WEIGEL RESIGNS

Posted on Comments

This is not good news for conservatives, no matter how much you hate Dave Weigel.

UPDATE: In an e-mail to several bloggers last night, I observed:

[O]nce the WaPo axed Ben Domenech, it was more than four years before they again tried a “conservative” blog. As someone who is BCC’d said to me on the phone Thursday, Dave is “about the best we can expect” from the Post. So there’s nothing to be gained by conservatives doing a takedown on Weigel, and perhaps a good deal to be lost.

Ah, vain hope. The “No Conservatives Need Apply” policy at WaPo may now be regarded as a permanent fixture.

UPDATE II: Dan Riehl disagrees with me. But I never argue with Dan.

UPDATE III:  Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

It should also be noted that he went on Keith Olbermann’s show and shot down a story about Sarah Palin committing perjury that had been lighting up the liberal blogs and defended Cato’s Michael Cannon against a “dishonest and unfair hit” by the Center for American Progress.

Pamela Geller, on the other hand:

This is the asshat who sided with chuckie the traitor, and slammed Spencer and me, among . . .

I’m not aware that Weigel “sided with” Charles Johnson, but perhaps I missed something. At any rate, in a phone conversation just now with a conservative activist/blogger, I located what may be the deepest root of my pain over this episode: Weigel’s short tenure at the WaPo will be woven into the “conservatives don’t do journalism” narrative that Matthew Yglesias and his liberal buddies have been weaving for the past couple of years.

UPDATE IV: Conservative operative Liz Mair:

[P]erhaps the Post could pursue someone like Phil Klein or Eli Lake or Jim Antle.  It would demonstrate good faith towards conservatives, and help the Post continue to drive in a direction that seems to be benefiting it, in terms of audience.

Not. Gonna. Happen. However, Liz also theorizes:

A lot of leaking has been done with the clear objective (I believe) of ruining Dave’s career, and forcing his ouster by the Washington Post.  I suspect it is happening because Dave committed the cardinal sin of defending Rand Paul, a figure who has become so reviled by many on the Left that it’s hard to draw a bright-line distinction between him and Saddam Hussein, by their standards (in fact, for some of them, I believe Saddam Hussein is held in less contempt).  That’s a bad place for Dave to be, but he got there because he had the courage of his convictions and defending a man who many on the Right consider almost indefensible — and he did it at the Washington Post, not Reason Magazine.

Ah, well. Water under the bridge. Weigel under the bus. Ace isn’t wasting any tears on Dave. Sad to see that among the few bloggers saying anything in Weigel’s defense is . . . wait for it . . . Andrew Sullivan.

Yeah. Kiss of death. Dave who? Never heard of the guy.

(Rooster crows three times.)

UPDATE V: In the comments, Moe Lane makes a good point:

“The thing that strikes me about this is how little input in the affair actual conservatives have had.”

Exactly. News organizations don’t hire conservatives. Therefore, conservatives don’t seek careers in journalism and instead become lawyers or accountants or stock brokers or whatever.

Ergo, none of the people making decisions in MSM newsrooms are conservatives. Where set A = “employees of news organizations” and set B = “conservatives,” we see that as the closer set AB approaches to zero, the more likely journalists are to view conservatives as The Other, and vice-versa.

If you think such a situation is a good thing, then you’re obviously congratulating yourself about Dave Weigel’s downfall, and you don’t want to hear the explanation of my disagreement.

UPDATE VI: Not to say there isn’t an upside: Ezra Klein has deep-sixed Journolist as a result of the Weigel affair. Little Miss Attila says the list had become “blackmail fodder.”

I spoke to Weigel by phone this afternoon. He’s fine, and is currently deciding which of three or four job offers to accept. He admits that he succumbed to hubris, but wasn’t interested in rehashing the back-story of this whole mess. He said he was going somewhere this evening to chill out.

Ed Morrissey says “Dave and I are on friendly terms,” so there’s that, and Ed engages in the “who leaked from Journolist and why?” theorizing that is the really intriguing angle here. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that Liz Mair was on the money in suspecting that Dave’s defense of Rand Paul motivated the leak.

Matt Welch at Reason recounts the saga for the benefit of Weigel’s former readers at Reason, and Ed Driscoll has a long and excellent round-up of reaction.

Defeatist Peaceniks Upset That Obama Isn’t Losing Afghanistan War Fast Enough

Posted on Comments

That’s not the headline on the Politico story, but it could be:

The president and congressional critics, long on a collision course over the war in Afghanistan, are hurtling ever faster toward each other since the ouster of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and doves on Capitol Hill are feeling a little tougher right now.
The anti-war coalition continues to be a thorn in the side of Democratic leaders, who are trying to find a way to move a war-funding bill over liberal objections and past a Republican Party unified in its opposition to using the must-pass $33 billion measure as a source of domestic spending.
War critics say Obama is missing a golden opportunity to use the McChrystal flap as an excuse to reshape his policy in Afghanistan. Instead, he’s reaffirming a policy that was shaped in large measure by McChrystal and using acclaimed Gen. David Petraeus to execute it, leaving himself little room to cast blame should things go wrong.
“He’s doubling-down,” said a senior Democratic congressional aide.

You can read the rest of that, but it’s a pretty simple story: All those Democrats who spent six years complaining that the Iraq war was a mistake because it distracted from fighting the real enemy in Afghanistan were . . . eh, lying.

Anti-war Democrats aren’t just against bad wars and, in truth, they’re not actually anti-war. They’re just anti-America.

They hate the U.S. military. Their worst nightmare is for American troops to decisively defeat the enemy. These are the people who cheered for Hanoi during the Vietnam War and they have never lost the habit of cheering for America’s enemies, which is why they love Fidel Castro and why they support Hamas in Gaza.

However, the fact that Obama is pissing off the Anti-America Caucus in Congress doesn’t mean that Obama actually knows what he’s doing. The Washington Post‘s Eugene Robinson puts it succinctly:

The good news? Nobody has to pretend anymore that Gen. Stanley McChrystal knew how to fix Afghanistan within a year. The bad news? Now we’re supposed to pretend that Gen. David Petraeus does.

Meanwhile today, at The American Spectator, John Guardiano offers a counterpoint to the beatdown on Gen. McChrystal:

It is not General McChrystal and his aides who exercised “bad judgment,” but rather the political and pundit class. They’re too thin-skinned; they don’t appreciate the importance of public dialogue and debate; and they adhere to stereotypical notions of military subordination and command and control.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: This post was inspired by catching a few minutes of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, where they highlighted the Politico story. Da Tech Guy watches “Morning Joe” almost daily and I called him to tell him about it. Da Tech Guy notes his earlier observation that for the “Morning Joe” crew “the replacement of McChrystal with Petraeus brought one line of argument, basically that it shouldn’t be used to try to win.”

MSNBC: Where Victory Is Never an Acceptable Option!

UPDATE II: Jeff Kuhner in The Washington Times:

America is heading toward a colossal defeat in Afghanistan. Unless there is a dramatic change in policy and leadership, the United States will suffer the most calamitous military setback in its history – one that will mark the end of the American moment, the loss of superpower status in the eyes of the world. . . .

Read the whole thing.

Did Somebody Say ‘Double Dip’?

Posted on Comments

Oh, yes they did!

Could a double dip in the housing market be on the way? That’s what influential banking analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC’s Squawk Box yesterday.


Market analyst Barry Ritholtz explains:

The assumption has been that if we can modify mortgages or voluntarily refrain from foreclosures, the [residential real estate] market will stabilize. Through a combination of mortgage mods and buyers tax credits, the government has managed to — temporarily– create artificial demand and keep more supply off of the markets.
But as we have seen, that fix was at best temporary.
One of the things that Markets are best at is price discovery — the determination of a price for a specific item through basic supply and demand factors. Without the heavy hand of the government intervening, the residential real estate market is about to experience what price discovery is all about . . .

Jeff Cox of CNBC:

A slew of troubling market factors have collided to send investors looking for safety amid concerns that the economy may slip back into a deeper recession.
Fears of a double-dip have lingered throughout the recovery but have intensified recently as the economy shows little signs of robust improvement and Wall Street has witnessed a sharp trend higher in bond investing.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

“We’re heading towards a double-dip recession,” said Chris Whalen, a former Fed official and now head of Institutional Risk Analystics. . . .
“The US recovery is in imminent danger of stalling,” said Stephen Lewis, from Monument Securities. “Growth could be negative again as soon as the fourth quarter. There is no easy way out since fiscal stimulus has already been pushed as far as it can credibly go without endangering US credit-worthiness.”

Brent Arendt:

Household debts are at record levels. We have begun a national process of paying down debt that will last for a generation, for the simple reason that it has to. Recent data suggest a rising risk of a double-dip recession, including the collapse of home sales and an ominous downturn in some forward-looking indicators.

Obamanomics isn’t working and the stock market is starting to notice:

Dow Jones industrial average lost around 145 points, or 1.4 percent. The S&P 500 lost 18 points or 1.7 percent and the Nasdaq composite lost 37 points or 1.6 percent.
Stocks fell after reports showed a still-tough environment for the manufacturing and labor markets and one day after the Federal Reserve sounded a cautious tone on the economy.
The Fed issued a cautious growth outlook Wednesday on the back of the day’s weak May new home sales report.

PREVIOUSLY:

The Dissonant Feeling That You Might Not Speak Your Mother Tongue

Posted on Comments

by Smitty (via Colmes)

DOOCY: The country is so gridlocked around this. What can business do that Washington, DC has not been effective in doing so far?
MURDOCH: Well you just gotta keep the pressure on the congressmen. You gotta do it on the press and on the television. It’s a political thing. They gotta fess up to it. […] You gotta recognize that there are millions of bright and intelligent people around the world — whether they are in China or in Hungary or in Germany or something — who want to come to America and live the American Dream.
DOOCY: Right, but they can’t. […] This is a political hot potato. How do get past the partisanship that is out there and is so biting for a while?
MURDOCH: I think we can show to the public the benefit of having migrants and the jobs that go with them.

Migrants? My wife came here from Germany several years ago, on a fiancée visa. We followed all the laws, paid all the fees, waited all the months, went through the steps, and now she’s an American citizen. While requiring archaic disciplines like patience, the system can be made to work. Furthermore, a non-instant gratification system allows time for the migrants to assimilate. To understand that ‘here’ is not ‘there’. To appreciate that these 50 States United really are a different approach to government, or at least were prior to the Progressive onslaught.
So I find myself wondering whether it’s me or Murdoch that doesn’t really understand English. Similar dissonance occurs when the word ‘illegal’ is used with respect to immigrants. It’s as though these modern, liberal, post-modernist, deconstructionist clowns think that the words ‘country’, ‘border’, and ‘American’ have somehow become profane.

Jews Attacked in Germany

Posted on Comments

The Religion of Peace:

Arab youths threw stones at a Jewish dance group during a street festival in Hannover, injuring one dancer and forcing the group to cancel its performance, German police and dance officials said Thursday.
The teenagers also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs during the attack Saturday, Hannover police spokesman Thorsten Schiewe said. . . .
Six suspects have been identified — five Arabic immigrants and one German — and police are looking for the other three, police said. . . .
Stephan Kramer of the Central Council of Jews in Germany condemned the attack.
“This latest incident shows something we have not experienced before: A growing radicalization of young Muslims, which affects not only the Jewish community but the entire German community,” Kramer told The Associated Press . . .

Via Jihad Watch.

Dave Weigel Violates Rule One

Posted on Comments

UPDATE 6/25: WEIGEL RESIGNS.

PREVIOUSLY: Rule One of Modern Journalism is, Don’t piss off Matt Drudge:

“This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.”
— David Weigel, e-mail to “Journolist”

Sigh. He also trashed Byron York and referred to Ron Paul supporters as “Paultards.” Both of which are very bad things to do, but probably not as career-damaging as pissing off Drudge. It doesn’t matter how big your scoop is. If Drudge won’t link you, you’re screwed.

Dave has tried to explain that he was getting buried in hate mail, etc., but I don’t know how — or even if — he can ever eat enough crow to repair this kind of self-inflicted career trauma.

Nevertheless, that crow ain’t gonna to eat itself. Chow down, buddy.

And Dave: You never should have trusted those Journolist people.

UPDATE: Donald Douglas reminds us of his earlier skepticism about Weigel’s WaPo gig and quotes Will Collier:

Weigel’s personality aside, the fact that he’s a contributing member of Klein’s liberal propaganda-coordination clique should have been disclosed from the very beginning of Weigel’s “reporting” on conservatives. It says nothing good about either Weigel or his bosses at the WaPo that none of the above thought Weigel’s membership in a glorified version of Media Matters would be something worth notifying readers about.

Understand this: Weigel’s editors are getting what they want. Conservatism to them is terra incognita, that part of the old maps emblazoned with the motto, “Here Be Dragons.”

If Weigel were to get fired, he would not be replaced with a blogger/reporter of whom conservatives would approve. The WaPo doesn’t hire such people. Rather, his failure would be interpreted by WaPo editors thus: “See there? Conservatives don’t want to read real news anyway, so why bother? Screw ’em. Hire Eric Boehlert.”

UPDATE II: Matthew Vadum on Twitter:

If you don’t know who Vadum is, he is senior editor at Capital Research Center and an American Spectator contributor who was busting ACORN before most people ever heard of ACORN.

Meanwhile, the lefties at Journolist are wondering who leaked Weigel’s e-mails:

[I]t was the first time the listserv has been used specifically as a weapon of the anonymous professional takedown, and so, sent shivers through the JournoList community.
“People are feeling betrayed by whoever the leaker is, once again,” said Eric Alterman, the Nation columnist and journalism professor who is a member of the listserv. . . .
“The list is confidential,” said one member who, in typical fashion, declined to be named for this article. “Whoever broke the confidentiality of the list obviously has no respect for some pretty basic journalistic norms. But I can’t talk about it because it’s supposed to be confidential.”
The member added: “Whoever leaked that is obviously extremely jealous of the exceptional work that Dave is doing for the Post, and whatever Dave said should be viewed in that light.”

“Crabs in a bucket,” as they say. Anyone who has ever worked in DC can testify that in Washington, the more you succeed, the more knives will be aimed at your back. The nation’s capital is a place where the whisper campaign and the poison-pen letter have been refined to a high art.

If you wonder why I’ve defended Dave, contemplate the moral of Androcles and the Lion: Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.

Is Charles Krauthammer Cynical Enough?

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Krauthammer’s take on the oil spill cleanup effort seems insufficiently curious to me:

The fact that Salazar is sticking with this and that they’re going to appeal and they’re going to hang in there on this I think is a measure of how much this administration is in hock to its ecological left.
These people are not going to let him go. They blame the Obama administration for the small opening on drilling, which it did before the Gulf oil disaster, and this is the price that they are exacting. I think it’s a big mistake, not just from an engineering perspective or an economic [perspective], I think it’s a big political mistake. …
The environmental left sees an opportunity here to shut down oil production as Three Mile Island did on nukes, and that’s why it won’t allow more drilling.

Satrunine Old Rascals Often Sip
Suds Or Riesling, Offering Such
Subdued Observations, Rejecting Other Sentiments.