Dems rally against unions!

Dems rally against unions!

Dems rally against unions!

A mostly political Weblog.
Aug. 24 2008 8:52 PM

Dems Rally Against Unions!

OK, teachers' unions. Still ...

T hings We Thought We'd Never See: Democrats Rally Against the Teachers' Unions! I went to the Ed Challenge for Change event  mainly to schmooze. I almost didn't stay for the panels, being in no mood for what I expected would, even among these reformers, be an hour of vague EdBlob talk about "change" and "accountability" and "resources" that would tactfully ignore the elephant in the room, namely the teachers' unions. I was so wrong. One panelist--I think it was Peter Groff, president of the Colorado State Senate, got the ball rolling by complaining that when the children's agenda meets the adult agenda, the "adult agenda wins too often." Then Cory Booker of Newark attacked teachers unions specifically--and there was applause. In a room of 500 people at the Democratic convention! "The politics are so vicious," Booker complained, remembering how he'd been told his political career would be over if he kept pushing school choice, how early on he'd gotten help from Republicans rather than from Democrats. The party would  "have to admit as Democrats we have been wrong on education." Loud applause! Mayor Adrian Fenty of D.C. joined in, describing the AFT's attempt to block the proposed pathbreaking D.C. teacher contract. Booker denounced "insane work rules," and Groff talked about doing the bidding of "those folks who are giving money [for campaigns], and you know who I'm talking about." Yes, they did!

As Jon Alter, moderating the next panel, noted, it was hard to imagine this event happening at the previous Democratic conventions. (If it had there would have been maybe 15 people in the room, not 500.) Alter called it a "landmark" future historians should note. Maybe he was right.

P.S.: My favorite moment didn't concern the unions. It came when NYC schools chief Joel Klein called for a single national testing standard. Groff, a crowd favorite, made the conventional local elected officials' objection that you need flexibiity, one size doesn't fit all, "what works" in County X might not work in County Y. And he was booed! Loudly. By Democratic education wonks. Wow. (The "one size" argument cropped up in the welfare reform debate too--and I assume it's just as bogus in the education debate. We're a national economy with cities that look more or less alike. What works in County X is almost certainly also going to work in County Y.)

P.P.S.: John Wilson, head of the NEA itself, was also there. Afterwards, he seemed a bit stunned. He argued pols should work with unions, in pursuit of a "shared vision," not bash them. But isn't this a power struggle where you have to bash the other side to get leverage, I asked. "Then you have losers," he answered.

P.P.P.S.: Mickey's Assignment Desk: Has someone done the trend piece on all these smart, young, powerful bald,** black state and local elected officials--e.g., Fenty, Booker, Groff, Nutter--who are taking on their unions? You'd need a name. Hair Club for Men is already taken. Domeboys? ...

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**--Nutter has a bit of hair on the sides. Maybe Groff too. Close enough for a trend. 5:12 P.M. link

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Here's that Biden clip, right on cue. ... Biden clearly sizes up "Frank," who asks him where he went to law school and where he ranked in his class, as a silly credentialist snob. It's hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy with the Senator there. But again, what killed Biden about this clip wasn't his anger, or even the uncomfortable "IQ" crack (followed by the trademark uncomfortable teeth-baring smile).  It was that Biden's insecure academic boasts were almost all bogus.**It certainly wasn't a Kinsley Gaffe. ... [Tks to reader J.]

**--Another class action suit! ... 2:23 A.M.

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Road Trip Report: 1) Things you don't want to hear from behind the counter as you buy a cup of coffee in Richfield, Utah: "You know, I think that water's cleared up enough it might be all right now." 2) Best part of trip: Spotted Wolf. 3) Worst part of trip: Worries about automated speeding-ticket cameras after horror stories from gas station night clerk; 4) What is probably a famous traffic warning (on the I-70 slope going into Denver):

TRUCKERS ARE NOT DOWN YET

It must be the hats. ...

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Update: Several emailers say the sign reads "TRUCKERS YOU ARE NOT DOWN YET." Same joke! ... P.S.: None of these is the sign I remember seeing. But I was going fast. ... 1:19 A.M.

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Is David Brooks trying to sabotage Barack Obama? I think so. Discussing Obama on NPR Friday:

He's gotta tie himself to a theme that runs through everything. And the theme that's authentic to him is: He is the future. He is the kind of person who emerges in a global world. And that's what I'm looking for at the convention, whether he can do that. [E.A.]

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Suggested slogan: "America is Over! Deal With It." ...  Brooks must know this is incredibly bad advice. Even Gore Vidal would recognize that this is incredibly bad advice. Heck, even Susan Estrich ... 12:20 A..M.

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Biden: Maybe when I get to Denver I'll find someone who'll explain to me why Biden is an inspired choice. He doesn't have gravitas. He has seniority. We've been waiting for him to mature for decades. Only Chuck Hagel (his chief competitor as Sunday morning gasbag) could make him look wise. ... Virtues: He's likable. ... I'm thinking. ... 11:19 A.M. link

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MoveOn, NeverMind: "MoveOn now calls their being listed [alongside AT&T and PG&E] as a sponsor 'a mistake' (they're apparently sponsoring an event at the same time), and swears they're going to get their name taken off the publicity for the event." [E.A.] ... Here's the poster  with MoveOn proudly listed. ...[Tks to reader J.]  ... Democratic Social Equality Watch: A bigger question is why any left-wing, or Democratic organization should sponsor an event with one "general" concert for the masses and a second, separate "invitation only" concert (with "VIP acts") for the elite. ... Subtle! ... The "general" bill looks better, though. ... 12:36 P.M.

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Warren Buffett on John Edwards--Sue! Buffett on CNBC this morning  [emphasis added]:

QUICK: You know, one of the things that the nation is watching is next week, the first of the conventions kicks off, the Democratic National Convention. Originally, John Edwards was expected to be speaking at that convention, but after some revelations and a spectacular fall about--some revelations about his private life, he will no longer be speaking at the convention. Warren, you're somebody who has been supporting Barack Obama. Did you ever give money to John Edwards along the way?

BUFFETT: No, I didn't--I didn't give money to John Edwards. And, in fact, I think if I'd given money to him, I'd probably be asking for it back now. It's an interesting situation because John Edwards essentially was soliciting money from people to further his ambitions for the presidency, and, you know, people sent him 50, $100, $200, and I would say that they sent it in while they were being misled by the person who was soliciting the money from them. And, you know, I think if I were Edwards, I might give up a haircut or two and refund at least, you know, the people that gave the 50 or $100, $200 items, because they-- if they had known the facts, they wouldn't have sent him the money, and he is the guy that didn't give them the facts. I mean, he knew that, in effect, he wouldn't be elected president. I mean, the story was out there during the campaign. He denied it, but it was out there. And, in fact, I've never heard of it, but it might be kind of interesting if somebody, some contributor, would bring a class-action suit on behalf of all these people who essentially were led to send money to a man under totally false circumstances, false pretenses, and where he knew it and didn't tell them the truth.

QUICK: Hm, that'd be ironic for a trial lawyer...

BUFFETT: Yeah.

QUICK: ...to have a class-action lawsuit brought against him.

BUFFETT: I've seen a lot of class-action suits with less to it than this particular case. The facts are clear. I mean, he solicited money and he wasn't telling the truth to the people he was soliciting it from.

QUICK: How--have you had any discussions? I mean, obviously, you talked to a lot of people who are high ranked in the Democratic Party. Is that something that's been thrown around out there, or did you cook this up yourself?

BUFFETT: No, I don't think--I don't think I've heard of that. The--I don't talk to a lot of class-action lawyers, but I really think--I think those people were defrauded. They sent money under--with the person who was soliciting the money from them misinforming them even when the National Enquirer came out with it during his campaign,he kept soliciting money and saying it isn't true. I would think that they--it might be a pretty good class-action suit.

QUICK: Even to this day, he says that he--they had 99 percent of it wrong, even in the most recent interview John Edwards came up with, although he admits that he did have an affair with a woman.

BUFFETT: Well, he would have a chance at a class-action suit to respond to that.

Heh! ... I would think this would be a difficult precedent to contain--can donors sue McCain because he didn't, in fact, get "the message" from the defeat of his immigration semi-amnesty bill--and he knew it? Maybe businesses have to live with this sort of uncertain class-action threat when they dissemble. Politicians will never stand for it. ... 12:32 P.M. link

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Sometimes you can look at the numbers, and doom stares you in the face. ... [snip] ... By the summer of 1988, the country had turned from believing we were on the wrong track to thinking we were on the right track. They thought my candidate, Governor Dukakis, was more conservative than he actually was — that's what beating Jesse Jackson every Tuesday will do for you.

Dukakis' campaign manager may be the only person in America who thinks he lost because he was seen as "more conservative than he actually was." ... [Tks to Z] ... Update: Emailer F suggests I'm misunderstanding Estrich:

She isn't saying people ultimately voted against Dukakis because he was too conservative.  She's saying that he initially was leading in the polls because people perceived him to be more conservative than he was.  When his ideological underpinnings became more apparent they turned against him.

That's not my reading of her column. In the very next sentence Estrich says, "By the fall, it was clear: right or wrong, they didn't like him." Would they be "wrong" if they came to correctly perceive that he was more liberal than they previously thought? Or is Estrich saying they persisted in their misperception of him? I think the latter. But "F" could be right. ... 11:34 A.M.

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Don't tell Thomas Frank: MoveOn.org, AT&T and PG&E, together again. (But it looks like quite a bill.) [Tks to reader J.]12:12 P.M.

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Why Biden Would Be Bad: There's a  bit of C-SPAN tape that should surface quickly if he's named. ... Remember, it wasn't Biden's plagiarism that knocked him out of the 1988 race. It was "'I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do''--a bizarre videotaped putdown that Biden immediately called into question with five (5) boasts about his academic record, four (4) of which turned out to be easily disproved B.S. ... [you got a better candidate?--ed Zinni! ] ...  [via Brothers Judd ] 1:16 A.M.

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The Cruelty of Feiler: Comedian Bernie Mac died on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago. The following Monday, someone at the regular Slate editorial meeting--maybe me-- proposed a piece on him. The immediate, unamimous response: "Too late."  Brutal! Work all your life, become a beloved public figure, go into syndication, then die tragically young--and you get, what, a day? ...

Screw that. Mary Battiata, an accidental fan of the Bernie Mac Show, explains its peculiar genius on Huffington Post.  ... 12:44 A.M.

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WaPo story on Fannie Mae  suggests 1) Paul Krugman was still at least deceptive  when he glibly asserted the giant government-chartered company had "nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago" ** and 2) government regulations, which Krugman and others say prevented Fannie & Freddie Mac from taking on too much risk may also have been at least partly to blame for the risky subprime-loan-backed securities they did purchase:

Internal documents show that even late in the housing bubble, Fannie Mae was drawn to risky loans by a variety of temptations, including the desire to increase its market share and fulfill government quotas for the support of low-income borrowers. [E.A.]

[via NewsAlert]

**--Krugman might claim that 2006 and 2007, the years examined by WaPo, weren't "a few years ago." But most readers of his column would have missed that vague lawyerly qualifier. And Calculated Risk makes clear Fannie had quite a bit to do with fostering the subprime market before then, presumably also in pursuit of its "low-income borrower" goals. ...  3:21 A.M.

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BLOCKBUSTER! Rielle Hunter Holding Angelina Jolie's Baby? New Enquirer photo of Rielle Hunter and her child: 1) Distinctive-looking little girl; 2) Love lips! 3) But not the only baby who's got 'em! 4) More than arguably similar to the blurry baby Edwards is holding in the Enquirer's earlier "spy" photo.  ... 2:54 A.M.

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Sometimes it takes a while: Dick Morris says Obama should be "nominated by acclimation." So true. ...  7:18 P.M.

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Mary Ann Akers reports that "as recently as last week" John Edwards was expressing interest in attending a Denver event.

 [W]e were told by well-placed sources who asked to remain anonymous that Edwards did, indeed, express interest to One Campaign officials just last week in playing a role in Denver, where the former North Carolina senator is most certainly not welcome by party officials. (His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, is no longer scheduled to speak at the convention.)

Edwards aide Jonathan Prince now says, "Unequivocally, he is not going to Denver." ... 12:40 P.M.

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Monday, August 18, 2008

On to Denver! When it comes to rounding up John Edwards news and links, I can't hope to compete with Deceiver. ... See esp. Lee Stranahan's informed speculations about future developments in the story, which now looks like it will run right into the Democratic convention. Obama's aides are probably not pleased. ... Howie Kurtz  congratulates himself again: "I had a strong feeling last weekend when John Edwards finally acknowledged having an extramarital affair that we hadn't heard the end of this thing." Is Kurtz is the new Daniel Patrick Moynihan, able to react to any development by praising his own previous thoughts? (Even though Bill Wyman vainly pleaded, back before Edwards' semi-confession, "Howie Kurtz ...Only you can investigate why you haven't written this story.") ...

P.S.: Deceiver missed journalist Ann Louise Bardach's defense of her former tenant, Rielle Hunter, in the Santa Barbara Independent:

For two years, she rented digs from investigative reporter Ann Louise Bardach and her actor husband Bobby Lesser (Carpinteria residents) in Los Angeles, and they insist Hunter is not the Venus flytrap as portrayed on TV. They describe Hunter as smart, funny, and underneath that extravagantly New Age exterior, tough as nails and hard as rock.

P.P.S.: David Usborne asks: "Just days before the start of the Democratic convention in Denver, which will culminate in the crowning of Barack Obama, are we, in fact, seeing the early outlines of a first-rate political cover-up?" Only if Watergate was a first-rate burglary. ... 11:30 P.M.

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Last October, John Edwards phoned his local North Carolina paper's editorlied and played the cancer card in the attempt to prevent the paper from printing even his public denial of the Enquirer's original "affair" story. The only reason it can't be said the lie worked is that the paper had already wimped out, according to the editor, John Drescher. ...  P.S.: The story of the Edwards Coverup, which has only begun to trickle out, is certainly providing a useful civic education in how powerful pols actually go about attempting to influence the MSM. It's one of those situations where unsophisticated people probably think the candidate himself calls the top editor directly to baldly influence coverage, while more sophisticated people know there are institutional procedures in place to protect against that sort of crude personal lobbying. Meanwhile, the really sophisticated people know the candidate himself calls the top editor directly to baldly influence coverage. ... P.P.S.: Whom else did Edwards--or maybe Elizabeth--call? ... [via Corner via Insta ] Update: How the competing Charlotte Observer ate Drescher's lunch while his paper (The News & Observer) was demonstrating "'the restraint that has marked The N&O 'sresponsible approach to the story.'" [via Deceiver] ... 2:35 P.M.

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Once again an editor shies away from a discordant aspect of the Edwards scandal, namely the role of Elizabeth Edwards:

"Stop, stop. I don't want to go there. I do not like it, [the editor] said to a reporter's suggestion about the Elizabeth Edwards angle. "She's been hurt, she's lashed out."

Maybe the Enquirer will show up the MSM covering this angle too! Except that the editor who doesn't "want to go there" is the editor of the Enquirer. ... 1:45 A.M.

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Saturday, August 16, 2008

Obama/Kerry: The All-Snob Ticket! We're prepared. ... 2:24 P.M.

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The Unraveling--Andrew Young's Mom Isn't Buying Story #2! The mother of Andrew Young, the John Edwards aide who has claimed paternity of Rielle Hunter's daughter, makes it clear to the New York Post that she isn't buying  that story.

Jacquelyn Aldridge made clear she deeply doubts her married son--Edwards campaign official Andrew Young---cheated on his beautiful wife and impregnated Edwards' paramour, Rielle Hunter, last year. ... [snip]

Asked if she believes two-time Democratic presidential contender Edwards, 55, is the real father, Aldridge declined to answer.

"I'm not supposed to talk," said the North Carolina woman.

Time to whisk her out of the country! ... Meanwhile, MSM reporters--having deemed it unnecessary to report  on whether a leading, active Democratic pol, third-place presidential candidate and likely cabinet official cheated on his ill wife while making a big show of his loyalty and then lied about it to the public --have found an angle sufficiently tedious to be worth discussing with their readers: a possible campaign finance violation! Why does that prospect  produce sudden investigative lust? Because government investigations of campaign finance violations can last years, involving lots of lawyers and government investigators who can then leak the fruits of their subpoena power to reporters in time to let everyone make it home for their kids' soccer game. And not even the Columbia Journalism Review will object. ... Unfortunately, as difficult as it is to not break some campaign finance law, the payments from Edwards's PAC to Rielle Hunter's film company may actually have been legal, according to the WSJ. .. 11:42 A.M.

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Thursday, August 14, 2008

U.S. Senator Susan Collins of Maine isn't buying Story #2. ... [Tks. to D.B.3:29 P.M.

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Former Edwards Senate campaign manager Gary Pearce isn't buying Story #2. ... 1:09 P.M.

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How big a victim is Elizabeth Edwards? A decision tree:  Did John Edwards

A) finally come clean in his Friday evening Nightline interview! ... or

B) choose, when caught out in a lie, to recklessly erect a second edifice of BS regarding at least 1) whether this was his only affair; 2) when this affair started; 3) when it ended; 4) whether it was going on in mid-2007 when Rielle Hunter's child was conceived; 5) whether he thinks he might be the father; 6) whether he actually wants a paternity test; 7) why he visited Hunter at the Beverly Hilton; 8) whether he knew and/or tacitly approved of payments to Hunter and putative father Andrew Young. ...

If you opt for B--perhaps citing this, or this--you face a second, more interesting speculation: Why did Edwards tell his new lies? Were they

i) the same lies he told his wife, Elizabeth--that the affair ended in 2006, etc.--so the Nightline's Story #2 was really an attempt to save his marriage now that his political career is over or

ii) lies designed more to preserve the possibility of a political comeback some time in the future by admitting only to a "short" affair, before his wife's cancer recurred, that did not involve any questionable campaign practices (such as using contributions to give your mistress a job that allows her to travel with you)?

It's not surprising that People magazine's new cover story  portrays Elizabeth Edwards as the anguished victim motivated by "her determination to keep her family together." People is basicaly working from script (A), the one John Edwards undoubtedly wanted the MSM to work from when he prepared for Nightline. The Excruciating Anguish of Elizabeth (who "pushed her husband to finally come clean") would be a logical part of that PR strategy whether or not Edwards was telling the truth to Bob Woodruff.

What's surprising is that the non-MSM National Enquirer, which is decidedly not working from script (A)--it's out to puncture Edwards' Story #2-- also portrays Elizabeth as the victim. "He is still lying to America and his wife." the tab says. The Enquirer opts for B (i).

Let me raise the alternative, third possibility contained in B(ii): there is a Second Coverup and Elizabeth Edwards, rather than being its victim, is in on it up to her eyeballs! ** Why do I think this is a real possibility? First, Elizabeth was in on the first coverup, allowing her husband to go out and deny the initial Enquirer reports of his affair. (He admits to Woodruff that she knew these denials were false,) Second, she might see her legacy as bound up with her husband's--and also want her children to have a father with a political future.*** Third,  Elizabeth Edwards is famously smart, and a lawyer. Does still she really think the Enquirer is just making up the part about how Edwards' affair with Hunter restarted around the time Hunter got pregnant? Does she think her husband knew nothing about the payments?

She can't possibly be as dumb as People thinks its readers are. ...

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**--She could still be anguished!

***--I deny the Second Coverup would be designed to avoid having her children's father humiliated. If he'd actually came clean, in this scenario, it would more decisively kill his political career but arguably be less humiliating than being caught out in a second set of lies, which is what will probably happen now. Rather, the Second Coverup risked this extra double-humiliation for the sake of political survival (i.e., being able to later say "all I did was have a brief affair"). ... 2:39 A.M. link

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Kos--- characteristically gracious! ... 12:51 A.M.

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Andrew Young--paternity-claimer and ... real estate genius? [8/14 Note: See semi-major update/correction at that link] ... 12:50 A.M.

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Walter Shapiro wonders how he got taken in by the Edwardses. ... 12:06 A.M.

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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Story #2--The Unraveling: In John Edwards' I-will-have-nothing-more-to-say statement, he declared:

With my family, I took responsibility for my actions in 2006 and today I take full responsibility publicly. But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then. [E.A.]

Shockingly, this statement may be roughly accurate (except maybe for the "short" part!). But it helps to place a Clintonian emphasis on the year, 2006. "It ended then." The trouble is it started up again a while later, according to the newly credible National Enquirer.

After Edwards confessed the affair to his wife, he restarted it, and was sexually involved with Rielle when she became pregnant

Oh, you mean that misconduct. ... Hey, he didn't say he took responsibility for his actions in 2007. ... 12:43 P.M.

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Ruth Marcus isn't buying Story #2. ... 12:05 A.M.

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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Katha Pollitt and Cal Thomas  aren't buying Story #2. ... They found each other through Friend Finder! ... 9:00 P.M.

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Bob Franken isn't buying Story #2. ... 12:21 P.M.

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Monday, August 11, 2008

Andrea Mitchell isn't buying Story #2. ... 10:19 P.M.

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Edwards: "This was in 2006": Here's a photo  of Rielle Hunter flying around on the campaign plane with Edwards on December 29, 2006--perilously close to, you know, 2007. ... 10:12 P.M.

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Was Narcissus Kurtzistic? Howie Kurtz actually ends his WaPo piece--on the embarrassing failure of his paper and others to cover the Edwards scandal until Edwards himself confessed--on a note of self-congratulation:

Early last year, I wrote a column about the behind-the-scenes video that Hunter produced for Edwards's presidential run, a self-absorbed episode in which he said he would campaign "based on who I really am, not based on some plastic Ken doll." After watching the smooth-talking candidate preen for the camera, I questioned whether he was engaged in "carefully choreographed candor." I didn't know how right I was. [E.A.]

P.S.: Doe he know how wrong he is in his mis-potted history of recent sex scandals?

I don't think the party favoritism charge holds up. Yes, the media went hard after two Republican senators, Larry Craig (who pleaded guilty in that bathroom incident) and David Vitter (who admitted calling an escort service). But they also pounced on New York's Democratic then-governor, Eliot Spitzer (whose taste in prostitutes was revealed by the New York Times), and, famously, Bill Clinton (whose Monica Lewinsky mess was disclosed by The Post and hotly pursued by Newsweek). [E.A.]

And here I'd thought Michael Isikoff's original Lewinsky story was withheld by Newsweek--making it an odd data point for someone arguing that the mainstream media "pounced" on a Democrat. ... The Lewinsky scandal took off only after Matt Drudge reported that Isikoff's story wasn't being published. ... [Thanks to emailers M.G. and G.R.12:45 P.M.

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Would it really hurt Obama if John Edwards went to Denver? The more he publicly defends himself, the more honest and upright he makes Obama look by comparison. And the smarter he makes Democratic primary voters look. ... 1:16 A.M.

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USA Today isn't buying Story #2  ... 12:40 A.M.

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John Tabin makes a good point about Rielle Hunter's refusal to allow a paternity test:

[Hunter's] response -- invoking her and her daughter's privacy -- is a little odd if she expects the test to come up negative. How much of an invasion of privacy is it to prove that someone isn't your child's father -- especially when you've already made public assertions about the child's paternity on the record?

Come to think of it, the statement put out by Hunter's lawyer, for all it's talking-point thoroughness, must have accidentally left out this sentence: "A paternity test is clearly unnecessary because I already know that the father of my child is Andrew Young." ... 12:27 A.M.

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Sunday, August 10, 2008

Edwards declares "it's not possible that [Rielle Hunter's] child could be mine,"  adding that he's "happy" to take a paternity test and "truly hopeful that a test will be done." The next day Rielle Hunter's lawyer says "Rielle will not participate in DNA testing."

Are you buying this? For one thing, if Edwards is really certain he isn't the father of the kid, wouldn't he have demanded a paternity test to clear his name, not just indicated his hope for a test? ... Too late to change the tone now! ...

P.S.-Story #2 is Elizabeth's too: Note also that it's not just John Edwards denying his paternity, it's his wife Elizabeth. In her Kos post  she writes:

Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private.  [E.A.]

Shouldn't she be demanding a paternity test? ... If Story #2 unravels and turns into Coverup #2, will it have been a coverup of which Elizabeth has now been an active (if not necessarily knowing) promoter? ... 2:56 A.M. link

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Saturday, August 9, 2008

Story #2, Lie # 1: Sam Stein has emails sent by Rielle Hunter that already reveal one seemingly false assertion  in Edwards' Modified Limited New Story--namely his claim that his "short" affair with Hunter didn't begin until after she began work as a campaign filmmaker in mid-2006:

Edwards and Hunter initially met each other sometime during the winter of 2006 (either late December 2005 or early January) in a hotel restaurant in midtown Manhattan. It would be another seven months before Edwards would first pay her for the documentary work. As Woodruff rightfully noted, the initial check cut to Hunter's film company was written on July 5, 2006, for the cost of $12,500.

What happened in between that winter meeting and the start of filming? Emails sent by Hunter suggest that her romance with Edwards was in full bloom that spring. In early April, Hunter wrote about a trip she had taken to North Carolina to see the man whom she affectionately referred to as "my love lips."

A week later she wrote another email in which she described the mental anguish of "being in love with a (still somewhat dysfunctional) married man."

Rather than Edwards having a fling with a staffer, Stein speculates, "Edwards hired her as a front to continue their relationship." ... But it's not true that Hunter had no filmmaking experience prior to being hired. She was actress, writer and producer for Billy Bob and Them! ...

P.S.: Hunter's lawyer has issued a statement saying she will not "participate in DNA testing" of her daughter. Convenient! No doubt some of Edwards' rich friends will now send her tens of thousands of dollars behind his back to try to persuade her to agree to the test and clear John's name (by validating Story #2's central claim that he is not the father). ... Wouldn't Hunter's statement seem a little more authentic if it wasn't PR'ed to an inch of its life to mesh with the Edwards anti-tab talking points? ("Rielle is a private individual. She is not running for public office.")

P.P.S.: According to WaPo,Enquirer editor David Perel explicitly says there were two meetings at the Hilton, not just one. ... More to explain! ... 6:46 P.M.

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[Note:Points 1 and 2 of this item are based on a misreading, which pretty much completely vitiates them. See below. Or feel free to skip to point 3] HuffPo reporter Sam Stein, who kick-started the Rielle Hunter scandal,  begins to cast a shadow  on Edwards' Story #2-- last night's semi-confession  in which Edwards admits only to a "short" affair back "in 2006 two years ago." 1) Stein notes that Hunter and Edwards didn't meet until the "winter of 2006." 2) Stein then says

Edwards would see Hunter for at least a year. How much of that time they were romantically engaged remains a mystery.

That at least suggests that 2007, not 2006, might be the relevant ending-year; [ Correction: By "winter of 2006" Stein means 'winter of 2005-2006,' not 'winter of 2006-2007." A year from 2005-2006 wouldn't necessarily take you into 2007. Never mind!] 3) As for the paternity of the child, claimed by loyal Edwards aide Andrew Young, Stein thinks

[A]llegations of Young's involvement seemed dubious both when they first surfaced and now.

Will there be a Story #3?  Our National Edwards Nightmare may not be over. ... 1:54 A.M.

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Friday, August 8, 2008

Your MSM buddy system at work: John Edwards has already broken his "will have nothing more to say" promise, calling CBS's Bob Schieffer. Schieffer admits "I've known John Edwards a long time" and starts right in building the new Edwards myth:

"He said he said he just couldn't live with the constant pounding from the tabloids. It wasn't going to stop, I was being dogged and dogged, for the sake of my family I just had to end it, for the sake of my family. ... "

Edwards also said, in Schieffer's words, that he had "no plans to go to the Democratic convention"--which somehow gets transformed, in the Politico's headline, into "Edwards to CBS: Won't appear at convention." Not the same thing. ... According to a second Politico story, "he told ABC earlier that he was leaving the option open." ...

Update: Elizabeth Edwards is already up on Kos  with a diary attacking "the present voyeurism." ... HuffPo's Lee Stranahan, a former Edwards supporter, responds  "Say It Ain't So, Elizabeth: You Knew But Let Him Run." Excerpt:

[I]f you're an Edwards supporter, let me put this bluntly; if you gave John and Elizabeth Edwards time, money, support, or goodwill, they played you.

They made a conscious decision to make their relationship a focus throughout the campaign. That emotional goodwill you feel for them? They not only let you feel, they took actions and made statements specifically so you would feel it.

Then when the rumors first surfaced, they made the worst decision of all; they decided to lie about it and to keep lying about it for months. They lied in a way that made the people who were telling the truth look like the real liars. They lied in a way that turned their supporters into attack dogs. They only started to tell the truth when John Edwards was caught at the Beverly Hills Hilton and even now both John and Elizabeth Edward are callin[g] the people who caught him the liars ...

5:56 P.M. link

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Edwards: 'I Lied. It's Friday. Can I Go to Denver Now?' John Edwards finally confesses, sort of, on ABC News. He admits he lied repeatedly about his affair with Rielle Hunter, but denies he's the father of her child and specifically seems to be trying to deny cheating on his wife after the recurrence of her illness:

Edwards made a point of telling [Bob] Woodruff that his wife's cancer was in remission when he began the affair with Hunter.

Edwards also "admitted the National Enquirer was correct when it reported he had visited Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton last month." ...

1) Textbook PR timing: Friday, Olympics, a small war. Not quite a Jo Moore Day, but not bad. ...

2) Obvious question: Why visit Hunter in the early morning hours if he does "not love her" and is not her child's father? ... But I think the question is actually even more difficult to answer than that. ...Look again at the Enquirer's photo of Edwards holding a baby in front of the Hilton's telltale drapes. Edwards is wearing a sweaty blue t-shirt. But the Enquirer reported that on the night they ambushed him, he was at least initially wearing a "blue dress shirt."  One possible explanation for the discrepancy: he visited her and the baby at the hotel more than once, and the photo is from an earlier visit. ... Just speculating! ... But if you read the Enquirer's accompanying text closely, they don't say the photo was taken on the same day they ambushed him, only at the same hotel. ... If this theory is right, Edwards has even more explaining to do than it initially seems. ... Update: Edwards claims to ABC  that the late July meeting with Hunter at the Hilton was an attempt to "keep this mistake I had made two years previously private." ...

3) Was it smart for Edwards to potentially annoy Rielle Hunter by saying he "did not love her"? Is she going to give her side of the story now? Doesn't he want her to think favorably of him if she does? Edwards denies paying her money but "saiid it was possible some of his friends or supporters may have made payments without telling him."  If so, are these helpful friends continuing their top secret payments?

4) A paternity test seems inevitable, no? [Update: Edwards has volunteered to take one. Make sure it's not Mudcat Saunders who gets the DNA from the kid.] If Edwards wanted to snake out of this scandal, the cunning way to do it was always to build up press anticipation of a paternity test and then have the test come back negative (after which the press will forget that he still cheated). He may have now lucked on to this strategy by accident. But paternity isn't the key moral question, it seems to me. It's whether Edwards treated his wife as honorably as he unsubtly boasted in the campaign (plus his subsequent coverup, and what it involved). Whether Edwards continuted the affair after the recurrence of her illness is one factor in making that judgment (and paternity would be damning evidence in that regard, given the timing). Whether he thought he was the father, and continued seeing Hunter for that reason, is more important than whether he actually turns out to be the father.

5) WIll the MSM, having given Edwards an epic, embarrassing pass, now question the line he has drawn (non-paternity, that the affair only occured during  "a short period in 2006,"placing it before the recurrence of Elizabeth's cancer)?** There is now one player in this scandal with far less credibility than the National Enquirer, after all. Edwards may be overestimating the willingness of reporters to roll over for him one more time. ..

6) Edwards claims in his just-released statement that he's learned, in the context of his dismissal of the Enquirer, that "being 99% honest is no longer enough." 99% honest? Edwards' rigorous self-inventory of his narcissitic moral failings ("You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself") may be incomplete.

**--Byron York reported, pre-confession,  that the commonly-held idea that MSM organizations were waiting for their own independent reporting to confirm the Enquirer was a myth--there was "not a lot of independent reporting" going on, ABC and Fox excepted:

Instead, some big-time journalists seem to believe the Enquirer has nailed the story, and they are waiting for the tabloid to release the full results of its reporting. In the meantime, they are staying away from the story because it appeared in the Enquirer. In other words, they're waiting for the Enquirer to fully report a story that they wouldn't otherwise report… because it's in the Enquirer.

The question is whether this independent reporting will now commence, or whether editors who never wanted to have to discuss the story will let Edwards' half-confession go untested. ... 1:03 P.M. link

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Thursday, August 7, 2008

John Edwards' fellow Democrats see silence as a bad move

Does it matter if the NY Times, Time and NBC News don't report it if mid-level metropolitan papers and bloggers do? I'd say a fair test is whether Jay Leno's audience gets his John Edwards jokes. He told one last Tuesday. It bombed--it was clear nobody in the seats had heard about the Edwards allegations. But that could, in theory, change, even if the biggest MSM players remain protective. ...

P.S.:Gawker's Ryan Tate effectively ridicules the MSM's Denver Excuse. ... 11:32 P.M.

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Neoliberals shout "Refine your position!" How did I miss this  (from HuffPo)?

Barack Obama is inspiring us like a desert lover, a Washington Valentino. ..[snip] My musician friends and I are writing songs to inspire people and couples all over America are making love again and shouting "yes we can" as they climax! [E.A.]

Museum quality. Not a joke!** Hard to see how it can be topped. .. [via Economist via Mortman via Insta]

**--though it's from February (before the flip-flops!) ... 9:57 P.M. link

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Bracing overseas perspective! ... Note to MSM: If you've lost Romenesko ....[via Insta9:21 P.M.

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Michael Kinsley emails about the Edwards/Hunter story:

AS for your laundry list of reasons to cover it, I think there's one more much simpler: the MSM told a story about Edwards—they told it often and loud—it was probably one of the best-known and totally accepted stories of the 2008 campaign: John loyally standing by his loyal wife as she deals with cancer. If the story isn't true, they should run a correction. My god, look at the things they run corrections over—the spelling of people's names, and so on. Yet they're leaving this huge story uncorrected, and leaving their readers misinformed.  No?

5:34 P.M. link

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One obvious possible solution to the Democrats' Denver Dilemma (see below):Give Elizabeth Edwards a prominent speaking role, while John is off on his hurriedly scheduled Global Poverty Tour. ... 12:31 P.M.

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Wednesday, August 6, 2008

We're Taking This Thing All the Way to Denver!  Former DNC chief Don Fowler delivers the Democratic grown-ups' message, on the record, as reported in the Charlotte Observer--

If Edwards fails to clear up the story in short order, he risks party officials deciding not to have him speak or, if they do, creating a distraction from a week focused on Barack Obama accepting the nomination.

"If there is not an explanation that's satisfactory, acceptable and meets high moral standards, the answer is 'no,' he would not be a prime candidate to make a major address to the convention," said Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chair.

And the old gang is rallying around the son of a mill worker!

Friends and former staffers refuse to comment now, though they helped Edwards last fall by dismissing an October story in the Enquirer of a sexual relationship between Edwards and a campaign videographer when it initially broke.

"Sorry cannot help you on this one," wrote Jennifer Palmieri, a former top Edwards aide, in an e-mail Wednesday.

Update: In an interview with Byron York calculated to terrify Dem stage managers, Enquirer editor David Perel hints that a convention-week climax may be exactly what he is aiming for:

"Obviously, the convention has not been our driving force behind the story," Perel says. "The reporting takes however long it takes. It took seven months to go from the December story to the [Beverly Hilton] meeting… . But if it happens to be a happy coincidence — if the story just happens to be breaking around that time, in terms of maximum exposure — " Perel pauses. If the convention wasn't part of the timetable before, it is now.

How long before prominent Democrats begin telling their MSM friends that it really looks like there's something to this Edwards story? ... 8:00 P.M. link

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Ann Coulter on the bizarreness of the moment:

The mainstream media's reaction to the National Enquirer's reports on John Edwards' "love child" scandal has been reminiscent of the Soviet press. Edwards' name has simply been completely whitewashed out of the news. ... I suspect that if I tried to look up coverage of the Democratic primaries in Nexis news archives, Edwards' name will have disappeared from the debates. By next week, Edwards won't have been John Kerry's running mate in 2004.

7:58 P.M.

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Banned-by-Kos Lee Stranahan: John Edwards needs to stop taking the fall for Andrew Young. ... 7:54 P.M.

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MSM: You want photos  ...  Old MSM line: We demand photos! ... New MSM line: We demand high definition photos! ... 11:56 A.M.

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Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Undernews seep: Inquirer's sister paper on Enquirer. "Are we mainstream or not? We're going to get a complex." ... 2:35 A.M.

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Monday, August 4, 2008

Why  write about the Edwards scandal? Here's a short clip-'n'-save response to those (including many friends) who argue the Edwards scandal shouldn't be pursued--or at least pursued too vigorously-- even if it is true:**

1. No "private citizen": Edwards was certainly a contender for VP, or a big cabinet post like Attorney General, or even the Supreme Court, before the scandal first erupted in the "undernews" in late 2007. Some reporters say he was still on Obama's VP list until quite recently. If he's now finished as far as those big jobs are concerned, it's in large part because of this scandal, which Obama might never have learned about if everyone had followed the MSM's lead.  Even now, Edwards may not be out of the running for an array of lesser public posts--including cabinet-grade positions--that provide non-trivial power and a platform for future advancement. Important unions back him. Until last week, he'd been traveling the country keeping himself in the public eye in a way well-designed to let him play a big national role in either the Obama administration or the opposition to the McCain administration. It's silly to say "he's just a private citizen"--he's much less of a "private citizen" than, say, William Bennett was in 2003 when Jonathan Alter and Joshua Green  torpedoed Bennett's career by revealing his gambling habits. 

What makes the scandal awful and unpleasant--as opposed to the Bennett scandal, which was delicious--is that Edwards has a very ill wife. But, as Susan Estrich has noted, that's also what makes Edwards' alleged behavior awful and unpleasant--more objectionable than anything Bennett was accused of doing.

2. Hypocrisy: Ah, but Bennett was a hypocrite-- a man whose chief claim to national attention was as a sophisticated moral scold who turned out to have a major gambling jones. Edwards is a hypocrite too, in much the same way. Why, after all, was Edwards ever considered presidential material. Is he a great executive? No. A brilliant policy expert? No. An accomplished diplomat? No. He's  an ex-Senator with one undistinguished term in office who rose in life on the basis of his singular ability to use tearjerking stories to move juries and win large verdicts . His presidential campaign has featured similarly moving anecdotes, such as the famous 10-year old girl "somewhere in America" who goes to bed "praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today, because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm."

Edwards' most effective anecdote this year, however, was probably the story of his popular wife Elizabeths' struggle against cancer. He made it the emotional center of a TV ad:

And Elizabeth and I decided in the quiet of a hospital room, after 12 hours of tests and after getting very bad news, what we were going to spend our lives doing. For all those that have no voice. We are not going to quietly go away.

During a joint 60 Minutes interview focusing on his wife's illness, Edwards explicitly linked his behavior in that struggle and his fitness for public office:

Katie Couric
Some have suggested that you're capitalizing on this.

John Edwards:
Here's what I would say about that.

First of all, there's not a single person in America that should vote for me because Elizabeth has cancer. Not a one. ..[snip]

But, I think every single candidate for president, Republican and Democratic have lives, personal lives, that indicate something about what kind of human being they are. And I think it is a fair evaluation for America to engage in to look at what kind of human beings each of us are, and what kind of president we'd make. [E.A.]

3. Relevance: If a politician is a great executive, thinker or diplomat who cheats on his brave, ill wife, you figure, "OK, We're not hiring him because of his sterling private behavior." If a politician whose chief appeal is his self-advertised loyalty to his brave, ill wife cheats on his brave ill wife, what's he good for again? And if Edwards' crucial talent as a public official is his ability to move people with tearjerky anecdotes, and those anecdotes (like the tale of his spousal loyalty, or the girl with no coat, or the anecdote that reportedly made John Kerry queasy about him)--turn out to be BS or half BS, that's more than random hypocrisy, It goes to the core of what he does and what he claims to offer. (I'd also argue that an emotional, anecdote-led liberal approach to poverty inevitably tends toward the failed solution of simply sending poor people cash welfare, but that's another argument.)

4. Irresponsibility: How irresponsible was it to seek the party's nomination knowing that this scandal was lurking around, ready to explode? What if he'd won? Are we sure it wouldn't have been discovered by the McCain campaign before November? Rock stars get to behave this badly because they're only rock stars. Worst that happens is the band breaks up. What if Edwards actually got elected--and then the scandal was discovered when he was in office? Did Democrats enjoy the Lewinsky years?

5. The Coverup:If the scandal is true, it almost certainly means that during the campaign Edwards presided over an elaborate coverup involving at least a) having an aide wrongly claim paternity and b) having other aides go out and lie to reporters. It probably also included payments of money to cooperating parties and various familiar slurs on the character of the 'other woman,' Rielle Hunter. All this would obviously be germane to Edwards' fitness to hold any office, including clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Even if Edwards were to forswear all future public employment, there'd be an interest in documenting and publicizing his role in the coverup for the same reason we track down bank robbers 10 years after the crime--to deter others from pulling the same stunt in the future.

The only legitimate reason not to cover this scandal, it seems to me, is simple sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards--and I've gotten enough emails from anguished and angry members of the MSM to conclude, with Estrich, that it's the prime reason for the MSM blackout. True, I also suspect that if Mrs. Edwards were a conservative Republican, or even an unbeloved Democrat, the MSM might somehow find a way to overcome this compassionate sentiment. But that doesn't make it wrong. Reporters don't have to print everything. You could conclude that the need to protect Mrs. Edwards her children is so great, the karma of Enquiring so bad, that all of the obvious, public-interesty reasons for covering the story should be  thrown out the window. And if John Edwards were already so damaged that in practice he'd never get a significant public office even if he wants one, I might agree (even if that meant sacrificing the deterrent effect of full exposure). 

But that's a point that clearly hasn't been reached yet, at least not while most Americans are being kept in the dark about what, exactly, has led to Edwards' mysterious disappearance from the political oddsmakers' charts.  A man arrogant and ambitious enough to think he can run for president posing as a loyal husband while keeping his second family secret, even as he visits his mistress in a famous hotel that is hosting a convention of journalists, will be arrogant and ambitious enough to keep hiding under the shield of his wife's illness until he can attempt a comeback-- if given the chance.

The alternative, it seems to me, is to let affection for Mrs. Edwards suck journalists into a Print-the-Legend world where they must spend their time burnishing--or at least accepting--the story powerful people and institutions want them to tell, the story  of the wonderful Edwards marriage, rather than figuring out and telling readers the truth. If I wanted to be in that business I'd be a publicist.

P.S.: Emily Bazelon may have said all this more economically. See generally the vigorous debate on Slate's XX Factor.

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**--For purposes of this item, I'm assuming we're reaching the next-to-final stage of the natural progression in cases like this: 1) Too horrible and shocking; it can't possibly be true; 2) It's not true; 3) You can't prove it's true; 4) Why are you trying to prove it's true? 5) It's disgusting that you've proved it's true; 6) What's the big deal anyway? ... 10:15 P.M. link

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The LAT is more like Daily Kos than it wants to admit (and vice versa): The Daily Kos has banned longtime blogger  Lee Stranahan for writing calm, clear-headed posts assessing the evidence in the John Edwards scandal--posts saying things like:

Edwards needs to clear this up so we can get on with the business of forgiving him and moving on. As progressives, we need to rise above the false choice between blind judgment and blind apathy. We're the reality based community, remember?  

Inflammatory! ...Now we know where Tony Pierce can always find a job. ... 1:37 P.M.

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Friday, August 1, 2008

Faster Comics--Jay Leno Beats NBC News: Charlotte's WCNC airs a hostile, smart, doomy segment on the "scandal brewing."  Pegged to Edwards "ducking reporters," plus the suggestive birth certificate. ... Leno, Conan jokes featured. Leno's is even funny. ... Resonant clip from campaign "webisode." ... Reporter Stuart Watson says Edwards is in danger of "disappearing from the national stage ... unless he finds a way to squelch this story fast." ... Maybe he did: It would be paranoid to notice that the segment isn't featured on the station's Web site. ... Update: Strangely, I am paranoid! Video is on main WCNC video playlist  and on the  "Investigators" page. ... 12:18 P.M.

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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Mo' MSM: Now on the McClatchy wire. ...  Aaron Barnhart  thinks Edwards' ducking of press questions "pushed this over the edge." ("Not a good way to erase suspicion.") ... 5:38 P.M.

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One option John Edwards must be considering. If anyone could pull it off .... 3:25 A.M.

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Dissent in the MSM: Rebellious nibbling from mid-rank players who are harder to coopt than the New York and Washington elites:

"Facing Questions, Edwards Evades Reporters" ...

On Wednesday, Edwards apparently ducked out a side area used by the kitchen staff in the fourth-floor ballroom of Washington's historic Hotel Monaco. Edwards emerged from a lower-level handicap ramp near the rear of the hotel with two men. When approached by a Charlotte Observer reporter, Edwards said, "Can't do it now, I'm sorry" and quickly walked past.

Asked what he was doing at the Beverly Hilton last week, Edwards said "sorry" and got into a waiting car with the other men.

Update: The News & Observer also reports that the birth certificate for Rielle Hunter's daughter lists no father. The paper's reporters seem skeptical of Hunter's lawyer's explanation. (Birth certificate posted here.)

There are simply a lot of good questions. Edwards already squirmed out of one such query at a press conference, but his political career appears to be over unless he can talk his way out of this one.

So it's time the major media picked up the story. It's not merely the stench of liberal bias that bothers me but the unfortunate reality that we in the MSM are giving up a good story to the internet. And if we in the major media continue to cede such stories to the internet, we won't be major much longer.

So far, there has not been a denial from either Edwards or the woman, who once produced videos for the Edwards presidential campaign, about the alleged escapade in Beverly Hills.

And if it's all a simple misunderstanding, if John Edwards was dropping by a hotel suite at 2 a.m. to say hello to a former campaign worker, then maybe someone should suggest to the politician that he come out and say that. Maybe it was his $500-a-cut hairdresser, for goodness sakes! In which case, money well spent. In any case, it doesn't seem like this is the kind of story that is going to fade into the mists of time.

P.S.--Maybe it's not the coverup: Interestingly, none of these MSM stories is about the alleged "cover up." They're all about what the "cover up" would cover up. ... 2:43 A.M. link

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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

They Like to Watch: Rachel Sklar's link-rich summary analysis of the howling void in most of the MSM regarding the Edwards/Hunter controversy seems about right to me: They'll report it when they "have to"--when there are no excuses left. Meanwhile, they will desperately think of reasons to not cover it.** ... P.S.: Not covering it is not the same as not knowing about it. It's a strangely passive, yet cost-effective, attitude:

[T]he Edwards story: Alive and well on the blogs, completely absent from the MSM. Is the MSM unaware of it? Hardly — everyone knows, and they're all waiting for the shoe to drop. Back in December, I asked a veteran MSM-er about the story, and was told that "we're watching it." But watching isn't the same as reporting — and back in December, John Edwards was still a viable candidate for the Democratic nomination. [E.A.]

**--with some possible exceptions! ... 6:41 P.M. link

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Perel's plan unfolds, the Empire of Undernews expands: The Enquirer has indeed already moved on to the Edwards "coverup." Their latest issue  alleges:

John Edwards' mistress, Rielle Hunter – the mother of his "love child" – has been secretly receiv­ing $15,000 a month as part of an elaborate cover-up orchestrated by the former presidential contender. ...

The money is being funneled to Hunter by a wealthy colleague who was closely tied to the Edwards' campaign ... [E.A.]

Not clear from the posted summary if the Enquirer got any response from the Edwards camp to this particular charge. (The printed issue is advertised as having "more details.") ... P.S.: It's hard to believe that the name of this alleged "wealthy colleague," described by "a source" as "a super-rich pal--who was closely involved with the campaign finances," will remain a secret for long. ... Here's one place to start searching. ... Or you could just call Tom Edsall. ...[Via Gawker, which takes some precisely targeted shots at the MSM--although it's silly for Gawker to say that the Enquirer's photographs "in and of themselves" would prove "precisely nothing scandalous."  In context, the photos would be powerful evidence. Enquirer editor David Perel apparently doesn't want to win over the MSM by releasing them. He'd rather have the Edwards story all to himself.] ...  3:27 A.M. link

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More Layoffs, Please--Part XVIII: You can read a better analysis of the Edwards/Rielle Hunter scandal on will.i.am's Dipdive "lifestyle engine" than in the mighty Los Angeles Times. ... Of course, you can't read any analysis of the Edwards/Rielle Hunter scandal in the mighty Los Angeles Times. But if you could, Dipdive's would probably still be better. ... P.S.: This Bloggasm interview  with LAT omertapparatchikTony Pierce suggests the paper's metro reporters came up empty-handed in their vaunted investigation of the Enquirer's charges:

I asked Pierce if the metro desk had the chance to follow up on the story, and if so, would he send out another post allowing his bloggers to write about it. He said that to his knowledge the LA Times reporters hadn't found any additional information and expressed some skepticism of the National Enquirer story's authenticity.

I guess that's it, then. Nothing more to say about it, really. ... Fox? We know of no "Fox." ... P.P.S.: After all, as Pierce says,

"This isn't something you would normally see in a newspaper more than once. We already wrote the one post quoting the National Enquirer [which slipped out before Pierce's ban--kf] and I don't think you'd see more than that if there were no blogs and this was just a newspaper."

That must be why the LAT has all those blogs: So you won't find out anything more than "if there were no blogs." A clear strategic mission statement for the Web 2.0 era. They rockin'! ... 2:06 A.M.

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If Mike Murphy wants to take over the McCain campaign, shouldn't he stop giving semi-critical quotes to the New York Times? ... 1:08 A.M.

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Politicized hiring-- in Hollywood? Is there a Hollywood blacklist that operates against conservatives?  Andrew Breitbart argues yes. As if to provide him with fresh evidence,  Jeffrey Wells fantasizes about Jon Voight's career trajectory  in the wake of Voight's not-nearly-cracked-enough dogmatic attack  on Obama:

But you'd think an arch conservative working in an overwhelmingly liberal town would think about restraining himself for expediency's sake, if nothing else. ... [snip]

But it's only natural that industry-based Obama supporters will henceforth regard him askance. Honestly? If I were a producer and I had to make a casting decision about hiring Voight or some older actor who hadn't pissed me off with an idiotic Washington Times op-ed piece, I might very well say to myself, "Voight? Let him eat cake."

Wells later denies he's seriously urging Voight's non-hiring, but not before offering this handy and apparently familiar Hollywood rationale for doing just that:

It's been said in this town many times that the right has a debt to pay for the blacklisting of lefties in the '50s, and that in all fairness it's probably going to take a long time to make amends. The fact is that the philosophical grandfathers and great-grandfathers of today's right-wingers ruined the lives of many Hollywood screenwriters in the '50s, and so their descendants now have to suffer and make up for that. Simple. As you sew so shall you reap. He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. [E.A.]

I tend to think Hollywood conservatives do face some employment barriers--but if you enter an industry that's inherently about ideas and politics can you really complain if people who disagree with you don't want to work with you? (The same might be said for the Department of Justice, but that's another item.) 

P.S.: Breitbart's blacklisted father-in-law, Orson Bean, has a nuanced memory of the 50s:

Aside from the inconvenience of having a career ruined, being blacklisted in the '50s was kind of cool. You were doing 'the right thing.' Hot, left-wing girls admired you. You hadn't 'named names.' The New York Times was on your side. And you knew it would pass.

12:02 A.M. link

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

NE to MSM--No Pix Fix: Don't expect any photos of the Edwards Hilton Hunt in the next issue of the National Enquirer. Radar's Neel Shah interviews Enquirer editor David Perel, who says the Enquirer "definitely" has photos but

he won't be putting them in tabloid's next issue, or making them accessible online.

"It's a story that we're taking a long view of," Perel told Radar by phone. "We've got a big exclusive coming out this week, and we are on the trail of some stuff that's even hotter." [E.A.]

Perel told me much the same thing when I followed up--that it's "not about the photos but about the rest of the story, and the story is just going to get bigger from here."

This seems like a tragic mistake on Perel's part. Why? Rationally or irrationally**, release of the photos has become the talismanic MSM/bien pensant test for whether the Enquirer can be believed about anything. Release them now and the big dailies and networks will all jump into the Edwards investigation, sources will talk (because they're either emboldened or terrified of looking bad), the whole story will come out in short order. Wikipedia will unlock! And the nation will be able move on.

Delay releasing the pics--in hopes of pursuing a "bigger" story, whatever that is--and you give Edwards time to regroup. You give the Protect Elizabeth lobbyists time to call up their media mogul friends (including the ones who own the Enquirer). You discourage truth-telling sources from sticking their necks out while you encourage ass-covering sources to remain loyal to Team E. We could end up with seven months of seething undernews rebellion, no MSM coverage of either the Rielle scandal or whatever "hotter" story the Enquirer documents***--and, next year, H.H.S. Secretary John Edwards.

It's like the famously parodied scene in a Bond film where instead of just shooting poor Bond the villain tries to stage some more elaborate and prolonged auto da fe, with the result that Bond is able to escape.

And it's hard not to completely suppress the feeling that the Enquirer is milking the story to boost its role (and, not incidentally newsstand sales). After being scorned by the Edwards-defending MSM last fall, Perel may understandably be content with building a separate EnquirerWorld where refugees from the mainstream matrix can go to learn the truth for the next few weeks. But that assumes he can pull off his long-term story plan without some other outfit scooping him three weeks out. Why make Dr. Evil's mistake?

Anyway, weeks and weeks of uncertainty aren't in the national interest.  And they aren't in my interest. (I'd like to go back to obsessing about something else.)

At least Perel has declared he has photos. But unless he releases them there will always be the suspicion that he's bluffing. After all, why did his reporters so quickly file a complaint against hotel security  with the local police? One obvious possible goal was to obtain the security camera tapes. Are those tapes so important because the Enquirer actually doesn't have other photographic evidence? I don't think that's the reason, but I don't know for sure. If Perel released even a little teaser photo--and I'd settle for white knuckles gripping a bathroom door--that would help erase a lingering suspicion that the Enquirer's photogarpher was out of position, or perhaps plagued by the world's only defective camera.

How about that compromise, Mr. Perel? Tease with at least one image. Then you can milk it all you want.

And they say kausfiles isn't solution-oriented!

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**--The answer is "irrationally," because a) the Enquirer has a better track record than that and b) there is substantial non-Enquirer evidence that Edwards was at the hotel-- Fox has interviewed a security guard, and Edwards pointedly hasn't denied it. But the MSM is demanding photos. And the customer is always right. ...

***--"Hotter"? I could see why the (possible) story of the (possible) coverup and any (possible) money transactions as suggested by Shah might be maybe "bigger," or "more significant." But "hotter"?  One part of the potential story involves sex. The other involves checks. Which one are Enquirer readers more interested in?  ... 7:02 P.M. link

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Timing is everything in the TV business. ... [via American Thinker12:11 P.M.

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Monday, July 28, 2008

Waiting for Fotot: I missed the solid item on the John Edwards "Two Families" scandal  that the Charlotte Observer published last Thursday. (Typical of the MSM--even when they have good news judgment they have poor Search Engine Optimization.) Reporter Jim Morrill's interview with National Enquirer editor David Perel seems useful for frustrated undernews followers wondering what happened to the Enquirer's rumored photographs:

I asked [Enquirer editor David] Perel about photos or eyewitness accounts. He wouldn't talk about that.

"Well, stay tuned, that's all I can say," he said. "Everything's done incrementally. So I'm not going to tell you exactly what our process is. Perhaps my time frame is different than your time frame. I'm not worried about the rest of the media. I'm worried about us." [E.A.]

Is the Enquirertiming release of the photos to coincide with the arrival of its print edition on newsstands later in the week? A week is long! Is no MSM journalist able to break the story in the meantime--or are they all lazily waiting on the Enquirer? (Note to MSM reporters: Call me. I can give you some leads.)

Morrill also gets a solid quote from former Democratic National Committee chair Don Fowler, who seems not to have gotten the omerta memo: "

"If you had this rumor about Bill Clinton it probably wouldn't cause a ripple," he said. "But given John Edwards and his public relationship with his wife, something close to a model of the perfect family and their perfect relationship, it would hurt that much more."

11:32 A.M. link

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BHTV 50 Seconds of Truth! The Usual Media Thing regarding the "n"-word, explained. ... 1:31 A.M.

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Sunday, July 27, 2008

STEPHANOPOULOS: "Opponents of affirmative action are trying to get a referendum on the ballot here that would do away with affirmative action. Do you support that?"

MCCAIN: "Yes, I do. I do not believe in quotas. But I have not seen the details of some of the proposals. But I've always opposed quotas."

STEPHANOPOULOS: "But the one here in Arizona you support?"

McCAIN: "I support it, yes."

McCain at first tried fo fudge, then got bullied into a "yes"--the same thing that basically happened with his answer on immigration at the Reagan library debate. McCain's clumsiness may indicate that his endorsement isn't exactly bankable--his spokesman was unprepared to defend it when Obama immediately brought up McCain's characterization of an earlier anti-affirmative action measure as "divisive." ("I do not have a firm enough grasp on the historical and relevant context of McCain's remark in 1998 to give you the pushback that this question deserves," the spokesman said, in a formulation that may become the Universal Punt in the idiotic daily news-cycle war.)

Yet maybe McCain has stumbled on to a strategic masterstroke. He's behind, after all. His big issue--Iraq--has just been seemingly defused. He's no expert on the economy. He's old and his formerly winning personality is starting to grate. He could do worse than make the election a national referendum on Connerly's initiative to ban affirmative action, which tends to win by large margins whenever it is actually placed on a ballot. Does Steve Schmidt have a better idea? ...

P.S.: In a precious moment of calm, Andrew Sullivan posts a sensible analysis  of how Obama might respond. [Sullivan's away. Item was written by Chris Bodenner--ed I finally know what they mean by "the exception that proves the rule."]

P.P.S.:  Weekend chat shows were bloated with talk of the McCain campaign's recent general incompetence. I know that Mike Murphy's comeback bid is over, finished, he "will not be reboarding the Straight Talk Express," and "the matter is now been resolved." Politico told us!  But at this rate don't you think Murphy will be running the campaign by August? ... 10:42 P.M. link

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More evidence of the new realism about Edwards on the left. Alex Koppelman in Salon:

I know what you're thinking: Why even bother with anything printed by the Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid you probably think of as the kind of "newspaper" that focuses on rumors that Elvis Presley is alive -- and leading a band of rampaging space aliens? ...[snip] That's not really the Enquirer's niche, though. It gets confused with publications like the defunct Weekly World News, but in fact the Enquirer is surprisingly good at reporting on these kinds of stories, and it has a decent track record with them. It was the Enquirer that published the photo of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart's lap. It was the Enquirer that broke the story of Rush Limbaugh's addiction to painkillers. And new information about the Edwards story makes the Enquirer's reporting on it look more solid.

Not all of Koppelman's commenters are on board! (Sample: "J.D. Rockefeller, back in the 1900's sent hired guns into a camp of striking mine workers. ...When you threaten the power base in this country, watch out.") But he has more support than you'd expect. ... 9:46 P.M.

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Blog Post of the Day: Lee Stranahan, an Edwards fan and Obama supporter, wakes up--

The truth is that I believe anyone who looks into the John Edwards / Rielle Hunter affair story will see that Edwards has, at best, acted in a very suspicious manner for over a year now. ...

Let's go with the assumption that Edwards is innocent for a moment; he didn't have the affair so the baby isn't his. If he didn't do anything wrong then it seems like he'd have good reasons to stop the rumors. A DNA test months ago would have ended all speculation about the paternity of the baby. Isn't that a better, less suspicious move than pulling down all the videos that Rielle Hunter helped produce about him for his campaign? And if there are rumors and you're innocent, WHY go visit the subject of those rumors at a hotel and leave at 2:45 in the morning? Why hide in the bathroom when reporters catch you leaving? These actions don't make any more sense to me than Craig's 'wide stance / dropped my toilet paper' defense did. ...

The mainstream media is fairly quiet but the most ominous silence right now is from the progressive blogosphere.

Stranahan goes on and on. I wouldn't cut a word. (Sample: "A blog by John McQuaid said that there's no 'physical evidence a la Bill Clinton.' Well, there's a baby.") ... 2:00 A.M. link

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Saturday, July 26, 2008

Sleaze Scuppers Democrat Golden Boy": Sometimes a foreign perspective is clarifying. Effective photo. ... 2:47 P.M.

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Will  the Pro-Obama Bias Turn Anti-Edwards? At this point, does Barack Obama want John Edwards to even show up in Denver, much less give a prime time speech? Even if the Love-Child saga progresses no further than it already has, an Edwards Denver appearance will inevitably be accompanied by renewed speculation about his seemingly scandalous and politically toxic behavior. Obama's in what looks like a surprisingly close race. He doesn't need to carry Edwards' baggage. He needs a positive convention. And Obama has previously shown a willingness to bury troublesome associates without much fuss (ask Jim Johnson).  

If you're an Obama strategist, mightn't you conclude that the best thing for your candidate would be if the press weighs in quickly and definitively concludes that Edwards is guilty, with the result that he and his whole sordid story go away until after November? ...

Of course, if that was the Obama camp's desire, you'd expect Obamaphilic Web sites like Huffington Post to suddenly start billing Love Child stories on their front pages, even if they come from FOX News, and that's not about to ... Oh, wait. ...

If Edwards has lost Arianna's crowd (which only recently was sneering at the scandal  with  embarrassing, heavy-handed, unfunny satires **) we can't be far away from the Flipping Point at which Liberal Media Bias, to the extent it exist, starts working against Edwards. ...

P.S.: HufPo has even finally begun to boast, accurately, that:

The Huffington Post was the first to report on Edwards' relationship with Rielle Hunter in  September 2007  . 

**--Update: Greg Mitchell, author of the embarrassing, unfunny satire, emails to say: "Within minutes of posting yesterday, I recognized that it was, indeed, 'heavyhanded' and had it 'unpublished.'" OK. (But it's still there. 7/28 Update: Gone now. But there's still the Google text cache.) ...  2:44 A.M. link

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Friday, July 25, 2008

Here's some MSM. ... Update: Rod Dreher writing on the Dallas Morning News blog--

Still, the Enquirer, as sleazy as its tactics strike many people, has a better reputation on stories like this than you might think. Frankly, I believe them here -- Edwards refuses to comment -- but I do want to see photos.

He couldn't say that at the rockin' L.A. Times! ... Meanwhile, Fox News manages to do what the L.A.T.'s reporters are apparently unable to do, namely find some independent corroborating eyewitness evidence that Edwards was present at the hotel when the Enquirer says he was. ...  

Dunn Loring, Va.: Does the Post have any political reporters investigating the legitimacy of the Enquirer's stories about John Edwards?

Jonathan Weisman: Yes, and to be quite honest, we're waiting to see the pictures the Enquirer says it will publish this weekend. That said, Edwards is no longer an elected official and is not running for any office now. Don't expect wall-to-wall coverage.

4:07 A.M.

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LAT Gags Blogs: In a move that has apparently stirred up some internal discontent, the Los Angeles Times has banned its bloggers, including political bloggers, from mentioning the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story. Even bloggers who want to mention the story in order to make a skeptical we-don't-trust-the-Enquirer point are forbidden from doing so. Kausfiles has obtained a copy of the email Times bloggers received from editor Tony Pierce. [I've excised the recipient list and omitted Pierce's email address]:

From: "Pierce, Tony" 

Date:July 24, 2008 10:54:41 AM PDT 

To: [XXX] 

Subject: john edwards

Hey bloggers, 

There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.

If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask

Keep rockin, 

Tony 

That will certainly calm paranoia about the Mainstream Media (MSM) suppressing the Edwards scandal. ... 

P.S.: Is the Times' edict a) part of a double-standard that favors Democrats (and disfavors Republicans like Rep. Vito Fossella and John McCain)? Or does it b) simply reflect an outmoded Gatekeeper Model of journalism in which not informing readers of certain sensitive allegations is as important as informing them--as if readers are too simple-minded to weigh charges that are not proven, as if they aren't going to find out about such controversies anyway? I'd say it's a mixture of both (a) and (b). This was a sensational scandal the LAT and other MSM papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate, and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again. ...

P.P.S.: The Times apparently failed to get word of the ban to one of its bloggers in time to prevent her from shocking readers by  saying she hoped the allegations against Edwards weren't true. ...  2:55 A.M. link

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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Always trust women named Emily (and Rachael and Bonnie):  Good discussion of whether the Edwards story is "news" on Slate's XX Factor. ... Are we in the truth business or the "protect Saint Elizabeth" business? ... Anyway, if the National Enquirer'sstory is true, Elizabeth Edwards' public role as a popular and effective spokesperson will not be undermined--even though maybe it should be a bit (given her complicity in the coverup).  ... P.S.: Melinda Henneberger argues that "the Edwards family should be left alone."  But didn't Henneberger write a piece purporting to take readers "inside the Edwards' marriage," according to the headline? Wasn't that a breach of privacy? It was just a breach of privacy that Elizabeth Edwards approved of. ... P.P.S.: It was a good piece--effectively countering the attacks on Edwards for having an expensive house. But it did not tell readers what was going on "inside the Edwards marriage." ("I still don't want to know," Henneberger initially blogs--though she eventually admits: "I may be identifying with [Elizabeth] a little too closely, as an oversharing cancer survivor and all.") ... 3:24 P.M.

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Nibbling at the edges of the MSM:  Imus laments that the Edwards L.C. story is "starting to become news." ... And there's always the late-night comics' rabbithhole into public consciousness. ...

But the MSM wants photos:Dallas Morning News' Rod Dreher, like   many, complains about the lack of photographs. ... Kf says the night is young! ... Would video do? ... 1:01 P.M.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

"At least 10 Eyewitnesses": Death By 1000 Papercuts interviews David Perel, editor of the National Enquirer, about the Edwards/Rielle Hunter scoop (excerpt):

Mondo: You have more updates planned on this latest installment?

DP: We'll be updating the story several times. We're not finished yet.

Mondo: Any other comments?

DP: We were looking for the "smoking gun": time, place, day and date. Edwards could always "deny, deny, deny". Now, Edwards can't deny being at the Beverly Hilton and visiting Rielle Hunter. There were at least 10 eyewitnesses to the affair of Edwards running on the stairs and ducking into the restroom.

There were seven reporters on the story, according to Perel. DBKP adds that Edwards ran into "at least one Enquirer photographer" when "trying to make his escape." ...  So will one of the "updates" include photos? Did the photographer forget to take off the lens cap?  11:53 P.M.

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"Get it first, but first get it second." The old Newsweek rule! I hope that's the rule the MSM is following. If so, here's an MSM mention! And here. Business Week is what, chopped liver? And doesn't Jack Shafer count? ... I fear there is a new rule: "We don't want to get it at all. Not even just a mention of the 'allegation.' Not even second." Why? Jon Fine's Business Week piece  summarizes some likely reasons. A couple of points:

--Fine notes that "Edwards isn't considered a likely vice-presidential candidate by the press." That's true. But he is a likely Obama cabinet official. Many Dems would like to see him as Attorney-General. That's what's at stake in the love-child coverage. The Enquirer has killed him as a VP candidate. But if the MSM goes into full "protect Elizabeth" mode the damage might yet not quite be enough to stop his confirmation by a Democratic Senate next year. "Protect Elizabeth" = "protect A.G. John."

--If the Enquirer story is true, Edwards didn't just cheat on his sick wife after making a big deal of his loyalty to her in the campaign. He also presided over an elaborate cover-up, involving lies and duplicitous lobbying of the MSM. What is it the CW says about cover-ups? Eliot Spitzer looks like a Boy Scout in comparison.

P.S.: If the MSM can discuss the charges in meta form ("It's so easy to jump to conclusions---and I admit, this looks bad") in blogs, chat rooms, and in press commentaries, why not on the front page in political commentaries? As things stand, here's a rundown of media performance on the John Edwards front:

--The New York Times doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--The print edition of the Washington Post doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Newsweek doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Time doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Katie Couric didn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Brian Williams didn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Charlie Gibson didn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--RealClearPolitics doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

-- HuffingtonPost  doesn't tell you what happened yesterday (and it's their story!). I blame the commenters.

--Mark Halperin doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Mark Ambinder doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--One Roger Simon tells you what happened yesterday--but the other Roger Simon  doesn't!

Has the gap between what the MSM lets you know and what happened--and what you can easily find out happened--ever been greater? ...

Update: John Tabin argues: "If the account of him being caught in a hotel rendezvous with Rielle Hunter was false, Edwards wouldn't be changing the subject, he'd be suing."

Jim Treacher emails: "Which story gets a bigger audience: A story the blogs run with but the mainstream news ignores, or a story the news runs with but the blogs ignore? I'm thinking the news comes out ahead, but just barely. And at this rate, not for much longer." ...

More: Rielle Hunter just appeared on camera on Extra, talking about what a wonderful man John Edwards is. Not sure this helps him. ... 5:17 P.M. link

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If McCain is doing so badly, why isn't that showing up here? Or here? ... 8:25 A.M.

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Edwards, Rielle Hunter, Busted:  HuffPo 's Sam Stein, who got the story rolling, appears to be vindicated. ... P.S.: Always trust content from   kausfiles! Never trust content from Jerome Armstrong. ... P.P.S.: Will this be the first presidential-contender level scandal to occur completely in the undernews, without ever being reported in the cautious, respectable MSM? That's always seemed an interestingtheoretical possibility--a prominent politician just disappears from the scene, after blogs and tabloids dig up dirt on him, but nobody who relies on the Times, Post, network news or Mark Halperin has the faintest idea why. If this is that case, it will  have come along sooner than I would have thought. ... P.P.P.S.: But it's hard to believe the MSM can ignore the story now. Don't think Obama will! ...

Update: Nothing yet. You'd think MSM reporters would resent being played for chumps by Mudcat Sanders, et al. ... 8:09 P.M. link

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Monday, July 21, 2008

You Can't Drill Your Way Out of This Problem! Have you seen former Energy secretary Bill 'I-was-vetted' Richardson on any of the well-sourced Obama VP lists? I haven't. ...  2:03 P.M.

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Dónde está Juan?  ... 1:36 P.M.

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Paul Begala, Friend of Angelo! ... Plus: Holbrooke saved $15,000. ... Suggested title for either man's memoirs: "Dodd is my Co-Pirate!" .... [stolen from P. Krassner's The Realist] 11:20 A.M.

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Here's Spiegel's transcript of Prime Minister al-Maliki's comments on when U.S. troops might withdraw from Iraq:

As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes. [E.A.]

And here's the NYT's own translation of the tape:

"Obama's remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq." [E.A.]

There's a not inconsequential difference between the two, no? The Times version specifically does not "endorse" the timetable of 16 months (no matter what some bloggers claim). It says 16 months isn't crazy. ...  P.S.:Hot Air has a third translation, which is somewere in between, ...  P.P.S.: Maliki does seem to endorse Obama's general approach over McCain's, though. ("Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.") ... [via Insta, Yglesias ] 12:41 A.M. link

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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Why did star blogger Matt Yglesias really  defect from The Atlantic  to the Center for American Progress? It can't have been the money: The Atlantic is the last journalistic gravy train in town. Were the ideas at the Aspen Ideas Festival not up to snuff? ... P.S.: What's CAP getting in the deal? Gravitas! ... 11:49 P.M. link

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Maybe we should pay more attention to the issues on which Obama hasn't noticeably shifted to the center. For example, 1) health care and 2) tax increases. In each case, the relevant question would seem to be: Is he sticking to his guns because a) that's what he really believes his presidency should be about, or b) the issue is so central to his coalition that changing his position would disrupt his election strategy? ... My guess: Issue 1# is both a and b. But some moderate moderation** on Issue #2, taxes, wouldn't really hurt Obama politically--he could still be for raising taxes on the rich without proposing hikes that add up to marginal rates in the over-50% range on the coasts.  His failure to do that suggests that soaking the rich in myriad ways is what he really believes in.

It's a big insufficiently remarked-on vulnerability. You don't have to be against high taxes to be against high marginal tax rates, which threaten to produce a boom in unproductive tax shelters. The tax-raising alternatives are to broaden the tax base (i.e. the sorts of income that are taxed) and to broaden the range of taxpayers who face increases (instead of soaking only the very tip of the income pyramid, those making over $250,000 or $300,,000 a year).  ...

**--Obama does seem to have watered down his tax position a bit, fudging what seemed to be an inclination to impose the Social Security payroll tax of 12.4%  on high earners. Now aide Jason Furman says

[W]e are looking at a range of plans, think Congress might like to have rates that are in the neighborhood of 2% to 4%."

Good climbdown, Jason! But was Obama just winging it before? And never mind what "Congress" wants. What does Obama want? ... Are Obama's own aides already invoking Congressional Democrats as a valuable check on their candidate's leftish instincts? ... 11:20 P.M. link  

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And they say investigative journalism is endangered: Driving to the 7-11, I passed a strange, ugly car/truck vehicle I'd never seen before. All the badges and identifying lettering had been removed. It turned out to be a SsangYong Actyon. But of course. ... Or ... wait ... did it just look like a SsangYong Actyon? Yes, that's what they wanted us to believe! But Autoblog Green penetrates the mask of the phenomenal world to uncover the hidden truth.  ...  2:11 P.M. link  

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Friday, July 18, 2008

So when Obama opposes the surge it's potential "chaos" and "disaster,"  according to John McCain. But when Chuck Hagel opposes the surge it's an "informed decision"? "I respect his views," says McCain. ... GetDrunk asks: "Will McCain 'respect' Obama's views once Obama has 'studied the issue'?" ... Maybe Obama was relying on Hagel's deep knowledge! Does that make it better? ... If an "informed decision" leads to chaos and disaster, what does that say about the value of the process by which U.S. Senators go about becoming "informed"?... P.S: You'd think McCain could just say, "I think Sen. Hagel is wrong"? What is it about Hagel that has the power to fog not just his own mind but the minds of others? Does he tell great dirty stories? Is he so gloomy that his friends worry that dissing him will send him over the edge? ... 5:10 P.M. link

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Thursday, July 17, 2008

If I see one more hip twentysomething man reading a book of high-class poetry (Rilke, Larkin) I'm going to report a trend (or, rather, check to see if the Trend has been Declared already). ... Update: I suspect these people are somehow mixed up in this. ... 2:52 A.M.

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"Security First"--McCain's One-Step Two-Step: Ramesh Ponnuru admits that John McCain has given "mixed signals" as to whether he intends to a) secure the borders through an enforcement bill, wait until the borders are secure, and only then try to pass a second bill to legalize illegal immigrants or to b) try to pass one big "comprehensive" bill that includes both enforcement and a provision that automatically triggers legalization once certain statutory conditions are met.  It's a crucial issue, since the statutory conditions are likely to be easy to meet--e.g., four pro-legalization border state governors certifying that "security" has been achieved, a "trigger" McCain has suggested in the past--and there will be tremendous pressure to either declare them satisfied or water them down.

Even admitting McCain's flailing, semi-confused contradiction--sorry, strategic ambiguity--is a concession some McCain supporters won' t make.  But think about it: President McCain takes office in 2009, along with a heavily Democratic Congress. A commitment to legalization is one of the few things McCain will have in common with those Democrats. What's he going to do--pass a tough "enforcement" bill his first year, despite opposition from Dem leaders, then wait a year or two, and then try to pass a second mostly-amnesty bill either in a mid-term election year or in the second half of what is likely to be his single term in office? Or will he try to pass both parts quickly, while he's still popular, in one big bill with whatever "triggers" are needed? Answer: He'll do (b). I can't believe Ponnuru thinks otherwise. ... 2:46 A.M. link

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When I tell  my liberal friends that "card check" is one of the big issues in the 2008 campaign, they tend to roll their eyes. But when I tell my conservative friends that "card check" is one of the big issues in 2008 ... they roll their eyes too. Apparently the words "card check" are not enough, in themselves, to convey the fundamental shift in industrial organization that might result if workers could trigger unionization under the Wagner Act without a normal secret-ballot election.

Mike Murphy's initial  anti-card check ads, using actor Vincent Curatola who played Johnny Sack in The Sopranos (and who also appeared in the Clintons'  parody), attempted to bring the issue down from the eye-roll level. They seemed effective to me, but I'm pre-convinced. Murphy's new follow-up ads-- example here--will be a test of whether support of card check can actually be used against individual candidates. I'm less convinced of that. ... P.S.: The target of this particular ad is Al Franken. It's hard for me to believe that Franken, who's always struck me as a sensible yuppie neolib type underneath, actually cares that much about card check (whatever his  Web site says). ... 1:40 A.M. link

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The Chandra Story Is Back: Fred Barnes said the most discouraging words in the English language are "first of a series." But the Chandra Levy case actually deserves a 12-part series, and I'm eager to read WaPo's effort. (I admit I may wait until it's all published and I can peek at the conclusion). Here's a complicated mystery, with a real victim and all sorts of sociological and political lessons, that never got the coverage it deserved after self-righteous media scolds who mainly work for MSM organizations that are now going broke used it to symbolize the allegedly trivial, tabloidy coverage before 9/11! ... Maybe I'll even  "skip" it. ...  Bonus: Now Howie Kurtz can try to boost his CNN ratings with a tabloidy show re-denouncing tabloidy coverag e of the Levy case!   ... 4:34 P.M. link

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Can't Get Enough Fannie Mae: V-helpful op-ed by Lawrence Kudlow

a) makes it clear that Fannie's involvment in the subprime market comes not from repackaging subprime loans as securities but from buying those securities after they'd been repackaged by others (which still helped fuel the subprime lending crisis, pace Krugman):

The main mission of Fannie and Freddie is to provide liquidity into the mortgage markets by purchasing loans made by local lenders and repackaging them into bond-market security pools that are sold to investors with the U.S. government's stamp of approval. You might call this the good-cop function.

But then there's the bad-cop function: Fannie and Freddie purchased some of these mortgage pools for their own portfolios, essentially setting up a high-risk internal hedge fund. It was the sinking credit quality of this hedge fund that drove last week's shareholder run. Think sub-prime mortgages and other shaky and exotic loans.

b) suggests, startlingly, that the government has agreed to back only Fannie's "good cop" function, not the bad-cop securities purchases that are the source of Fannie's financial troubles;

c) hints that left and right are converging on the desirability of de-privatizing Fannie and Freddie, at least temporarily. When even an AEI expert calls for talking profit-making shareholder owned organizations and "making them tightly controlled government agencies," maybe they should be made tightly controlled government agencies! Letting Jim Johnson politico types build profit-making empires with taxpayer-supported credit is just too risky. (For how Johnson operated, see this 2006 WaPo piece  [via NewsAlert].)

P.S.: When toting up the costs and benefits of Fannie Mae, shouldn't Slate's Daniel Gross have taken into account the cost of dragging down the whole economy in a subprime crisis which Fannie and Freddy helped fuel maybe not as a primary but as an important secondary factor? Just asking!  .... I smell Kool Aid! ... 2:58 P.M. link

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Chart of the Day: What happened to the number of people on public assistance in New York City after the 1996 welfare reform. ... 2:52 A.M.

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Both these candidates are for the same thing: a path to citizenship--that doesn't reward people who come in illegally--but McCain did change his emphasis ...

Liasson is being very careful not to overemphasize or underemphasize the difference between the candidates. She doesn't exhibit any tilt toward Obama or toward McCain. It's all exquisitely fair--except that she almost unconsciously embeds a bit of ludicrous BS that is common to both candidates: the idea that their legalization plans wouldn't "reward people who come in illegally."

Of course they would. When you hear the candidates talk about sending illegals to the "back of the line,"  remember that there are two lines: 1) An initial, typically very long line in which foreigners patiently wait years, sometimes decades, to get green cards or other documents that enable them to live and work here legally, and 2) a shorter second line of people who have green cards and want to become citizens. Neither Obama nor McCain would send illegals to the back of the first line--that would, in many cases, be tantamount to deporting them. On the contrary, the illegals who are already here get to pay a not-huge fine and skip Queue #1 entirely. They may go to the back of Queue #2, but that's a queue they can wait out while working legally in the richest country on Earth--a reward the poor suckers who obeyed the law and are still lining up outside U.S. consulates abroad don't get. ...

Just because both candidates say something doesn't mean it's not crap! ... 2:33 A.M.  link

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kf seems to have reappeared on Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo blogroll after a mysterious absence. Thanks! ...  12:34 A.M.

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Monday, July 14, 2008

Asymptotically approa ching ... damage control: Calculated Risk has what seems like a judicious assessment of Krugman's Fannie Mae column.

Fannie and Freddie had about as much to with the "explosion of high-risk lending" as they could get away with. We are all fortunate that they couldn't get away with all that much of it. ... [snip]

But they didn't like losing their market share, and they pushed the envelope on credit quality as far as they could inside the constraints of their charter: they got into "near prime" programs (Fannie's "Expanded Approval," Freddie's "A Minus") that, at the bottom tier, were hard to distinguish from regular old "subprime" except--again--that they were overwhelmingly fixed-rate "non-toxic" loan structures. ...

Furthermore, both GSEs [Government Sponsored Enterprises--e.g. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] were major culprits in the growth of the mega-lenders. Over the years they were struggling so hard to maintain market share, they were allowing themselves to experience huge concentration risks. As they catered more and more to their "major partners"--Countrywide, Wells Fargo, WaMu, the usual suspects--they helped sustain and worsen the "aggregator" model in which smaller lenders sold loans not to the GSEs but to CFC or WFC, who then sold the loans to the GSEs. ...

I think we can give Fannie and Freddie their due share of responsibility for the mess we're in, while acknowledging that they were nowhere near the biggest culprits in the recent credit bubble. [E.A.]

In a post-column mop up operation, Krugman cites Calculated Risk's analysis and glibly says, "That's not really in contradiction to what I said  ..." Really? What Krugman said was:

Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago ....

My turn: But didn't I say that "Fannie Mae was a huge buyer of subprime mortgages"? I did. How does this jibe with Calculated Risk's assertion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed the envelope but that the envelope still constrained them at least somewhat?  I don't know the answer ... at least not yet... but at least part of it seems   to be  that Fannie Mae mainly purchased subprime mortgage securities--i.e. mortgages that had been aggregated and repackaged as bonds--but that it didn't buy actual subrime mortgages directly. In theory buying the bonds backed by lousy mortgages might have been safer than buying the mortgages, although this 2007 Fortune article seems to argue that the protection was largely illusory, and that through the bond purchases

over the past five years [Fannie Mae] became exposed to mortgages that were made to people with poor credit - subprime mortgages.

Is there any doubt that by purchasing bonds backed by subprime mortgages Fannie Mae helped enable the "explosion of high-risk lending"? I wouldn't think so. Indeed, expanding subprime lending seems to have been the goal.  But then why doesn't Calculated Risk emphasize that aspect of Fannie's culpability? If anyone wants to explain this to me, I'll repackage it and sell it to my readers. ...

Answers! a) Yes, the explanation seems to be that Fannie Mae bought securities backed by subprime loans, not the loans themselves; b) Even Tantu says  these securities purchases were "supposed to be about supplying some 'needed' capital to the subprime market." If you're providing "needed" capital aren't you thereby enabling the "explosion of high risk lending," as Conn Carroll charges? Doesn't that leave Krugman--"Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion"--looking like he's drunk some kind of Fannie Mae Kool Aid?  ...[Thanks to readers R and S11:57 P.M. link

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Curious passage in Paul Krugman's half-defense of Fannie Mae today:

But here's the thing: Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago, an explosion that dwarfed the S.& L. fiasco. In fact, Fannie and Freddie, after growing rapidly in the 1990s, largely faded from the scene during the height of the housing bubble.

Partly that's because regulators, responding to accounting scandals at the companies, placed temporary restraints on both Fannie and Freddie that curtailed their lending just as housing prices were really taking off. Also, they didn't do any subprime lending, because they can't.

Huh? Does Krugman not know that Fannie Mae was a huge buyer of subprime mortgages, including mortgages from Angelo Mozilo's Countrywide? David Smith's eerily prescient AHI blog noted  that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reportedly bought $35 billion in subprimes in the first quarter of 2007 alone.

What you need to know here is that the right — the WSJ editorial page, Heritage, etc. — hates, hates, hates Fannie and Freddie. Why? Because they don't want quasi-public entities competing with Angelo Mozilo.

"Huh?" again. Conn Carroll responds:

The problem is that Fannie was Countrywide's No. 1 enabler. ... When he was CEO of Fannie, former Barack Obama campaign adviser Jim Johnson worked personally with Mozilo to streamline the two companies' business relationship.

Could Mozilo have done his subprime thing without Johnson and Fannie Mae as a backup to purchase his junky mortgages?

P.S.: Krugman suggests Fannie's problem is that it wasn't a true government agency, but rather a hybrid public/private partnership that privatized profits and socialized losses.

Liberals like Fannie the way it was for the first 30 years — a purely public enterprise.

Good point--according to Smith Fannie seems to have been using all sorts of tricks to turn profits using its implicit government credit guarantee.But if Fannie had been a pure government enterprise, would it really have refrained from supporting Mozilo-style subprime lending? I'm not so sure. Providing "affordable housing" was a policy crusade of Johnson, among others, and a popular goal on Capitol Hill (where Mozilo had done so much to ensure that his "friends" would be receptive to his particular method of pursuing affordability).

P.P.S.: Krugman also writes, boldly:

You could say that the Fannie-Freddie experience shows that regulation works.

You could say that--unless you read the remainder of Krugman's column, which notes the inadequate capital requirements imposed on Fannie-Freddie because 

the companies' management bought off the political process, systematically hiring influential figures from both parties.

P.P.P.S.: Is this risk of corruption any less with a) "purely public enterprise" than with b) a public-private hybrid like Fannie Mae or c) a purely private enterprise (like, say, the Blackstone Group)? Interesting question. I would think well-connected liberal operatives like Johnson would be capable of at least perverting a regulatory regime even if they headed a 100% federal, civil-servicized Fannie Mae. (Most "regulation" is in category (c) of course, where the risk of corruption seems somehow undiminished by the triumphant "Fannie-Freddie experience.") ...

Update: See semi-clarifying semi-correction. ...  2:00 P.M.

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Didn't subprime poster villain Angelo Mozilo do Barack Obama a big favor by compromising Obama's initial VP vetter, Jim Johnson, with favorable loans, causing Johnson to step down from his position? How bad would today's headlines be for Obama if Fannie Mae fatcat Johnson was still heading up his vice-presidential search effort? ... 10:45 P.M.

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A reader emails:

People seem to think it's somehow a stroke of political genius that Sen. Obama is taking Sen. Hagel with him on his trip to Iraq.  But why doesn't this highlight Obama's lack of judgment on the surge, by bringing along the man who considered it a catastrophically bad idea?

Actually, Hagel called the surge  "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam." ... Is Obama cannily trying to demonstrate why Hagel would be a horrifying VP pick? Is he trying to deflect attention from his own poor surge judgment ("the surge has not worked") by bringing along as a lightning rod someone whose judgment was even worse than his? ... Imagine how embarrassing it would be if Obama went with an antiwar Republican like Gen. Zinni, who supported the surge, with what now looks like contrarian wisdom. ... 1:40 A.M.

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Saturday, July 12, 2008

BMW 3 series needs a Seven Level DeBangling, gets minor tweaks. Now slightly less ugly. ... 12:41 P.M.

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William Bradley on why Schmidt might be a good fit: He helped Schwarzenegger move to the center in 2006. A beat sweetener, but that doesn't make it wrong! ... 12:28 A.M.

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Friday, July 11, 2008

I must admit, I don't quite understand why Obama appears to have lost ground in two of three  recent polls. ... My working theory was roughly this:

Moving to a more responsible position on Iraq: Valuable.

Having Jesse Jackson say he wants to cut your nuts out: Priceless

Maybe the Newsweek poll is off (always a good bet). Maybe Obama's rapid-fire--and, therefore, seemingly calculated--pivots on a series of issues really have hurt his image, as Halperin suggests. Maybe there will be a delayed Jackson bounce. ... Or maybe Obama needed to respond to Jackson more forcefully, given that Jackson implicitly, but rather graphically, raised the "wuss" meme. ... 4:40 P.M. link

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

According to Rasmussen, voters reject Obama's Scarsdale Bien Pensant Dinner Party Lecture about bilingulalism by, oh, 83% to 13%. ... See also Gateway, Clegg, and Maguire. ... Maguire makes the seemingly obvious point about having a common language: that it allows America to welcome and integrate immigrants from all over the world, whose native tongues may be Vietnamese, Chinese, or Polish, etc. ... Clegg:

If a fat, rich American goes to Paris and can't speak French, that's too bad but it is no tragedy. When a child growing up in America, or anyone who wants to live here and get ahead, doesn't learn English, that IS a tragedy.

7/11 Update: Does Obama really want to make this a two-day story? ...  4:06 P.M.  link

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McCain makes what, in other circumstances, might be a candidacy-crippling Social Security gaffe,** but few except Josh Marshall notice. ... I don't know if this means that the new Schmidt regime is already floundering or that it's working brilliantly. ...

**--A Category II Kinsley Gaffe, to be precise, in that it accurately reflects what the candidate really thinks. ... 3:45 P.M. link

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Reader D.L. emails:

Jackson may be right.  Let us assume for argument's sake that Obama is condescending and arrogant etc.  I am black but I am not so sure that really matters.  All I can say is close your eyes and look at the damned statistics.  We in the black community need to face up to the fact that we are the primary cause of our own demise. That may only be partly true but, by golly, it is better than thinking it is someone else's fault. One of these days white people are going to wake and realize that they do not have to respond to black guilt anymore.  Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and their ilk are dying and we need to start looking inward. What Obama says might only be partly true but in this case I will take it to heart. Arrogant, condescending, who cares?  We need to start hitting the books (yea, learning to speak Spanish is not a bad place to start), taking responsibility for our children (I am aware that welfare is not a "black" problem, but I guarantee you that the majority of white people think it is which, in some respects, makes it our problem). Maybe we need to hear more of that, not less.

Fair enough. But Steven Waldman helpfully links to a Father's Day talk in which Obama gets this point across without any downtalking  that I can discern. Effective! The biggest problem with Obama's occasional "I'm a big success and I'm telling you losers what to do" tone, in other words, may be that's it's not effective. My guess is it's likely to eventually produce a non-trivial, intense anti-Obama movement within the black community that will partially undermine the message D.L. wants delivered. ... P.S.: Of course, Obama's effectively non-condescending Father's Day talk my be what really annoys Rev. Jackson, as Waldman, Jack White, Eric Easter and Kathleen Parker have all suggested. ... See also Daniel Finkelstein, who employs a Shelby Steele-ish template, but whose argument dovetails with Easter's description of blacks worrying that whites want Obama to bring "a change in the racial dynamic." I know I do! ... 2:57 P.M. link

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Didn't Jesse Jackson Sr. have a point? There is something condescending, or arrogant, in Obama's lecture to a town hall meeting  in Georgia:

"You are probably not that good a rapper. Maybe you are the next Lil' Wayne, but probably not, in which case you need to stay in school," Obama, D-Ill., told a cheering crowd, brought to a standing ovation at a town hall meeting in Powder Springs, Georgia.

The presumptive Democratic nominee was speaking about high school drop out rates and the need for people to be committed to working hard in school so they can get a job after school.

Obama said he knows some young men think they can't find a job unless they are a really good basketball player.

"Which most of you brothas are not," Obama, who played basketball in high school, a sport he continues to play to this day, said jokingly. "I know you think you are, but you're not. You are over-rated in your own mind. You will not play in the NBA." [E.A.]

Isn't there a better way to phrase it that doesn't set up Obama as a commanding know-it-all--something along the lines of, "I urge you all to stay in school. I've seen what happened to friends of mine. I know what would have happened to me. The odds against people who drop out of high school are not good." (Something along the lines of this, in fact.) ...  P.S.: If you were a conscientious African-American parent who carefully rationed your kids' TV time, how would you feel if Obama came to town and told you, "So turn off the TV set, put the video game away." ... Even Bill Cosby is less condescending, I think. He's just a pissed off old geezer comin' right at ya. He doesn't claim to venerate Lil' Wayne  and then put down kids who aspire to live the life Lil' Wayne boasts about. ...

P.P.S.: Obama's lecture to parents about how "you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish"? Also condescending! Especially since, as Abe Greenwald points out, Obama doesn't speak Spanish.*** ... He's insultingly missing the point about the need for a common language, of course. If we want a common language, and the common language of Americans is English, then learning Spanish, however beneficial, is not going to achieve that goal. It's perfectly reasonable for native English speakers to worry if enough new immigrants whose ethnic leaders demand bilingual education will learn English. They probably will, but Obama's saying it's wrong to even worry about it. ... [via Corner] ... And then there's the whole embarrassed-by-boorish-Americans-who-don't-know-French riff. A provien vote-getter! ...  P.P.P.S.: He also seems really tired! ...

P.P.P.P.S.: Is the lecturing style one that wears well in a President? I think the answer is so obviously "no" that it's never been tried. Mayhill Fowler tried to warn us. [I had a snide comparison to Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech here, but that was unfair to Jimmy Carter. The "malaise" speech  was an exercise in self-loathing--and if it insulted voters it insulted them by attributing to them the same flaws and failures Carter attributed to himself.] ...

***: From a Jorge Ramos interview with Obama--"Obama studied Spanish in high school and for two years in college. "My Spanish used to be OK," he said. Now, however, he has all but forgotten it." ... 12:44 A.M. link

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Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Even kf is not this paranoid. ... 2:35 P.M.

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From WaPo's bio of new Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli:

He is married to Los Angeles Times reporter Maggie Farley, who is the paper's U.N. bureau chief.

The Los Angeles Times has a U.N. bureau chief? More layoffs please! ... [Thks. to alert reader E.]  2:27 P.M.

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First say "First": McCain's speech before the Latino Organization of the Day makes sure to include the word "first."

"Many Americans, with good cause, didn't believe us when we said we would secure our borders, and so we failed in our efforts. We must prove to them that we can and will secure our borders first, while respecting the dignity and rights of citizens and legal residents of the United States of America." [E.A.]

Byron York is impressed. I hate to be picky, but even if you think McCain actually believes his constantly-shifting formal position, the statement remains ambiguous. Is McCain saying he first must actually secure the borders or that he first must prove to the voters that he can secure the borders? I don't think it's crazy to believe the second interpretation is the correct one--or at least that McCain's drafters left it open to potentially give him wiggle room later (i.e., "We wouldn't be passing this historic comprehensive reform today, with the help of my Democratic friends, if we hadn't convinced the voters that we can and will secure the borders.") ... The ambiguous formula also leaves open the more obvious possibility of quickly passing a bill that contains a future "trigger"--with semi-amnesty automatically taking effect after, say, the four Mexico-adjacent governors sign some sort of artful finding that the borders are "secure." ...

On to La Raza! ... 2:05 P.M. link

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Murphy is through! Finished! There is noone named Mike Murphy. I don't quite see how Mike Allen of the Politico can write sentences like this:

Mike Murphy, a political consultant who helped Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) mastermind his 2000 campaign, will not be reboarding the Straight Talk Express. ... [snip].

With Steve Schmidt taking over operations last week, the matter is now resolved. Murphy will be seen on television and may offer McCain private counsel. But he won't be in the bubble. [Emphasis on overly definitive statements added.]

Yes, Murphy isn't coming on board in the current shakeup. But if McCain is still behind and flailing at the end of the summer, is he really going to say, "We resolved that matter of my campaign's structure back in July." Or is he going to panic and bring in Murphy? I don't know, but neither does Allen. (Or the NYT fool who titled Nagourney's item "Count Murphy Out for McCain Campaign.") ... Murphy certainly didn't close the door. ("I do not expect to join the campaign.") He had to say something to tamp down overheated reports of his imminent arrival.) ... Backfill: Zengerle refines his position. Search for "knife." ...

Update: Nor am I convinced that this brings "full closure" to the issue. Would NBC really not let Murphy out of his contract if he said he wanted to go run McCain's campaign? ... 1:23 P.M. link

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Jim Johnson's Legacy Builds: Politico gravy-train Fannie Mae in trouble  despite its massive implicit government subsidy, because new accounting rules would apparently require it to list billions of dollars of now off-the-balance-sheet mortgage guarantees as liabilities. Of course, the agency formerly headed by Obama's ex-veep-vetter  will probably wriggle out of the new rule thanks, as always, to political pressure:

"I would bet my firstborn that they will be excluded from the accounting change. It would bankrupt them," said Paul Miller of the investment firm Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group.

So everything's OK then! ... Backfill: Eerily prescient David Smith post here. See also this E-Z-2-Follow post on Fannie Mae's balance sheets. Cheap visual devices are used, and also the word "Augean." ... 12:35 P.M. link

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Monday, July 7, 2008

Getdrunkandvote4mccain.com The Republican base comes home, plastered. ... 1:49 A.M.

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PearSneak of the Day-- "Employers Fight Tough Measures on Immigration":  Robert Pear is the acknowledged master at sneaking not-as-important-as-they-sound policy stories into the lead position on the NYT front page on slow news days. These Pear pieces are often leaks from liberal interest groups, who then benefit from the prime placement. But it was Julia Preston who pulled a Pear yesterday, with a lead A-1 piece that seemed to be mainly a press release for Tamar Jacoby's new lobbying organization, ImmigrationWorks USA.

1) Some of Preston's evidence of an employer fight-back against the immigration crackdown is ludicrously weak. "Unhappy California business won the support of Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, who wrote a letter" protesting immigration raids. Yes, a letter! From a mayor!  Meanwhile:

Arizona businesses rallied behind a bill to create what would have been the first state guest worker program in the country. Their advertising campaign used the slogan "What part of legal don't you understand?"—a tweak of the battle cry of their opponents, who use the same phrase with the word "illegal." ...[snip]

Although the bill never came to a vote, employers said the debate helped make their views known in Washington.

"It's a message to the federal government," said Joe Sigg, director of government relations for the Arizona Farm Bureau ... [E.A.]

Then, a cautionary note:

Employers' groups have not succeeded everywhere.

They can't all be as successful as in Arizona, where their bill never came to a vote. ...

2) Does the employer resistance help or hurt the cause of "comprehensive immigration reform"? The "comprehensive" deal, after all, is supposed to be a) a guest worker program and b) semi-amnesty for existing illegals coupled with c) tough enforcement measures to make future amnesties unnecessary. That's why it's "comprehensive." To the extent powerful employers are fighting those enforcement measures--like "the federal system to check the working papers of new hires"--that would seem to undermine the "comprehensive" rationale and support the anti-comprehensivist claim that we'll end up with the amnesty but not the enforcement (as happened with the 1986 immigration reform).

And how is President John McCain going to plausibly claim he's "secured the borders first" if the chamber of commerce is suing in federal court to poke holes in that security? ...

P.S.: Preston's article seems to be part of a "series" titled "Getting Tough" and introduced by the NYT as follows:

This is the second article in a series that explores efforts by the government and others to compel illegal immigrants to leave the United States.

Isn't that description more than a bit tendentious? You can support enforcement efforts for lots of reasons other than a desire to have "illegal immigrants leave the United States." You might want to discourage further illegal immgration by those not yet in the U.S. for example, but not be especially bothered if current illegals  continue to live "in the shadows" for many more years. That's basically my position. ... It's true that Mark Krikorian and others explicitly advocate a strategy of "attrition."  Yet it's tendentious to describe even their position as being an effort to "compel" illegals to leave. If the government changes the desirability of staying in the U.S.--by requiring employers to check Social Security numbers or by simply failing to pass McCain's reform bill, thereby increasing "uncertainty about obtaining legal resident status any time soon"-- many illegals will decide to leave. Many won't. That doesn't seem like compulsion. ... 1:22 A.M.  link

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Sunday, July 6, 2008

More than two weeks ago the New York Times mentioned  that the Iraqi city of Mosul was " in the midst of a major security operation" against one of the last bastions of Al Qaeda in Iraq. So how's that going? Should we have to read the London Times (or Belmont Club) to learn about its success or failure? (It looks like relative success, Juan Cole notwithstanding.) ... If the NYT has reported the outcome, I missed it. (A June 1 story only went so far as to say that "hopes" had been "raised" and that the "Iraqi Army may soon have tenuous control." ) ... P.S.: Sorry to be crude, but does the NYT realize that we may be at the point where reports of military success in Iraq help Obama (because stability enables the rapid pullout he seeks) while reports of contiuing turmoil and difficulty help McCain (by raising doubts that U.S. forces can be safely withdrawn in the next few years)? ... [via Insta]11:56 P.M. link

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Saturday, July 5, 2008

Hey, I thought Leon decides what's anti-Semitic around there! ... 4:01 P.M.

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Out-of-Context Dingalink of the Week: NSFW. But true. ... 3:04 P.M.

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Carbon/Silicon's "The News"  would make a good Obama campaign song. You could skp the crunchy verse about people "caring about what they eat." ... [Unrealistically sunny?-ed Happy days are here again] ... 3:02 P.M.

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Thursday, July 3, 2008

The difference between Bill Clinton's "pivot" and Obama's "pivot". ... P.S.: Clinton's is better! ... 11:02 P.M.

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Aims at False Modesty, Misses: You'd think and Obama's Conceit-o-meter would have sounded the alarm before he let this sentence ship:

"I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience." [E.A.]

At least he fudged it with "mainly." ...[Quoted by Dominic Lawson]... 8:26 P.M.

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Instapundit does a much more effective job clearing Obama on the issue of home mortgage favoritism than Obama's own clumsy web site. ... 2:06 P.M.

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Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Klein Delendus Est: Another day at The Corner and Contentions and no mention of Joe Klein's imminent punishment. ... It must be a very long abject statement of apology he's working on. ... 3:35 P.M.

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I tried to cause Hugh Hewitt at least some momentary pain over McCain's renewed commitment to illegal immigrant legalization. I failed. Transcript:

MK: ... It was a terrible week for McCain, because he made it clear, Hugh, to people like you, that he's still for some form of amnesty, and he's much more likely to produce it than Obama. That's why I'm not for McCain. That's your problem.

HH: Well actually, I like where he is, since he's gone security first. Glenn, what do you think about the week? ...

He is such an apparatchik.  ... P.S.: The whole point of last week is that McCain's dropping the "first" from "security first."  ... 3:39 A.M.

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TNR's Jason Zengerle analyzes the McCain campaign shake-up:

[I]'s hard to see how or why McCain would bring back Mike Murphy--as has been rumored for a little while now--since [Steve] Schmidt's now playing the role McCain would have presumably wanted Murphy to fill.

So wrong!  McCain has plenty of time to bring back Murphy by the end of the summer if/when whatever Schmidt does between now and then doesn't seem to be working. ... Backfill: Chait made the same point. ... Update: Zengerle doubles down! "I don't think McCain can afford to do any more major reshuffling without running the risk of key Republicans concluding that he's hopeless and abandoning him en masse ..." Really? McCain has a shakeup before Labor Day and that's it, he's through? (Certainly voters won't care about it in November. By October even Mark Halperin will have forgotten about it.) ... Zengerle must be a) suffering from a clinical bubble-insider's loss of perspective and b) oblivious to the implications of the Feiler Faster Principle. ... It seems to me McCain has enough time to fire Schmidt, hire Weaver, fire Weaver, hire Murphy, fire Murphy, bring back Rick Davis, re-demote Davis and hire Schmidt again before the final debate. ... 2:58 A.M.

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Obama's campaign has posted a response  to that Boston Globe article on the failure of the "public private" housing partnerships Obama and his allies championed. The response seems weak and amateurish to me--with some good points (one housing project, for seniors, is a success) mixed with ineffective responses. For example:

RHETORIC: Obama translated that belief into legislative action as a state senator. In 2001, Obama and a Republican colleague, William Peterson, sponsored a successful bill that increased state subsidies for private developers. The law let developers designated by the state raise up to $26 million a year by selling tax credits to Illinois residents. For each $1 in credits purchased, the buyer was allowed to decrease his taxable income by 50 cents.

REALITY: SB 1135 WAS A BIPARTISAN BILL THAT HOUSING ADVOCATES SUPPORTED

Well, that settles it! Because bipartisan bills that housing advocates support always produce more clean, safe afforadable housing, and never enrich developers who wind up managing slums. ... P.S.: In general, it's hard to believe that Obama's fact-check site, heavy with pro-forma testimonials from other pols, will convince anybody who's not already a firm supporter. ... 2:51 A.M.

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So the Fourth of July newspapers will have John McCain in ... er, Mexico plotting how to achieve comprehensive immigration reform with Felipe Calderon. ... And some people say the McCain Team has a tin ear! ... 1:16 A.M.

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Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Klein Lives: Have the rules changed? Last Tuesday, Time's Joe Klein wrote:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives--people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary--plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

Max Boot, Pete Wehner,   Jennifer Rubin, Paul Mirengoff  and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League  all wrote confidently outraged responses to Klein's raising of the "divided loyalties" possibility--and, indeed, it's not the sort of assertion that has typically gone unpunished in the past. When Klein stubbornly  failed to back down in a second post, Wehner somewhat smugly anticipated his near-certain demise:

It's like watching a movie that you now know is going to end very badly, and very sadly.

But here's the thing: It's now a week later, and as far as I can tell Klein still has his job.  He's still blogging (wondering "why Lieberman is so fixated on Iran"). He hasn't been publically rebuked by his employer. He hasn't been forced to issue a groveling apology.

Can it be that the rules have changed? I suspect they have. And I think this is progress, for reasons outlined here and here. It should be possible to publicly debate whether some "Jewish neoconservatives," among others, too easily convinced themselves that America's and Israel's interests happily coincided in the prosecution of the war. Meanwhile, Foxman's view  that

Neoconservatives have the right to make their case without having their religion brought up.  ... [snip]  Religious beliefs are personal, and matters of faith belong in the heart, in the church and in the home

seems preposterously artificial. Note to Foxman: I worked at The New Republic! The magazine supported the war. I consider its editor, Martin Peretz, to be a friend and mentor. But if you think Marty's views are uninfluenced by his affinity for Israel--and that the views of many of the eminent neocons who visited our offices were uninfluenced by "matters of faith" and/or religious identity--then you don't know Marty and you don't know The New Republic. In fact, you're more than a bit clueless.  But you are not clueless.

This isn't to say that the decision to go to war in Iraq was necessarily wrong or right. It's not to say that "Jewish neoconservatives" were more than what Klein calls a "subsidiary" source of support for the war. It's not to say that anyone is more patriotic than anyone else.  The influence of pro-Israel sympathies (or pro-wherever sympathies) invariably takes the form of encouraging the belief that what you think is right for the United States is also what is right for Israel (or wherever), and vice-versa. But that only begins the discussion of whether this belief is itself distorted by those sympathies. It doesn't end it. At least it doesn't seem to any more. ...

Update: M.J. Rosenberg at TPM on Klein's "chutzpah." ...1:52 A.M. link

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Monday, June  30, 2008

Just Don't Hire Bangle: Schwarzenegger steals the new Tesla plant from New Mexico (and its governor, Bill Richardson). Tesla will now apparently attempt to build electric sedans in the S.F. Bay Area. ... P.S.: It's one thing to build a fast $100,000 two-seat sports car--the car nuts who buy it are probably willing to overlook a few flaws (as long as it goes from 0-60 in 3.9 seconds).  It's another to build "a mid-size sports sedan for $60,000, a competitor to the BMW 5-series and Jaguar XF " by the "end of 2009." Tesla is going up against decades of expertise in, for example, achieving both a supple ride and good handling. They'd need to set up a network of high-quality parts suppliers. Plus they need to sell in volume to bring the price down. Seems a longshot.  But I'm all for them trying.  ... 3:43 P.M. link

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P.S:  A friend emails: "Obama's KATRINA. A little dramatic?"  Maybe. Obama's record on "affordable housing," as described in the Globe story, isn't a case of gross ineptitude in a catastrophic regional emergency. It's not even a symbol of endemic governmental dysfunction. (Although: Is there a bigger Petri dish for corrupt incompetence than the "public-private partnership"? Think cable TV franchises.) But the Globe account does seem to capture what's most likely to be wrong with an Obama administration.  After all, Obama's career has been unusually limited for a presidential contender. Housing and "community development" has been a big part of it. If the result has been a disaster in which Obama's friends made lots of money while his poor constituents lived in dangerous squalor, that seems like a big warning sign, no? At least an expectations-lowerer! George W. Bush, in contrast, hadn't dedicated a large chunk of his life to FEMA. ... P.S.: Plus Valerie Jarrett, one of the people who comes off poorly in the article, remains a  central Obama advisor. It's as if Brownie had Karen Hughes' job. ...   3:16 A.M. link

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Bring Back Bode: Why not bring back Ken Bode to host Meet the Press? His Washington Week in Review was just getting really good when he was fired to make room for the anodyne Gwen Ifill. ... Bode's about as far away in style from Keith Olbermann as you can get, something that seems to be important to MTPers who see their show as a holdout against creeping cable culture. ... 2:43 A.M.

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Where's the "First"? McCain appears before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, as reported in Politico:

McCain, speaking first, promised the approximately 700 attendees that resurrecting the bipartisan immigration bill he helped shape last year would be at the forefront of his agenda as president.

"It would be my top priority yesterday, today and tomorrow," McCain said in response to a question about whether he would pursue a comprehensive approach beyond his campaign promise to secure the border in his first 100 days in office.

Seeking to win some points for his initial support for a comprehensive immigration bill, McCain noted that his position "wasn't very popular ... with some in my party."

And, in remarks that could inflame those Republican border hawks, the Arizona senator made clear he would not just seek to secure the border first, as he promised in the primary.

"We have to secure our borders — that's the message," McCain said. "But we also must proceed with a temporary worker program that is verifiable and truly temporary."

1) It looks as if the folks at The Corner are no longer in denial on whether McCain's "I got the message" talk during the primaries was a sincere shift to to a tougher stand on immigration.  It wasn't.

2)  Note that in the above remarks, and the  remarks highlighted by McCain campaign bloggerr Michael Goldfarb, the candidate says "we have to secure our borders" rather than "we have to secure our borders first."[E.A.] The missing "first" matters. With it, McCain's position sounds like Lou Dobbs'. Without it, McCain's position threaten to shade into full immediate support of semi-amnesty, with the inconsequential notation that of course reform wouldn't pass unless the public is convinced the borders are sufficiently "secure."  Comprehensivists have always claimed their legislation would secure the borders, remember. It's the "first" that made the difference for McCain, or seemed to.    

3) Is there any convincing evidence that actual Latino voters care as much about illegal immigrant legalization as Latino elected offiicials (or the journalists who cover them)?

4) Won't McCain's expedient abandonment of his expedient primary position produce loud conservative protests at the GOP convention? Does McCain worry about this--on the theory that discordant conventions make for losing presidential campaigns? Or does he welcome it, on the grounds that a noisy fight with his right wing would effectively distinguish him from his unpopular party (even though McCain's side in this fight would also be President Bush's)? ... 

Update: Mark Krikorian argues Obama is goading McCain into emphasizing "in increasingly strident terms his commitment to legalizing all the illegal aliens," which further inflames anti-legalization Republicans. McCain seems to be taking the bait, which would seem to make sense only if he hopes to win over, not just swing Latinos but also swing centrists of all ethnicities who've become allergic to the GOP. But is immigration the issue on which Mike Murphy's "white females and ticket-splitting independents" crave a break from Republican dogma? Aren't they equally uneasy about rushing to a Grand Comprehensivist Solution?  You'd think there would be more promising Souljah-esque, anti-base battlefields for McCain: Congressional corruption, excessive deregulation, stem cells and even abortion, no? ... 2:27 A.M. link

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Sunday, June  29, 2008

Isn't this the plot of House of Sand and Fog? It looks as if Cindy McCain's elderly aunt was a year away from having her San Diego house sold by local tax authorities (when McCain's trust failed to pay property taxes). Did Newsweek save her? ... [via HuffPo] 10:34 P.M.

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More flip-flops, please! ... [via Insta ] 1:38 A.M.

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Friday, June  27, 2008

That's the Lanny Davis we know! He says to Obama:

"I don't want you to take out of context what I said during the campaign."

The press has played yesterday's Washington meeting as a way to let Obama, worried about losing the election, suck up to Hillary supporters. But maybe it was also a way to let erstwhile Hillary supporters, worried about losing access to power, suck up to Obama. ... 10:37 A.M.

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Mike Mur ... I mean the blogger Richelieu thinks McCain shouldn't overdo his support of gun rights, especially handgun rights.

In the end, this election will be decided by white females and ticket-splitting independents. The handgun issue is no huge winner among this group.

Richelieu suggests that he's armed, however. So don't call him "Mike" to his face. ... 10:34 P.M.

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Thursday, June  26, 2008

Zinni, Zinni, Zinni!  ... 9:02 P.M.

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Wednesday, June  25, 2008

Why do Democrats "hope to pressure McCain strategist Charlie Black to resign"?  He might! Then what? Black's been doing a distinctly mediocre job so far. McCain would probably replace him with someone like Mike Murphy, who might do a much better job. ... 7:44 P.M.

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"[S]peaking to reporters aboard his campaign plane, Obama said the actress doesn't have his personal email address. "She sent one email to Reggie, who forwarded it to me," Obama said, referring to his 26-year-old personal assistant, Reggie Love. "I write saying, 'thank you Scarlett for doing what you do,' and suddenly we have this email relationship"

This seems inexplicably clumsy. Johansson's a supporter who helped make Obama a highly effective video. She probably thought she was helping Obama again when she told the press how impressed she was that he returned her "personal emails." ("I feel like I'm supporting someone, and having a personal dialogue with them, and it's amazing.") Surely there's a way to get across the point that she's just an occasional emailer without making her look like a fantasist. ...  8:50 A.M. link

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Comprehensivist Down! In 2006, the primary victory of GOP Rep. Chris Cannon was offered by many pundits as comforting evidence that the immigration issue didn't have legs. After all, Cannon had supported "comprehensive" immigration reform--including legalization (i.e. semi-amnesty)--yet he survived in a conservative Utah district. Here's Michael Barone  two years ago:

If Cannon had lost, House Republicans surely would have panicked and stonewalled any approach but border-security-only. But his victory -- and the fact that he ran ads with endorsements from George W. Bush, who supports a comprehensive bill -- indicates that his positions are not political death, even in a district that went 77 percent to 20 percent Republican in the 2004 presidential election

Well, yesterday Cannon lost-- to a fellow Republican who had no paid staff or polling but did attack Cannon's support of "amnesty." And Cannon lost by a large margin (60-40) primarily because he "failed to generate the kind of [Republican primary] turnout typically enjoyed by House incumbents." ...

Hmm. As if by eerie coincidence, John McCain has been having trouble generating the kind of popularity among Republicans typically enjoyed by Republican presidential candidates! And he's also been pushing "comprehensive" reform of late, potentially winning Latino support but further jeopardizing his GOP support. Kausfiles notes that there are more Republicans than Latinos. If McCain win's an extra 10% of Latino voters but loses an extra 10% of Republican voters,  he loses, right? Maybe on his forthcoming trip to Mexico he will do the math. ... [Thx. to alert reader M.]

Update: The impulse in the respectable Washington MSM will be to downplay the impact of the immigration issue. But here's what the Daily Herald in Cannon's district thinks:

The most important issue may have been illegal immigration. For years, a segment of the GOP electorate has longed to punish Cannon over his past moderate stands. Cannon this year has pointed to numerous votes to improve border security. But that didn't seem to be enough to placate much of the electorate. One might theorize that voters' anxiety about immigration is so great that Cannon's more recent votes to fight illegal immigration only reminded voters of his original stands. The inescapable conclusion is that immigration is a more potent and durable issue than many political experts realize.  [E.A.]

1:31 A.M. link

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I'm alarmed to hear reports that the prospect of a second John Edwards VP run is actually being taken seriously. Hello? Obama team? Aternity-pay est-Tay! ... And get the DNA yourself. ... 12:29 A.M. link

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Tuesday, June  24, 2008

Jerry Skurnik isn't buying the NYT's report of an 86% Muslim turnout in Virginia in 2006. ... 8:30 A.M.

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Save the Seal! "A one-time seal for a one-time event."  ... P.S.: I should add that the faux seal was a disaster not just for the reason I gave (that it suggested Obama is "stuck up"). It also carried this counterproductive connotation: that there is a separate Obama Nation, grown up in opposition to Bush's nation. Obama Nation has its own insignia and its own reality. It is somewhat alarmingly devoted to its leader. And this blue tribe is about to completely conquer the current ruling red tribe. ... Voters didn't much like this kind of  revolutionary swagger in the 1960s. They may not like it now. . 8:25 A.M. link

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Saturday, June  21, 2008

The "progressive" netrootsy left often discounts the importance of welfare reform. Worrying about welfare--that's outdated '90s neoliberal thinking! But when Democrats want to actually get elected, as opposed to blogged, what issue do they emphasize?

"That's why I passed laws moving people from welfare to work ..."-- Barack Obama, in his first post-primary TV ad.

3:17 P.M.

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Is Obama's new faux-presidentialalternative-reality seal his "Mission Accomplished"? If you wanted to emphasize to voters that the Democrats' nominee is a bit stuck up, it would be hard to do better. I suppose he could start requiring reporters to stand when he enters the room. ... The seal probably started out as a bit of fun. But unless David Axelrod is insane, the thing will never be seen again. .. 2:15 A.M. link

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A few responses to criticisms of Wednesday's exciting Social Security item:

-- Andrew Biggs questions  whether Social Security's "work test"--you only get it if you've worked--would "keep a more progressive Social Security program from being seen as welfare." He notes that the Earned Income Tax Credit also goes only to workers, and asks "does a work test keep the EITC from being seen as welfare?" The answer is yes! The EITC helps only the poor and yet remains very popular (despite occasional criticism from the right). Even Biggs concedes "the EITC has fared much better than welfare programs without a work test."  He needs a better counterexample.

-- Ramesh Ponnuru, citing Biggs, says a "means test"--reducing or eliminating the benefits of seniors who don't need them when they become eligible--would discourage savings. He and Biggs propose instead fiddling with benefit schedules so that high earners earn lower benefits --but they'd get to keep those benefits whether they retire poor (having failed to save) or retire rich. The Pozen Plan, endorsed by President Bush, is one way to gradually adjust benefit schedules in this fashion.

The Pozen Plan is fine if all you want to do is balance the books on the current Social Security system. It falls short if you want to go further and actually shrink Social Security by a few hundred billion in order to make room in the budget for, say, universal health insurance. Then you need to do something more dramatic, like eliminating--not reducing--benefits for the richest 25% of retirees. They did it in Australia. It worked. (I'd be interested to learn if Australia's means-test had any effect on savings.)

Backfill: On KCRW's Left, Right & Center, Matt Miller (center) and Amity Shlaes (right) were both alarmed by the high marginal tax rates produced by Obama's preferred Social Security fix  (which is to subject over-$250,000 taxpayers to the 6.2% payroll tax). ... Tune in about 16:30 into the progam. ... Shlaes, like Biggs, supports an alternative self-contained Social Security fix:

[I]t is possible to fix Social Security without doing too much, you can fix most of it by adjusting the formula, so that each cohort gets just what the proceeding cohort got. adjusted for inflation, no more. What we have now is real increases and that's more than half of the problem in the Social Security system.

Again, this is easy to say if you don't also want a big, expensive health care addition to our welfare state, which I assume Shlaes doesn't. If you do though, and you don't want a counterproductively high tax burden, then you may eventually have to endorse a more drastic Social Security diet plan. ... 1:31 P.M.  link

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Friday, June  20, 2008

Uckers-say: From the A.P.:

Republican presidential John McCain assured Hispanic leaders he would push through Congress legislation to overhaul federal immigration laws if elected, several people who attended a private meeting with the candidate said Thursday. ... [E.A.]

Hmm. If McCain is going to sell out his party's conservatives, renege on his primary campaign repositioning and return to his righteous push for "comprehensive immigration reform," wouldn't it be better to do it in public than in a closed-door meeting, where it looks like a guilty, furtive secret pander? ... P.S.: AndThe Corner stays silent! ... Backfill: Tapper has more, including a report from a Latina Minuteman who got into the meeting:

"Then he said, 'I bet some of you don't know this -- did you know Spanish was spoken in Arizona before English?'"

I bet they did! ... Update: AP's Espo notes  that McCain "['a]ides ... had kept word of the event secret ...." 2:33 P.M.

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I didn't realize Obama went to the Million Man March. ... [via  N.A.] 1:53 P.M.

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The Man Has the Magic Touch: Who introduced Democratic Senator Kent Conrad to Angelo Mozilo? ... Could it have been respected ex-veep-vetter Jim Johnson

Conrad on Tuesday sought to clarify a subsequent report that he spoke to Mozilo by phone about his mortgage, saying he didn't call the lending executive or realize that talking to him could result in any special treatment.

"I didn't call him. I called my friend who happened to be with him at the time," he said, referring to James Johnson, the former chairman of Fannie Mae, whom Conrad says he called to ask for advice on getting a new mortgage.

By pure coincidence, according to Conrad, Mozilo was sitting next to Johnson, who suggested the senator speak to him directly. Conrad doesn't recall whether Mozilo referred him to a Countrywide loan officer, or whether the company contacted him.

Johnson has a fine-honed ethical sensor, no? ... P.S.: Do you call the head of Fannie Mae when you need a mortgage? Why would Conrad call Johnson unless he was looking for some kind of deal? ... Backfill: Powerline made that last point and has some home state TV coverage. ... 1:44 P.M.

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Wednesday, June  18, 2008

Does Earl Ofari Hutchinson really not think absentee fatherhood is a huge problem  for African-Americans? ... I'm not sure Cosbyesque scolding by public officials the way to solve it, but that's a different issue. ... P.S.: If Hutchinson didn't write this unconvincing, wounded PC attack on Obama, Obama's staff would have had to recruit someone to do it. ... Sample: Hutchinson makes a big deal of a study showing that "black fathers who aren't in the home are much more likely to sustain regular contact with their children than absentee white fathers, or for that matter, fathers of any other ethnic group." But he doesn't say what percent of black fathers--vs. fathers of other ethnic groups--aren't in the home. Seems relevant! ... 11:55 P.M.

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Jason Linkins buries a good idea: Obama should fight smears against McCain on the same site  where he fights smears against himself. He'd get credit for civility and decency while publicizing the dirt on his opponent! ... P.S.: It's better than the old "I would never consider making Cindy McCain a campaign issue"  dodge. ... 11:24 P.M.

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Obama's embarrassing Jerusalem walkback. ... Also here ("Didn't Obama have advisors ...?"). ... 8:29 P.M.

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Oy, Hollywood Liberals: DreamWorks Animation mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg on a red carpet:

"Obama is the greatest ... Nothing this great has happened to us in a long time. The only thing we have to worry about is what we'll have to wear to the inauguration." [E.A.]

I don't think it will be that easy! ... P.S.: You see what we have to put up with out here. ... 8:23 P.M.

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

"DHS moved swiftly on Obama's request for protection": Recently-obtained documents reveal that the Department of Homeland Security approved Barack Obama's 2007 request for Secret Service protection in six days. This is apparently moving "swiftly" at DHS. ... 3:36 P.M.

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Bob Wright has become a Bond villain. ... (This one, I think.) ... 2:30 A.M.

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Can't He Just Eat His Doughnut? (Is Obama Setting the Stage for a Social Security Means-Test?) Ramesh Ponnuru,  opposing Obama's plan to apply the 6.2% Social Security payroll tax to earnings above $250,000--it now stops at $102,000--says it would undermine the rationale of the system:

Social Security is structured so that the more you pay in, the more you get back. That's what supposedly makes it a compact among the generations and not a welfare program. Actually, what it does is make it an inefficient, disguised welfare program.  [E.A.]

A couple of points:  

1) Changing how we finance Social Security won't turn it into a welfare program, or unmask it as a welfare program. A "welfare" program pays out benefits according to need whether or not the recipient works--at least that's the distinguishing characteristic of "welfare" people don't like. Social Security, in contrast, pays out benefits only to those who work for them (for the required number of quarters). Because of this "work-test," Social Security wouldn't be "welfare" even if it was funded entirely out of general revenues generated by the regular progressive income tax.

2) That said, funding Social Security through a payroll tax underscores the "work test" by mimicking the contributions in an ordinary pension plan.  In this Contributory Model, you pay in part of your paycheck until you've paid enough to "cover" your benefits, then (if you keep earning) you don't have to contribute any more. Some liberals may hate this "capped" payroll tax as regressive, but it's served the system well, emphasizing that you only get benefits through contributions, that rich and poor both contribute as well as benefit, that benefits are a finite foundation for retirement and not part of some general liberal redistributional impulse.

When Obama fuzzes up the "contribution" part of the tax--by starting up the payroll tax again above $250,000 in income--he risks undermining support for the system (even though he'd keep other regressive "contribution" aspects in place, including a) taxing low-income workers from their first dollar** and b) taxing only earned income and not investment income.) The new Obamified system wouldn't be welfare, but in order to make that point defenders would have to rely more heavily on the "work test." 

3) The third basis of support for the system--one emphasized by its traditional defenders--is a political calculation based on crass economic self-interest. Call this the Crass Calculation. Specifically, the system has to benefit enough people far enough up the income ladder to seem worthwhile to them. After all, even if it's not a welfare program it might not be a program voters want to support. The political fear is that the middle class or upper middle class will say "hey we're contributing all this money but not getting much back in benefits, so the hell with this system." By asking the affluent to pay what by historical standards is a big extra chunk of their income--at least 6.2% at the margin, maybe double that if you assume workers wind up paying for their employer's additional 6.2% share, definitely double that for the self-employed--Obama risks provoking the bailout reaction. That's one reason he creates his "doughnut hole" of no payroll tax between $102,000 and $250,000--there are lots of voters in that range he doesn't want to chase away. (If he has to eat the doughnut hole to get more revenue, the whole plan could collapse, politically.) 

Krugman's right that the size of this one Obama hike in marginal tax rates for the rich has been vastly underplayed in the press. High-marginal rates in themselves are not a good thing--they encourage tax evasion, for starters, as well as elaborate legal schemes that funnel money not into the most productive uses, but into tax shelters that avoid the high marginal rates (by, say, reclassifying it as capital gains). Lots of laywers and bankers take their cut in these wasteful shelter shenanigans. If Obama really will hike the top rate into the 60% pre-Reagan range, as Krugman and the Tax Policy Center suggest, that's a big deal. And if 6-12 points of that 60% will come from Obama's Social Security hike, we'd better make sure we're getting something pretty important in exchange. 

There's an alternative to raising Social Security taxes on the rich, after all. It's cutting Social Security benefits for the rich. The simplest way to do that is through a "means test"--people who were wealthy when they retired would have their benefits drastically cut. Maybe at the very top they'd get no benefits at all. The sums that could be saved through a means-test are staggering, hundreds of billions--money that, as Krugman notes, Obama will need for health care

Means-testing wouldn't turn Social Security into welfare--again, because of the "work test." Social Security would become government insurance for workers against the possibility that they won't be very well-off in retirement! Yes, means-testing might undermine political support for the system, by violating the "contribution" model (nobody could even think they were getting their contributions back) and by altering the Crude Calculation so that those who confidently expected to be affluent would have little selfish reason to support the stystem. But--and here's the key point--Obama's already diluting or dispensing with those other two sources of support.  He's fuzzing the Contributory Model. He's undermining the Crude Calclation.  He can still rely on the work test--he can say, "Hey this is to help old folks who've worked all their lives," etc.. But as long as you're relying on the work test, why not rely on the work test to justify a more radical, more progressive and more lucrative reform of the system that would not just tax the rich but stop shelling out unneeded benefits to them. 

There might be reasons. Maybe Obama feels it's politically easier to tax the rich than to cut their benefits. But it's not wildly obvious why this should be so. Both tax hikes and benefit cuts involve imposing economic harm. But (a) tax hikes are immediately felt by people of all ages. Benefit cuts impact most immediately only on the old.  (b) High tax rates, as noted, have bad side effects that hurt the whole economy. Means-testing wouldn't have those effects (though it might have others, such as discouraging savings). (c) Means-testing could be sold as a shrinking of the program--as Ponnuru points out, why run lots of money through the system by taxing the rich in order to pay benefits to the rich?

The rich aren't uninfluential! At some point the people making $275,000 a year may wonder why they are paying an extra 10% of their last dollar to send a check to the couple down the street who make $240,000 but don't have to pay any of that extra 10% at all (because they're in the lucky doughnut hole)--or to the vastlyy more numerous couplee making $120,000 who would also get full benefits but pay no new tax to fund them At some point, the $275G plus crowd may say, "The hell with it. None of these folks in my neighborhood need the benefits. Just stop taxing us to pay for them"--and support means-testing. 

I think you can argue Obama's opening the door to this outcome. Since I like the outcome, this doesn't bother me. Means-testing isn't necessary to keep Social Security solvent--the system's not that out of whack--but it might be necessary if you want to generate lots of money (in the form of budget saving) you could then spend on a decent universal health care plan. Orthodox Democrats who've rigidly opposed means-testing for decades might want to think twice about Obama's payroll tax plan, though. 

**--But Obama would apparently offer low income workers a "Making Work Pay" tax credit in an amount equal to their "employee's" half of the payroll tax for the first $8,100 in income. ... 12:47 A.M. link

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Monday, June  16, 2008

See a Chair at the Annenberg School: Joe Conason responds to my suggestion of an on-the-record email (regarding his hypocritical condemnation of "revolting ... tabloid journalism" given his own 1992 Spy investigation of George H.W. Bush's sex life):

I just saw your item from last April

and finally realized that you don't just pretend to be a bonehead.

Well argued! ......P.S.: Joe: Let's keep these lines of communication open.  ... P.P.S.: But it still takes two to go off the record. ... 7:32 P.M.  link

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The Genius of Jim Johnson, Part XXVIII: Craig Crawford has a Jim Johnson story that's a little too bad to be true.

For a clue about Johnson's questionable political acumen, here's what I remember from my own experience as a field operative in Mondale's presidential campaign. Johnson blew the only moment when it looked like Mondale might actually have a chance at overcoming Ronald Reagan's reelection bid.

Following Reagan's disastrous debate performance against Mondale, when the media began to seriously question the president's mental fitness, many Democratic insiders counseled their nominee to go in for the kill in the next debate. But Johnson, apparently believing that Mondale had a lock on the election, advised his candidate to back off, counseling that it would seem mean-spirited to do otherwise.

Johnson could not have been more wrong, as many of us in the campaign thought at the time. Still, Mondale followed his manager's advice and Reagan won the day - and probably the election - at the subsequent debate as the Democrat foolishly held his fire.

If Mondale had not "held his fire" he'd have lost anyway. Still. ...  [You are kicking this guy when he's down--ed Yes! Otherwise he'll be back. With guys like Johnson, if you don't kick them when they're down you'll wind up kicking them when they're up.] ... P.S.: If Johnson quit as veep-vetter of his own volition last Wednesday, should Obama get credit for having taken "decisive action"? ... 1:58 P.M.

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Suckers! Part XVIII: John McCain met privately with some Clinton supporters  in the diehard group Party Unity My Ass, and tried to wobble his way into their hearts:

"He stayed for a good almost half hour afterwards shaking hands, listening to our concerns, talking to us," said PUMA founder Will Bower, who said he thought many of the people there would vote for McCain.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina stayed to mingle with the crowd, whose members also included Clinton backer Harriet Christian, made momentarily famous on YouTube for getting ejected from the Rules & Bylaws press area.

Bower said he'd liked McCain's answer on judges, in which he "pointed out that he supported Bill Clinton with both Ginsberg [sic] and Breyer." [E.A.]

You actually believed that stuff about Roberts, Alito  and Scalia? [McCain could easily support Ginsburg and Breyer's confirmation--maybe on the grounds that they were the best Republicans could expect from Clinton--even if he wouldn't nominate them himself--ed True. But this is the sort of leftward wink that will drive conservatives crazy, with reason. Do you really think McCain wants to appoint another Alito to the Court? Or does he want he want to appoint Lindsey Graham?] ... P.S.: If McCain keeps this up for two months, the Republican convention could be more interesting than expected. ... P.P.S.: The late convention seems like a problem for McCain--if he's inhibited from moving to the center by a fear of prompting televised discord and disruption in Minneapolis in September. (Obama seems much less inhibited--his party is not as restive.) ... It's hard to believe Dick Morris hasn't already made this point. ... P.P.P.S.: Are there cougars in PUMA? ... 1:01 A.M.

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Friday, June 13, 2008

More Friends of Angelo? Dodd, Conrad, Shalala. ... Holbrooke!  ... 12:31 P.M.

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Will Obama Kill Bling? Mary Battiata thinks maybe. ... Now that she mentions it, I kind of hope Obama's election will kill off much of hip-hop, at least the gangsta-inspired parts. But just killing off bling and gangsta fashion would be a start. ... 3:08 A.M. link

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Obama's new anti-smear website looks more effective than I expected. ... And I'll be checking back regularly to find out the latest charges! It's the new go-to spot for Obama dirt. ...P.S.: That's the problem. The site creates an expectation that the Obama camp will respond quickly and persuasively to every accusation and rumor. Should it fall short, the damage will be magnified, no? ... P.P.S. Obama recently chastised reporters  for asking him about the Michelle "whitey" rumor:

"We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails, and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it," Obama said, bristling. "That gives legs to the story."

But according to Time, when the Obama camp "got wind" of the "whitey" rumor, his aides took it so seriously they confronted Michelle and "grilled her on the particulars." So why can't bloggers and reporters do the same thing? ... 3:05 A.M. link

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Thursday, June 12, 2008

The Wages of Sid? Buried in GQ's interview with Mark Penn:

So when they come out with, like, "Mark Penn was paid $4 million," 3.4 million of that was postage?
The actual consulting fee is, you know, we received $27,000 a month, which is split between me and Sid Blumenthal [a senior adviser]. So it makes the net around half that.

Wait, Sid makes as much as you?
You know, again, I don't own these companies, so—

No, really, Sid Blumenthal makes as much as you?
His fee is about the same.

To me the interesting angle here isn't whether Penn was making that little-- Crowley doubts  that half of $27,000 a month was all he got--it's whether Sid was making that much. Also what did he do for it? ... Half of $27,000/month is a rate of about $160,000 a year. ... I'm getting jealous. ... P.S.: I've emailed Blumenthal to get his comment, if any. ...  4:20 P.M.

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Undernews Update--"samztiF" Edition: The Chicago Tribune reports

Two months before he was convicted of federal corruption charges, political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko told his trial judge that "overzealous" prosecutors were pressuring him to tell them about any wrongdoing involving Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama or Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

But in a two-page typed letter, Rezko said he was never involved in any wrongdoing with either of the Democrats and wouldn't make up stories about them in an attempt to benefit himself. [E.A.]

Still, if you're a Democrat this can't make you feel 100% secure. ... Update: Actual Rezko letter here. [ via Newsalert] 12:14 P.M.

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Jim Johnson's ambitions (from WaPo):

In 2004, he had hoped a Kerry victory would make him White House chief of staff or Treasury secretary, former Kerry campaign aides said yesterday, and he had similar ambitions with Obama.

2:42 P.M.

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Spanish Lesson: Jason DeParle, discussing Spain's six illegal-immigrant amnesties since 1985, and the effect they might have had on encouraging more illegal immigration:

Lorenzo Cachón, a sociologist at Complutense University, analyzed the program's "call effect" by studying municipal records. Most immigrants in Spain, legal or not, register with local governments to obtain benefits like health insurance. Their numbers grew 20 percent the year after the program was announced, compared with 3 percent the year before.

"That means the maximum call effect is 17 percent," he said.

A 17% rise seems like a lot to me, especially only one year after an amnesty. You'd think the incentive "call effect" might actually grow over time--after all, would-be illegal immigrants would know that the next amnesty is probably at least a few years away. ...

P.S.: I'd like to see American advocates of what the Times now frankly calls "amnesty" argue "It will only produce an immediate 17% increase in immigration." ...

P.P.S.: According to The Hill, "Hispanic Democratic lawmakers" are warning:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) must commit to helping illegal immigrants achieve citizenship or else risk losing the vital Latino vote in the general election ... [E.A.]

I thought the  party line after the California primary was that it was a mistake to assume that Latino voters cared only about legalization. It seems to be practically all Latino politicians in Congress care about, though. ...

P.P.P.S.:The Hill's Jared Allen adds

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), Obama's Republican opponent, is also liked by Latinos. He co-sponsored with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) the immigration bill that the CHC is demanding, which would put the country's 12 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship. And he did not buckle under pressure to abandon that position during the GOP primary. [E.A.]

You don't mean he only tried to con conservatives into thinking he'd abandoned that position? Uckers-say! ...  2:00 A.M. link

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Instead, in Zell, what Los Angeles has is a visiting Visigoth, whose civic influence is about as positive as that of the Crips, the Bloods and the Mexican mafia.

And Meyerson says Zell's the one producing "dumbed-down" writing. ... P.S.: Meyerson complains that the LAT's "editorial staff is about two-thirds its size in the late 1990s." Jesus, how bloated was it in the late 1990s? ...  [Tks to reader MDL145 A.M.

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Wednesday was maybe not the best day for Mark Halperin to explain how brilliant and on-offense the Obama campaign's message operation is. But he could be right! ... 12:34 A.M.

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Change We've Been Waiting For: Jim Johnson bails  as Obama's veep-vetter, after Obama defended him in what NBC's Chuck Todd said could "be the worst answer Obama has ever given in print"  (Johnson was only a "volunteer," he was doing a "discrete" job; he was "tangentially related to our campaign;"' "these aren't folks who are working for me;" what's Obama supposed to do, "vet the vetters"? etc.)

But vetting wasn't necessary in this case. Just Googling!.  ...

P.S.: If Johnson is so honorable, shouldn't he have vetted himself? Obama has now pulled off the Johnson Band-Aid, but not before Johnson cost him a few days of bad news and tarnished his image. And not before other juicy Johnson stories came out: Johnson "angling for a job" in a possible Kerry administration, his lucrative consulting deals at Fannie Mae, his (lucrative) role "on the board of five companies that granted lavish pay packages to their executives ."  ...  Question: Will Johnson come back in an Obama administration? Samantha Power similarly quit the Obama campaign, but everybody expects her to be back. I would think Johnson is now radioactive in a way that Power is not. ...

P.P.S.: Why pick Johnson in the first place? One possible answer is implicit in Kerry's pre-bail  defense: In the course of his veep-vetting, Johnson learns all the dark, damaging secrets of all the potential #2s.  This means that Johnson effectively already has the dirt on a lot of Democratic pols from his previous vetting stints--but, as Kerry notes, he has been discreet with this "very sensitive" info.** By appointing Johnson as vetter yet again, Obama was limiting the number of people potential Dem VPs would have to bare their souls to--limiting them, essentially, to Johnson. Now Obama will have to name a new vetter, and the potential Dems VPs--many of whom, like Biden, are repeat Veepstakes customers--will have to tell their secrets to a second person. That can't be a comfortable feeling. ...

**--Still, if you were one of those vetted pols, would you want to tell Johnson "no" if he came around later asking for your support on a piece of legislation? ... 1:15 P.M. link

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

"Want Windows XP pre-installed? Time's running out."--Promotional email from Dell Small Business Systems

After that, you'll have to buy the product Microsoft actually wants to sell you! ... A strong vote of confidence in Windows Vista from Dell. ... P.S.:  "Dell makes it easy to migrate [to Vista] on your schedule .... " Let's see. How about never? That fits my schedule. ... [The interesting piece now would be a defense of Vista--ed  Typical reflexive contrarian.] 2:54 A.M.

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Scarlett Johansson doesn't understand why Barack Obama finds time to return her emails. ("You'd imagine that someone like the senator who is constantly traveling and constantly 'on' — how can he return these personal e-mails? But he does ....").

I think I understand.  As does Ted Frank. ... Update: As does Bob Wright,  after I try to explain Dipdive to him. I feel so hip. ... 12:40 A.M.

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Monday, June 9, 2008

Obama's Friend of Angelo: Barack Obama's choice of Jim Johnson to vet his VP prospects is already embarrassing his campaign, thanks to a WSJ story reporting that Johnson  (according to the NY Sun)

took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company's CEO, Angelo Mozilo. ...

Mozilo and Countrywide were deeply enmeshed in the subprime meltdown, of course, and Mozilo has been denounced by Obama for his business practices and multi-million dollar compensation. ...

a) Always trust content from kausfiles!

b) Obama's response suggests these were "completely above board transactions," which is a little different from saying they were "arms-length" or "market-rate" transactions. Why would Johnson avail himself of Mozilo's "friends of Angelo" program unless he got some kind of special deal, better than the deal Joe Citizen would get? (And if it's so difficult to tell "the factors that went into these arrangements," as the Obama camp contends, then how "above board" were they?)

c) Johnson headed Fannie Mae. If Fannie Mae was really "the biggest buyer of Countrywide's mortgages," should Johnson really have gotten enmeshed as a consumer with Countrywide, particularly if it was hard to tell if he was getting a special deal or not?

d) I don't know if Mozilo is a benevolent genius or evil. I saw him at a conference once and he's clearly an impressive person. But it's also quite clear that Obama has made him a symbol of the subprime mess, as McCain has noted. Update: As the RNC has been pointing out, Obama's campaign previously attacked Hillary strategist Mark Penn because he did some P.R. work for Countrywide--and attacked Hillary's campaign because it took contributions from representatives of Countrywide. ** (Now-embarrassing self-righteous David Plouffe quote below.)

e) Johnson was an atrocious, tin-eared choice on many other grounds. He's a symbol of old Democratic elites--the Mondale Restoration!--and of Beltway business as usual. He's gotten obscenely rich off of public service while pursuing a failed liberal antipoverty theory (community develpment) and taking credit for spreading around other peoples money.  He failed to catch Geraldine Ferraro's problems before they blew up on Mondale. He helped lead Fannie Mae into a multi-billion dollar debacle (even though he let his successor catch most of the blame). He said Mozilo's firm had "done a brilliant job of insulating itself for the down cycle" shortly before Mozilo's firm was clobbered in the down cycle, eventually selling itself to Bank of America for about a tenth of it's former value, according to the Sun.

Why would Obama, in his first big personnel decision, choose a paleoliberal greedhead with a track record of failure? You tell me! He's described Johnson as "a friend." It looks as if he was at best highly susceptible to amicable overtures from someone he about whom he should have retained some critical perspective.

 f) Is Obama really going to let this story drag out all week?  Are Johnson's allies so powerful he must be protected--the way Rev. Wright was protected, for a time? Why not say "This is not the Jim Johnson I know" and throw him overboard? Remember the Parable of the Band-Aid. ...

**-- From WaPo back in March:

"Obama aides also said Clinton is in no position to stiffen oversight after taking contributions from mortgage industry lobbyists, including funds from representatives of Countrywide, which has been at the center of the mortgage meltdown. 'If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors,' campaign manager David Plouffe said." [E.A.]

Update: Byron York has some more links. ... 5:47 P.M. link

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Sunday, June 8, 2008

Venti Snooty Latte: A new threat to social equality--the frequent-customer snob. The NYT's Ron Lieber doesn't just want freebies for his repeat Starbucks patronage. He wants something more:

Rewards are nice, but recognition is better. So if I'm one of Starbucks's best customers, I want to have elite status, as I do on American Airlines. I want shorter lines, better freebies, special seating (Aeron chairs, preferably) and electrical outlets reserved just for me and my laptop.  [E.A.]

A creep, no? It's one thing for Starbucks to give Lieber free wi-fi and discounts. It's another to reward him by undermining the essentially egalitarian experience that's part of the appeal of a good American "third place." ...

P.S.--The Welfare State Angle:  Lieber's elision of consumerism and snobbery is similar to the mistake doctrinaire Democrats make when they defend universal Social Security receipt as an egalitarian institution just like universal health care. It isn't--because getting health care is an actual communal experience (going to doctors, chatting in their waiting rooms, complaining in their waiting rooms, etc.) while getting Social Security checks is just ... getting checks. It's only money.  A little more money for well-off Social Security recipients isn't going to bolster solidarity with the working poor any more than a little discount for Lieber is going to destroy the vibe at his local Starbucks. Letting him flounce around in his Aeron in the roped-off Starbucks Select VIP section, on the other hand . ... well, things could get ugly! ...

"I'm glad to report that Starbucks is indeed considering some sort of elite status," says Lieber. Next: Skyboxes? ...

P.P.S.: [Isn't Lieber just clinging bitterly to his Starbucks status because of stagnant middle class living standards?--ed  Don't be condescending.]

Backfill:  Lieber also wants to be invited to "a members-only party when new products come out." Wow. You can be condescending now. ... [Backfill via Gawker ] 3:02 A.M. link

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Phillippe Reines Memorial Item explaining why there's no Hillary post-mortem in kf: "We don't comment on campaigns that are utter and complete failures." ... 2:19 P.M.

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The Los Angeles Times notes that Obama beats McCain 62% to 29% in a May Gallup survey of surveys.  The LAT s Peter Wallsten has a pat explanation ready:

The numbers suggest that McCain's image has suffered after a competitive GOP primary in which he renounced some of the moderate views on immigration popular among many Latinos.

It couldn't be that Latino voters don't care about immigration as much as reporters at the LAT assume, preferring to focus more on other domestic and foreign policy concerns (health care, the economy the war) that they share with voters in general, could it? The numbers "suggest" that explanation too. ...

P.S.: Defenders of the Times' bloated staff argue that new owner Sam Zell's aides are being unfair when they compare  the "51-page" annual output of LAT writers with the 300 page output of Hartford Courant writers. That's true. The comparison is unfair to the Courant journalists, who surely aren't permitted the pointless verbosity of "quality" LAT writers. Wallsten's story is a case in point: a) He opens with a back-in anecdote about Obama's Spanish-language ad in Puerto Rico that he eventually has to admit makes the opposite of the point he's trying to make, since Obama got "trounced" in P.R. and Wallsten's story is supposed to be about how well Obama's doing with Hispanics; b) He wastes column inches on bland, predictable, if not actively misleading stop-reading-this-story quotes from Latino consultants and activists who argue that McCain and Obama must pay more attention to Latino consultants and activists ("they need to beef up that operation"); c) He then has no room for the obvious counter-thesis--that Obama leads among Hispanics because Hispanics aren't receptive to Latino-specific campaigning. ...

Update: I stole the "verbosity" point from Michael Kinsley who has now deviously gone ahead and stolen it from himself. ... 1:11 A.M.

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Friday, June 6, 2008

Zell's  Golpe: Looks like Sam Zell is onto the overlayering at the L.A. Times

[Tribune COO Randy Michaels] also warned of further cuts in newsroom expenses, based in part on a company study of its journalists' productivity. "You find you can eliminate a fair number of people without eliminating much content," Michaels said.

The review found that reporters at the company's smaller papers were more productive than those in the biggest markets of Chicago and Los Angeles. Michaels did not address findings for the Chicago Tribune, but said the average Los Angeles Times journalist produced "51 pages" per year, while the average journalist in Baltimore or at the company's Hartford Courant produced "300 pages" per year. [E.A.]

[Tx to reader J.L.] 12:14 A.M. link

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Thursday, June 5, 2008

Undernews Update: The Michelle Holy Rail/"Whitey" rumor is disputed by   David Weigel, Robert George, and Barack Obama  (who argues he shouldn't be asked about it). See also Geraghty. ... Since it's hard to prove a negative, former Gingrich aide George's appeal to history is probably the most effective of the latest debunkings:

No tape exists. I am willing to bet my first-born on it.

You know why I know no tape exists? Because all copies of it were wrapped up in an American flag and burned on a woodpile ignited by Hillary Clinton and Kitty Dukakis. I didn't see it, but my best friend's cousin's boyfriend saw the whole thing.

Let me explain.

This is the '08 version of a really weird conservative urban legend that pops up every four years, The names change, but the basics remain the same: 1) It always involves the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate; 2) It always portrays the wife -- not the candidate -- committing some anti-American, unpatriotic act.

P.S.: Meanwhile, Vanity Fair gets a Singer Letter--a fairly strong one. ...11:58 P.M.

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Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Emailer Z, who knows business and politics--and isn't a liberal (or even a Democrat)--writes to usefully amplify David Corn's Mother Jones piece, which blamed Sen. Phil Gramm for engineering an ill-fated non-regulation of financial services that contribuled to the sub-prime meltdown:

The non-regulation of the not banking system has been a team effort in Washington.  Major financial services firms, hedge funds and private equity groups set out in the 1990s to own Washington and they have succeeded completely.  80% of banking activity used to be regulated.  Today, 20% of "banking activity" falls under regulatory guidance.  (See Charles Morris's The Trillion Dollar Meltdown).  Capital networks own the Democratic and Republican parties.  Barney Frank didn't even bother to try to get the tax on "carried interest" increased after the Ds recaptured control of Congress in 2006 ...  the members understood that such a tax would make their fund-raising lives a LOT harder.

This is the part of Kevin Phillips' analysis of Washington that is exactly accurate.  The power of private capital sources hasn't been as overwhelming since the days of JP Morgan. [E.A.]

Update: Maguire elaborates. ... 10:40 P.M.

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Bob Wright and I discussObama's cosmopolitanism. ... 10:01 P.M.

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Arianna is on Jay Leno  saying Sen. Chuck Hagel has "consistently and eloquently been a major critic of the war." Except, you know, when he voted for it.... 9:20 P.M.

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Fitzmas in Reverse: Steve Bartin speculates on the potential Rezko Shoe. ...Update [also via Bartin]: The Chicago Sun-Times Mark Brown wonders why Rezko elected to go directly to jail  rather than trying to remain free on bond:

There's a more interesting way to look at this, which paints a scenario you'd more likely see in a trial where there is some sort of mob connection.

Tony Rezko is a guy who knows a lot about a lot of people. Those people have a very serious stake in him keeping his mouth shut. Rezko is also known to be a very security-conscious guy.

I know this is going to sound overly dramatic, but it's not really that far-fetched to think Rezko may well believe he's in danger if he goes free and that by reporting to jail it's proof that he's not cooperating.

It's one way of saying, "You don't have to worry about me."

3:25 P.M.

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Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Unions  Make the Wage-Price Spiral Go Round: Paul Krugman argues we aren't about to see a return of 70's style stagflation  because

there's no sign whatsoever of the wage-price spiral that, in the 1970s, turned a temporary shock from higher oil prices into a persistently high rate of inflation.

He also identifies a mainspring of that wage-price spiral: union power,

Here's an example of the way things used to be: In May 1981, the United Mine Workers signed a contract with coal mine operators locking in wage increases averaging 11 percent a year over the next three years. The union demanded such a large pay hike because it expected the double-digit inflation of the late 1970s to continue; the mine owners thought they could afford to meet the union's demands because they expected big future increases in coal prices, which had risen 40 percent over the previous three years.

At the time, the mine workers' settlement wasn't at all unusual: many workers were getting comparable contracts. Workers and employers were, in effect, engaged in a game of leapfrog: workers would demand big wage increases to keep up with inflation, corporations would pass these higher wages on in prices, rising prices would lead to another round of wage demands, and so on.

The point isn't that unions were greedy. They were doing what they were supposed to do under the Wagner Act--protecting their members interests--in a period of inflationary expectations (fueled in part by the big contracts won by other unions). Yet the larger social result of this institutional arrangement was a destructive game of leapfrog in which the most powerful labor organizations (like the UAW) did quite well, but those without collective bargaining power--that is, most people--got it on the chin. And it took the brutal early-80s recession to wring inflation out of the economy.

Today, though, there's little union power--and little threat of stagflation, says Krugman:

But where are the unions demanding 11-percent-a-year wage increases? ...

And since there isn't a wage-price spiral, we don't need higher interest rates to get inflation under control.

OK. But then why do Democrats want to legislate a restoration of organized labor's power by allowing unions to sign up workers without secret ballots? Do they want to bring back the wage price spiral? The irony seems lost on Krugman, though it's hard to believe it really is. 

I suspect it's simply a train of thought Krugman doesn't want to follow right now. His plan for reducing income inequality is built, in part, on rebuilding union strength. Doubt about the wisdom of that effort would complicate things--quite apart from whether it's what his Democratic fan base wants to hear  ... 2:59 A.M. link

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Dare to Gush: He's not excitable. He's "open to the moment"!  ...  1:32 A.M.

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Monday, June 2, 2008

Bill Clinton calls Todd Purdum a "sleazy ...slimy ... scumbag:"HuffPo'sMayhill Fowler delivers again. ... P.S.: Why'd he do that! ... P.P.S.: Brendan Nyhan notes the creepiness of Clinton aide Jay Carson demanding that Dems "protect" the "brand" when talking to reporters. ... P.P.P.S.: What about the zippy Burkle brand? That took decades to build! ... 3:48 P.M.

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Undernews Alert: Have Michelle-bashers finally found the Holy Rail?  ... Update:  Larry Johnson  describes a tape, but doesn't show it. It may be more like Annie Hall. ("Jew eat?")  ... NRO speculates. .. More: Johnson   counterattacks, not very convincingly. ...But NRO's increasing skepticism ("the evidence suggests this is a hoax") isn't 100% convincing either. Ditto Reason's Dave Weigel--though he makes a good point about Farrakhan's alleged presence on the tape:

If anyone wants to compare Louis Farrakhan's travel records to dates the Obamas appeared at Trinity, go ahead (the last Farrakhan appearance at Trinity was 11/2/07, when the Obamas were presumably busy trying to win the Iowa caucus), but it beggars belief that he could join a panel with Obama's wife as late as 2005 and no one would hear about it . [E.A.]

[Weigel via Harper's ] 2:25 A.M. link

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Powerline posts a satsifying collection of now-embarrassing gushes from Andrew Sullivan, Joe Klein and Garry Wills  about Obama's Great Philadelphia Race Speech. PL leaves out the gushiest parts of Sullivan's reaction,, though:

Alas, I cannot give a more considered response right now as I have to get on the road. But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation ... [snip]

I love this country. I don't remember loving it or hoping more from it than today. [E.A.]

And some people say he's excitable! ... P.S.: "Deeply, deeply." Not typo typo. ...  Also now gloating: Mark Steyneerily prescient Amy Holmes   ...1:34 A.M.

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Sunday, June 1, 2008

A few words about Chuck Hagel (as a possible Obama VP) that will probably get me into trouble. ... 12:42 P.M.

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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Tight Like That in Iowa: I don't want to make too much of this, since John Leland's story concerns a tight labor market for skilled workers, not necessarily those at the bottom of the labor market. But a) This is the condition we should want the national labor market to be like, for all skill levels, right? b) Unions not required! c) Low immigration seems to have something to do with increasing the competition among employers for workers. ... They're scouring the prisons.  And  they're competing for $14/hour welders, which means the tightness isn't restricted to salaried "symbolic analysts. "... 12:50 P.M.

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Friday, May 30, 2008

David Corn argues that McCain co-chair Phil Gramm helped bring on the subprime crisis by preventing regulation of something called "credit default swaps."   Corn almost succeeds in making these "newfangled financial products" understandable. ... P.S.:  Henotes that Gramm's legislation was "supported by Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury secretary Larry Summers." You sort of want to hear fromthem on whether they now think they were wrong. ... 11:39 P.M.

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Chinese Economy Grinds to Halt: China is suspected of surreptitiously trying to hack into computers  at the U.S. Department of Commerce?  ... Isn't that sort of like sleeping with the writer? ... Next target: HUD! ... [via Insta ] 11:05 P.M.

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Where  does  Obama get that "hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year"--an alleged increase he blamed on "people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up"?  The latest FBI statistics I can find are from 2006, not last year. They show about a 14% increase from 2005, by my calculation. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center only claims  

According to hate crime statistics published annually by the FBI, anti-Latino hate crimes rose by almost 35% between 2003 and 2006, the latest year for which statistics are available.

A 35% increase over four years is not "doubled last year." (Never mind  why the SPLC may have picked 2003 as their base of comparison).

Am I missing some Obama data source? Or is this an overly overlooked incident of Obama pulling convenient facts out of the air? ... 

Suppose John McCain had said the same thing! ...  Er, actually, McCain probably will say the same thing. And he'll probably get a pass too.  Who'd attack him for it? Obama? The Dobbs-deriding MSM? This is not an area where you can rely on the normal adversarial political process to yield the truth, because Obama, McCain and the MSM essentially agree on immigration. ...

P.S.--Who's #1? Ruben Navarette, struggling to defend Obama, wrote:

Nevertheless, Hispanics in 2006 were considered by the FBI as the No. 1 victim of hate crimes motivated by one's ethnicity or national origin, and by a margin that was the highest since records have been kept.

What Navarette's hiding is the FBI's category of crimes motivated by "ethnicity or national origin" does not include crimes motivated by "racial bias"--a far larger category. In 2006, there were about 4 times as many attacks on African-Americans because of "racial bias" as attacks motivated by "anti-Hispanic bias."

Of course, it's entirely possible that many attacks on illegal immigrants go unreported due to those immigrants' fear of coming into contact with authorities. That means the FBI stats might be off. It doesn't remove the suspicion that Obama's stats are essentially made up. ...

P.P.P.S.: "Hate Crimes Surge in Valley"--L.A. Daily News  Aha! Here we can see the effects of Limbaugh and Dobbs' "ginning"! ... But no again. It turns out "Jews and African Americans" suffered "most of the attacks. ... 6:42 P.M. link

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Thursday, May 29, 2008

"FNC stays on top" says TVNewser. But it's closer than you'd think, at least in the prime-time 25-54 demographic, notes commenter pdxuser. .. Make that 'the prized prime-time 25-54 demographic.' ... Indeed, on any given day you might  find  MSNBC beating  FOX in that prime time "demo."... I had no idea. I thought Roger Ailes still ruled cable. Fox News' slide is the story, no? ... [via Drudge].4:59 P.M.

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The Gall of Gallup! In a release that apparently excited Hillary aide Howard Wolfson, Gallup  compared Hillary vs. McCain and Obama vs. McCain  in the swing states where Hillary beat Obama, and then performed the same comparison in the swing states where Obama beat Hillary. Hillary came off looking better (mainly because her swing state group has more electoral votes).

But that was a bizarre way to organize the results, no?  Who cares who won the party primaries or caucuses in what state? We want to know who'll win the general.  Just as it's a well-known fallacy to assume that a primary loss by Obama in Pennsylvania, say, will translate into a November Obama loss to McCain, isn't it also a fallacy to assume that just because Obama lost to Hillary among Democrats he'll do worse in the general against McCain than she will? (Maybe more Republicans who didn't vote in the Dem primary will cross over to vote for Obama in the general--who knows?)

By grouping states into "Hillary states' and "Obama states'--and lumping together all the states in each group-Gallup may miss individual states that buck their group's trend (only to see that anomaly washed out when their results are averaged in with the other states.)  For example: Hillary did better against McCain when the six swing states she won (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Arkansas) are lumped together. But does she really do better in each of those states? Maybe Obama does better in New Mexico by a few hundred thousand votes--but they get swamped in the overall 6 state average by his deficit in Ohio. We have no way of knowing--or at least Gallup gives us none.

Only a state-by-state poll can give the answers wavering superdelegates (if there are any) need. I'm amazed Thomas Edsall doesn't point this out. ... 1:42 A.M. link

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

I missed the death of Claus Luthe, who designed some very attractive German cars (NSU, Audi, BMW) in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The really great BMWs appear to have predated his tenure, but he carried forward the clean, "modern" traditions that current design chief Chris Bangle would later destroy. ... P.S.: Some of the most familiar Euro car styling tricks appear to have been borrowed from the Chevy Corvair, in contravention of what I've always reflexively assumed (that good designs start in Europe and get copied here). ... See also. ...[Thanks to reader T.S.]  2:50 A.M.

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Undernews Alert: With friends like Roger Stone. ... 1:48 A.M.

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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

What if the Dems aren't serious about health care? The immigration angle! Bubbling around the blogosphere is an inconclusive debate on whether Dem Senators are preparing to go slow on health care, staging endless hearings but passing little actual legislation. ... I'd been counting on the Dem push for universal health care to crowd out other big, difficult issues, such as ... immigration semi-amnesty. Congress can only do so much at once, even if the Dems also control the White House. But if the Dems don't push for health care, that raises the troubling possibility that they will push for something that important business and ethnic constitutencies (plus cynical party builders) desperately want, namely mass legalization for illegals.... P.S.: This is still only the second most nightmarish scenario facing skeptics of such "comprehensive" reform. Nightmare Scenario #1 remains a McCain Presidency coupled with a large Democratic congressional majority--in other words, a president who has nothing more important he wants to do, domestically, than pursue his ancient goal of legalization--which would also be the only major domestic issue where his views coincide with those of the Democratic leadership.  ... Both nightmares would still require comprehensivists to override the worries of Rahm Emanuel's swing-seat Dem candidates, many of whom ran on tough-on-illegal-immigration platforms. ... 3:10 P.M. link

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Payday! Why isn't it transparently obvious that the main point of the controversially inconclusive last episode of The Sopranos  wasn't to show that Tony got whacked, or to show that Tony didn't get whacked, or to provoke a profound existential discussion of whether Tony got whacked, but to enable a lucrative theatrical follow-up, a la Sex and the City? ... 2:17 P.M. link

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McWhorter and Loury parse the various reasons whites might vote against Obama--including "He's the radical type who might bring in Farrakhan" and "[I'm] more comfortable with a white candidate"--that aren't "racist.". ... Also: McWhorter--

There seems to be this tacit idea that if the college-educated brie-eating Blue American has not been for Obama, then it's because they have an intelligent, principled interest in Hillary Clinton ...[snip] .. but if the beer bottle person decides that they like Hillary Clinton better,  it's because they're tribalists who are more comfortable with their own and/or they're outright racists ...

[via Baltimoron ] 3:15 A.M.

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Monday, May 26, 2008

Nearly 1,000 state employees in California make more than $200,000 a year, according to the S.F. Chronicle. That's excluding university employees. ... The month before Gov. Schwarzenegger took office, there were only eight. ... Mainly, the high earners seem to be dentists, doctors, and psychiatrists in the state prison and mental health systems. ... The total state employee head count has gone up by 26,000 under Schwarzenegger. ... [via Newsalert] 2:05 A.M.

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Sunday, May 25, 2008

Senator Dianne Feinstein takes a stand:

Simply put, I cannot vote for another $165 billion to give President Bush a blank check and fund the continuation of the war in Iraq, without condition, for over another year.

This is a difficult decision and not one I take lightly. But I believe that the time has come for Congress to exercise the power of the purse and bring this war to a conclusion.

But, hey, if they'd included her sneak 5-year amnesty for illegal ag workers ... 9:42 P.M.

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Saturday, May 24, 2008

L.A. Times--"Californians narrowly reject gay marriage ..." By, er, 19 points (54-35% among registered voters). ... Patterico reviews the LAT's embarrassing history of pretending polls are close when the paper wants them to be close. Ask Gov. Davis. ... Note to Zell:  More layoffs please! The chain of editors who worked on yesterday's poll story would be a good place to start.  Are there still four layers? Or is it down to three? ... 1:18 A.M.

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

McCain to GOP: "Suckers!" John McCain in Silicon Valley  today--

"But we must enact comprehensive immigration reform. We must make it a top agenda item if we don't do it before, and we probably won't, a little straight talk, as of January 2009." [E.A.]

Media Matters, in its clueless way, has been trashing the press for reporting McCain's pro-legalization position "without noting his reversal on the issue."  But that ignores his reversal of his reversal, which now appears complete. ... P.S.: If McCain even contemplates possible enactment of "comprehensive" reform (i.e., including semi-amnesty) before January, 2009, what does that say about the seriousness of his promise to "secure our borders first"?  ... Backfill: See also SacBee. ... NYT reports: "Mr. McCain has made some gains in reassuring conservatives nervous about his views on issues like immigration, polls suggest." Time to become un-reassured? ... It's tempting to call these conservatives cheap dates. But that would be unfair to cheap dates. Cheap dates aren't spending their own money! ... 4:50 P.M. link

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Fewer Americans than forecast applied for unemployment benefits last week, indicating companies are reluctant to fire more workers even as the economy slows.

Hmmm. Next consumers will be unexpectedly reluctant to cut back on purchases even as the economy slows. And manufacturers will be unexpectedly reluctant to cut production even as the economy slows. ... Slowly, the realization may dawn that the economy is not slowing anymore! ... But reporters will be not-unexpectedly reluctant to stop reporting that it is. ...[via Insta2:53 P.M.

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"The same old Washington game with the same old players":Please tell me that Obama has not picked Jim Johnson, Walter Mondale's campaign chairman and an an   architect  of the multi-billion dollar Fannie Mae debacle, to lead  his vice-presidential selection process. ... Johnson helped Walter Mondale pick a nominee who immediately became mired in controversy, as Ambinder notes. (He also helped John Kerry pick a running mate who didn't help the ticket --and  creeped the candidate out.) ... Obama's rhetoric about avoiding the old Washington players always seemed to me the phoniest part of his message. Now we know just how phony. Johnson's exactly the sort of veteran Dem Party bigshot--now rich off the wages of doing good--whose clutches you'd hope a smart freshman Senator would avoid. What's next? Terry McAuliffe as Secretary of the Treasury? ...  Obama says: "He is a friend of mine. I know him." ... Starter Tip for Johnson: The Edwards Campaign Love Child has been born! ... Traditional link: Here's a prescient  Slate piece on Johnson and Fannie Mae that Johnson called"unbelievable trash." .. 1:27 P.M. link

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Now the success of the our counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq represents a "vindication of a left of center worldview":  Even dour Bob Wright is softening on the Surge--to the point of making a surprise preemptive appointment  to Obama's cabinet. .... 1:29 A.M.

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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Paul Maslin's Electoral College math looks surprisingly grim for Obama:

If Obama wins the 255 votes in the states where he's favored, then to get to 270 he needs to choose from the following menu: 1) Win Ohio, which takes him to 275; 2) win in the West -- Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, for 274; 3) win the three N's (Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire) for 269, plus one other state; or 4) win two of the three N's and either Colorado or Virginia.

I think this means he basically has to win either Ohio or Colorado. Not the odds-on bet you would expect in a Democratic year. ... See also Karl Rove's maps. [via RCP ]  ... Update: Indefatigable Dem emailer K.B. pushes an Obama strategy of a) holding all the Kerry states plus b) winning Iowa and Virginia. That would avoid the need to win Ohio or Colorado. But it would also require Obama to win New Hampshire, where both Maslin and Rove currently give McCain the edge. ... 1:34 A.M.

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You know the primaries are getting dull when even Mystery Pollster turns in early  on election night. ... 12:59 A.M.

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

My favorite bit of analysis from CNN's Indiana/N.C. primary election coverage two weeks ago:

GLORIA BORGER: One thing, Anderson, in looking, again, through these exit polls, there is a clear correlation between which candidate a voter believed was better on the economy and the candidate they voted for.

We'll see if they can top that tonight. ... 5:29 P.M.

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Model Two Isn't Everything: I've become sensitive to compliments that have the effect of putting you in your place. ( "I love your writing about cars!") My friend Jon Alter pulled this trick a couple of weeks ago while berating me for not weighing in against Hillary Clinton's proposed gas-tax holiday:

"There were not all of these pundits and bloggers and everything who were all over it. I had to do reporting to find out what was wrong with it. ... If you had last Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday even Thursday, if you had written about it you know you could have gotten maybe the thing rolling sooner. ... I wanted you to be ahead of me. You would have saved me some work. I would have linked off your site.  .... I wanted you to be ahead of me.

Translation:, "You bloggers do a great job digging up stories for us in the MSM. Keep it up." Grrr.

There's an implicit model underneath Alter's comments--blogs as the minor leagues, Off Off-Broadway, trying out storylines and scoops that may or may not make it to the Big Show. I have to admit I've embraced this model myself, as "Model Two." I think blogs are (for the moment***) particularly suited to functioning as a sort of intermediate tryout area for burgeoning scandals ("undernews").

But Alter adds a revealing bit of the newsweekly reporter's traditional self-loathing:

Look I write for Newsweek. It doesn't matter if I'm behind you. I rely on you and other great bloggers--you know, Josh Marshall and other people like that to give me links cause you see all kinds of stuff, you're much better at you know being on top of this early.,And it's not a problem for me , because I writer for the MSM, you know, or on television and I can come to it a little later.  

Exactly. Alter makes big bucks because he's called on to write about the story of the day at the precise moment it breaks out into the mainstream--and not a moment too soor! If the US bombs a Syrian nuclear reactor, the public wants to know about it right then--and Alter more or less has write about it or have a pretty damn good excuse why not.  Newsweek's editors, in effect, can make Alter jump. He's very good at it. I'm not.

The problem with the "minor league" model of the blogosphere, is that it's simply an extension of this "just in time" model of journalism--blogs are a conveyor belt, if you will, delivering news. ideas and angles to the MSM on a precise production schedule.

But I didn't start a blog because I wanted to be yoked, no less than poor Alter, to the story of the moment--certainly not so I could be yoked more firmly but in a subordinate capacity. It's all well and good for blogs to be feeders of the MSM. But it's also desirable to have freedom from the MSM and from the imperative to cover what's hot now--or even the imperative to generate what's going to be hot tomorrow.

P.S.: Of course, the commercial incentive to cover the "story of the day" isn't as bad in the blogosphere as it is in the MSM. It's worse. If Senator X gets hit by a bus, Slate's editors don't want a retrospective by the next day. They want a retrospective in an hour. That's what gets hits--and hits are how Slate makes money. The ideal type here is Christopher Hitchens' appraisal of John F. Kennedy, Jr.--which was probably one of the worst articles Hitchens has ever written, but which made the Web within minutes of the grim news. It got about 18 billion hits, if I recall.

The Web holds out the technological possibility of something better, however, or at least different: People writing about what interests them, when it interests them, maybe writing better for that--and maybe finding an audience. You have the whole planet to troll, after all.

***--Blogs now work comfortably as a "middle" tryout area because 1) they are technologicallly distinct from most of the MSM, which still mainly operates in print and broadcast formats and 2) the vast majority of Americans still get their news from the MSM (the Major Leagues), not blogs (the minors).  If both these conditions disappear, as seems quite possible--if newspapers stop being distinguishable from blogs and if the public stops getting its news from the MSM--then the "minor league" or "undernews" model of blogging would seem to break down. There would be no "major league."  The conveyor belt will have nowhere to go. In that case, we'll need a new model. But it will presumably still be one in which tips, rumors and angles are proffered, sifted, sorted, and tested until a consensus somehow emerges as to whether they are valid. .. 1:25 A.M. link

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Why does every establishment I enter play Sara Bareilles'  "I'm Not Gonna Write You A Love Song" in the background? That goes for both upscale cafes and 7-Elevens. It's an awful song, full of forced vigor. Not a new song either. Does it have some proven stimulative effect on consumers? ...1:23 A.M.

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Monday, May 19, 2008

Michelle Malkin is tracking   the Feinstein sneak half-decade amnesty for illegal immigrant farmworkers, which currently looks like it will come up for a vote on Wednesday. ...See also Numbers USA  for updates. ..  P.S.: What's John McCain's position? Didn't he promise to "secure our borders first," holding off on "other aspects of the problem" (i.e. legalization) until a "widespread consensus" that border-security had been acheived? I think he did!  He will presumably have to vote one way or the other (or else be conveniently absent). A not-small test case of whether he'll keep any of his promises to the right when he decides he'd rather not.  ... 4:47 P.M. link

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Mutnemom in Action: RCP's chart  shows Hillary closing in Oregon, of all places. ... Backfill: See Faughnan--"Is her mutnemom kicking into overdrive now that even Senator Obama seems to be tossing dirt onto her grave?" ... [Thanks to reader P.F.] 10:32 P.M.

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The Possibilities of Push-Off Politics: 1) David Frum argues Republican Congressional candidates should treat the presidential election as "already lost"  and campaign "on a message to balance the crazy left-wing things a President Obama is sure to try." 2) Jennifer Rubin argues the Republican presidential candidate should treat the Congress as already lost and campaign on a message to moderate the things a lopsidedly Democratic legislature is sure to try.

It's hard to see how both these strategies could plausibly be successful, assuming polls on the week before election day offer an accurate picture of whether the GOP has a chance to control either branch of government. At the moment, Rubin's strategy looks closer to reality--McCain has a shot at the presidency, so writing him off doesn't resonate. But even the Republicans in Congress think the Republicans in Congress are doomed.

Would Rubin's proposed McCain strategy of running against the looming Congressional Democratic majority make it impossible for him to "triangulate" by dissing Congressional Republicans? Not really--presumably he could do both, contrasting himself with the conservative GOP caucus and with the Pelosi Democrats.

What about "reverse triangulation" (noitalugnairt!)--the possibility that a party's Congressional delegation could get closer to the center than its presidential candidate? That seems impossible for the Republicans. It's not impossible for the Democrats. If Obama fails to pivot to the center (as Frum, at least, predicts) Rahm Emmanuel's House candidates could easily position themselves as moderate checks on a very liberal prospective President, no? ... 1:15 A.M.

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

Strange piece on the huge, attractively Apollonian Ford Flex in Automobile, in which the editors get driven around but don't say much about the actual car. ("Sadly, the dog ate our notes.") Is that because the Flex, er, sucked? Maybe Ford's PR department restricted what the editors could say and do, envisioning a benign pre-rollout teaser. But if the car's any good, that approach backfired by raising doubts. ... P.S.: When is the last time a Ford interior was criticized for being "luxuriously upscale"? Ford should have that problem. ... 12:26 P.M.

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Note that, Dick Morris, in his cynical advice to McCain, advocates that he appeal to Dems and independents by moving to the center--but not on McCain's signature issue of "comprehensive immigration reform" (which Morris has supported). Indeed, Morris thinks McCain should:

Attack Obama for favoring federally subsidized health insurance for illegal immigrants.

Says something about the vaunted popular appeal of immigration semi-amnesty, no? It's not like welfare reform--a popular initiative policy elites resisted for decades. If it happens, which it might, it will be because political, policy and business elites (plus ethnic lobbies) manage to finesse it through Congress despite unenthusiastic popular sentiment. ... 12:05 P.M.

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Saturday, May 17, 2008

Today's Obama Gaffe to Ignore: No point covering this, Mr. Halperin, sir. Move right along. Obama's our nominee. We're stuck with him. Here he explains his impending loss in Kentucky:

"What it says is that I'm not very well known in that part of the country," Obama said. "Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it's not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle." [E.A.]

Cling Alert! ... As emailer "S" notes: 1) "Last time I checked, Illinois was more 'nearby' Kentucky than Arkansas.  Heck, they even touch." 2) "[I]sn't there something a tad condescending in his reference to "some of those states in the middle"? ...

P.S.: Obama also said that Kentucky Democrats are fools who let themselves get pumped full of false rumors by Fox News, or words to that effect. But he'll rally them in the fall! ...

Note to Sen. Obama: Please stop explaining! ... 6:43 P.M. link

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Bloggingheads--Bob Wright's videoblog project. Gearbox--Searching for the Semi-Orgasmic Lock-in. Drudge Report--80 % true. Close enough! Instapundit--All-powerful hit king. Josh Marshall--He reports! And decides!  Wonkette--Makes Jack Shafer feel guilty.  Salon--Survives! kf gloating on hold. Andrew Sullivan--He asks, he tells. He sells! David Corn--Trustworthy reporting from the left.  Washington Monthly--Includes Charlie Peters' proto-blog. Lucianne.com--Stirs the drink. Virginia Postrel--Friend of the future! Peggy Noonan--Gold in every column. Matt Miller--Savvy rad-centrism. WaPo--Waking from post-Bradlee snooze. Keller's Calmer Times--Registration required.  NY Observer--Read it before the good writers are all hired away. New Republic--Left on welfare, right on warfare!  Jim Pinkerton--Quality ideas come from quantity ideas. Tom Tomorrow--Everyone's favorite leftish cartoonists' blog.  Ann "Too Far" Coulter--Sometimes it's just far enough. Bull Moose--National Greatness Central. John Ellis--Forget that Florida business! The cuz knows politics, and he has, ah, sources. "The Note"--How the pros start their day. Romenesko--O.K. they actually start it here. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities--Money Liberal Central. Steve Chapman--Ornery-but-lovable libertarian. Rich Galen--Sophisticated GOP insider. Man Without Qualities--Seems to know a lot about white collar crime. Hmmm. Overlawyered.com--Daily horror stories. Eugene Volokh--Smart, packin' prof, and not Instapundit! Eve Tushnet--Queer, Catholic, conservative and not Andrew Sullivan! WSJ's Best of the Web--James Taranto's excellent obsessions. Walter Shapiro--Politics and (don't laugh) neoliberal humor! Eric Alterman--Born to blog. Joe Conason--Bush-bashing, free most days. Lloyd Grove--Don't let him write about you. Arianna's Huffosphere--Now a whole fleet of hybrid vehicles. TomPaine.com--Web-lib populists. Take on the News--TomPaine's blog.  B-Log--Blog of spirituality!  Hit & Run--Reason gone wild! Daniel Weintraub--Beeblogger and Davis Recall Central. Eduwonk--You'll never have to read another mind-numbing education story again. Nonzero--Bob Wright explains it all. John Leo--If you've got political correctness, he's got a column. Gawker--It's come to this. Eat the Press--Sklarianna & Co. are like Gawker if Gawker actually believed in something. ... Luke Ford--Go for the sex, stay for the self-loathing. ... [More tk]