publish anything by him that isn't good, sure. But what if he submits something that is good (as Sullivan obviously often did)? Unless a writer has a reputation for dishonesty, a blanket ban seems hard to defend. ... Bloggishly personal point: The Prospect says my explanation for the ban is that "Howell Raines is obsessed with control." Did I write that? I didn't write that. Again, I don't know why Raines might have banned Sullivan..There are so many possible explanations -- including a) personal ego; b) institutional ego; c) politics d) Sullivan's bashing of Krugman; e) Sullivan's dissing of Dowd; f) perceived journalistic shortcomings; g) that barebackin' business -- that it's overdetermined, as the academics say. My point was only that Sullivan's charge that Raines blackballed him is plausible because it's the sort of thing Raines does. Whether or not Raines is "obsessed" with control, he in fact exercises it.. ... [And I suppose you'd bite the hand?--ed.  A few months ago I predicted that Microsoft's introduction of Windows XP would spark the nation's economic recovery because, unlike its predecessors, XP "won't crash." Having now purchased a Windows XP computer, I can say I was wrong, not about the recovery but about XP, at least as evidenced by my machine. It crashes all the time! It crashed, in fact, while I was writing this item. ... How's that?]

Kohut buries the lede: Pew polltaker Andrew Kohut's otherwise unsurprising NYT op-ed  on Americans' Mideast views contained this startling stat:

Among secular Democrats, a much smaller group [than white, evangelical Republicans], 28 percent sympathized with the Palestinians and 26 percent with the Israelis.

Can this be right? Applying kausfiles'  First Rule of Journalism (always generalize from your personal experience) I note the I'm a secular Democrat. Many of my friends are secular Democrats. And I don't think any of them would have told a pollster, since the suicide bombings began, that they "sympathized with the Palestinians" over the Israelis, even if they supported Palestinian's long-term aspirations to statehood. ... Keep in mind, the result for all those polled (in the Post-ABC survey Kohut seems to be talking about) was 49-14 in favor of Israel. ... There must be something funny in how "secular Democrat" is defined. How does one get admitted to this club? Do you have to actively check off a box labeled "secular"? Are you denied "secular" status if you ever set foot in a church or synagogue? ... Either the Post-ABC  poll is screwed up, or advocates for the Palestinians have been more successful than anyone thought. One Zogby or another has reason to be happy. But which one? ... Update: Alert kf reader DB correctly notes that Kohut was referring to the Gallup Poll, not the ABC-Post poll. Same difference -- Gallup found a 47-13  result in favor of Israel among all those polled on the "sympathies" question. Why would "secular Democrats" be so out of step? ... Blogback: Josh Marshall delicately suggests  my friends are disproportionately Jewish. Well, yes. So who are all those other "secular Democrats"? ... Glenn Reynolds says he was a non-Jewish secular Democrat, but he stopped in 1993. So it's not him. ...

Monday, May 13, 2002

The paleoliberal magazine The American Prospect, lavishly funded by the Bill Moyers-led Schumann foundation, was described in a previous item as "troubled." It turns out I accidentally understated the case. The Prospect, I've learned, is way more than "troubled" financially. It seems that a businessman placed by Moyers on the Prospect board, Michael Johnston, actually looked at the Prospect's books and, unlike Enron's accountants, sounded the alarm. The resulting financial crisis has insiders speculating that TAP might revert to bi-monthly or quarterly status, or even become a Hotline-like newsletter plus a Web site  (Note to Moyers: Keep the blog!) .… Prospect managers have now decided to ask/beg Schumann to simply continue giving TAP money to maintain it as a biweekly.  Fellow TAP-bashers might want to pay close attention to the next Schumann board meeting, on June 13^th.  … How is TAP like Vietnam? Why would Schumann keep sluicing money down the Prospect-hole, with no end in sight? Moyers' foundation may in fact have considered pulling the plug on TAP. But the magazine is now so associated with Schumann -- and with Moyers -- that they would be publicly humiliated if it suddenly collapsed or shriveled up (after they'd poured in many millions and reaffirmed their confidence in its leadership). They can't just pull out! They need to prop it up for a decent interval, Kissinger-style … Note to executive editor Harold Meyerson: This has been going on for weeks. Don't you think you should have been, like, told? … How is TAPlike Ishtar? As for the Prospect's hope of being saved by a Hollywood celebrity – well, kausfiles has been talking to its extensive Tinseltown network, and wonders: Why would a cautious, publicity-conscious star like, say, Warren Beatty want to get involved in such a potential disaster? …
.......
Cuomo's sin: The N.Y. Times recently published a three-part series  on neglect in N.Y. state's homes for mentally ill adults. (No, I couldn't bring myself to read it either!) In response, Andrew Cuomo, running for N.Y. governor, called for the resignation  of the official whose department oversees the homes, state health commissioner Dr. Antonia Novello. For this, Cuomo was immediately denounced by four Hispanic lawmakers. Their only argument appears to be that Novello is a Latina, and therefore shouldn't be criticized. Sample quote: "As a Puerto Rican woman, how can I ask my constituents to vote for a candidate who is denigrating us?" --Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo, who also said Cuomo was "offending the Hispanic community." Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez demanded that Cuomo apologize ... The whole episode appears to be playing as a Cuomo gaffe: "Cuomo Again Tongue-Fried," said the N.Y, Daily News hed, which was gleefully linked on Lucianne.com. ... But shouldn't Lucianne's conservative "L-dotters" be the first to recognize a completely bogus identity-politics ambush when they see it? I'm not a Cuomo admirer (he seems an opportunistic thug), but if you can't call for your opponent's aide to resign after an unreadably long newspaper series alleging their negligence, what's politics coming to? ...P.S.: Is the press out to embarrass Cuomo because they dislike him too? If he's anything like his father, he'll make a great, thin-skinned target..... P.P.S.: During her tenure as U.S. Surgeon General (succeeding C. Everett Koop) Dr. Novello was known as an excellent palm reader! ...

But note he didn't rule it out! Queried by Howie Kurtz, John McCain may have said the magic words that would preclude him from seeking the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination (as both the Washington Monthly and New Republic  have fantasized.) What were those words? "I'm for school vouchers." ... Update: But McCain adviser and press favorite John Weaver has officially gone to work for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, reports Roll Call[subscription required]. ...

The old Ovitz has sputtered out. A new Ovitz must be created, a process not unlike the formation of a new universe  (with the press playing the role of the ominous-yet-life-giving "dark matter" brane). ...Think that analogy is strained? So is the NYT's comparison of  talent manager Jeff Kwatinetz with Ovitz in his prime. Why do "some see a young Ovitz" in Kwatinetz? Well, according to the billboard quote from Jay Cooper, "an entertainment lawyer," both men have strong personalities! And "if Jeff does similiar things -- and I don't know here if he will or not -- he could struggle with the same issues." Wow! How do Laura Holson and Bernard Weinraub get people to say those things? And if Kwatinetz became a champion golfer he could struggle with the same issues as Tiger Woods! If he made two bad movies in a row he could struggle with the same issues as George Lucas! If he became an L.A. showbiz reporter desperate to please his out-of-it East Coast editors ...