Speaking through gritted teeth?

These are the entire statements:

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill:

"I hereby resign my position as secretary of the treasury. It has been a privilege to serve the nation during these challenging times. I thank you for that opportunity."

A privilege to serve the nation, but no mention of a privilege to serve the President.

President George W. Bush:

"My economic team has worked with me to craft and implement an economic agenda that helped to lead the Nation out of recession and back into a period of growth. I appreciate Paul O'Neill's and Larry Lindsey's important contributions to making this happen. Both are highly talented and dedicated, and they have served my Administration and our Nation well. I thank them for their excellent service."

NOTE: In the Washington Post article, they quote Bush, but omit the 2nd and 4th sentences without designating it with ellipses. So all one reads is:

"My economic team has worked with me to craft and implement an economic agenda that helped to lead the nation out of recession and back into a period of growth. Both are highly talented and dedicated, and they have served my administration and our nation well."

Isn't that considered bad journalism?

posted by Quiddity at 12/07/2002 07:17:00 AM

Keep your journalistic distance!

We read an MSNBC story about the resignation of Paul O'Neill and Lawrence Lindsey. This excerpt caught our eye: (our emphasis)

Q&A with Tim Russert

RUSSERT: I pointed out to some folks at the White House that it was about a week ago that Paul O’Neill, in an interview with the Financial Times, said that reform of the tax code system was more important than tax cuts. That rebounded around the corridors of the Bush administration, because it suggested that he wasn’t on the team.

What's Russert doing "pointing out" things to the administration? Can't they do their job without Tim's help? And Tim, are you ingratiating yourself with the powers that be?

posted by Quiddity at 12/06/2002 11:22:00 PM

The boys in the band of New York Times bashers:


Simulated Picture (Mickey Kaus on left, Andrew Sullivan on right)

Move mouse over image (Javascript enabled browsers).

posted by Quiddity at 12/05/2002 10:21:00 PM

Watcha lookin' at?

Hey Johnny Poindexter! Instead of having your all-seeing eye focused on the United States, why don't you take a peek at the lee side, and put your technical snooping to work examining bank and credit-card account data, bridge-toll records, e-mail messages, tax and medical records, pay-per-view movie titles, travel reservations, Internet activity, and pharmacy records throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. You know, where the terrorists come from, are funded, and find refuge. Instead of tracking a bus driver's purchase of dog food at Wal-Mart, look into those Saudi charities!

posted by Quiddity at 12/05/2002 08:00:00 PM

Separated at birth?

"The much-respected journalist" Mickey Kaus	Andrew Sullivan
Wednesday, December 4, 2002, at 10:01 PM PT (and later)	Thursday, December 05, 2002, at 2:41:22 AM
The NYT's idea of damage control: Don't apologize -- slime your writers! ... It's a surefire morale booster! ...	I It's been a big week at the New York Times. My sources tell me morale is at or about bottom as Howell Raines continues his manic attempt to corral news stories and now columns to reflect a party line.
While kausfiles fiddles, Slate's Jack Shafer has completely taken over kf's traditional ecological niche, feasting on the steady diet of embarrassments thoughtfully provided by Howell Raines' New York Times.	Even a Raines defender, Jack Shafer, has given up, while Raines' critics, ahem, are feeling vindicated.
If Boyd's memo is an example of his idea of "logic," I really want to read the columns he killed because "the logic did not meet our standards."	[A] piece was turned down, according to Boyd, because its logic wasn't sound enough. I will resist the temptation to point out that they publish Maureen Dowd twice a week, but this line is just as dubious.
Aren't the in-house dissenters from your campaign against male-only clubs just like those Southern whites who made excuses for segregation? Or actually defended it? Yeah, that's just what they're like!	[re: A column that did run in the Times about Augusta] A column that analogizes the club to a Confederate Army Camp?
I agree with Shafer -- show us the columns! Let us judge if they're so badly reasoned and illogical.	Here's the only way in which the Times can now prove to their readers that their columnists actually are free to argue what they believe: run the two columns and prove me wrong.
Update: .... Andrew Sullivan has a sophisticated exegesis here

There were other similar bits, but we got tired of reading Kaus and Sullivan.

posted by Quiddity at 12/05/2002 12:52:00 AM

Bully for you:

What do bullies do?

They set a very low threshold for "offense" and then pounce aggressively.

Let's look at a recent example:

• Daschle comments on the war on terror:

  14 November 2002
  "We haven't found bin Laden. We haven't made any real progress in many of the other areas involving the key elements of al Qaeda. They continue to be as great a threat today as they were a year and a half ago. So by what measure can we say this has been successful so far?"

• Limbaugh attacks:

  15 November 2002
  "You are seeking political advantage in the war on … You, sir, are a disgrace. You are a disgrace to patriotism, you are a disgrace to this country… Way to demoralize the troops, Senator! What more do you want to do to destroy this country than what you've already tried? … What do you want your nickname to be? Hanoi Tom? Tokyo Tom? … You sit there and pontificate on the fact that we're not winning the war on terrorism when you and your party have done nothing but try to sabotage it… It's nothing more than an attempt to sabotage the war on terrorism for your own personal and your party's political gain."

• Limbaugh is questioned about his behavior on Howard Kurtz' Reliable Sources:

  30 November 2002
  KURTZ: I want to come back to it, but first I want to ask you this. As you well know, some of your critics say that you can be inflammatory, that you can be mean spirited and Exhibit A lately is what you had to say about Tom Daschle about his criticism of the war on terrorism. I just want to read it.

  What more do you want to do to destroy this country than you've already tried? Do you want your nickname to be Hanoi Tom, Tokyo Tom?

  Pretty rough stuff.
  
  LIMBAUGH: To the arena of ideas, and he threw the brick, Howard. One of the things I think people who don't listen to me regularly and therefore can't listen in context, need to understand is I don't attack anybody. I defend.
  
  KURTZ: That's not an attack?
  
  LIMBAUGH: No, it's a defense. He attacked my president. He attacked our effort in the war on terrorism.

posted by Quiddity at 12/04/2002 11:44:00 PM

What a jerk:

Kaus writes this on Sunday, Dec 1:

Raines Staying Silent in Debate on Augusta Crusade, Day 6!
Ever since NYT Executive Editor Howell Raines has come under attack for his forced, feverish crusade regarding the Augusta National Golf Club's men-only membership policy, he has been silent on the issue, apparently hoping the complaints of a few Web writers and the New York Observer will be smothered by public indifference!

Wow, no comment for six whole days!

But how long did it take Lil' Mickey to say anything about Ann Coulter's "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building" remark?

It wasn't six days. It took eighty-eight days.

For a sharp appraisal of Kaus (this time on his Kerry-bashing), we recommend this at Lean Left.
Excerpt:

This is what we can expect from the right wing hacks (and, yes, Kaus is a right wing hack. He may not have always been one, he may not have started out as one, but he is definitely one now. No serious political commentator would pen this kind of meaningless tripe.

posted by Quiddity at 12/03/2002 09:42:00 AM

Kooky Krauthammer:

From Presidential Campaigns by Paul F. Boller Jr. (1985 Oxford University Press)

1896
[William Jennings] Bryan was the first presidential candidate to attract the attention of professional psychologists. On September 27, the New York Times published an editorial entitled "Is Mr. Bryan Crazy?" ... The same issue of the Times featured a letter by "an eminent [psychologist]" announcing that an analysis of Bryan's speeches led inescapably to the conclusion that the Democratic candidate was unbalanced and that if he won the election there would be a "madman in the White House." (pg. 176)

1912
Some people questioned T.R.'s sanity. Dr. Allen McLane Hamilton discussed the subject in the New York Times. Dr. Morton Prince wrote a long paper about it. "T.R. would go down in history," declared Prince ... "as one of the most illustrious psychological examples of the distortion of conscious mental process through the process of subconscious wishes." (pg. 199)

1964
Goldwater's sanity, like Bryan's in 1896 and T.R.'s in 1912, was partisanly called in question. The magazine Fact polled 12,356 psychiatrists on the question, "Is Barry Goldwater psychologically fit to be president of the United States?" Only 2,417 replied: 1,189 said "no," 657 said "yes," and 571 said they didn't know enough about it to answer. Both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association dismissed Fact's poll as yellow journalism and criticized the editor for trying to pass of the personal political opinions of psychiatrists as therapeutic expertise. [our emphasis] (pg. 318)

From Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall

2002
Isn't there something tasteless and shameful about a psychiatrist -- or a no-longer-practicing psychiatrist -- lazily questioning a public figure's mental health because he disagrees with that person's political views? Here's Charles Krauthammer from yesterday on Fox News Sunday ...

I'm a psychiatrist. I don't usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there's a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. He could use a little help ...

posted by Quiddity at 12/03/2002 08:19:00 AM

Attention must be paid:

Why do we have taxes?

1. To pay for government programs.
   
2. To influence behavior (e.g. deductions for energy conservation, giving to charities,...)

That sounds unexceptional, which it largely is. However...

Our attention has been directed to the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. There, they published an editorial, "The Non-Taxpaying Class", which said, among other things:

Over the past decade or so, fewer and fewer Americans have been paying income taxes and still fewer have been paying a significant percentage of income in taxes.

[...]

Who are these lucky duckies? They are the beneficiaries of tax policies that have expanded the personal exemption and standard deduction and targeted certain voter groups by introducing a welter of tax credits for things like child care and education. When these escape hatches are figured against income, the result is either a zero liability or a liability that represents a tiny percentage of income.

[...]

... as fewer and fewer people are responsible for paying more and more of all taxes, the constituency for tax cutting, much less for tax reform, is eroding. Workers who pay little or no taxes can hardly be expected to care about tax relief for everybody else.

... the last thing the White House should do now is come up with more exemptions, deductions and credits that will shrink the tax-paying population even further.

Let us be absolutely clear on this matter:

Instead of having taxes based "on the merits", as it were,

the Wall Street Journal is advocating a tax schedule that will directly influence how people vote.

We don't allow public service announcements that say, "Vote for Proposition 16" or "Fred Young for Mayor". We shouldn't accept tax policies that are designed to influence how people vote. That's anti-democratic.

Gedankenexperiment: Can you imagine the howls from the right if the tax code was amended so that you got a $500 deduction if the state you resided in had tough gun control? Or free condoms for the kiddies? Or ...

NOTES:
Ed Meese has chimed in recently with an affirmation of the WSJ position (no surprise there).

E.J.Dionne has commented on the WSJ editorial, and CalPundit ran the numbers on the "Lucky Duckies" (who aren't that lucky, after all).

Paul Krugman weighs in as well.

posted by Quiddity at 12/02/2002 10:18:00 PM

Our take:



UPDATE: We couldn't resist. Here's Mickey Kerry.....



posted by Quiddity at 12/02/2002 02:31:00 PM

Commission to investigate 9-11:

This is all we have to say about the appointment of Henry Kissinger as chairman:

Not our first choice.

TRIVIA FANS: That line is inspired by a comment James Baker made in 1988. When first informed that George H. W. Bush had selected Dan Quayle as his running mate, an obviously peeved Baker said this: "He's not my first choice."    We've always liked that way of expressing an opinion.

posted by Quiddity at 12/01/2002 10:53:00 PM

We did it before, and we'll do it again:

Last week, there was quite a fuss kicked up by a Newsweek story about the wife of the Saudi ambassador, and money from her bank account that may have found its way to a couple of hijackers of Flight 77 - the plane that flew into the Pentagon. (We diagramed the relationship.)

Today Newsweek has another story, this on money and connections involving the International Islamic Relief Organization. Connections that involve the bin Laden group, and possibly the Saudi Embassy in the United States. So, to make things clear, we present the information in the form of a diagram:



Once again, a direct connection looks implausible. However, we don't doubt that some money is given to the charities with the unstated assumption that a portion will go to terrorists. The question is, who are those people giving for that purpose, and how do you prove it?

posted by Quiddity at 12/01/2002 03:37:00 PM

How smart is the right?

Noted blogger and mega-brain Glenn Reynolds links to this Fox News story about the Cato Institute suing Washington D.C. over gun laws. This excerpt caught our eye: (2nd paragraph!) "The Second Amendment provides an individual right for a person to bare arms, not a collective right, not a right of the states, not a right of the militia, but a right on each and every person," said Bob Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at CATO. Hey Glenn! Do you ever read the crap you link to?

UPDATE: Fox corrected the story (in the link above), but we captured the page and the original version can be viewed here.

posted by Quiddity at 12/01/2002 07:54:00 AM