washington post – Page 5

Eugene Robinson gets the name of RedState right.

It’s actually been a matter of some amusement for us over there: you could tell who the lazy or just dumb reporters were from their habitual reference of the site as Redstate.org, which it hasn’t been for years. Apparently, the Washington Post has gotten around to updating their files, bless their hearts. A shame that Eugene Robinson didn’t then try to actually talk to a Republican before he wrote his column, although I admit that it would have been harder than sneering at the Republicans that live largely in his head.

Let’s unpack a typical paragraph:

Will loyal members inform on others for harboring suspiciously moderate views?

Err, no.

Will anyone judged guilty have to wear a sign saying “Republican In Name Only” as penance?

Err, no.

Will there be re-education camps?

Err, no. Also: cheapening to the memory of victims in the tens of millions.

Will deviationists face the Enhanced Interrogation Technique of being forced to listen to the wit and wisdom of Glenn Beck, at ear-splitting volume, for days on end?

Err, no. Continue reading Eugene Robinson gets the name of RedState right.

WaPo calls White House ‘Agnewesque.’

They didn’t even rate ‘Nixonian.’

Another for the ‘media’s starting to get just a bit tired of the administration’s crusade against Fox News’ file. From Ruth Marcus:

Obama’s dumb war with Fox News

There’s only one thing dumber than picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel — picking a fight with people who don’t even have to buy ink. The Obama administration’s war on Fox News is dumb on multiple levels. It makes the White House look weak, unable to take Harry Truman’s advice and just deal with the heat. It makes the White House look small, dragged down to the level of Glenn Beck. It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian — Agnewesque? — aroma at worst. It is a self-defeating trifecta: it distracts attention from the Obama administration’s substantive message; it serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings; and it deprives the White House, to the extent it refuses to provide administration officials to appear on the cable network, of access to an audience that is, in fact, broader than hard-core Obama haters.

A colleague of mine wondered privately what could be the reason for what is fairly clearly a counter-productive effort on the administration’s part – and when you’re getting this kind of push-back from what is generally conceded to be a core constituency of the Democratic party, you’re engaged in a counter-productive effort. My response was one word:

Pique.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The Washington Post catches up with me on the fundraising story. Yes, me.

And I didn’t lose a buck-ten on every post that I wrote on the subject, either*.

A regular reader of mine might be forgiven for wondering why there’s any sort of surprised tone in this Washington Post article.

Democrats Are Jarred by Drop In Fundraising

Democratic political committees have seen a decline in their fundraising fortunes this year, a result of complacency among their rank-and-file donors and a de facto boycott by many of their wealthiest givers, who have been put off by the party’s harsh rhetoric about big business.

The trend is a marked reversal from recent history, in which Democrats have erased the GOP’s long-standing fundraising advantage. In the first six months of 2009, Democratic campaign committees’ receipts have dropped compared with the same period two years earlier.

After all, the people reading this post already know all of this. The ongoing fundraising situation has been regularly reported on here, here, here, here, here (all of which also compared points in this cycle to the equivalent points in the last one), here, and here – and also here for the state of the parties’ financial status at the end of 2008. Readers of both RedState and my own personal website have been kept apprised that Democratic fundraising has been consistently below last cycle’s expectations, and that the GOP has been overperforming (compared to largely media-driven expectations) – and that the amount of debt that the Democratic party has chosen to retain is warping its cash-on-hand numbers (which is something that the above article neglects to mention). So why is the Washington Post apparently discovering this now?

Oh, right: because I’m not a ‘journalist.’ Just somebody who was paying attention.

Moe Lane

*Thank you, Virginia Postrel.

PS:

Crossposted to RedState.

WaPo retracts racism charges made by Darryl Fears & Carol Leonnig.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, AoSHQ readers.

Darryl Fears & Carol Leonnig being the Washington reporters who did their level best to make their story about James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles racial:

Though O’Keefe described himself as a progressive radical, not a conservative, he said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans.

“Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization,” he said. “No one was holding this organization accountable. No one in the media is putting pressure on them. We wanted to do a stunt and see what we could find.”

(Bolding mine) Well, guess who had to retract that passage by Darryl Fears & Carol Leonnig*? Continue reading WaPo retracts racism charges made by Darryl Fears & Carol Leonnig.

Well, nobody expects Rahm Emanuel to be historically literate.

But we should expect the Washington Post to be.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) In the process of reading this otherwise unsurprising WaPo article about how the President is still trying to figure out how to counter the quote-unquote “right wing noise machine*,” we’re treated to this bit from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel:

…the John Birch Society was created in reaction to Kennedy…

Um. No. No, it wasn’t. I got no love for the Birchers, but they were formed in 1958 – and at the time, John F Kennedy was still the guy who was friends with Joe McCarthy. Or so Wikipedia assures me here, here, and here.

I don’t blame Emanuel for making this up – he’s an administration stooge, that’s what they do – but the WaPo should have sent out a reporter with the mother-wit and education to check that out, even if it was only on Wikipedia. Not that I really approve of that source for important things, but I understand that a good number of mainstream journalists do. At any rate, why doesn’t the Washington Post have reporters who know enough 20th Century American history to immediately spot an iffy statement like Emauel’s?

Or editors?

Moe Lane

*Hi! How are you doing? I don’t get paid for this, darn it. So hit the tip jar!

Crossposted to RedState.

Three summaries of cap-and-trade.

Washington Post: The Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill is popular, as long as it doesn’t cost people more than $25 a month. Then it craters (Via The Conservatives.com).

Rasmussen: The Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill is unpopular, with the people who hate it really hating it and the people who like it only kind of liking it (Via The Campaign Spot).

Senate Democrats: The not-particularly-sudden death of Senator Kennedy requires that the bill be delayed again (Via Don Surber).

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Senate Democrats have already made up their own minds over whether they believe Rasmussen, or the Washington Post.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The Washington Post is now worried about Democratic tax plans.

Better late, than never?

The Washington Post has come out against the progressive tax raises proposed by Congress to pay for health care. It does so reluctantly – it’s not against the principle of progressive taxes generally – but apparently they feel that the combination of Medicare cuts and wider-than-expected targets for the surcharge are just unacceptable.

…in principle, higher taxes for the well-heeled could make sense — as part of a broader rationalization of the unduly complex tax code.

But there is no case to be made for the House Democratic majority’s proposal to fund health-care legislation through an ad hoc income tax surcharge for top-earning households. The new surtax would hit individual households earning $350,000 and above. It would start at 1 percent, bumping up to 1.5 percent at $500,000 in income and to 5.4 percent at $1 million. The new levy would begin in 2011 and is supposed to raise $540 billion over 10 years, about half the projected cost of health-care reform. The rest of the money would come from reduced spending on Medicare and Medicaid — though the surtax for the lower two categories would jump by a percentage point each in 2013 unless the Office of Management and Budget determines that the rest of the bill has saved more than $150 billion.

[snip]

The long-term deficit is driven by the aging of the population as well as by growing health-care costs, both contributing to Social Security and Medicare expenses. There is simply no way to close the gap by taxing a handful of high earners. The House actions echo President Obama’s unrealistic campaign promise that he can build a larger, more progressive government while raising taxes on only the wealthiest.

To evoke one of my favorite authors, it would be unseemly for me to ask: Continue reading The Washington Post is now worried about Democratic tax plans.

I almost wish that Iowahawk would stop doing this.

Well, not really. Not at all, in fact. Via Little Miss Attila:

Please do not touch the bureaucrats

Music (throughout)
Motley Crue, “Girls Girls Girls”

Katherine Weymouth
Hey fellas, after a hard week lobbying down on K Street, we know what you want. When the sun goes down on the capitol dome, you want to kick off those white shoes and get comfortable with the Beltway’s hottest journalists and public policy analysts. And they’re all waiting for you at the Washington Chrome Post.

Sexy Reverb Voice
mmmm…. the Washington Chrome Post.
(Trust me, there’s more. Much more)

But still: he makes this look all too easy, sometimes.

Crossposted to RedState.

Obama’s ‘new’ tack: everything is Bush’s fault.

Be grateful that the Washington Post is at least catching up to the rest of us.

It will come to a surprise to some that apparently the former administration is now the font of every economic evil…

Obama’s New Tack: Blaming Bush

In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

It hasn’t taken long for the recriminations to return — or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome “inheritance” of its predecessor.

…mostly because it would imply that there was ever a time when this administration didn’t take that stance. Even the article itself doesn’t really support the title, as it admits a good ways in that President Obama started off on blaming the previous administration for its ills on or about January 26th. What’s been happening since then is much more accurately described by what was apparently the original title of this piece, which was “Obama Sharpens His Reminders That He Inherited Fiscal ‘Mess’ From Bush.” This also makes the ludicrous assumption that no blame accrues to Democrats for our financial meltdown – but at least that title doesn’t pretend that this is any sort of new behavior on Obama’s part. Continue reading Obama’s ‘new’ tack: everything is Bush’s fault.

So, Obama stopped by the Washington Post to reassure them.

Via Glenn, here’s their first and last paragraphs, with my executive summary in the middle:

PRESIDENT-ELECT Barack Obama came to The Post editorial board yesterday with two messages sketchy on details yet reassuring in approach: a commitment to fiscal discipline, and a determination not to be bound by liberal, or indeed any, orthodoxy.

[snip of the President-elect not answering their questions about what he plans to do about controlling the budget, determining what financial sacrifices need to be made, when – or if – Card Check will be passed, what changes – if any – will be made to our current detainee system, and whether all of this means that he’s a centrist.]

Mr. Obama’s indications of ideological flexibility are rather abstract at this point; he has not yet been called on to make the kind of difficult choices about which he speaks so eloquently. But his transition has sounded all the right themes, and, if yesterday’s session is any guide, his presidency promises to begin on the same hopeful, pragmatic note.

For my response, here’s an Isaac Asimovquote from Foundation (pg 71).

“That,” replied Hardin, “is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Holk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications – in short, all the goo and dribble – he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out.

“Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed. There are the assurances you had from your precious Empire.”

Further commentary unnecessary, yes?