Time's most liberal columnist thinks it might be a pretty good idea to nuke Iran.
Of course he knows more about it than you do and you're an idiot and an
Anti-American if you disagree. (Was he booked on ABC's "This
Week" as the liberal?) Never mind that the war plan, here,
looks to be a recipe for disaster that will undoubtedly inspire massive
acts of terrorist retaliation against the United States, here. Why do Richard Clarke and Steven Simon hate America?
The State Department thinks we talk too loud. Well maybe, but how about don't invade other countries, torture their people, lie about it to everyone, and then screw up everything anyway. That might help too.
The New York Times edit board publishes a good editorial. (For a bad editorial, go here.)
Have you noticed that the Washington Post is now replicating the worst
aspect of the Wall Street Journal? Its editorial page, driven by
right-wing ideology, is ignoring or purposely contradicting facts
printed in its news pages. Read all about it here and here.
Congrats to Gellman/Linzer for their great reporting. (And by the
way, isn't it funny that Howie Kurtz says it doesn't interest him at
all that the Post edit page contradicts the facts on the news
page? Isn't he admitting that he can't cover his own paper?
And if he can't cover his own paper, why is he covering his own
network, CNN? Which kinds of conflicts-of-interest are "good
conflicts of interests," as the Post edit board might put it?)
Finally, on the journalistic ethics beat,isn't it about time we put a moratorium on the practice of journalismby telepathy? Read this paragraph in TNR by Noam Scheiber, here.
It'sfitting that the idea animating Dean's tenure at the DNC is a bigone. Dean, after all, effectively sacrificed his futurepresidential ambitions to pursue his current job. The only reasonhe would do such a thing is that he considers the DNC post moreimportant than even the presidency.
Well,actually, bub, I can think of quite a few more reasons he would "dosuch a thing." Maybe, for instance, he thinks he can win one andnot the other, which turns out to be true, since he did win one and notthe other. Then again, maybe Dean thinks he is personally bettersuited to one, rather than the other. Maybe he prefers not togive up his personal privacy to the extent a president would haveto. Maybe he feels like he's a young man and can run againlater. Maybe, maybe, maybe all kinds of things. Scheiberbuilds much of his piece around this bit of dime-store psychoanalysisand it has absolutely no basis in reporting or any other form ofevidence, though it does nicely illustrate the contempt that the smartjournalistic establishment regularly demonstrates for Dean. IfScheiber had been writing something decent about Dean, one imagines hiseditors would have ask a few tough questions.
Hey look:
"The intense opposition to Bush is larger than any faced by
Clinton. For all the polarization the 42nd president inspired,
Clinton's strong disapproval never got above 37 percent in Post-ABC
polls during his presidency." Here. Is he the worst president in a hundred years? Damn straight he is. More, I'd say.
Quote of the Day: "Woman's sexual organ is like the open mouth of a snake filled withpoison." --Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose pastors, under George W.Bush's Healthy Marriage Initiative and abstinence-only grants, have wonnearly $1 million in public funding. Read the rest of this. It's wild.
Contempt for books in the news business builds: Do a search here or even one here and you won't find the word "book."
And finally, a massive Maazel Tov
to the smart folks at the Jewish Theological Seminary for having the
creativity and smarts to pick my old professor at Stanford, Arnie Eisen,
to be the new Chancellor. I've never met a scholar of Judaism
whose arguments I found more compelling than Arnie and he's a great
guy, too. Brave of him, too, to take this position on gay
marriage coming in...