"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
Left Coast Rebel caught me on Google Chat, pursuant to the Ellie Light case. I did precious little, but forward LCR to somebody whom you irritate at your peril. LCR and I rambled a bit, and he’s tidied the output into a post.
Meanwhile, I have to get the FMJRA done before RSM flogs me.
So says Christian Josi, referring to the hiring of a new editor at The Washington Times. Paul Bedard, who was on the White House beat when I joined the Times in 1997, gives the lowdown on the new guy:
Dealey, a U.S. News contributor, is based in Washington, writing on national and foreign affairs. Besides contributing to Reader’s Digest, he writes frequently for publications such as GQ, Details, and The New York Times. Dealey has also reported from Africa for CNN and PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. He is a media fellow at the Hoover Institution.
The Dallas native was a reporter for The Hill newspaper, an editorial board member at The Washington Times, and assistant managing editor of The American Spectator.
I’ve never met Dealey, and have no reason to doubt that he is everything he is cracked up to be. On the other hand, he’s only 36 and nothing in his biography suggests extensive managerial experience in a daily newspaper environment.
That was really the problem that sank Dealy’s predecessor, John Solomon, who had built his career as a reporter for the Associated Press and spent a year at the Washington Post before taking over the top job at the Times shortly after I left in January 2008. Whatever else his qualifications, Solomon had little managerial background and no experience of the distinctive culture of the Times.
Running any daily newspaper is a tremendous managerial challenge, and the Washington Times is certainly more challenging than most. D.C. is a very competitive news environment and being the underdog paper, going up against the Post every day, requires an extraordinary degree of mental toughness. Former editor-in-chief Wes Pruden’s long tenure in the job was as much a testimony to his cast-iron temperament as to his journalistic ability.
No matter what, Dealey starts off on the wrong foot with the newspaper’s staff. Bringing in an outsider to run the Washington Times newsroom — Dealey was on the editorial board of the paper, but never on the news staff — is an implied putdown of the guys who’ve been in charge of the daily news operation since Solomon quit in November.
All of which is to say that Dealey’s got his work cut out for him. I wish him luck. At least he’s not a damned Postie. That’s basically what prompted me to resign when I did. It had just been announced they’d hired Solomon from the Post, and one of my colleagues remarked, “If I’d wanted to work for a Postie, I’d have applied at the f—ing Post.”
Good point. I submitted my resignation the next day. My colleague stayed — and got laid off right before Christmas last year, along with dozens more who didn’t see the writing on the wall soon enough.
Watch this video from ABC’s “Good Morning America”:
“The Scott Heard ‘Round the World” has inspired grassroots activists nationwide — John Fund has a feature article about Brown today — and as I explain at The American Spectator:
One of the volunteers on Brown’s campaign is now running for Congress in Alabama, and emulating the “straight talk, no BS” theme. Rick Barber, a small businessman and ex-Marine, is challenging Democrat Rep. Bobby Bright in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District and was featured in an ABC “Good Morning America” segment on the impact of the Brown campaign.
“If there ever was a time in our political landscape that really an everyday guy like myself could get into Washington at the congressional level, this would be the year to do it,” Barber told ABC.
Many others see the same opportunity and, as the Associated Press notes, this has resulted in a crowded field of contested primaries nationwide. . . .
Please read the whole thing. Speaking of crowded primaries, Adam Andrzejewski’s Tea Party-backed gubernatorial campaign — which the legacy media are trying to ignore — got an unexpected boost yesterday when Barack Obama made a joke about GOP establishment candidate Kirk Dillard:
As I told you Thursday, Kirk actually appeared in a 2008 campaign ad for Obama:
Ouch. Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark.
by Smitty
Libertas et Memoria captures succinctly the tactical problem for the POTUS: the irresistible force of the Left, verses the immovable object of the Right, coming together as gently as a tsunami and a city for the administration.
However, the real feeling of doom in the air, in my opinion, has more to do with the opposing tectonic plates out to sea whose gymnastics provide the tidal waves. The Democratic and Republican plates progressively grind against each other, and the debt effects continue to mock any attempt to discuss reform. Cthulhu laughs.
In defense of elected officials, it is up to the people, specifically the Tea Parties, it seems, both to demand reform and support the ensuing disasters. Furthermore, what will be desperately required is forgiveness. We really can’t bicker and argue over who killed who:The political gravity will see us all enjoy a hearty *splat*. I was explaining to my colleague, a Naval Reservist and Obama voter, that incorporating any Reserve pension in retirement planning is unwise. Just expect nothing out of the Reserves or Social Security, I said. She was indignant: “They can’t fail to pay on that stuff!” My other colleague, a self-proclaimed independent, said “See, he’s telling you the same thing I did.”
Musical chairs, played properly, are a software fencepost error turned into a game. So long as we deem it morally correct to engage in deficit spending and pass on debt to the next victim, and the music is playing, life is good. Thus, until we’ve improved the moral perception, the situation remains intractable.
The Iron Law of Bureaucracy remains an ugly truth, but I had an interesting idea. What if all entitlement programs had an expiry? In Smitty USA, no entitlement program could outlast the POTUS who signed it into law. In other words, I would require a Steel Law of Bureaucracy such that, periodically, the entire organization must be scrapped. All of the databases archived, all of the staff thanked for their interest in civil service, all of the recipients re-enrolled in the follow-on program, which begins from scratch, headquartered in a physically different location. The usual 10th Amendment argument against Federal implementation of entitlements applies. However, there may need to be a series of smaller steps in the effort to unwind the NewBad Deal.
The motive for such an overtly draconian regime would be to mimic Winter. Winter is a crucial season for rejuvenating nature. Elections provide a similar turning of the compost heap called Capitol Hill. Mandating infrequent transitions to wholly new bureaucratic systems would be one way to capture that natural cycle in the Executive Branch. Otherwise, the prostate-like growth of bureaucracy remains be unchecked.
Coming full circle to the POTUS, there is little indication that the gentleman even perceives the problem, much less has the character to repudiate his past theoretical approach. This administration is the political equivalent of a Jack London story.
The supermarket tabloids report, you decide:
President Barack Obama has blown $10 million on drunken White House parties, Washington insiders tell GLOBE. This week’s Special Report rips the lid off the Commander-in-chief’s outrageous antics, including boozy conga lines and dinners featuring $150-a-pound Japanese beef! It’s must reading for every American.
“Washington insiders“? It’s probably crap, but I said the same thing when the Enquirer reported that John Edwards had a love child. And apparently, Nancy Pelosi’s been partying down at taxpayer expense, so . . .
With the Republican primary Tuesday, the final push is on in Illinois:
In the final days before the Illinois primary, Former President of Poland Lech Walesa came to Chicago to support Adam Andrzejewski as the GOP candidate for Governor.
“As you see I support Adam . . . I am convinced that he is right. But we live in times that people do not always listen to those that are right,” said Walesa speaking through a translator.
The Chicago ABC affiliate reports:
Despite the frigid weather, the Tea Partiers and other self-described “true” conservatives made their way to Federal Plaza Friday afternoon. There, they welcomed their newest hero, Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski.
“New ideas are required by new people. Real reform requires a new generation of leadership,” said Andrzejewski.
Andrzejewski, a Hinsdale businessman who made millions selling telephone books, vows not to raise taxes and to cut, cut, cut spending, as he says. His rhetoric has resonated with the Republican right.
“We need more people to step up to the plate for hard-working Americans who have the morals and can go in and get our country back,” said Kathy Hurst, Tea Party member.
Andrew Marcus of Founding Bloggers was on the scene and has photos. The person who recorded this video says, “I apologize for the shaky video. It was about 7 degrees and that’s me shivering.”
By the way, remember the Wednesday money-bomb that was supposed to raise $24,000? I’m told it raised $35,000. Congratulations!
Adam Andrzejewski’s Web site is here and he is @AdamForIllinois on Twitter.
by Smitty
Would ‘countless’ be synonymous with ‘infinite’? If an infinite number of hearings, each lasting a second long, took place, then it would seem that this series of hearings must have been all that occurred last year. Continue reading ‘Countless Hearings Took Place’ →
My buddy Dan Collins is feeling kinda blue. So I’m featuring this video, just to cheer him up:
The best part? Olbermann says he’s narking out his family:
“Here’s a little secret, gathered, sadly, from witnessing it my whole life, even from some in my own family,” Olbermann said. “When racist white guys get together and they don’t want to be caught using any of the popular epithets in use every day in this country about black people – and there’s a chance one of them, or worse still a white guy who doesn’t get it, might wander in and hear the conversation, when there’s a risk even in saying “uppity” or “forgetting his place,” the racist white guys revert to euphemisms and code words.”
Euphemisms! Code words! Dark secrets of the white racist underworld that only Keith Olbermann was courageous enough to discover and tell the world about! But what’s strange is that, on Wednesday night, the racists were all (gasp!) conservative commentators:
[Olbermann] singled out Erick Erickson of RedState.com, John Stossel, host of the Fox Business Channel’s “Stossel”, Jay Nordlinger of National Review, former Bush speechwriter and Washington Post contributor Marc Thiessen, John Hood, also of National Review and Fox News host Glenn Beck as racist for criticizing the president’s demeanor during the Jan. 27 State of the Union address.
Isn’t it interesting that Olbermann, rather than noticing the guy on his own network who called attention to Obama’s race, instead takes to the air to denounce conservatives, who have a monopoly on euphemisms and code words?
OK, actually, it’s not interesting at all. Olbermann does this hysterical denunciation trip night after night. A Supreme Court decision on campaign-finance laws? It’s Dred Scott! You wonder if he carries this tendency over into his private life.
Waiter, I specifically ordered a merlot, and you’ve brought me burgundy instead. This is worse than McCarthyism. It’s worse than the Spanish Inquisition or the Jonestown Massacre. It’s . . . it’s Kristallnacht!
The astonishing thing is that he evidently expects these proclamations of his to be taken seriously.
UPDATE: Jay Nordlinger responds:
Being a conservative, or even somehow anti-Left, means that you will be called a racist. Period. It’s written in stone. You get used to it — but not really. . . . I have never — never really and truly — gotten used to being called a racist. I suppose I never will, even if I live to 143.
Read the rest. What’s amazing is how casually Olbermann makes the accusation, as if it were a thing of no consequence. And indeed, there will be no consequences for Olbermann. Liberalism is like a free pass to ride the Irresponsibility Express.
