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Id Watch: Hmmm. If voters oppose by a 64-34 margin a health care bill with individual mandates but no public option, doesn't that mean voters will oppose by a 64-34 margin any health care bill that is likely to pass? ... That would put Obama's reform up in Dick Morris' the-Democratic-party-isn't-a-suicide-pact range. .. .9:27 P.M.
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Fire Mickey Kaus finally earns his salary. ... 9:26 P.M.
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Hyperlocal videos: Here's a local news video (I assume web-only) about a burglary in the neighborhood of a friend of mine. It's pretty compelling if you live in the neighborhood. ... If not, not. ... But presumably there are lots of potential advertisers--supermarkets, restaurants, etc--who would want to reach even that relatively small local audience. ... 9:25 P.M.
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Marc Lynch of FP suggests that Joe Biden committed "the worst foreign policy blunder of the Obama administration" in seeming to give the green light to an Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. "Aggressive pushback" is called for, declares Lynch. Biden needs to "issue a strong clarification immediately"! ... But when you think about it, if you wanted to scare the Iranians without credibly committing the United States, isn't Biden the perfect person for the job? I mean, it's just Joe Biden! He could be actually enunciating Obama administration policy. Or he could be winging it! Or it could be just another gaffe. Who knows? The Iranians don't. They can't dismiss the threat, and have to be worried, but can't be sure whether to expect a strike or not. Meanwhile, no credible U.S. spokesman has said anything especially bellicose. That's exactly what we want, no? ...
Strategic ambiguity, I think they call it. Everything Biden says is by definition ambiguous! He's an unreliable narrator. The trick is making it strategic. But the Obama brahmins would be crazy not to try to use this asset. When you've got lemons ....
P.S.: Lynch worries that the Israelis might "[take] up the offer" and attack. But presumably the U.S. has ways of directly communicating to Israel that it doesn't have the green light, or that it does. ...
Update: Obama says the U.S. has "absolutely not" given Israel a green light to attack Iran. Guess it's just that crazy Biden! ... Or is it? ... And Obama didn't rule out a "green light" in the future. ... Maybe Biden was on to something? ... Iran still doesn't know for sure, do they? Which is the point. ... 6:30 P.M.
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Admit it, Mediaite is a lot better than you thought it would be. ... P.S.: I'm a Dan Abrams skeptic--he seems in love with himself, and I don't trust him--but on a bad day his conflict of interest in using journalists to advise corporate clients on how to work the media isn't as bad as Howie Kurtz's (covering CNN, which not only pays him an ongoing second salary but is what makes him famous). ... 6:28 P.M.
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"'I'll sue you for defamation!' is the toothless wonder of the legal world," declares a confident and defiant HuffPo blogger. But is it really toothless? ... Background: Sarah Palin's attorney suggests that an Alaskan blogger has been defaming the Governor, and is threatening to sue not only the blogger but also "those who republish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post." I would have thought that this threat was decidedly non-toothless--that if a blogger really was publishing something defamatory about Palin (or anyone**), and if HuffPo or the NYT published the blog on their web sites, they'd be on the hook for defamation just as if they'd published an article by one of their own reporters.
That was before I learned about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It's imprecisely worded, but if it really does immunize HuffPo and Gawker and even Slate or the NYT, etc --by requiring any libel plaintiff to recover damages from the actual original blogger, as some cases suggest--that would change a lot from what I thought I learned in law school. The changes go way beyond defanging Palin. I'm obviously way behind thinking about this, but off the top of my head, here are some of the possible ramifications:
a) It would be great for blogging, because it would mean lawyers for big journalistic outfits (like the Washington Post, which owns Slate) won't require blogs to be edited. In fact, they won't want the blogs to be edited, lest that be interpreted as implicating the big journalistic outlet itself in any libel. "Curation" is for co-defendants!
b) Most bloggers themselves are probably poor enough to be judgment-proof, although some HuffPo bloggers might have deeper pockets than HuffPo itself;
c) It means unverified undernews would now have a prominent, semi-official, de facto-sanctioned home, namely judgment-proof blogs on big news sites;
d) Are they really going to apply this to organizations that pay freelance bloggers for their submissions? If not, the statute might protect HuffPo (which usually doesn't pay bloggers) but not Slate (which pays me). But does this paid/unpaid line really make sense, since readers don't necessarily know who's paying what to whom when evaluating a blog's credibility? Is HuffPo all that different from Slate? And I don't want to give my editors another reason to cut my salary to zero. ...
e) What about repeating these protected-by Sec. 230-but-unverified blog allegations in the core MSM? If actual reporters working for actual traditional news outfits can then relay 'the fact that Judgment-Proof Blog X is reporting Y rumor'--despite the traditional rules saying news outfits couldn't do this, but hey, why cut them out of the new vibrant "diversity of political discourse"?--we've really entered a new world. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with it. ...
But I find it difficult to believe that the broad web-site-protecting reading of Section 230 will hold up--it's a mere statute, remember. Congress can amend it. Is Congress really going to let average citizens get libeled by blogs on the New York Times web site without being able to sue the New York Times? ... On its face, the statutory provision, which protects "interactive computer services and other interactive media," appears intended more to protect outfits like American Online than traditional newspapers that host blogs or even new hybrid journalist/blogging/activist outfits like HuffPo. When Congress sees how that phrase has been interpreted, it may (as they say) revisit the issue. ...
**--Sure, public figures like Palin would have to show "actual malice," as defined in New York Times v. Sullivan. But that's not always impossible to do. ... 2:21 A.M.
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The "Savonarola of Sullivan's Island": Was he in love with the Latina hottie or with the "unashamedly navel-gazing culture of Argentina itself?" ... 12:11 A.M.
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Back when kausfiles began, in the spring of 1999, we didn't have any of this fancy blogging software or RSS/twitter#whathaveyou that kids have today.** No sir. We had to hew HTML code out of wood, after walking through the snow for ten miles.
The first entry was on June 26. I posted it from my mother's basement. (But I had been dressed for hours. I swear.) It was a conventional piece,*** with a set-up lede, some worker-paragraphs, a kicker. A few weeks later I ran into Walter Olson, of Overlawyered. He said, "I really admire your site, Mickey. Everyone else is out there desperately trying to put up fresh daily content to attract hits. But you let your posts just sit there. It's dignified--almost stately." I'm paraphrasing, but you get the point. I realized maybe I should desperately try to put up fresh daily content to attract hits. So I added "just-written, linked commentary on that day's news"--what I didn't know was a "blog." In 2002, I moved it to Slate, in exchange for the equivalent of Nikki Finke's toenail.
In any case, the gala kf 10th Anniversary, now underway, seems a good time to force myself to assess the highs and lows so far:
Stupidest thing I said: No contest. At least I hope no contest.
Media coverage of the 9/11 attack often emphasizes that it will be a "long time before America gets back to normal," etc. The opposite is likely to be closer to the truth -- we'll get back to normal all too quickly, ...I suspect the story will be off the evening news by Thanksgiving. [9/12/2001]
Feature I shouldn't have let die: Yent-a-matic. Heather Mills and Ron Burkle was a good idea! Still could happen. ...
People I should maybe apologize to: Gary Condit. He was behaving awfully squirrelly. And I was only speculating! But that got pretty intense. I was more caught up in the possibility of his guilt than was justified. (After a long investigation, the police arrested someone else, clearing him.) I remember I once questioned--maybe on a conference call--why Chandra Levy would go jogging if she was about to leave town. A few days later, when I was mourning the sudden death of my colleague Scott Shuger, I realized I'd forgotten to listen to my phone messages. There was a days-old one from Scott, calmly explaining that going for a jog is exactly the sort of thing you do when you're about to leave town. Right. I'd been overexcited. Thank you, Scott.
People who should maybe apologize to me: Matt Yglesias! When John Edwards denied the rumor that he'd had an affair with Rielle Hunter, and called it "made up," I argued this was a poor strategy--even an innocent pol shouldn't go out of his way to challenge the integrity of the press organizations that are after him. It might anger them and cause them to redouble their efforts and actually nail him, or at least accuse him further, with attendant PR hassle. Yglesias argued that I was assuming guilt, and anyway:
No doubt by now we've had all the legitimate news organizations in the country looking into it and it seems that . . . nobody can come up with any evidence.
He then went on to giggle about goat-blowing. ... In the event, of course, the press organizations that were after Edwards (e.g., National Enquirer) redoubled their efforts and nailed him. ... P.S.: I don't think I assumed Edwards' guilt, but I admit it was hard not to because I knew he was guilty. It was the worst-kept secret on the Eastern Seaboard. You'd write about it and then you'd get off-the-record you-can't-use-this calls from credible people confirming it. I suspect that if I were a trained reporter, or just a better reporter, I could have figured out a way to explain to readers (including Yglesias) why I was on Edwards' case without compromising those confidences. I was actually trying to write just that piece when the Enquirer caught Edwards visiting Hunter at the Beverly Hilton.
Best bit of writing: The best-written piece I've published after starting kausfiles was a fake reminiscence of JFK Jr. My friend Ellen Ladowsky and I had the idea. I wrote a draft and sent it to her, but didn't hear anything. Finally I reached her by phone at her mother's house in Canada. She was having some sort of intense discussion and didn't have time to talk. "No, it should be like this," she said, almost annoyed, and hurriedly dictated four or five paragraphs. I had the good sense not to change a word. I suppose if I were Maureen Dowd I would get in trouble for that.****
Best idea: A Fed for payroll tax cuts during recessions:
[E]mpower some independent, non-partisan body to temporarily cut payroll taxes, by one or two percentage points, just as we empower the Federal Reserve Board to cut interest rates.
We could have used that this winter, no? Spending may eventually deliver more punch, but tax cuts that don't even have to go through Congress would undoubtedly be much quicker.***** This must be an old idea. But it's still a good idea. And the great thing about the Web is you don't have to check! You just write "This must be an old idea." ...
Best idea I dropped: Open Source Health Studies. Let everyone with a computer and a bit of paranoia mine a big database to see what correlates with, say, Alzheimer's and what doesn't. I even got an email from someone who seemed to know the subject who said it was possible. It's in a folder. I need to dig it out. ...
Worst case of being spun: Watching from the press area, I thought Gore cleaned Bush's clock in their first 2000 debate. Then I went to the spin room where Stuart Stevens immediately mentioned that Gore hadn't been to Texas with James Lee Witt, as he'd boasted. Didn't that play into the festering press meme that Gore was an insecure embellisher? It sure did. I wrote a goading piece saying this was a test of whether reporters could trash a Dem as they had said they would. (It was a test they passed.)
Since a butterfly flapping its wings could have tipped the 2000 election the other way, and since Gore would have been a better president than Bush, I've been feeling guilty about that piece. It's true that a) there were other reasons Gore "lost" the debate among many viewers--he grunted and sighed obnoxiously, something I couldn't hear in the press area.***** And b) every Dem political pro I've talked with thinks it was inexcusable-- and telling--that Gore boasted about Witt when he knew and was surely told that any new little boast would kill him. Still ... flap, flap ....
Greatest Hit that seems questionable in retrospect: The "Don't Rush Me" Series before the 2000 election. It was fun to run through all the reasons why I was an undecided voter, but in retrospect I shouldn't have been. I got snookered by Tucker Carlson's "If you're going to fuck me you'll have to kiss me first" anecdote into thinking Bush was going to be a surprisingly charming bipartisan compromiser and not a stubborn misguided cuss. Yes, Gore would have been a disaster in his own way, but he wouldn't have invaded Iraq. [Would he have passed health care?--ed No Would he have destroyed the GOP and salted the ground the way Bush has?-ed No Are we in such a bad place now?--ed All good points!]
Thing I'm proudest of: Being part of the angry, You-Tubin' mob that helped stop Bush and McCain's misguided and irreversible illegal immigrant legalization bill. Sorry! ...
That said, these are kf's Greatest Hits, I think:
The Case Against Editors On the Web they can help, but not enough. Don't curate me bro!
Let's Not Save Social Security A means test-for-health care swap looks better every day.
50-50 Forever In which I imagine I've discovered a theory about voting that actually dates from 1929.
Stating the Obvious After 9/11 Norman Podhoretz argued "Israel Isn't the Issue." Of course it is--in large part. And 9/11 changed our stakes in that Mideast conflict. (I wonder if David Greenberg would stand by his criticism today now that Obama has rejected the Podhoretz thesis.)
Gore vs. the Mysterious Forces A Kinsley-approved case against Shrumian populism.
No New Jaguars: The Fence and the Kitchen Sink My attempt at writing a column the way Ann Coulter would--forget the other hand, bombs away. It was an improvement.
I Can't Help Hating Chris Bangle About the crack BS artist who's done more to destroy our urban visual environment than anyone since Philip Johnson. Bangle's finally out of power, but every time I see a BMW--which is a lot around here--I hate him again.
Does Welfare Cause Terrorism Ethnic antagonism + welfare = oppositional culture.
Everyone Was Wrong About McCain Feingold Campaign finance reform isn't what we thought it was.
Help, I'm a Snob Like Obama! And Bob Wright. ... Mayhill Fowler opened up a can of worms! I hope I get points for failing to come up with any sort of satisfying conclusion.
Bold Decisive Disasters The scales fell from my eyes when I realized the suspect methods Bush used to push "comprehensive immigration reform" were the same suspect methods he had used to push the Iraq War.****** A little late, I realize.
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**-- And Bing! We didn't have Bing.
***--The piece actually ran in the NYT, which graciously let me post it on my site 24 hours later. I wonder if they still do that.
****--The piece was originally published under the byline J.William Medley, a fictional Washington pundit I borrowed from his creator, Jefferson Morley.
*****--Who needs editors when you have enemies!
Alert Reader noticed that I'd said "spending cuts" when I meant "spending."
Media Matters says an
immediate post-debate poll showed Gore narrowly "won" the first debate among viewers (as I thought he had). The same survey suggested that Bush gained more "favorability" ground. I've changed the wording to fudge that issue (adding "many"). The point is that Gore's sighing and grimacing turned off
lots of people--including my own mother (no Bush fan). The sighs and grimaces were inevitably replayed over the succeeding days, damaging Gore further.
******--Also when I read
this book.
2:54 P.M.
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'If Nikki Finke is worth $14 M, then I'm worth ... ': Even The Wrap's Sharon Waxman seems almost happy that DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com blogger Nikki Finke has had a big payday. Green shoots! It's lucky Finke is not a cantankerous person. ... Actually, their interview is fabulously tense and confrontational. ...
P.S. Gawker's Gabriel Snyder is skeptical of the $14 million figure reported by Waxman's site. ...
P.P.S.: I'm more interested in the indirect Rattner/Penske connection revealed in an earlier Gawker post on Finke's deal. It seems Obama auto czarito Steve Rattner's firm put money into a firm run by Finke's new owner, Jay Penske, the son of Detroit auto entrepreneur Roger Penske:
[Jay] Penske's Mail.com Media Corporation took a $35 million investment from Steve Rattner's Quadrangle Group in September; but we hear he's been having trouble finding properties to buy.
Hmm. A few months later Rattner helped restructure/dismantle General Motors, and Jay's father Roger wound up buying its Saturn brand. All innocent I'm sure! And Roger Penske has a record of business success that GM (and Rattner) can only envy. ... 11:23 P.M.
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The Truth About Cars on why that J.D. Power and Associates "Initial Quality" survey is not worth paying that much attention to. ... 11:45 P.M.
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Chooch On the Horizon? What happens to Chrysler if FIAT, its putative savior, fails to acquire Opel from GM this week? Was FIAT counting on Opel to fill some of the obvious gaps--mid-sized cars and larger--in Chrysler's weak lineup? The best U.S. car GM makes--the Camry-fightin' Chevy Malibu--started as an Opel design, remember. ... 2:07 A.M.
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Product placement is everywhere these days. ... 12:18 A.M.
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Is there a campaign to tarnish poor Anderson Cooper? First this negativity in the LAT. ("Cooper's ratings have been in sharp decline ...") Today, a suspiciously similar item in the New York Post's Page 6 ("ratings have plunged") that cherrypicks Cooper's worst days. TV Newser has a less excited take, noting
Year-to-date, Cooper is flat in the ratings. In 2008, AC360 averaged 1,194,000 Total Viewers. Year-to-date 2009, he's averaging 1,199,000 (through May 3). ...
It is true that AC360 is shedding viewers from its Larry King Live lead-in ...
Still, flat is not so good! If Cooper falls further, how does Visionary CNN Chief Jonathan Klein not fall with him? ... P.S.: If Klein has done anything at the network, aside from promoting Cooper, keeping his own name in the papers, and sneeringly spinning CNN's declining numbers, I forget what it was. Oh right: He's skillfully positioned CNN as the boring, nonpartisan network in an exciting, partisan time. ... 12:12 A.M.
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Monday, May 25, 2009
Buried Lede of the Day: From the tenth graf of a May 7 WSJ article on furniture retailer Design Within Reach:
Just getting people into stores can be difficult at a time when self-indulgent shopping has lost its allure, says Jim Taylor, vice-chairman of Harrison Group, a market research firm. Dr. Taylor has just completed a consumer study for American Express Publishing that suggests the wealthy no longer really enjoy shopping. What's more, their new, less-materialistic lifestyles are "a lot of fun," he says. "Our happiness scales are up this year for the first time in years." [E.A.]
Is that really true? If so, a big deal, no? ... And why? Perspective? Lower status anxiety? Lower Iraq anxiety? Obama? The power of schadenfreude? ... It's a thumbsuckers' playpen. ... 2:07 A.M.
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Ben Sheffner illustrates Nick Denton's possibly-tragic misunderstanding of American libel law. ... But is linking to Gawker's libel itself libelous, even if the purpose of the link is to show how libelous it is? [What about linking to Sheffner's linking?--ed That's OK under the Two Degrees of Libel rule, which I just made up] ... 2:05 A.M.
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Ezra Klein warns that if nothing is done to control the cost of health care, in 20 years we'll be spending 26.7% of our GDP on it. Is that all? I was thinking the figure would be much higher. ... P.S.: I suppose it depends on what we get for 26.7% of GDP. But if expensive medical advances added a year or two to my life, I'd be happy to fork over a quarter of my income. Wouldn't you? ... P.P.S.: The Obamist Party Line on universal health care--that we have to scare everyone into thinking we need it to control costs--has always seemed ill-advised, given that we've never been able to control health care costs before. And it plays into conservative arguments that liberals really want to meddle in medical decisions and ultimately deny treatment. Now it turns out the O.P.L. health cost scare stats aren't really even that scary. ... Why don't Democrats instead push to provide everyone with health care using the argument that ... everyone needs health care? ... Just a thought. ... 2:03 A.M.
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Friday, May 15, 2009
Is Obama about to waste $100 billion in education "stimulus" spending? That's the implication of this mild-mannered Andrew Rotherham article. ... 1:28 A.M.
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Perplexing Party Line: Net immigration from Mexico to the U.S. is down by half, says the NYT. Is that due to the economy or stepped up enforcement? According to the Times' fourth graf, "Mexican and American researchers" say it's the economy and lack of jobs. That's the party line of pro-legalization forces, who would like to deny that stepped-up enforcement can have, and has already had, a big impact. But then the Times buries paragraphs like this:
The enforcement buildup along the border, which started during the Bush administration, has made many Mexicans think twice about the cost and danger of an illegal trek when no job awaits on the other side, scholars said.
Obviously both factors are at work. But only one factor is PC. ... P.S: The NYT ed board might want to revisit its declaration:
Nor have the forces of global economic migration magically adjusted to fit the American mood.
I don't even understand why the Times ever made that claim--wouldn't it be smarter, if you were a pro-legalization advocate, to argue that free immigration is no threat because in periods of recession the flow does "magically" adjust (reduce) itself?
The Times--and the rest of the pro-legalization lobby--seemed to believe it was more important to stamp out the idea that enforcement--or anything, for that matter--can stop or slow the inevitable tide of immigration to which we all just have to adjust ("whether you like it or not," as Gavin Newsom might put it). Someone should remind them that the sales pitch for "comprehensive" reform is precisely that enforcement will work once existing illegals are amnestied. If enforcement is powerless, "comprehenisve" reform is a fraud. ...
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**This Times ed board passage, for example, comes close to saying that any enforcement strategy is doomed:
[I]t helps to remember that the country has ... [snip] ...spent decades and billions to seal the border as tightly as possible.
It stages raids to pull people off assembly lines and out of their beds and cars. It has added hundreds of thousands of prison beds to hold illegal immigrants and enlisted local police officers to enforce federal laws. It has done everything it can to make illegal immigrants miserable in the hope that they will abandon their jobs, houses and citizen-children and tell everyone back home to forget about America. And how has that worked? It hasn't.
The Times dismisses even the idea that stricter enforcement can discourage would-be immigrants who are still back in their home countries. Isn't it "comprehensive" reformers who say that--once existing illegals are "out of the shadows"--stricter enforcement will discourage would-be immigrants who are still back in their home countries? Cecilia Munoz needs to have a talk with the NYT. ... 1:27 A.M.
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I've been an admirer of Carlos Watson ever since the New Hampshire primary of 2004, where he managed to talk for a half hour with Robert Novak and never make a dull or familiar or bogus point (not easy to do when 3,000 journalists have already chewed over the material). But wow, this is an awfully ambitious new web site. It's as if one man were turning out Slate. ... Elizabeth Spiers seems to be involved in some way, which is another good sign. ... 1:26. A.M.
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Stop Him Before He Kills Again: Michael Wolff, as a friend of mine once argued, is a Topic-Killer. He has a talent for figuring out what everyone would want to talk about, and then he writes a quick, mediocre piece on the subject that doesn't do it justice or that takes an extreme position for effect--but that says just enough to kill off the interest of other, better journalists in tackling the issue. ... The social problem we now face is that Wolff has started a web site, which he has to promote--meaning he now kills a promising topic every day. Today, it's Drudge. ... [You just killed the topic of Michael Wolff's topic-killing--ed. I have that power? No. I can't even stop myself from re-doing the same item over and over] ... 2:55 A.M.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Paragraph #8 in WaPo's account of Freddie Mac acting CFO David Kellerman's suicide:
He and a group of company lawyers tussled with the company's regulator in early March as the firm prepared to file its quarterly disclosure. The group insisted that Freddie Mac disclose the $30 billion cost to the company of carrying out the Obama administration's housing recovery plan, but the regulator urged the company not to do so.
Freddie Mac employees argued they had a legal obligation to disclose the information and would have to get the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees such disclosures, to sign off if they didn't. The regulator backed down.
Alert reader J. says, "[A]n odd story, isn't it? The regulator says don't disclose the cost of this government program? Why would he say that?" ... There's an obvious overarching reason--it would be embarrassing to the Obama administration. But why? Isn't the administration usually boasting about how much it's spending for struggling homeowners? ...
Update: Politico's Josh Gerstein offers some informed speculation:
In the end, FHFA [the regulator] reportedly retreated and Freddie formally disclosed that the Obama anti-foreclosure plan could force the firm, which is in a federal government conservatorship, to take a pre-tax charge of $30 billion.
While the Obama administration might not want to have the pricetag for its foreclosure efforts look too big, the reason regulators may have pressured Fannie to understate the cost of the program is pretty simple: both Obama and Geithner said publicly that it wouldn't have a material financial impact on Fannie or Freddie.
Why would Obama and Geithner make such an estimate? Because they were publicly buying into the Juiceboxy free-lunchish, counterintuitive** notion that if only lenders were made to offer more lenient terms to homebuyers, the lenders would make more money! (Obama: "While Fannie and Freddie would receive less money in payments, this would be balanced out by a reduction in defaults and foreclosures.") Looks like those numbers don't add up--though you can expect the free-lunch argument to crop up again in the current effort to get credit card companies to offer less harsh terms (i.e., as if that will let banks pay off their bailout loans quicker). ...
P.S.: Gerstein does raise the issue of why the "FHFA would feel obligated to carry water for the Obama administration," given that FHFA Director James Lockhart was originally a Bush appointee. ...
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**--The intuitive notion would be that if there's one thing rapacious lenders know how to do, it's make money. If setting more relaxed terms would maximize their profits, they'd do it. ... 4:34 P.M.
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Guess this feud is over: Nancy Pelosi speaks out in defense of Jane Harman!
"I have great confidence in Jane Harman," Pelosi said. "She's a patriotic American. She would never do anything to hurt her country."
Thanks, Nancy ... for, you know, emphasizing the whole unpatriotic, betray-your country issue. ... P.S.: I used to work for Harman and like her. Maybe I'm biased. But I don't completely understand what all the fuss is about. So someone convinces her that this prosecution is unfair and she says she'll probably lobby against it. And then this person puts in a good word for her with Pelosi about committee assignments. If this person is also (unbeknownst to Harman) a spy what does that change? Is that different than if they were an ambassador, or foreign leader, or foreign pundit, or New Republic editor? Or president of a respected non-profit? Seems like everyday politics. No secrets were leaked to anyone, as far as I know. Whether it's corrupt or not depends on whether Harman genuinely thought the prosecution was unfair, which in turn depends at least in part on whether it really was unfair, no? But maybe I'm missing something. ... 4:33 P.M.
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009
You know those figures that Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn used in his WSJ column, the ones that seemed like BS?
The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That's almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click
Well, they were BS! Room 8 notes that Penn a) assumed that all bloggers saying they'd like to make money are actually making money. And b) recast bloggers who said blogging was "a" primary source of income into bloggers having blogging as "their primary" source of income. ... I would add that Penn's statement claiming
It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year
is fantastically bogus and clueless. It all depends on your niche, of course, but a blogger with only 100,000 uniques would be very lucky to make half that amount, I would think. Penn's own post--publication mop up attempt makes the methodology of his hype clear:
The question of how much traffic it takes to make a living also comes from the Technorati report. We say it takes "about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year" and Technorati states those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors the average income is $75,000.
But Technorati emphasizes that the $75,000 average is pulled up by a few highly successful bloggers who have way more than 100,000 unique visitors. This doesn't mean that if you have only 100,000 you generate $75,000. It sort of means the opposite--that 100,000 won't get you anywhere near the "average." Penn himself mentions, in his follow-up, that the $75,000 is "not the median." In fact, the median was only $22,000 (and even that probably wouldn't apply to the mere 100,000-visitor sites, since they are the low end of the sample and presumably making less than the median). Faced with a choice between an absurd $75,000 claim and a still-inflated $22,000 claim, Penn went with the $75,000.
Don't worry Hillary! The delegates will be there for you. ....
P.S.: You might think that Penn's bogus factoid was a Robert Reich-style bogus factoid--that is, it's not true today but it will be true tomorrow! That's part of Penn's defense ("We can quibble about how easy it is to make this kind of money -- but the point is, the huge potential is there.") But it's actually a huge open question whether blogging will get more or less lucrative: Will ad rates go up or down? Will the proliferation of blogs bid down the price faster than the migration of eyeballs online builds an audience? Etc. ... It might be true that two years from now a site attracting 100,000 uniques will be lucky to make $5,000. The "huge potential"--at least the huge moneymaking potential--isn't necessarily there at all.
This is an issue of some importance to me! Like Hillary in 2008, I hope Penn is right. ...
Backfill: Scott Rosenberg's discussion is more thorough. ... 6:10 P.M.
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39,000 New Pentagon Civil Servants are to be hired in the next five years, according to Defense Sec. Gates' plan. Many would replace private contractors overseeing military acquisitions--allegedly on the theory that this will help prevent over-budget, under-performing weapons systems. But not all the new full-time civil servants will be in acquisitions. Reports WaPo:
Of the 13,000 private contractors to be replaced in the coming year, 2,500 of them would be in the acquisition workforce.
What about the other 10,500? ... Contractors can be fired, remember. Full-time civil servants are forever. Yet replacing the former with the latter seems to be a consistent theme of the new administration. Is this really Gates talking? Or is it Obama talking through Gates? Or is it AFSCME** talking through Obama through Gates? ... P.S.: The Post's ed board says "Democrats who say they support the president's expensive health-care and education programs" should support cuts in weapons systems that would free up money to pay for those programs. But, on the same grounds, shouldn't they also oppose permanent Pentagon bloat? ...
**--Or, when it comes to Pentagon workers, AFGE. ...12:42 A.M.
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The rehabilitation of Andrew Cuomo has been a heavy price to pay for the return of a few AIG bonuses. HuffPo's Thomas Edsall and Robert Dowling do their best to cut him back down, suggesting Cuomo may have tacitly approved, or at least enabled, the bonuses he later dramatically got returned. ... 12:24 A.M.
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'Employee Free Choice' Still on the Move! Yet another Democratic Senator, Michael Bennet of Colorado, declares "card check" unpassable. He also calls it an impediment to enacting health care reform--a potentially convenient "frame" for other wobbly Dems, Greg Sargent notes. ... P.S.: At some point doesn't the near-stampede of moderate Democrats to renounce the unions' top agenda item cut into labor's leverage when it comes to negotiating a compromise? Just asking! These Dems are defying labor. Are they paying a big price for it, or do they know labor needs them as much as they need labor? Lesson learned? ... P.P.S.: Didn't Robert Reich try to warn Andy Stern that this would happen? ... P.P.P.S.: Or is labor angling for a pity vote--they're about to be so humiliated, Dems will have to do something to help them? ... Update: Udall and Warner (!) seem to say they will vote for cloture. Of course, that's a bit of a 'free' vote now since cloture on the full-strength bill seems unlikely to get the necessary 60 votes (or even come up). Still, it makes it less of a stampede. ... Campaign Diaries' headcount seems a bit Ambinderesque--that is, optimistic, from labor's point of view. If they can get Feinstein and Bennet on cloture, then they only need two out of five other senators who "oppose the current version but haven't closed the door to compromise." Why would a senator 'close the door to compromise'? The question's still "which compromise?" ... 12:03 A.M.
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Tuesday, April 7, 2009
60 in two? Really? Jennifer Rubin (citing Jay Newton-Small): Are we sure 2010 is a year for Dem Senate pickups? ... 11:40 P.M.
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Variety Was His Blog: Amy Wallace, whose 2001 profile of Peter Bart in Los Angeles Magazine became the sort of "industry" sensation the L.A. Times seems to never achieve, jumps in on Bart's upstairs-kicking with a juicy lunch anecdote (see end of page 1) that demonstrates why Bart had no business running Variety.. ... P.S.: It's another question whether a man who's a bag of conflicts and biases--and who gives them free range in his writing--should be covering anything anywhere. The answer is of course he should. But those ethics aren't the ethics of a man running a large conventional reporting staff. They're the ethics of a blogger. In the coming days it will probably become a cliche to suggest that Bart's Variety was been done in by lone Web operators like Nikki Finke. But Bart actually had more in common with Finke (who also doesn't seem to keep her ad hominem impulses from shaping her reporting) than you might think. ... [Via L.A. Observed] 11:38 P.M.
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First Time The MSM Has Ever Ignored Warren Buffett: The press accounts I've read have wildly underplayed Obama supporter Warren Buffet's criticism of the President on CNBC today. It's fairly pointed, and Buffett comes back to it, suggesting he has a message he's trying to deliver. [E.A.]:
BUFFETT: ...And, Joe, it--if you're in a war, and we really are on an economic war, there's a obligation to the majority to behave in ways that don't go around inflaming the minority. If on December 8th when--maybe it's December 7th, when Roosevelt convened Congress to have a vote on the war, he didn't say, `I'm throwing in about 10 of my pet projects ... [snip] ...
JOE: Yeah, but you might--might not have fixed...
BUFFETT: But I say...
JOE: You might not--you might not have fixed global warming the day after--the day after D-Day, Warren.
BUFFETT: Absolutely. And I think that the--I think that the Republicans have an obligation to regard this as an economic war and to realize you need one leader and, in general, support of that. But I think that the--I think that the Democrats--and I voted for Obama and I strongly support him, and I think he's the right guy--but I think they should not use this--when they're calling for unity on a question this important, they should not use it to roll the Republicans all.
JOE: Hm.
BUFFETT: I think--I think a lot of things should be--job one is to win the war, job--the economic war, job two is to win the economic war, and job three. And you can't expect people to unite behind you if you're trying to jam a whole bunch of things down their throat. So I would--I would absolutely say for the--for the interim, till we get this one solved, I would not be pushing a lot of things that are--you know are contentious, and I also--I also would do no finger-pointing whatsoever. I would--you know, I would not say, you know, `George'--`the previous administration got us into this.' Forget it. I mean, you know, the Navy made a mistake at Pearl Harbor and had too many ships there. But the idea that we'd spend our time after that, you know, pointing fingers at the Navy, we needed the Navy. So I would--I would--I would--no finger-pointing, no vengeance, none of that stuff. Just look forward. ..[snip] ...
BUFFETT: Well, I was going to mention to Joe that you've heard this comment recently from some Democrats recently that a `crisis is a terrible thing to waste.'
BECKY: Yeah.
BUFFETT: Now, just rephrase that and since it's, in my view, it's an economic war, and--I don't think anybody on December 7th would have said a `war is a terrible thing to waste, and therefore we're going to try and ram through a whole bunch of things and--but we expect to--expect the other party to unite behind us on the--on the big problem.' It's just a mistake, I think, when you've got one overriding objective, to try and muddle it up with a bunch of other things.
P.S.: He's against "card check." ("I think the secret ballot's pretty important in the country.") ... 7:19 P.M.
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Least convincing editorial ever?** WaPo's ed board admits 1) earmarks aren't the problem 2) the "omnibus" spending bill now before Congress would mean a "significant jump in domestic spending" of either 6 or 8 percent 3) this increase will be "built into the annual baseline" and as a practical matter, set the floor for future spending; 4) if you add in the already-passed stimulus, the "overall increase in domestic spending is a staggering 80 percent;" 5) Obama's 2010 budget "appears to envision another increase in excess of 6 percent in this category."
Yet the Post endorses the omnibus bill. It argues the only alterntive is the GOP's spending freeze. Huh? Why not block the bill, cut the increase in across-the-board spending on existing agencies in half, and substitute equivalent spending on stimulus programs that actually are reversible once the economy recovers? A Third Way! It's the sort of thing a presidential veto might accomplish, if there were a president around. ... [via Corner]
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** Harmless bloggy hyperbole. But it's a pretty strange editorial. ... 6:19 P.M.
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Tumblr Goes Denby: The founder and CEO of Tumblr, David Karp, announced that five blogs in his "community" critical of Web personality Julia Allison have been taken down because they were "derogatory" and constituted "harrassment." ... I suppose Karp can kick whomever he wants off his site--but that's exactly what seems to be going on here. It certainly smells like a CEO protecting a friend. (Allison says "I haven't asked David to take down any sites in a long time." Oh.) ... Note to tumblr bloggers Alex Balk and Elizabeth Spiers: Hope you stay on Karp's good side! .... P.S.: Allison sees Karp's action as applicable, not just to his "community," but the entire Internet:.
There is no reason the internet should remain in its current Hobbesian state of nature. Someone needs to begin the long process of setting basic standards of decency online.
This is an argument so new it's already old. But Allison is a peculiarly unappealing complainant, having attempted to build a career out of exposing her private life in public on the web. Now people shouldn't be able to criticize her with the same vigor with which she promotes herself? ... P.S.: Here's a google cache for one of the sites tumblr deleted, Reblogging Julia. Seems pretty tame--at least by Atlantic standards! ... P.P.S.: Doesn't Allison understand that the only thing worse than having five sites devoted to trashing you is having four sites devoted to trashing you? [I think she does!-ed You're not suggesting she'll be happy to see this item too? This item is vicious! She'll never recover from this item!] ...
Update: Karp ("This is really upsetting") has now caved and abandoned his plan to rid his "community" of negativity."[W]e’ve decided to restore the accounts affected."... My theory: Spiers got to him. .. Or Sklar. ... Or this survey. ... Alternate theory: He just wanted some of that free Facebook F___-up publicity. ... Problem with alternate theory: If he's that calculating, he does a really good job of faking immature angst. ... Plus he's done real damage and made his company look like a high-school operation. ... 11:26 P.M.
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Gran Salida Requires Gran Fudging? Michael Barone notes how the relative decline in Hispanic immigration will increase the pressure on Latino leaders to make up for the losses in the 2010 census by getting the government to use statistical "sampling" techniques. ... The problem, of course, is that they may be sampling Latinos who are no longer there. ... Update: Mark Krikorian notes it's primarily illegal immigrant Hispanics whose numbers are dwindling--but they apparently still count when it comes to drawing district lines and allocating Congressional seats. Krikorian worries that "the reduction of enforcement which Obama and Napolitano will order will likely stop the slide in the illegal population and maybe even allow it to start increasing again," especially "in the period immediately leading up to the census count." ... 10:40 P.M.
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So Obama's going to try to reopen the stimulus bill on the much-debated banker pay cap provisions** but not on the little-debated welfare-expanding provisions? That would not be the "populist" choice, in either case. ...
**--sorry, I mean he "looks forward to working with Congress to responsibly address this issue." .... 10:32 P.M.
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Monday, February 2, 2009
Press release from TheAtlantic.com on the launch of their new politics site:
The Politics Channel follows the introduction of the Business Channel, which has averaged 20,000 daily page views since its launch last this month.
20,000 daily page views! Does that impress you? I didn't think so. ... Sullivan probably gets as many hits for his "bear" posts alone! [Aren't you in danger of pissing off one of the few organizations that might conceivably hire you--ed. Nah. I don't worry about that sort of thing. I can always go blog for Pajamas Media. ... Oh, wait.] 11:00 P.M.
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