Health Care Reform: Reich Overboard!

Canary Ejects from Coal Mine: Robert Reich sure seems to be saying that Obama should have focused on the economy and put off health care reform:

a) Reich's test of success or failure seems to be whether "the Democrats lose one or both houses of Congress in the midterms." His analysis of why this might happen (benefits of health plan won't be felt, lack of jobs will) appears sound. But if Obama had focused on the economy, what measures, exactly, could he have taken to avoid a midterm massacre? A larger stimulus? Obama got as big a stimulus as he could last spring, no? Maybe Reich thinks Obama could have gotten a second tranche earlier this fall if he'd delayed health care. But Reich more or less admits that now it's too late for any measure to have a big impact before the election. So why not get health care reform? The way things are going, it's not like Dems will have another chance in 2011.
 
b) Reich's clearly still miffed that President Clinton rejected his stimulus plans in early 1993, choosing instead to lower the budget deficit and interest rates. As a result, Reich declares, "the Clinton years produced few if any major social reforms." Hmm. I can think of one. Actually, two and a half (work-oriented welfare reform coupled with the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and medical care for poor children). Even if Reich perversely won't count that as a "social reform," Clinton's rejection of Reich's advice was followed by the longest economic expansion in our history. The combination lowered the child poverty rate from 22% to 16%. Never trust content from Robert Reich.
 
c)  You could say it's a bad sign for Obama if Reich has ejected from the health care express. On the other hand, if there were a theatrical, left-cultivating, personal-branding semi-economist who was going to get attention for himself by jumping ship, it would be Robert Reich. He's sort of a canary in the coal mine in this respect. The canary has jumped! But at this point it's only the canary. ... Any metaphors left? [Shark-ed Well, Reich's chances of returning to power in an Obama administration are now close to zero. Maybe he's jumped that too. ... ]  9:01 P.M.

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Allthumbsucking: From WaPo reporter Michael Shear's exceptionally gauzy and correct "analysis" of Obama's "challenges"--including handling the aftermath of the Ft. Hood mass shooting:

And the incident -- clearly out of Obama's control -- comes as the president appears nearing a decision to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan. Explaining that decision to the public will be a critical job for Obama during the next several months, and Hasan's actions can only make that more difficult. [E.A.]

"Only"? Really? If Obama wants to send thousands more troops to bottle up radical Islamic terrorists who would like to bring violence to America, it seems as if this violent incident might make explaining it easier, no? ... P.S.: I'm not saying it necessarily makes it righter--just easier to win support for. ... 9:01 P.M.

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Conservatives Against "Spiritual Health"

Conservatives against prayer ... Or, rather, against requiring health insurance in Obama's "exchanges" to cover prayer treatment ("religious and spiritual health care"). a) Yes, a government-run plan will always have to contend with this sort of pressure, in addition to pressure to cover experimental procedures and expensive mental health treatments. These pressures are often harder for our political system to resist than for private insurers to resist; b) But if the government can avoid covering Christian Science prayer treatment under Medicare you'd think it could avoid covering it under the smaller health insurance exchange plans envisioned by the Dems, no? c) Wonder which way Sarah Palin comes down on this; d) Can the Scientologists be far behind? ... 12:18 P.M.

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Hugh ("only time will tell") Sidey has a worthy successor: Eugene Robinson in this morning's WaPo:

Reading too much into Tuesday's off-off-year election results would be a mistake, but reading too little into them would be wrong as well.

[Thanks to reader J] 12:08 P.M.

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Chrysler to break out new "Ram" line of trucks. If they'd called it the Rahm line I'd really start to worry about politicization. ... P.S.: Chrysler has now "projected that it will double its sales over five years." Do you believe that? Me neither, though I guess if Chrysler sales keep falling (down 39% so far this year from last year, which wasn't so great itself) they'll eventually be able to double their sales just by selling another one. [Update: They put an actual number on what they expect to do--increase sales from 1.3 million in 2009 to 2.8 million in 2014. With this? Okeydokey.] ... 12:04 P.M.

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Mineola Man Survives N.J. Nuclear Holocaust!

What Liberal Bias? This is the main headline on the L.A.Times web home page: 

Dem score congressional victories in California, N.Y.

From staff and wire reports | 9:42 p.m.

The GOP fares better in Virginia and New Jersey as both states elect Republican governors.

* * * * * *

Thanks to alert reader KL, who speculates that not even the conservative Washington Times would try something that disoriented. I think it would be a stretch for Granma. ...

Update: As of an hour later the headline was "Democrats win Congressional victories in California, N.Y.." with the same subhed. ...10:48 P.M.

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Election 2009: Some Winners, Losers,

Winner: Robopolls. Rasmussen's final poll, showing a 46-43-8 Christie win, was pretty damn accurate. Polls using conventional human operators tended to show Corzine ahead. They were wrong.** ... If you have a choice between Rasmussen and, say, the presitigous N.Y.Times, go with Rasmussen! ... Why this is important: Rasmussen's polls tend to show the highest level of opposition to health care reform. If they accurately predict who will turn out to vote, they may signify big potential trouble for Democrats in lower-turnout mid-term elections. The Democratic Congressional id--at least the part that represents primordial existential fear of non-reelection--is throbbing. Expect a lot more time-consuming negotiating hangups and talk about how we should avoid arbitrary deadlines when it comes to passing Obama's big reform. ... (I still think it will eventually pass, but it may take until next Spring or beyond.) ...
 
Loser: Health care reform (see above) ...

Loser: Obama, who tried to work his magic for Corzine and discovered it wasn't there. (I don't buy the "he invested his prestige" line. A President is still allowed to try to help in a tight race. But he was clearly not a transformative presence in this one. It was more an Olympics bid situation.)

Winner: The Incumbent Rule--which holds that late-breaking voters do not go to the incumbent.  Tarnished in 2004, it's having a Nixon-like rehabilitation in New Jersey. Update: And in New York City. ...

Losers: E.J.Dionne, Walter Shapiro and others caught in the MSM negative-ads worked narrative for New Jersey (which just happened to favor the Democrat). ... Update: Negative ads were losers in Virginia too, says Byron York. ...

Winners: ACORN, SEIU, voter fraud. A close election would have put the spotlight on them, no? I guess that could still happen in NY-23. ... Corollary Loser: John Fund. A close election would have given him six months of well-paying work. ...

Losers: Dems who were planning to argue that a Corzine victory, when contrasted with Deeds' loss, shows the need to stick with "core Democratic values" (i.e. unions) ...

Loser: Card check. Virginia Republican McDonnell didn't fudge on labor's "card check" bill. He bashed it. He won. Virginia is hardly a union state, but neither are the states with Senators who are swing votes on "card check". ... 

Losers: Beck, Limbaugh, New Media conservatives who thought the rebellious Reaganite vote was bigger than it turned out to be in NY-23. ... Also Dem-leaning MSM who were planning to use a rebellious Reaganite victory as demonstrating a tea-party takeover of GOP (as opposed to a botched candidate-selection process). ...

Winner: GOP, because now that the rebellious Reaganites have had some serotonin leakage, they might be a bit easier to handle. ...

Winner: Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC. Breath of sanity next to K. Olbermann ...

Perennial loser: Exit polls (see below).

P.S.: Always trust content from kausfiles!

**--Note, though, that robopollster PPP was way off on NY-23. ... 8:33  P.M.

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NSFT--Not Safe For Twitter--Election Eve Special

R, Robot: Could this be the election that validates automated polls as more accurate than regular polls conducted by humans? Robopollster Rasmussen may have more riding on the New Jersey results than Obama. Mark Blumenthal (citing Nate Silver) discusses whether the reluctance of some potential voters to answer automated surverys eerily replicates the reluctance of some potential voters to ... vote--in effect giving robo-polls an effective screen for "likely" voters.** .. Also, in an especially exciting development, the Incumbent Rule may make a comeback ... P.S.: If robopolling really does focus accurately on "likely" voters, this latest Rasmussen-heavy health care chart will terrify wavering Democrats. ...

**--Post Election Update: Rasmussen and the other robopollsters were more accurate, but Blumenthal now attributes this to their "simulating a secret ballot, thus pushing voters harder to make a choice" between anti-Corzine candidates Christie and Daggett." Does this mean the robots' "likely voter" screen wasn't any better? ...10:30 P.M.

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Bonus Conditional CW: If conservative insurgent Doug Hoffman defeats the Democrat in New York's 23d District (after Republican party candidate, Dede Scozzafava, dropped out)--

Old CW: Sure, Scozzafava is a moderate Republican but that's what her constituents want.

New CW: It's a conservative district, what did you expect?

9:49 P.M.

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kf--Always the Positive Spin: The UAW's Ford workers have rejected contract concessions that would have almost-but-not-quite lowered Ford's labor costs to match GM and Chrysler's new costs, which are said to almost-but-not-quite match Toyota and Honda's. But is that really so bad? It means pattern bargaining is broken. The UAW strategy was always to take labor costs out of the auto industry's competitive equation by making basically the same deal with each of the Big Three. Yet Ford's workers obviously saw that their company was doing better than Chrysler or GM, and they refused to get in line. It's now clear that the fate of even unionized auto workers will vary with the success or failure of their individual employers. They're back to competing against each other, not just against the "bosses." ... P.S.: Too bad the GM and Chrysler bailouts, with their minimal UAW contract concessions, may have given Ford workers an excessively rosy impression of what it really means to have a failed employer. Were Ford workers scared enough to avoid the UAW's too-little-too-late tradition of concessions?  Obama has short-circuited bankruptcy's shock-and-awe function. ... And not just in this case. [via RCP] ... 3:33 P.M.

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That Mid-term CW in Full:

Old CW: Wow, Corzine's a goner. Voters are pissed.

New CW: Mixed message! Mixed message!

Next CW: What do midterms mean, anyway?

2:21 P.M.

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Uncensored Twitter Vitriol Unleashed! Someone calls Stephen Fry "a bit ... boring." Can't have that. ... More evidence that many celebrities have skins of pre-Internet thinness. It seems plausible that they would have to be insulated--or have their public insulated--from what's really tweeted about them. ... 2:21 P.M.

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Hostages to Fortune: Mid-term Edition [E.A.]

[NPR Host: ...[N]ext week, the off-year election could be a political weathervane for the Obama administration. ...  E.J., what do you - what do you find of interest in next Tuesday's elections?]

I think the weathervane is going to be going in circles in the end. I mean, what you're looking at in New Jersey, an embattled Democratic governor, Jon Corzine, on today's numbers is likely to squeak out a narrow victory. He's run a very, very tough campaign against Republican Chris Christie. It's as if Corzine lost the referendum on himself, then he turned it into a referendum on Christie, and Christie lost that one. And there's a third party candidate called Chris Daggett who's drawing off enough votes that Corzine will come through. And Corzine has hugged Barack Obama.

--E.J. Dionne, All Things Considered, Friday Oct. 30
 

John Corzine by all estimation is going to be reelected Governor of New Jersey.

--Walter Shapiro, KCRW's Which Way L.A.?, Thursday, October 22 **

Reader submissions accepted. (Email to Mickey underscore Kaus at MSN dot com). ...

P.S. I was sure this Bob Shrum column would yield a potentially embarrassing quote, riddled as it was by the assumption that Gov. Corzine was headed to unexpected victory (because unlike Creigh Deeds he "refuses to yield on core Democratic values.") But it's worded very carefully. ...

**--Maybe Shapiro left out the qualifiers speaking on a radio show? Here's the written version: "Aided by a superior Democratic get-out-the-vote drive, Corzine is now widely expected to prevail ..."   2:16 P.M

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Too Catty to Twitter--The mask of adopted authority slips: Someone who admits he thought the Ford Fiesta was "already out" --i.e. being sold in the U.S.--is maybe not the go-to expert to explain the "5 Reasons Ford Bounced Back." ... 2:14 P.M.

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"[M]ore people read the Newark Star-Ledger than watch Anderson Cooper": Jerry Skurnik claims I've failed to see the forest for the lede (about CNN's last place finish). The real story is how few people watch CNN and MSNBC and FOX combined: 

And it’s not like the bigger names in Cable are reaching a vast audience either. The “giants” of cable news do much better but still reach a puny number of viewers (O’Reilly, Beck & Hannitty reach 2-3 million a night) in a country where 130 million voted for President last year.

Skurnik claims this reinforces his theory of the growing gap between the "two electorates"--the tiny minority of super/faster informed politicos and the vast mass of less up-to-speed voters. But the driver of the two-electorate phenomenon isn't so much the increased knowledge of the superinformed, its the decrease (or leave-it-until-the-last-minute delay) in the common knowledge of the less informed, no? Sure, cable news' audience is tiny in a nation of 130 million voters. It's small compared to the 20 million who watch broadcast network news. But even that 20 million is small in a nation of 130 million voters! What about the other 110 million? There's your lede! (They used to watch Walter Cronkite or Huntley/Brinkley. Now they don't. Do they remain relatively uninformed, or inform themselves at the last minute--and if so, how? On the Web? If so, where? ... Word of mouth from neighbors? Neighbors in the first electorate? Neighbors who watch cable news? ...)

P.S.: I'm not so sure about Skurnik's near-CW point that

Cable news does sometimes play an important role in our politics. But that’s only when a story they report gets picked up by those parts of the media that bloggers & cable news say is dead or dying.

I suspect Dede Scozzafava might disagree. Did the conservative rebellion in her district gain unstoppable momentum because of coverage in the broadcast and newsprint MSM? ... Update: No! It was New Media! [via Insta] ...  2:12 P.M.

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Paranoid's Corner: Does Twitter Semi-Censor to Protect Celebrities?

@JonKleinCNN You axed Crossfire, sucked up to Jon Stewart + MSM! Don't you wish you had Crossfire back now? http://bit.ly/27TDat Just askng!

To be honest, this was as nasty an item as I thought I could write and not come off like a total prick. Perhaps I failed at that last task. But it was also an experiment to see if nastiness pointed criticism worked on Twitter. Maybe there could be a productive, or at least entertaining, debate. 
 
A few hours later I checked to see if there was any response from Klein or one of his defenders. But my hostile twitter didn't show up in a search for "Jon Klein," or his twitter handle "JonKleinCNN." In fact it didn't seem to turn up in a search for any of the terms used in the item, like "MSM" or "Jon Stewart."
 
This morning, I did get a response from Klein, and the item briefly turned up in one of my searches, only to seemingly disappear again.** It hasn't vanished entirely--it's at least still in the list of items I've posted, and presumably in the general river of tweets that flows by everyone who "follows" me. It just doesn't turn up if you search for twitters about Jon Klein.

People tell me I shouldn't read a lot into this incident--twitter search engines are notoriously flaky--so I won't. But it did get me thinking. Why do the searches for "tweets" that mention various twitter celebrities-- Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, and Alyssa Milano, and even CEOs like Klein--almost invariably turn up such pleasant comments? Here's a search for @Jon KleinCNN.. With one or two relatively mild exceptions, it's a tame (and lame) series of attaboys, welcome-backs, and this-is-what-he-saids. Don't a few more people have criticism of Klein, or CNN, on the weekend it hit last place in the ratings? Are twitterers that polite and deferential?

I mean, this is America. If you really opened up a line of communication where every horny 20-year old dude sitting on a couch in a basement typed 140 characters about Alyssa Milano for the world to see ... well, would you really want to see that stream of tweets? People would ... criticize her acting! They'd bring up her famous ex boyfriends. They'd say she looked bad in that dress and otherwise comment on her appearance. Perhaps approvingly! I'm keeping it clean here. But it wouldn't be pretty.

And yet it is. If you actually search for  @Alyssa Milano, this is the sort of thing you get:

Last night @AlyssaMilano asked: How do you want to be remembered in this life? I ask you, my followers, how do you want to be remembered?

Haha I saw @AlyssaMilano RT'd u. She's so chill...and hot too!

: @alyssamilano describe yourself in 3 words. Describe your husband in 3 words.

<----watching a rerun of @alyssamilano in who&apos;s the boss :)

You get the idea. Something doesn't add up. Does Twitter maybe censor "curate" the search results for its celebrity Twitterers?
 
This thought would be too paranoid even for me, if I hadn't read Nicole LaPorte's article in The Daily Beast on how celebrity publicists have connections at Twitter HQ:

[V]irtually every publicist in Hollywood has a go-to person at Twitter—the equivalent these days of having an “in” with famed MGM publicity chiefs-cum-fixers Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

“We’ve had a relationship with Twitter for quite some time,” said one. “We have contacts at most of the sites, so that they can help us out and give us quick tech support.”

(Perhaps journalists are shown less love? Twitter did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.)

Hmmm. Questions:

Would it even be technically feasible to delete nasty items from searches? Having once met a top Twitter tech guy who seemed incredibly competent, I'd have to guess yes.

Why would Twitter want to sanitize celeb tweet searches? That one's easy: Celebrity Twitterers like Milano, Moore and Kutcher have been very important to Twitter's growth. They take care of Twitter. Twitter takes care of them. At least that would be the equation--a familar one to anyone who has ever tried to round up bold-faced names for a party. The job of actually weeding out hostile tweets could be delegated to the celebrity's "social media director." Or  the social media director's assistant. But presumably there are also Twitter staffers whose job is celebrity troubleshooting.

(Is Jon Klein such a celebrity? You might not think so--though he's listed as one. In this paranoid theory he might qualify under a Bigwigs-at-Media-Companies-Who-Might-Buy-Twitter-One Day loophole.)

It woudn't even be all that sinister--certainly less sinister than, say, the typical roped-off VIP section at a party. Web sites police comment sections all the time, after all. Alyssa Milano does talk with ordinary people on Twitter, and her twitstream or whatever you call it--which she seems to write herself--is quite informative on a fairly wide range of topics. When Obama threw out the first pitch at the All Star game, Milano's twitters gave a better account of where it landed than the Fox telecast, which had a bad camera angle..
 
On the other hand, if Twitter sanitized searches, that would make the site a more fake and less democratic place than it initially appears to be. Here we thought we were meeting bigshots in a virtual public square, and really it was maniuplated like the Truman Show.

Is my paranoid suspicion right? Anyone with answers--including people at Twitter--can tweet a response to @kausmickey or email me at Mickey underscore Kaus at MSN dot com.

Update: Responses on Twitter from Milano

Interesting. cc: @ev RT @kausmickey: Does Twitter protect celebrities? http://bit.ly/4vIHld (via @atomsareenough) about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

and from Twitter CEO Evan WIlliams

@Alyssa_Milano I think that guy has a pretty dire outlook on humans. :) about 1 hour ago from web in reply to Alyssa_Milano

 Oracular! A non non-denial denial non-denial ...

Update II: Gawker ... a cartoon ...

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**--An earlier anti-Klein tweet that I myself deleted does turn up on one site's search of "Jon Klein."  1:28 A.M.

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Why Does the "Public Option" Have to Lower Costs?

The Curve Has To Want to Bend: Like Steven Pearlstein, Robert Samuelson more or less assumes the purpose of a "public option" is to control costs (as opposed to providing the security of a guaranteed fall-back plan). In an Un-Samuelsonesque fashion, he also assumes that there is some solution that will control costs in a manner agreeable to patients.

It's not insurers that cause high health costs; they're simply the middlemen. It's the fragmented delivery system and open-ended reimbursement. Would strict regulation of doctors, hospitals and patients under a single-payer system provide control? Or would genuine competition among health plans over price and quality work better?

That's the debate we need, but in truth, doctors, hospitals and patients don't want to be limited, whether by government or markets. Congress reflects public opinion. Fearing a real debate, we fake it.

a) Maybe none of these options--single payer, competition among health plans--will significantly lower costs, and we'll simply have to pay the increasing bill. Just a thought. b) If, as Samuelson says, "doctors, hospitals and patients don't want to be limited," it sounds like the debate over our system of "open-ended reimbursement" isn't a "debate we need." It's a debate we've had. Samuelson's side lost. Nobody wants to bend the curve.

Maybe it won't be bent. 8:38 P.M.

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Give Him a Fifth Chance! After completely misreading the zeitgeist and-- in a series of self-servingly ostentatious steps ("storytelling," emo)--leading his network into a ditch, is CNN's Jon Klein really going to keep his job? He doesn't seem even to be "embattled." ...  8:34 P.M.

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The Federalist Capers: A federalism compromise on the "public option" always seemed more promising to me than a "trigger" based compromise. But I'd been viewing the issue through a welfare-reform prism, in which states would either be in or out as discrete statewide units. Josh Marshall points out that the virtue of Harry Reid's plan is it allows states to join a single nationwide federal plan rather than set up their own plans. That lets you create a big--or big enough--pool of insured. It's like letting states opt out of (or in to) Medicare. ... That said, the federalist approach still offers a giant menu of possible compromises, from 1 to 50. You can have opt-out, opt-in, opt-in with a numerical limit, opt-out with incentives not to opt-out, opt-in with incentives to opt-in if regional distribution isn't achieved, even opt-out with a trigger that offers the incentives only if too few states stay "in." ... Update: Sam Stein has more. ... 

P.S.: Note also that the federalist solution means at least one "juice" vote in every state legislature, as health insurance lobbyists seek to use campaign contributions to bribe gain access and thereby influence the "opt out" or "opt in" vote. Another source of federalism's appeal! And bipartisan appeal at that. ... 8:34 P.M.

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What's Your Beef With Fox, Mr. Dem-Basher?

First Rough Draft of kf: Some readers may understandably be confused by my posts about Fox. On the one hand, I seem to be saying Fox is ideological and unbalanced but, hey, that's the wave of the future, and as a lifelong opinion journalist I'm not that bothered by the prospect of living in a universe populated by such outfits (The New Republic, MSNBC, the New York Times, DRUDGE). On the other hand I find myself agreeing with the White House, and Jacob Weisberg, when they argue Fox is different from even those other non-balanced news enterprises--that it's "not a news organization."

I guess there are two distinct axes on which you can judge press organizations--actually, there are many more than two (see below), but two are important here: 1) Neutrality--Are they attempting to be "objective," trying to serve the "public interest" in some balanced way, or are they ideologically (or otherwise) driven in a way that inevitably colors their coverage--what topics they pick, what 'experts' they rely on, etc. 2) Independence--Whether they are biased or generally neutral, can somebody--a political party, a Mafia family, a government-- tell them what to do?

I think it's pretty clear MSNBC and the NYT and Breitbart.tv are not neutral. They all have an agenda and they pursue it. But they are independent. The Obama White House can't tell Bill Keller what to do. They can't tell Keith Olbermann what to do. (They can suck up to him, and it will probably work, but that's a different issue.) Breitbart is for sure independent--I can't see anyone telling him what to do.

I think Fox is also not neutral (which, again, doesn't bother me) but it's also not independent (which does). This isn't because it's owned by Rupert Murdoch--moguls are, typically among the more independent sorts. It's because it's run by Roger Ailes. I have zero faith that Ailes is independent of the Republican party or, specifically, those Republicans who have occupied the White House recently--the Bushes. As I said, I think if Karl Rove called Ailes in 2003 and said "We don't want so much coverage of X" it's extremely likely that X would not be covered on Fox. A ... suggestive example of Fox's loyalty is the debate on immigration, in which Ailes' network initially seemed to try valiantly--against the beliefs of most of its audience--to push the Bush White House line in favor of "comprehensive" legalization (while brushing aside its viewers' views).

It's certainly possible, in theory, to have a faux news organization that pretends to be an ordinary, ideologically biased journalistic outlet but that, at the top, is actually taking orders from Moscow, or from Kennebunkport. That news organization might have lots of viewers and money and White House press passes and some great on-air correspondents--it's not as if you could rip off their masks to uncover the alien underneath, like in V. ABC's Jake Tapper would refer to it as "one of our sister organizations."  But that's not what, ultimately, it would be about. It would be different in nature, just like Organizing For America would be different in nature if it decided to buy some cameras and cable time and start reporting the news.

Here are some other measures you could use when classifying media outfits:

3) Accuracy--Are they committed to not telling untruths?

4) Fairness--Do they try to present all sides, even if it's only to take on an opponent's best argument (as opposed to his worst)?

5) Discipline--Do they tolerate dissenting voices within the organization--even when those voices are effective? Will they assign major stories that will cut against their interests and arguments?

6) Willingness to Suppress: You can have a commitment to accuracy, even a commitment to going out and finding and publicizing the truth for its own sake--but what happens when that commitment collides cataclysmically with your other, ideological purpose? The New York Times has a high commitment to accuracy, for example--and it's so big it almost has to be relatively tolerant of individual deviation. But would it endanger the Democrats' Senate majority by printing a series of damaging exposes of a leading Democratic Senator shortly before an election?  The Times answered that one for us in 2002.

Note, first, that these are all sliding scales. Only a few media enterprises print what they know to be untruths, but many more sometimes run with very suspiciously sourced stories. Some organizations tolerate lots of dissent, some very little. Some are wildly unfair, some occasionally give an idea of the strongest competing arguments. I suppose even Pravda in the Brezhnev era had its little moments of internal rebellion. But it's also possible to put some organizations at one end of the spectrum and some at the others.

Second, I'm not arguing that any of these additional qualities--aside from extreme inaccuracy (#3)--are essential for a media enterprise to play a valuable role in the national debate. The idea of the First Amendment isn't that everyone will be fair. It's that everyone will be free, and out of it all the voters will come to their own conclusion about what's fair--right? Likewise, you can have a terrific national debate between ten magazines none of which publish dissenting views in their pages. And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't pass the suppression test if you framed the hypothetical right. Suppose on October 25th, 2008 I'd discovered, without doubt, and with documentation, that Barack Obama cheated on his taxes. Would I publish it? Probably not. I think Bill Keller would publish it way before I would. Would Marty Peretz publish something true that had a high probability of leading to the destruction of the State of Israel? I have my doubts! That doesn't make The New Republic not a "news" organization.

But I do think independence is essential to be a legitimate player in the new, emerging non-objective press world. If you're independent, there's always a chance you'll change your mind. At the least, you have to make fresh calculations about your views and interests, which means that in a free society there will be a steady proliferation of nodes of thought. If you're independent, Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs has a shot at convincing you--even if you're conservative, even if you're wildly biased, even if your organization is almost dictatorial in structure. Even if you're Rupert Murdoch! But not, I think, if you're Fox.

Update: Maguire is unconvinced.

I can suggest a better place to look for signs of Fox's fealty to Bush - how did they handle the conservative rebellion in early 2006 over both Harriet Miers and the Dubai port deal?  If Fox was truly in the tank for Bush, as opposed to holding a conservative point of view, they would have tilted in favor of Harriet and Dubai.  Did they? [E.A.]

My impression is they did--on Miers, anyway. ... Samples:

MORT KONDRACKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ROLL CALL: Well, you know, I trust the president. I trust the president to know this person that he's known for 10 years, and what her mind is and how she thinks. And he thinks she is strong and all that.

When various conservatives say, "Oh my God, you know, we're scared that she's going to turn into David Souter" -- as I said yesterday, I don't think that's going to happen.

--Fox News All Stars, Oct. 4, 2005

BRIT HUME: Needless to say, our colleague, Mr. Will, lacks enthusiasm for Harriet Miers, as does Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Laura Ingraham, and the former Justice Department lawyer John Yu, not to mention David Frum. What do they all have in common? Well, they're products of the most prestigious Eastern schools.

Some observations on whether there is in all of this a whiff of elitism in the air from Fred Barnes, a graduate of the University of Virginia, as indeed I am, Mort Kondracke, a graduate, I'm afraid to say, of Dartmouth, and Mara Liasson, a graduate, dare I say it, of Brown University.

All right, folks. What about it? Is there a bit of elitism in all of this?

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": Well, there may be snobbery even.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Snobbery even? Snobbery even? Go ahead, Fred.

--Fox Special Report, October 5, 2005

 7:11 P.M.

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Guaranteed 50% Fox-Related Ingredients

Attention, "Fait Accompli" Brigade: This chart seems to be going in the wrong direction for health care reform, even if you discount the lopsided FOX poll (for Nate Silverish reasons--they only get the big support/oppose question after asking a series of spoiling questions). ... P.S.: Does this suggest that the much-derided insurance industry study (suggesting premiums would rise after reform) had an impact? ... It could also reflect increased dissent on the left, from public-option supporters, as hinted by the new WaPo survey. (See, for example, question 13.) ... 9:55 P.M.

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On Sunday, William Kristol argued it was "reckless" for Obama to delay surging in Afghanistan while he waits to see how legitimate our "Afghan partner" will be:

If the president issued the order now, he could always delay or revoke it later, if the political situation seemed truly insupportable....

Why do I get the feeling that if Obama ordered a surge of troops today and revoked it in two weeks, Bill Kristol would be among the first to savage him for being indecisive and prone to sudden reversal? There's a virtue in making the decision once, and then being able to stick with it, as Kristol surely knows. ... P.S.: I would suspect Kristol of adding his bad faith argument so he'd have three bullet points, but he already had his three. So no excuse! ... P.P.S.: Won't Kristol's post--which sneers that the White House had "failed" to improve the election process--look awfully silly if Obama's delay turns out to force Karzai to accept a cleaner runoff? ... 10:21 P.M.

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Gawker got hold of the first few words of ex-President Clinton's private twitters, including this entry:

Twitter / Bill Clinton:  John Edwards ... why did you ...

You'd think Clinton, of all people, would know that answer to that one. ...

Update: In a slyly invisible, joke-ruining revision, Gawker's Anthony De Rosa now says the twitters were probably captured from the account of a Bill Clinton imposter. ... P.S.: Is De Rosa the new night guy or the new ex-night guy? ... 10:50 P.M.

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Odd sloppiness in Monday's big N.Y. Times story with possible dirt on GOP N.J. gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie:

1) The Times writes that

interviews with federal law enforcement officials suggest that Ms. Brown [to whom Christie had loaned $46,000] used her position in two significant and possibly improper ways to try to aid Mr. Christie in his run for governor. [E.A.]

Motive is very hard to prove. The Times doesn't come close to showing that Brown was trying to aid Mr. Christie's run for governor if (as alleged) she a) supervised a FOIA request by the Corzine campaign of her and Christie's travel records and b) argued for making a big corruption arrest before Christie left office. In (a), she might have been trying to cover her own a--, since the FOIA request included her own records, no? In (b), maybe she just thought her friend and boss (rather than his successor) deserved to get full props for his hard work. I suppose the facts do "suggest" that Brown was trying to aid Christie's political run, but it's still a weird, easily abused way to write a lede. The first arrests at the Watergate suggested that the White House was a lawless operation headed by a crook who was trying to spy on his Democratic rivals, but I don't think that's how Woodward & Bernstein's nut graf read. The allegation about Brown's motive was hardly necessary to make a good story--all the Times had to say was that in both cases Brown seems to have taken actions that actually helped Christie's campaign.

2) In its tour of anti-Christie accusations, the Times refers to

reports that [Christie] discussed a run for governor with Karl Rove in 2006 led Democrats to assert he had violated the Hatch Act, which forbids candidates from “testing the waters” for a run for office. [E.A.]

The Hatch Act forbids candidates from "testing the waters"? There's your story! A whole lot of politicians are going to jail if that's the case. But maybe the Times "computer assisted reporting team" should hit the keyboards to find out what the Hatch Act says first. (And is talking to Karl Rove "testing the waters"?)

3) "$20,000 in mileage reimbursements during his seven-year tenure" is less than $3,000 per year--not that much. Even if it does include $79 to see a Mets game.

It would be wrong of me at this point to mention the famous Howell Raines Spike (of reports damaging to Democratic New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli when he was running for reelection) as evidence that the NYT is trying to elect Dems in New Jersey. It certainly "suggests" that! But we're in the age of partisan media and if the NYT wants to try to elect Dems the way Fox wants to elect GOPs, that's their right. ...

P.S.: If you believe the Feiler Faster Thesis, this story was dropped way too soon. Plenty of time before November 3 for Christie to change the narrative. But maybe in New Jersey Feiler is slower. ... 10:52 P.M.

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No Amnesty for Windows 7!

We have ways of making you stress-free: Someone should write the fictionalized dystopian nightmare of mandatory "wellness" programs foreshadowed in Sen. Ensign's business backed plan to let insurers penalize even those who seek non-employer-based health coverage if they don't participate in healthy life regimens."  Like THX 1138, but with brownies. ... Nineteen-Eighty-Fat! ... Ensign says his plan "would guarantee that the incentive is strong enough for Americans to want to participate." ... Next:  Marital fidelity incentives! ... 9:33 P.M.

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It's pretty obvious Jacob Weisberg is right to assert that Fox News is a partisan, non-balanced outfit, more like a 19th century pamphlet than the 20th century "balanced" news outlet it pretends to be. During the Bush presidency, if Karl Rove gave an order, I think it was much more likely to be followed by Roger Ailes at Fox than, say, Christie Whitman at the EPA. I can see why this would lead Democrats to legitimately refuse to let Fox host a debate. But I don't see why this means that non-conservatives need to stop appearing on Rupert Murdoch's network. Are they only allowed to preach to the converted? ... P.S.: Weisberg notes that partisan media organizations like Fox (and now MSNBC) are not only one American First Amendment tradition but are also winning in the TV marketplace. Don't we need to learn to live with them? They aren't going to respond to sanctions. ('OK, we'll do anything. Just don't cut off Mara Liasson!'). ...  P.P.S.: It's true that going on Fox and effectively sowing doubt behind enemy lines is something Ailes is likely to only let you do once. So be it. But maybe not, if the ratings are good. ... 8:56 P.M.

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Nightmare of Vista Not Over! Attention, Fellow Vista-Skippers: We haven't made it yet. Yes, Microsoft is telling us we don't need to wait for the first bug-fixing "Service Pack" before replacing our creaky, precious XP machines with new Windows 7 devices. But they've said that sort of thing before. Given Microsoft's track record, it seems more sensible to wait for them to get it right right out of the box at least once before we start to take them at their world. ... P.S.: The obvious analogy is to .... comprehensive immigration reform!  Maybe fancy new employer-based verification systems and "biometric" identifiers (and "virtual" border fencing) really will survive ACLU challenge and then actually function effectively keep out illegal immigrants. But we were given similar assurances in 1986. It didn't happen. Better to wait and make sure the new high-tech enforcement mechanisms work before we take the plunge with the proven illegal-immigrant lure of an amnesty, no? ... 8:26 P.M.

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Tim Russert: Now Washington's Creepiest Exhibit

Creepy on so many levels. ... 1) He just died; 2) He wasn't that important. This isn't Winston Churchill. (The vacuity of David Gregory just makes him seem like Winston Churchill); 3) They've recreated the way his office looked on the day he died. Morbid! 4) It's like they're trying to build some kind of cult of the personality, with the family willingly invading its own privacy to help out ('Look, there's Luke's childhood drawing'); 5) Making a big deal of Russert's I-love-the-Bills schtick assumes it's shocking that a high-level Washington news guy would be an ordinary middle class American. Bureau chiefs, they're just like us! 6) Does the exhibit include an animatronic NBC butler?** 7) Will it include Lloyd Grove's famous, damning profile of Russert-on-the-make? 8) Self-important, dying industry attempts to fetishize its prominent members before it is completely forgotten. 9) NBC News in particular seems to be living in the past. ...

Coming soon: Luke Ford's Grotto! Kids will love it. ...

P.S.: I'm sure Gawker goes to town on this, but I haven't read Gawker yet. Update: They do. Jack Shafer beat me to mockery too. By hours. Lucky for me speed isn't important in this business. [The contrarian thing would be to defend the exhibit--ed Defending Russert can't be contrarian. That violates a law of physics.]

**--Ali. Maybe he gets a whole new wing! ... 3:15 P.M.

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Dan Kennedy and Oliver Willis have never heard of absentee ballots (not to mention the fun you can have with same-day registration). ... 3:16 P.M.

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The most striking statistic in Mark Kleiman's terrific Zocalo crime lecture (about his new book, When Brute Force Fails) concerned the benefits of sending nurses "into the homes of poor and undereducated first-time teenage mothers to coach them through their children's difficult first two years."  From the book:

In a well-evaluated experiment in upsate New York, nurse home visitation for expectant mothers whose demographic profiles put their children at high risk of poor outcomes reduced the arrests among the children of those mothers by 69 percent compared to the matched control group. If that result is even close to correct, nurse home visitation focused on high risk mothers is surely cost-effective as crime control ... [emphasis added; footnote omitted]

This is one of those social science advocacy stats that sets off too-good-to-be-true alarm bells, as Kleiman's own reaction suggests. The number's so spectacular, though, that he thinks its clearly worth a large scale trial. "Given how important parenting is, and given how intensive the intervention is, and given how rocky some of the moms are to start out, I don't find the big numbers implausible," he writes in an email to kf. Even James Q. "Lock-'Em-Up" Wilson is on board. ... Call it something like Pinpoint Liberalism, in which a consensus forms for at least going after what looks like low-hanging fruit, while avoiding a general subsidy for, say, "community development" (which won't be as easy as you'd think). ... Lead reduction, which Kleiman (a bit surprisingly) thinks helped contribute to the recent crime drop, is another obvious targeted effort. ...

P.S.: I'd link to Kleiman's book on Amazon, but then the I might be putting myself at the mercy of a man named Richard Cleland, or someone like him. [I have no idea what, if any, arrangement Slate has with Amazon these days. **] ... Oh, all right. It's here. Come and get me, copper! [That's the lead talking-ed] ...

**-- My previous elaborate conflict-of-interest disclosures have already failed to pass muster even with Howie Kurtz, the man with the biggest conflict of interest in all of journalism, so I'd better be careful where the FTC is concerned. ...

P.P.S.--Still Digging: I just linked to Zocalo, which is kind of doing them a favor. I like their lectures, which fill a local civic need. Unfortunately, they also invited me to their fundraiser on Saturday, which I think means free dinner. Yikes. ... And now I've linked to their fundraiser. That must be worth millions. I'm a cesspool of corruption today. ...  4:50 P.M.

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More: The FTC's new blog disclosure regs seem to be governed by the established First Amendment principle of "Oh, don't worry, we'll never go after you. We like you." Don't Olson, Shafer, Althouse, et al. realize this?. ... P.S.: I don't think blogging or twittering is like talking at Denny's (Jeff Jarvis' analogy). At Denny's you talk to the guys across the table. You blog or twitter to the whole world. That means something. What it means, I think, is that bloggers are on the same constitutional footing as conventional MSM journalists. They're all publishers. That's why it's so absurd and self-contradictory for the FTC to then exempt the most important, powerful (and occasionally corrupt publishers)--the MSM itself. ... P.P.S.: These regs are so doomed. ...

Backfill: Years ago, Michael Kinsley wrote an eerily prescient reductio ad absurdum of what an actual, full conflict-of-interest disclosure would look like. I haven't been able to find it. Think it was in his Curse of the Giant Muffins. ... Update: Kinsley suggests it's this 2000 piece, which is very funny. But I remember another one. What does he know? ...  6:49 P.M.

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Orszagism or Nothing

23. Which comes closest to your view? 1. The U.S. needs to fix its health care system now as part of fixing the overall economy. Or 2. Because of the state of the economy, the U.S. cannot afford to fix its health care system right now.

 
Unless you want to be a heartless Republican (2) you have to buy not only the basic Orszagist argument the health care reform is the key to solving the deficit problem but the broader argument that it's the key to fixing the entire economy? What if you just think it's something we should do and that we can afford to pay for? ... No wonder respondents were so confused by the poll's barrage of nonsensical, tedious, and guilt inducing questions ("are [health care reforms] confusing to you?") that when the big question (#41) about whether they supported Obama's health plans finally arrived, CBS and the Times managed to produce an unprecedentedly huge number who said they "don't know enough"--47%--rendering the poll basically useless. Congratulations! ... The Paranoid View: For the Times, it was less risky to have a useless poll than one that actually measured where health care stands with voters. ....

Update: Several emailers point out that conservative and libertarian plans to "fix" health care also fall into the poll's vast excluded middle--at least if they aren't necessary for fixing the overal economy or don't have to be done now, but are nevertheless considered affordable. And if you don't think health care needs a "fix" at all--well, you're a total unperson as far as question 23 goes.
 
**--They've asked this question twice before, in July. Doesn't make it any less stupid. ... 2:34 A.M.

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Fish Out of Water Uncomfortable in Own Skin! Beck seems phony here, no?*** Something creepily inauthentic about him. ...

***--Except 2/3 of the way through, when he says he's never heard of kf. ... [Thanks to alert reader H.] 2:40 A.M.

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It's Not That He's Black. It's That He's An Enigma.

The more I think about it, the more the townhall anti-Obama anger isn't explained completely by the issues (sorry, Frank ). There's also something about Obama himself-. But that something (or the main something) isn't his race. It's that he's a relative newcomer, as Presidents go--an unknown quantity, an enigma, with a short track record and patches of that record left fuzzy. That means opponents can fill in the blanks with ominous possibilities. It makes paranoia more rational, if you will.

For example, a few months ago I went to a discussion of the pending "card check" bill Obama has endorsed (enigmatically!). Talk turned to the bill's astoundingly intrusive provision for federal arbitration of initial labor contracts, which would inevitably involve not only the setting of wages but also the organization of work itself. A conservative law prof said he knew Obama as a colleague, and the Obama he knew wouldn't really want that level of detailed and pervasive (if uncoordinated) government direction of economic enterprises. Was the prof right? I have no idea. In contrast, I think I have a pretty confident idea of where Bill Clinton would come down on that issue. I even have a clear idea of where Jimmy Carter would come down on the issue.**

The uncertainty about Obama made it wildly important that he not do things that would give the most common ominous speculation--that he's way on the left of the possible envelope--any traction. Obviously, Obama's White House understands this. Larry Summers is not a lighnting rod for the right. But the Obama-ites apparently failed to internalize this imperative sufficiently to allow them to exclude the Van Joneses and Yosi Sergants from government with the ruthlessness required in a year when they were asking taxpayers to trust them with administering an unprecedented stimulus package and restructuring Detroit and the financial system--all before transforming the nation's health care system. They've been ruthless, just not ruthless enough. Maybe they were lulled into thinking the MSM would, or could, protect them as it had during the campaign (e.g., when Rev. Wright cropped up). But asking 21st century Americans to rely on the assurances of elites is a good way to produce a populist revolt.

After a few years of Obama, voters will have a surer sense of him on their own and the paranoia should subside. Unfortunately, his biggest legislative fight is now.

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**--Of course, one reason a voter might not have a clear idea is that it's been heretofore hard to imagine that mandatory federal arbitration would even be an issue--in recent decades it's been beyond the mainstream pale. If unions didn't like a deal they could strike and try to get a better deal. Then labor got desperate and came up with mandatory arbitration.

Unfamiliar issues + Unfamiliar president = Paranoia.

What's Breitbart Got Next?

Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment.com has stopped being subtle about hinting he has another scoop on order for next week. It's apparently not another ACORN story. Patterico speculates about what it is. ...

P.S.: Breitbart's a friend of mine, though I have some fundamental disagreements with him. I'd like to think I'd like him even if he weren't the kind of guy whose good side you want to stay on--because you have a feeling you and everyone you know might be working for him one day. (He has lots of entrepreneurial energy.) But I didn't realize he'd have the course of events all planned out like Hari Seldon in Foundation. ...

P.P.S.: There have been some few-bad-apples, look-who's-acccusing defenses of ACORN around the web. I dunno. ACORN has always seemed one big bad apple to me.**  Everything I've learned or read about them suggests they're not an outfit to be trusted--trusted with voter registration duties' for example. Does anyone think ACORN isn't out to register Dems and elect Dems (or people further to the left)? Would you trust them to deliver your elderly Republican grandmother's absentee ballot? ACORN also conspicuously organized to resist welfare reform after the big 1996 reform law was signed by President Clinton. I'm amazed that any national Democrat who claims to have learned any of the lessons of Clintonism, or even wants to be elected from a non-Berkeleyesque district, would have anything to do with them.

**--Other organizations that produce the same reaction: Fox News, UBS. ... 12:54 A.M.

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What Did Dave Matthews Know And When Did He Know It?

Good Neil Lewis NYT story on John Edwards today--not much news that a Carolina TV station, the National Enquirer and even kausfiles didn't have more than a month ago, except this fabulous nugget (from Ex-Fall Guy Andrew Young's book proposal):

Mr. Young says that he assisted the affair by setting up private meetings between Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter. He wrote that Mr. Edwards once calmed an anxious Ms. Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band. 

The book proposal also has Edwards conspiring with trial lawyer Fred Baron to conceal the Hunter story, even asking Baron "if he could find a doctor who would falsify a DNA report." ... Lewis missed the sex tape, though! ... P.S.: While John Edwards' ongoing agony about whether or not to tell the truth is riveting, he is rapidly becoming the Prinz von Anhalt of the Democrats**--a spectacle, but he won't be making policy in the near future. The more relevant angle is the complicity or lack thereof of Edwards' aides--and his wife--in constructing the Twin Edifices of BS with which the campaign attempted to snow the press. Jennifer Palmieri, Mudcat Saunders, Jonathan Prince and Elizabeth Edwards are still potential players in the party, after all. What did they know and when did they know it?***  Of course, they're also still potential future sources for the New York Times, which may make aggressively questioning their accounts a less urgent prirority for the paper. But maybe Andrew Young can fill us in. ...

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**--  ...whom we nominated for Vice President in 2004. Whoops.

 ***-- My impression is that the truth about Edwards and Hunter was well-known around Edwards HQ. During the campaign I was contacted by two non-campaign people who questioned whether I should push the story, but who checked with their friends in the Edwards camp and came back and told me they were surprised to learn that the allegations were true. ... 12:06 A.M.

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@kausfiles: Sex, Racism, and Jimmy Carter

Roger Simon says John Edwards could rehabilitate himself by becomng the "poster boy for tort reform," He forgot about the sex tape. ...  6:47 P.M.

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Jimmy Carter cites racism as anti-Obama factor. Instant reaction: Kiss of Death. Gift to the GOPs. Remember the Carter era of smug moralizing? Anyone want to go back to that? ... P.S.: A good example of how, if the MSM wants to tilt against the Republicans, it's often too wedded to its own conventions--e.g., the desire to 'make news' with an ex-Pres.--to be effective. ... No sophisticated campaign propagandist would say, "OK, let's throw Jimmy Carter at them. They'll be reeling!" ....6:42 P.M.

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Obama Overexposure Tour continues. ...  Next: Bloggingheads? Mediaite Office Hours?     6:40 P.M.

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Jeffrey Lord gives a good description of the MSM Gatekeeper's Greatst Hits. Then he goes on and on. Makes Rabbi Saperstein look like Marcel Marceau. ...P.S.: Lord lays it on as if only conservative bloggers, etc, have been rebelling against Big Media. As if he wants a piece of the Mark Levin business. Depressing. ... [via Lucianne] 6:40 P.M.

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Why did the GOP lead in "generic" ballot evaporate on Rassmussen, even as Obama health bounce also vanished? Is the Joe Wilson heckle hurting? ... Could this be an example of a successful kamikaze-style attack? Wilson's "You lie" badly damaged its target (Obama has apparently now caved on the central issue of verifying legal status) but it also damaged Wilson. ... Except that it's not clear it damaged Wilson himself, reelection wise. It's his party that's maybe been hurt. "Kamikaze" isn't the right analogy. ... What's the word for a kamikaze attack in which the pilot survives but the carrier he took off from gets sunk? ... 6:23 P.M.

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Twitter is not @marcambinder's friend! It broadcasts his initial take--which is often 180 degrees wrong. Example #1: Twittering as if Obama would be mad at the networks that his off the record "jackass" comment leaked. #2: Twittering as if town hall rebelliousness would help the Dems. ...   6:09 P.M.

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That False Consciousness Keeps On Coming: Workers at Boeing factory vote to un-unionize. By secret ballot. ... Because when it comes to decertifying unions, union lobbyists insist on the sanctity of the secret ballot. ... 6:08 P.M.

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Jack Palance Plays Elmer Gantry: Andrew Breitbart + Good Haircut = Slightly Scary Rabble-Rousing Potential. ... 6:05 P.M.

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@kausfiles--Does the Right Resent Glenn Beck?

Amplified and edited entries from the kausmickey Twitter feed. ... Just don't call them "curated."

My friends on the Right don't like Glenn Beck either. In private, they say he's a careerist phony. about 15 hours ago

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I don't think the last line of this Andrew Sullivan post will make Bartlett's http://bit.ly/2EtsLJ12:17 AM Sep 11th  

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The 'M' Word! "Did that clerk just call you 'ma'am'?" Subtle anti-Boxer shot in Mitsubishi Lancer ad before KCAL scandal report video? http://bit.ly/hcwa6 1:44 PM Sep 9th  

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Is Tom Wilson--who produced Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" et al--wildly undersung or did he just preside and not do that much? 3:52 AM Sep 9th

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Poor L.A., off in its own little corner of Chris Wilson's News Dots news map. http://bit.ly/d2reS That's sure how it feels to us out here! 11:13 AM Sep 8th

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Even Van Jones' friend Arianna says, after talking to him and presumably getting his side of the story, that "it was stupid of Van to put his name on a very stupid '9/11 Truth Statement.' " 1:06 AM Sep 8th     

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Note to Slate ad corps: Wouldn't a 3 sec. ad that made you like H-P be better than a 10-15 sec. screen-hog ad that made you hate H-P? 11:29 PM Sep 7th     

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Got new ish of Automobile. Have a) glossy car mags gotten dull, or b) do opinionated blogs like Truth About Cars just make them seem dull? It's not only (b)! When these magazines get desperate for ad dollars, as they are now, they become scared to exist. ... 10:10 PM Sep 7th

 4:58 P.M.

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Van Jones: Does the NYT Know What a Truther Is?

Amazingly, many New York Times print readers still don't know why Van Jones resigned! Here's how the paper's John Broder describes his situation: 

The adviser, Van Jones, a controversial and charismatic community organizer and "green jobs" advocate from the San Francisco Bay Area, signed a petition in 2004 questioning whether the Bush administration had allowed the terrorist attacks of September 2001 to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. [E.A.]

Reading that, would you realize the petition was a Truther petition? You might think Jones simply made the standard argument that Bush shouldn't have used 9/11 to help gin up the Iraq War--as opposed to suggesting that Bush "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war," which is what the petition actually said [E.A.] ...

P.S.: Is this a) the famous meddling liberal Times editors rewriting Broder's lede graf to soften the blow to Jones or b) Broder sanding the facts in order to make his apparent thesis--that the White House was somewhat coldy caving in to conservative attacks on a minor official--more plausible (if the petition's wording had been made clear, after all, it might have looked like the conservatives had the goods on Jones and the White House was actually doing Jones a favor by letting him resign quietly), or c) incompetence--maybe second-string editors filling in over Labor Day who permitted either (a) or (b)?

P.P.S.: Sarah Wheaton's earlier Times story did not make Broder's mistake. ... [Thanks to alert reader C.B.] 

Update: Newsweek' s Daniel Stone defends Jones on the Truther count:

It's worth noting that the "truther" movement accusing the Bush Administration of a hand in 9/11 has evolved significantly since 2004. Back then, it was a sizable group of skeptical citizens asking unanswered questions. Only since has the association turned fringe and angry.

Really? I remember attending some lectures around 2004 that were beseiged by Truthers. They sure seemed crazy to me. Stone goes on::

And besides, those questionable instances came before he had an administration to speak for and constituents to answer to.

Well all right then! ... 

Best defense of Jones so far: My brother's Wacky Bay Area Defense! And it's not very good. ... 11:24 P.M.

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Van Jones Resigns

Van, Bus Collide: Always trust content from kausfiles, give or take 24 hours! ...P.S.: He signed a Truther petition. Bye. ... P.S.:  Where's the New York Times? Noah SIlverman notes:

Readers of the print edition will never have heard of the presidential appointee so controversial the President had to dump him. Is this a milestone in the decline of the NYT?

I've been waiting for the day when a prominent pol resigns and for print MSM readers it appears to be out-of-the-blue, though everyone on the Web knows the whole story.  But for WaPo's Franke-Ruta and Kornblut, this would be that case. ... In any case, more evidence that you can't find out what's going on by reading the Times. ... Backfill: Andy Levy. ...

Update: It seems this may be just another installment of the NYT's running feature, "You Know That Guy You've Never Heard About? Well, He's Gone." ...[Tks to reader C.W.] ... Tom Maguire:

Folks living in the Times bubble are possibly becoming accustomed to these moments of whiplash - the Times' first coverage of the Eason Jordan resignation at CNN also came with his resignation.

It's sort of like in Spinal Tap, when the drummer spontaneously explodes. ... [via Insta]

More: People are crediting Gateway Pundit with the scoop, though GP seems to credit another blog. [Correction: GP thanks a commenter for the tip.] Either way, GP a) did the MSM's work for it and b) is not Glenn Beck. ... 10:19 P.M.

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Van Jones, Gone in 60 Seconds?

kf hears today is the day the MSM (not just Tapper) officially turns on Van Jones, the White House "green jobs" adviser who signed a 2004 Truther petition. 'Gone by midnight' is the prediction. He's on the Liverpool Care Pathway! Soon he'll meet with his death panel and be under the bus! ... Obama presumably doesn't want the controversy to bleed into post-Labor Day Speech Week. ... Update: Ambinder's page hears the same tom toms. ... More: Here's WaPo's story. Page A3. Portrays him as "embattled," with White House officials offering "tepid support." ... NYT remains silent!--as far as I can see. ... 9/5 Update: Gone. ... 3:29 P.M.

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