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Media Infiltrations: Obama's Social Security Fine Print  The Wall Street Journal June 25, 2008 Commodity-Prices Scapegoats The Wall Street Journal June 3, 2008
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 7:00 pm EDTTuesday, July 1 |
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Chronicle of the Conspiracy
Join us as we discover, document, expose and challenge the bad people, the bad institutions and the bad ideas that stand in the way of wealth creation -- and show you how to fight back!
Saturday, June 05, 2004
REAGAN DIES The last major party candidate I will ever vote for. May he rest in the peace he made possible.Update 6/6/2004... Here's James Crystal's unique take -- when Ronald Reagan really died.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:12 PM | link
Friday, June 04, 2004
NOT INSANE Could this be Krugman's new stalker? It's "Commander Coconut," the pseudonymous columnist for the Orlando Star Sentinel. Today the Commander writes,The other day, I sent my first e-mail to a hero columnist at another paper. It was short: "Mr. Krugman, Thank God for you. I would go insane otherwise."Whew. I'd hate to think that Commander Coconut might have gone insane. Thand God, indeed, for Paul Krugman....Mr. Krugman is a smart columnist for The New York Times. I read him and the great Maureen Dowd all the time...
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 2:48 AM | link
EVEN THE LETTERS GET IT WRONG Can the New York Times simply not manage to report correct economic statistics? (And is it just a coincidence that their errors are always on the side of doom-and-gloom?) Even the letters to the editor contain absurdly large errors. Here's one today from Bettye Nowlin, attacking a pro-Bush David Brooks column: "Given the mess in Iraq and a national debt of $22 trillion, that raises the question, Could our Republic survive a Bush administration with a mandate to do anything bigger?" According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, gross federal debt at the end of this fiscal year will be $7.4 trillion. Just off by a factor of three, guys. So do we print corrections when the screw-up is in a letter?
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 2:36 AM | link
Thursday, June 03, 2004
THE TIMES COVERS UP ITS TENET MISTAKE Don't waste your time clicking on the link in the posting below, looking for the New York Times article that has Stansfield Turner slamming Bush over the George Tenet resignation -- without identifying Turner as a Kerry operative. The link now takes you to an entirely different story with a different byline -- a story that doesn't even mention Turner. Down the memory hole. Thanks to reader and typo king Irwin Chusid for noticing the incredible vanishing bias blunder.Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:42 PM | link
THE TIMES FALLS FOR LIES FROM BIASED SOURCES -- AGAIN You'd think the New York Times would have learned, after all the embarrassment it has suffered -- having been tricked into saying positive things about the Bush administration (the horrors!) thanks to alleged lies from sources about WMDs in Iraq. But no. In the Times' online story today about the resignation of CIA chief George Tenet, the paper quotes Stansfield Turner taking a swipe at Bush, saying "The president feels he has to have someone to blame." Turner is identified as "a former C.I.A. chief...who held the post under President Jimmy Carter." But Robert Musil points out that the Times failed to identify Turner as a member of the Senior Military Advisory Group of the Kerry for President campaign, which the campaign announced just today.
My guess is that the Times was fooled. That it didn't even know. Again.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:34 PM | link
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
NEW RULES FOR A NEW WORLD Alan Dershowitz surprises on the upside. In an uncommonly sensible article, he writes that the Geneva Convention has become hopelessly outdated, and unnecessarily ties the hands of nations trying to fight terrorists. Some nuggets:First... [c]ivilians who are killed while being used as human shields by terrorists must be deemed the victims of the terrorists who have chosen to hide among them, rather than those of the democracies who may have fired the fatal shot. Second, a new category of prisoner should be recognized for captured terrorists and those who support them. They are not "prisoners of war," neither are they "ordinary criminals." They are suspected terrorists who operate outside the laws of war, and a new status should be designated for them - a status that affords them certain humanitarian rights, but does not treat them as traditional combatants. Third, the law must come to realize that the traditional sharp line between combatants and civilians has been replaced by a continuum of civilian-ness...Fourth, the treaties against all forms of torture must begin to recognize differences in degree among varying forms of rough interrogation, ranging from trickery and humiliation, on the one hand, to lethal torture on the other. They must also recognize that any country faced with a ticking-time-bomb terrorist would resort to some forms of interrogation that are today prohibited by the treaty. International law must recognize that democracies have been forced by the tactics of terrorists to make difficult decisions regarding life and death. The old black-and-white distinctions must be replaced by new categories, rules and approaches that strike the proper balance between preserving human rights and preventing human wrongs. For the law to work, it must be realistic and it must adapt to changing needs.On the other hand, Dershowitz signed this letter protesting treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and reaffirming the Geneva Convention.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:11 AM | link
JOKE OF THE DAY
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:16 AM | link
AND SPEAKING OF DOOH NIBOR Rick Gaber has some good thoughts.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:12 AM | link
HOWLERS FROM HOWELL An email from our friend Bruce Bartlett, about the article in the Guardian by disgraced former New York Times editor Howell Raines:
First, Raines calls Kerry "America's first war-hero candidate since John F. Kennedy." This will come as news to George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole. Perhaps he meant to say that Kerry is the Democratic Party's first war hero candidate since Kennedy.Raines says we now have "the most unfair tax system ever" in 225 years. If he believes that, then he should happily support the tax system we had before 1913 where there was no income tax and the federal government was funded by regressive tariffs. At least he would have to support the original income tax, with its top rate of 7 percent. Since our current system is the most unfair, any system previously in existence must be more fair. Right?
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:06 AM | link
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
ONE STEP AHEAD OF THE LAW As if the New York Times' crocodile tears over its flawed coverage of Iraq's WMD weren't already insincere enough. From the Village Voice:Why did the Times wait until now—more than a year after the misleading stories appeared—to fess up? A spokesperson said the timing reflected Chalabi's undoing as well as public editor Daniel Okrent's decision to write about the situation on Sunday (after previously declining to address it). But it's also likely that the Times felt the hot breath of Adam Moss, its former assistant managing editor for features. These days, Moss is pursuing the all but impossible dream of making New York magazine a must-read. To that end, he reportedly assigned an exposé of the Times' errors—and the paper knew it was coming.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 1:27 PM | link
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For most families, the losses from these [spending] cuts will far outweigh any gain from lower taxes. My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that 80 percent of all families will end up worse off; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will soon come out with a more careful, detailed analysis that arrives at a similar conclusion.I sure hope they're careful and detailed about how they come to a conclusion that, apparently, they've determined in advance.
Oh, and you've got to love this line:
The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year.In other words, by cutting taxes that robbed high-income earners of their income -- and cutting government spending that transferred that stolen income to low-income earners -- we have a "transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent"? If we simply reduce the rate at which we are stealing from the rich, are we therefore stealing from the poor? We can certainly have an argument about whether there ought to be redistributive taxes. But it's nothing but sophistry to suggest that a move toward less redistribution in the future constitutes robbery.
Update... According to the Washington Post story that Krugman cites as his source for how the Bush administration is going to cut spending that will create this "large-scale transfer of income," the total of all the proposed spending cuts is "a tiny slice out of the federal budget -- $2.3 billion, or 0.56 percent, out of the $412.7 billion requested for fiscal 2005 for domestic programs and homeland security that is subject to Congress's annual discretion."
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:15 AM | link
Monday, May 31, 2004
GONZO TO COME An email from Robert Musil, who blogs as Man Without Qualities:Concerning Okrent's (and the Times') essentially fake mea culpas on the WMD's -- it's as though the Times is using this method to clear the way for some real Gonzo stuff to come. Time will tell.As the Wall Street Journal points out, Chalabi personally has by no means been shown to be the kind of sinister prevaricator the Times and Okrent are making him out to be. If the Times didn't do enough checking and follow-up to suit their current or previous standards, fine. But the efforts to twist their own deficiencies into an excuse for a purer shade of hostility towards Bush in their reporting is disingenuous and -- as you correctly put it -- rings fundamentally false.
Update 6/1/2005: Uh oh. Econopundit Steve Antler is threatening to withdraw my "Econogonzo" designation, now that Musil implies how corrupted its original, honorable meaning has become.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:11 AM | link
CAUSES ALL ENEMIES ON SCREEN TO MISS A TURN From a Wall Street Journal story on the Pentagon's assessment of China's military posture with respect to the US and Taiwan:
Because China's leaders believe their military forces are not yet strong enough to compete directly with the American military, they are putting more emphasis on preventing U.S. intervention first. This includes development of what the Chinese call "assassin's mace" weapons, the Pentagon said.The report said U.S. officials are not sure what "assassin's mace" is.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:39 AM | link
HAITIAN RESTROOMS GET CLEANLINESS AWARD Headline from today's China View:
Aristide accorded state-of-head welcome in S. Africa
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:33 AM | link
Sunday, May 30, 2004
THE REAL STORY OF THE TIMES AND WMD An email from Bruce Bartlett:You missed the real story behind the New York Times' WMD coverage. It is precisely because the paper has been so relentlessly negative about Bush that its support for the administration's view on WMD's stood out. People like me figured that if the Times thought there were WMDs in Iraq, then they had to be there. Because, given the paper's biases, it would have done everything in its power to refute the administration's evidence if it could. Therefore, to the extent that the invasion of Iraq was wrong because of a mistaken belief that it had WMDs, the Times is as responsible as anyone.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:20 PM | link
KRUGMAN MUSES ABOUT DEPRESSION Here's the full reason why Paul Krugman and his ilk are praying for economic disaster. It's more than just to make George Bush look bad -- Krugman and the rest have always done it. From a report in the Guardian:
Paul Krugman, America's heir apparent to JK Galbraith, was in London last week expressing incredulity about the way in which his country's politics have been captured by the super rich and the religious right.Update Reader Jill Olson notes, "I guess this is what he meant about the super rich. Oops -- wrong party."Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal settlement had been relentlessly whittled away, with the Democrats seemingly powerless to defend their own legacy. Would it, Krugman mused, take another Great Depression to breathe new life into progressive politics in the world's richest democracy?
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:12 PM | link
JOKE OF THE DAY
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:01 PM | link
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First, Okrent's column -- and the Times' own self-analysis that ran Wednesday -- ring fundamentally false. They fail to set the paper's coverage of WMD into the larger context of its coverage of Iraq overall, or for that matter, its coverage of any other element of the Bush administration's policies. To the extent that the Times was accommodative of the administration's point of view on WMD, it would stand as the single exception to the Times relentlessly negative, critical, skeptical and just plain downright nasty coverage of the administration. So Okrent and the Times are doing a mea culpa for what amounts to ideological inconsistency, one tiny piece of revisionism in an otherwise dogmatically anti-Bush stance. What's worse, the Times is using this mea culpa itself as an anti-Bush photo-op, much like Richard Clarke's "apology" for 9/11. No doubt everyone on 43rd Street feels terribly virtuous now (and much more comfortable, having caved in to pressure from the left both internal and external).
Okrent concludes his column with
The editors' note to readers will have served its apparent function only if it launches a new round of examination and investigation. ...a series of aggressively reported stories detailing the misinformation, disinformation and suspect analysis that led virtually the entire world to believe Hussein had W.M.D. at his disposal.
Why not just offer a bounty for the best new "Bush lied" story? It would be so much more honest if Okrent had called, in addition, for stories about "misinformation, disinformation and suspect analysis" on any aspect of the Times' coverage of Bush administration policies, including ones in which the Times was incorrectly negative.
My second comment is on this passage from Okrent's column, in which he advocates that reporters expose anonymous sources found to be lying:
The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source - the offer of information in return for anonymity - is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed.
Fine -- if that's what the source agrees to going in. But otherwise, what a moral hazard this would create! What gives a Times reporter the right to mete out the punishment of exposed anonymity on the basis of his sole authority? How does he verify that the source is indeed lying -- by asking another source? How does he know for sure? Okrent is proposing to vest the very same people who, he claims, screwed up the WMD story, with the power to destroy the lives and careers of sources simply because the reporter decides unilaterally that the source is lying.
And what a cushy deal for reporters. Why bother to take responsibility for verifying the accuracy of an anonymous source's information at all when, if it turns out the source is lying, you get a whole new front-page "Bush lied" story? Hell, if you're a Times reporter, you've got to hope the source is lying!
I think the New York Times has entirely too much power already. It is lunacy to give its reporters even more.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:25 PM | link
I STOPPED READING THIS COLUMN WHEN I SAW... "Paul Krugman, an economics professor, not a journalist, has consistently outperformed his journalistic colleagues at the NYT - with the exception of Maureen Dowd." Read the whole thing. Or, actually, don't.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:45 AM | link