BECOMING THE all-terrain human.
Archive for 2013
March 25, 2013
TWO TNRs IN ONE:
MSNBC isn’t an instrument of the Democratic Party in the way that Fox is of the GOP. Ailes has a direct line to conservative politicians and considerable influence over them. Griffin may go to the odd White House Christmas party, but he’s not talking strategy with Valerie Jarrett.
— The New Republic, “Slyer Than Fox: The wild inside story of how MSNBC became the voice of the left,” today.
MSNBC is now hiring high-ranking party operatives. In February, two of Obama’s closest confidants, Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod, signed up as contributors to the network.
The courtship of Axelrod was particularly intense. Network bigwigs—including Griffin, Brian Williams, and former NBC News President Steve Capus—went to Washington for a meeting with Axelrod in his lawyer’s office. Zucker and CNN made a bid, too, but the NBC team, offering wider exposure, won out. “It was not a negative judgment about CNN,” Axelrod says. He’ll be appearing on a weekly basis on either NBC or MSNBC (“I don’t think I’ll be a ubiquitous presence”), and he expects to be featured on MSNBC’s new website. “I like to write, so I wouldn’t discount the possibility that I’ll do some writing for them as well,” he says.
— The New Republic, “Slyer Than Fox: The wild inside story of how MSNBC became the voice of the left,” today.
EXILE ON MAIN STREET: In the Wall Street Journal, Andrew Stuttaford reviews A Prince Among Stones, Prince Rupert Loewenstein’s newly-published memoirs of his financial adventures as the Rolling Stones’ lead accountant:
A mildly artsy upbringing had left him open to dealing with musicians too scruffy and too chaotic for most City financiers of that era. He understood that in swinging London the old hierarchies had swung apart. Besides, he was “rather bored.”
What he discovered was that the Rolling Stones’ finances were a shambles. What he appreciated was that they need not be so. For all their countercultural baggage, the band was a business, one that needed running properly. Mr. Loewenstein spirited them out from under the grasp of the British taxman and, so far as he could, replaced one-sided commercial arrangements on which they were on the wrong side with ones in which they were not.
As much as Mr. Loewenstein did not like their music (“I never played a Stones track by choice”), he recognized their strength as performers, a talent that, he saw, could be profitably exploited—but by the band and not just by promoters and other scavengers. So here, too, Mr. Loewenstein took charge, not only sorting out the contracts, and the merchandising, and the sponsors, but doing his best to bring a little more Ordnung, financial or otherwise, to the touring process. A leading figure in an “ancient” (naturally!) Catholic order, Mr. Loewenstein even modeled the band’s meet-and-greets on papal audiences. The author’s famous ancestor had died in an attempt to repel barbarians. A millennium later, his descendant embraced them, enriched them and, on the way, did pretty well for himself.
And so did the Rolling Stones: In 1971, multimillionaire British rock star John Lennon recorded “Imagine” with its notorious line, “Imagine no possessions.” That same year, the Rolling Stones’ didn’t need to just imagine it — their coffers really were empty, thanks to their previous mismanagement. Under Loewenstein’s advice, the Stones left England and moved to France, to avoid having their wealth confiscated by the rapacious taxation of high income earners by the British government, recorded Exile On Main Street, and never looked back. It’s a reminder of Conquest’s First Law of Politics, “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best,” particularly when it’s their money that’s on the line. (As opposed to grabbing more of yours.)
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
It is to the point that writing about the news is like writing about telekinetic squirrels.
In other words, it can’t possibly even be real, so writing about it feels creepy, pointless, and silly.
— Rachel Lucas; Read the whole thing.
(Via the Chicago Boyz.)
GOP PICKUP OPPORTUNITY: South Dakota Dem Senator Tim Johnson reportedly to retire.
WE’LL FIND OUT SOON ENOUGH IF SHE’S “EVOLVED” FROM THIS OPINION: Kagan 2009: “There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”
THE DEATH OF CONTRARIANISM: “The great irony is that The New Republic is repudiating contrarian neoliberalism precisely when we need it most,” Matt Welch writes in the new issue of Reason. “Somewhere, some day, a left-of-center critique of the Obamaite consensus will emerge, perhaps even one that revives the neoliberal economic ideas currently out of fashion. It’s hard to know where the epistemic opening will come from, but we can say for certain where it won’t: The New Republic.”
Read the whole thing.™
MEDICAID’S CRONY FEDERALISM: James Capretta at NRO offers a cutting and insightful take on the Obama Administration’s desperate attempts to get Governors to “voluntarily” expand their Medicaid programs to save this aspect of Obamacare. Call it coercion “light.”
IS THE CHOCOLATE RATION UP TO 20 GRAMS A WEEK YET IN OCEANIA? Bloomberg on Soda Ban: ‘We’re Not Banning Anything.’
On the other hand, “I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.”
But as Allahpundit asks at Hot Air, “Who’s the ‘we’ and who’s the ‘you’ in ‘your freedoms’? If ‘we’ get to regulate ‘your’ obesity because, after all, we have to pay for part of the cost to treat it, what other behaviors do ‘we’ get to regulate in the name of saving some money?”
Follow Allah’s post for some modest proposals to Mayor Mike on what he should regulate/ban next, from Ann Coulter and Nick Gillespie. “There’s no limit to the things we could prohibit in the name of cost-cutting. Which, of course, is the problem.”
RELATED: Rick Moran on “The Madness of King Bloomberg and His Acolytes.”
IS THIS TOLERANCE OR DIVERSITY IN ACTION? “I Got Kicked Out Of An ‘Independent Media Convention’ Today.”
VIDEO: When Engineers Have Dogs. “This is ridiculous. And I want one, right away.”
(Via Betsy Newmark.)
IT’S NOT NICE TO FOOL …Well, Rep. Frank Wolf for starters: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told a House Appropriations Committee panel last week that he counts 192 Chinese nationals working in jobs that provide them with physical access to space agency resources and facilities. The Washington Examiner’s Richard Pollock reports on the 118 Bolden didn’t mention.
FUNNY HOW THEY DIDN’T TAKE THIS ADVICE LAST YEAR: Matt Lauer Howler: “You can’t just repeat something over and over again until it sounds true. It’s not fair. You know how much trouble we would be in if we did that? If we repeated what one person told us over and over like it was a basic fact? We would be done.”
Why yes, you would.
RELATED: David Gregory Spreads High-Capacity Misinformation.
IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? Nope, it’s more of the same: “Obama Energy Nominee: We Need a Carbon Tax to Triple the Cost of Energy or Something.”
The big media have already written their encomiums in support of this idea. No, really, they have.
HOW MUCH DOES AN OBAMACARE STATE INSURANCE EXCHANGE COST?: In California, a whopping $910 million– and counting! Funded by you and me. By contrast, online insurance giant esurance cost about $40 million to get up and running, facilitating the comparison and purchase of all types of insurance, not just health insurance. Ah, the efficiencies of government!
ARE SMARTPHONES BAD FOR YOUR HEART?
TO ASK THE QUESTION IS TO ANSWER IT: “The impression that Obama has turned his back on Iraq stems from the fact that Obama largely has turned his back on Iraq. The question is: why does Obama ignore a country of Iraq’s strategic importance?”
FLAMING SNAKES AND OTHER BAD IDEAS: Apparently setting snakes on fire isn’t such a good idea. Just ask the woman in Texas who unintentionally incinerated her neighbor’s house.
SOME QUESTIONS FOR BLOOMBERG AND SCHUMER, regarding their “comprehensive background checks.”
RELATED: Universal background firearms checks means that anybody can request one.
What could go wrong?
CHANGE: For single retirees, is a ‘Golden Girls’ future the way to go?
COLORING THE NEWS: “The New York Times twists a police-bias trial beyond comprehension,” Heather Mac Donald writes at City Journal:
It takes determination to out-demagogue New York City’s anti-cop advocates, but the New York Times has done just that. A front-page article in Friday’s print edition announces: BRONX INSPECTOR, SECRETLY TAPED, SUGGESTS RACE IS A FACTOR IN STOPS. The story goes on to claim in its lead paragraph that a secretly taped recording “suggests that, in at least one precinct, a person’s skin color can be a deciding factor in who is stopped.” In fact, the exchange in the recording, between a police officer and his precinct commander, suggests something altogether different: that crime determines who is stopped by the police. But reporter Joseph Goldstein has twisted the taped conversation into a poisonous indictment of the police at a time when anti-cop passions, already enflamed by irresponsible city politicians, are running dangerously high.
So according to recent articles in the New York Times, not only is the NYPD racist, but so are many of the Times’ own readers. To borrow from former editor Howell Raines’ motto, the Times appears to be flooding the zone – with a fair amount of paranoia and oikophobia.
PROGESSIVES, PRESERVATION & PROSPERITY: “Many American progressives have shifted from their historic interest in economic growth and social mobility to a primary focus on environmental purity, whatever the social or economic cost,” Joel Kotkin writes in the Orange County Register.
They don’t call it the Catch-22 of radical environmentalism for nothing.