Archive for 2009

HOW TURKEY was lost to the West. “Once the apotheosis of a pro-Western, dependable Muslim democracy, this week Turkey officially left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis.”

MEGAN MCARDLE:

People who aren’t worried about setting up a big new entitlement, because after all, we’re going to have to fix it eventually, are encouraged to read Paul Blustein’s excellent book on the Argentinian crisis, And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out). Unsustainable fiscal policies can end when the government tightens its belt and raises taxes and cuts spending–or it can end when the whole thing melts down spectacularly. . . . At best, when we do start cutting back, we will make various people who planned their lives around current government policy substantially worse off. That’s something that we should be thinking carefully about, not blithely endorsing.

Indeed.

2010 CORVETTE GRAND SPORT vs. BMW M3.

NO SURPRISE HERE: MSNBC Admits ‘Unable to Verify’ False Limbaugh Quote, No Retraction or Apology. Reader C.J. Burch writes: “The problems at CNBC and CNN are deepening. I wonder why they’ve decided to ride this one into the ground? There were better hills to fight for. Are they going to throw themselves on their sword when an athlete in the NFL misbehaves and the rest of the country calls for him to be banned from the game? I just watched CNN try to tie a posthumous pardon of an African American in South Carolina to Limbaugh. Why? The trial happened in 1913. Did Limbaugh travel back in time or something. Or is CNN just that desperate, vicious and dishonest?” I think he means MSNBC, not CNBC, but yeah.

Meanwhile, reader Kurt Winkelmann writes: ‘Right now, CNN is showing a graphic of the $1.4 trillion deficit on its homepage. It’s the same graphic that you’ve been showing us for the past several months. That is how far behind the curve they are (or how far ahead you are).” Yeah, but I don’t have their layers of editors and factcheckers. . . .

UPDATE: For an example of how it should work, see Ta-Nehisi Coates. “I’m a little sick that I got it wrong, as I should be. But not sick that I have to apologize to Rush. The thing is this: I don’t think that you guys expect me to get it write right 100 percent of the time. I think you expect me to try very hard to be accurate, and immediately acknowledge when I’ve failed to do so. I don’t fear losing readers because I was wrong. I very much fear losing readers because they think I’m not being honest.”

RAND SIMBERG: The Dishwasher.

APPLE PLANNING ITS OWN WINDOWS 7 CAMPAIGN: Buy a Mac Instead. They’ll need a price-cut to make that one work . . . .