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Friday, August 30
Whoa. It has just come to our attention that this post seems to have accurately predicted this post by Mickey Kaus. Ladies and gentlemen, how do they do it? Tapped will be charging for palm readings starting next week..... [posted 3:10 pm]
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WHY CONSERVATIVES LOST THE CULTURE WARS. L. Brent Bozell's Parent's Television Council (PTC) has released its list of the best ten and worst ten television shows. Their least favorite show is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. PTC comments:
Offensive language has included uses of "bitch," "bastard," "hell," "damn," "ass," and "piss." Violence on Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not only frequent, but also very graphic. In past seasons, episodes included vampires being aroused by biting their victims, Buffy being stabbed, and Dawn's wrists being slit. In the 2001 season finale, Buffy committed suicide, jumping to her death to save the world. The 2001 - 2002 season premiere showed her decayed corpse regenerated and resurrected through witchcraft.
Ah, witchcraft, that perennial bugaboo of culture warriors everywhere. What is it with the witchcraft? Do they really believe American kids suffer from an epidemic of Satanism? Reader: Do you know any Satanists?
But seriously, folks. PTC's least favorite shows are among the highest rated of last week, including CSI and Friends. If we had access to the full-ratings for every show, we think PTC's favorites would tend to rank pretty low. Bernie Mac, sure. But Reba? Come on. [posted 2:25 pm]
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ONWARDS TO LABOR DAY. It's a tough day to be blogging, but we're trying. To the op-ed pages! The Post isn't just eating crow. David Ignatius has a fine column arguing that the war on Islamism should be, essentially, a kind of Cold War for Arab democracy. E.J. Dionne clarifies the Iraq debate here. Paul Krugman provides a useful refresher on Bush's changing rationale for and explanations of the tax cut and its effect on the economy. Mark Bowden, who knows
a bit about these things, explains why American troops needn't be paralyzed by Saddam Hussein's threat of urban warfare. [posted 2:20 pm]
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A MORON OF CROWS. Tapped was a bit flabbergasted by this op-ed in the Post this morning. Written by a "Dupont Circle artist" -- not an ornithologist -- the piece is titled "The Silence of the Crows," and begins thusly:
This morning I suddenly realized that there are no crows outside my window. I was listening to a National Public Radio story on the West Nile virus, in which an interviewee mentioned that the first thing that happens when West Nile invades an area is that all the crows die. And then it struck me like a wave of nausea: The crows that have populated my block for as long as I can remember had disappeared.
The piece concludes on this lugubrious note: "But I can't help wondering whether, like the 19th-century Americans who watched the decline of the ubiquitous passenger pigeon with utter disbelief, I am witnessing the disappearance of the crow from the American landscape."
Here's what Tapped has to say about all this: Somebody needs to get out more. We saw at least four crows on our morning jog today. (We also saw a black-crowned night heron, but that's another story.) Now, granted, we've seen some dead crows lately as well. But we'd wager that the crow won't be going the way of the passenger pigeon any time soon. In case you want to hear an expert on this question, we'll leave you with this longish quotation from an August 10, St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on the effect of West Nile on crows:
Daryl Damron, a wildlife biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, said he does not expect the disease to decimate local wild bird populations. Most susceptible are crows and blue jays, both members of the corvid bird family. Hawks are also vulnerable.[posted 10:50 am]Other birds, including songbirds, penguins and flamingos, have contracted the disease as well.
Missouri doesn't count wild birds, so there's no way of knowing what percentage of the population will be affected by the disease, Damron said. Crows and blue jays are so common that their populations can bounce back, he said.
"You've got to realize crows have withstood the test of time. They're an Old World species; they've been around forever," Damron said.
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Thursday, August 29 Here's an afternoon report on political fundraising (from Terry Neal, whose column title we won't mention) that includes some startling new totals. Soft money fundraising -- which will be banned (courts willing) after the upcoming election -- is up 150 percent from the last comparable (i.e., non-presidential) election cycle. The total is some $300 million thus far. Tapped particularly liked this remark from Common Cause president Scott Harshbarger: "Americans are facing a shaky economy, an unprecedented threat to our security and a potential war in Iraq. But these figures document that our national parties and national leaders have been spending time not working on the major problems but shaking down special interests for records amounts of campaign contributions." Bush raised another million today.
Neal, commenting on the recent Fortune Magazine cover story "You Bought. They Sold," belittles the soft money amounts. He notes that corporate executives made off with $66 billion before their companies went down the tubes.$300 million compared to $66 billion sure sounds like chump change -- and it is. One of the little known secrets of money and politics is how cheap it is to buy a politician. [posted 5:10 pm]
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CNN IS PRINTING OLD ONION ARTICLES. That has to be the explanation. [posted 3:30 pm]
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RITTENHOUSE REVIEW HAS NORAH VINCENT'S NUMBER (IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE). Not only is her website proving to be "a growing collection of incoherent and discursive Peggy Noonan-esque essays rejected by editors across the land." She also seems to have lifted one of her lines from -- get this -- Jackson Browne's song "The Pretender." [posted 1:45 pm]
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REPARATIONS CONUNDRUM. William Raspberry makes a splendid contribution to the reparations debate in the Washington Post. (Via Mathew Yglesias.) [posted 12:55 pm]
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MORE COULTER FACT-CHECKING. One "Dr. Limerick" emails to say that he has the most comprehensive compilation of Coulter mistakes, period. Enjoy. [posted 12:55 pm]
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BUT WHAT ABOUT BELLESILES? Asks InstaPundit, in response to our post yesterday about Ann Coulter's publisher. Well, sure. Bellesiles should correct his book, too. What does that have to do with Coulter? (This is an old rhetorical bait-and-switch: "Forget about the person you're criticizing! First you have to criticize the guy I'm criticizing!")
Reynolds does bring up an interesting question about "pop" vs. "serious" books. We're not sure whose offense carries more gravity: Coulter, because her numerous factual errors undermine vicious attacks that, for all their vitriol and mock-importance, can't really be taken seriously; or Bellesiles, because his numerous factual errors undermine a scholarly argument that was meant to be taken seriously. But either way, it's no real mystery why Coulter has come in for more criticism for her errors: She took swings at dozens of individual journalists, politicians, and publications, many of whom have responded personally. Her mistakes could be picked apart by anyone with a copy of Slander and access to Nexis. Bellesiles, on the other hand, allegedly falsified data on two-hundred-year-old probate records and such -- stuff that few laymen could easily double-check. It has little to do with Bellesiles's book being P.C. and Coulter's being right-wing.
Finally, it's an old story that book publishers have traditionally never considered themselves bound by the same standards for fact-checking as newspapers and periodicals. Sad but true. [posted 12:20 pm]
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PUNDIT SMACKDOWN. First came Brent and Henry. Feeling outclassed, the pro-invade-Iraq neocons have brought in their own ringer: Al Haig! He's in charge! [posted 12:10 pm]
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CORRECTION. Yesterday we wrote that Paul Krugman had served "on the Council of Economic Advisers." We didn't specify which Council, but the time period in question was during the Reagan years. Well, Krugman has posted a correction on his website regarding just this issue:
The error is the statement that I was on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. I wasn't - I was on the Council's staff. That's a significant difference. Council members are political appointees; they are expected to give speeches defending the administration's policies, and so on. Staff positions are, in principle, civil service jobs.
Krugman has more on his role here. [posted 11:40 am]
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SHOCKED. Tapped knows that we use that headline a lot, particularly when it comes to money and politics matters. But we continued to be stunned, outraged, and well, yes, shocked by how the FEC is irresponsibly setting the new rules for the McCain-Feingold law. Today we learn that certain groups -- left, right, and in between -- are asking for exemptions from the provisions that concern issue advertising. We've been around this barn before.... [posted 10:45 am]
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Wednesday, August 28 This excellent St. Petersburg Times article by John C. Cotey illustrates an interesting emerging blog phenomenon. Cotey did a piece on all the mistakes bloggers like Scoobie Davis, Bob Somerby, Joe Conason, and Tapped have found in Ann Coulter's book Slander. Basically, a single reporter would have to spend a lot of time to do this work himself or herself. But blogs can act as a kind of distributed intelligence -- a thousand bloggers typing away at a thousand keyboards, breaking down the problem without coordination, and eventually arriving at the big picture. Then an established reporter can come in, sift the wheat from the chaff, and put it all before a wider audience.
P.S. Who is Coulter's editor, Doug Pepper, kidding? "As for the other mistakes the Web is trumpeting, he says there are no other plans to correct anything other than a few 'little mistakes grammatically...We published the
book and we stand by its veracity. If a mistake is found in any book, we change it.'" [posted 5:15 pm]
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WAR POWERS REVISITED. Jeff Cooper has the definitive -- for a blog -- take on the White House's claim of authority to wage war on Iraq. It's very good. Hmm...is Cooper the antidote to libertarian dominance of law professor blogdom? [posted 3:05 pm]
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TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY OF KRUGMAN-BASHERS. We just read Lee Siegel's devastating Harper's essay on Paul Krugman and Richard Goldstein, in which he defends both against the attacks of, chiefly, Andrew Sullivan. (Siegel also gets in some swipes at Susan Sontag. More gravy!) The piece is worth buying this issue of Harper's for, even if, like Tapped, you've found it harder and harder to slog your way through each issue. Anyway, Siegel's little philippic provoked us to start sketching out some notes on the varieties of Krugman-bashing through time, of which Sullivan's frequent swipes on www.andrewsullivan.com are only one. Here's what we came up with.
Pro-Bush Partisans. This group includes Sullivan, as well as a variety of conservatives (many of whom were left without a target for their anger when Anthony Lewis retired). Their motive: To take a bite out of the one pundit who is probably the single most effective Bush critic in the country. (Leveling Krugman is all the more important because Krugman's special skill is to unpack the Bush administration's chief brand of dishonesty; that is, budget and tax policy.) Their method: Gin up bogus charges of mendacity or conflict of interest, bounce them around the blogosphere, Lucianne.com, and FreeRepublic.com, and get the Wall Street Journal and the National Review to pick them up.[posted 2:10 pm]Fellow Economists. Unlike Krugman, these pure academics toil in the genteel obscurity of universities across the country, writing technical papers for the Journal of Economics and Annals of Statistics. Their motive: Sheer jealousy. For the Fellow Economists, Krugman's popular accomplishments (the bestselling books, the Times column, the fame) are all the more galling in the face of Krugman's academic accomplishments (winning the Clark Medal, serving on the Council of Economic Advisers). Their method: Whisper in the ears of sympathetic Pro-Bush Partisans that Krugman's academic work has gone downhill ever since he starting writing that Times column.
Offended Neoliberals. Among top Washington political writers of the center-left, the most cherished journalistic value is "counterintuitivity." This value is best honored by the periodical writing of articles explaining why one's own side is completely and utterlywrong about everything (and also stupid or "idiotic.") The greatest sin, on the other hand, is to be a consistent partisan -- someone who prefers to focus on attacking the other side. By these standards, Krugman is something of an abomination: A credentialed smart guy who shares the neoliberal pedigree but now has the bad taste to bash only Bush. Their motive: Cut Krugman down to size. Their method: niggling catalogues of minor errors, blown up to fantastic proportions, and repeated ad nauseum.
Liberal Economic Writers. Once upon a time, Krugman was at loggerheads with prominent liberal economists and economic writers, many of them affiliated with the Prospect, including Robert Reich and Laura D'Andrea Tyson. Their motive: Substantive disagreement with Krugman on issues of economic policy. (Although some of the infighting arose from Krugman's attacks on these individuals, whom he called "policy entrepeneurs," for their alleged promulgation of uncredentialed economic policies and theories.) Their method: None, anymore. This category is defunct because whatever disagreements this group may have with Krugman are negated by his sheer effectiveness as a Bush critic. Liberals and progressives are now Krugman's biggest fans.
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HARD RAINES GONNA FALL. Cynthia Cotts has a good piece tracking the "Howell
Raines is running a campaign against the war!" non-controversy. But don't you dare read it before you read this article by John Judis in the latest issue of the Prospect about precisely the same thing. Both Cotts and Judis agree, incidentally, that there's no doubt that Henry Kissinger was actively criticizing the Bush administration, if not opposing a war in theory. That's the man-bites-dog story here, and The New York Times was right to make a big deal out of it. [posted 1:25 pm]
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TIM MCVEIGH WASN'T A LIBERAL. Michelangelo Signorile has a good column calling Mickey Kaus on his claim that the threat of violent political action now, in the Bush age, exists mainly on the left. It wasn't a very plausible argument then. It's less and less plausible when you start trolling around FreeRepublic.com or, God forbid, reading about what Ann Coulter thinks. (Quick: Name a well-known Democratic pundit, operative, or politician who has called for the assasination of President Bush? Exactly. Coulter, in her book High Crimes and Misdemeanors, suggested just such action with regard to Bill Clinton.) C'mon, Mickey. You were mistaken. It's not too late to take it back! [posted 1:15 pm]
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MORE POSTMODERN BLOGGING. And while we're quoting stuff about the Prospect, we also thought you might enjoy this amusing e-mail from our office manager Ellen Pinzur:
I took a call yesterday from an older man who had just the hint of a German accent. He said he had called the Boston office asking for the Editorial Department & was routed to DC. He went on to say that the reason he was calling was that, as English is his fourth language, he had a question regarding a word in one of the TAP articles. (Ellen's Note: His English is very formal yet extremely clear. I just hoped he asked me about a word I KNEW!) He said the line is: "Mary Matalin, Dick Cheney's flack." I asked if "flack" is what he didn't quite understand, and he replied yes. So, I said that a flack comes to us via the world of public relations & advertising and is used for a person who promotes the boss's position wholeheartedly without deviation; and he said, "Oh, a spokesperson!" At which point I said he understood perfectly. He then thanked me & said good-bye. I never did learn his name.
It's a small world, after all. [posted 12:30 pm]
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WE DON'T USUALLY DO THIS, BUT... We couldn't resist drawing attention to this hilarious moment from a debate between the Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates -- one of whom, Robert Reich, is currently on leave from his position of chairman of the Prospect -- as reported in the Boston Globe:
Reich also tried to lighten the questioning when he was instructed to ask a question to Tolman. Reich said he has been traveling around the state, touting his record as labor secretary, as a defender of progressive values, and his accomplishments, pushing for an increase in the minimum wage and cracking down on sweatshops.[posted 12:15 pm]"I keep on talking about my experience. But enough about me," Reich told Tolman. "What do you think is the most admirable thing about me?"
Tolman countered that he admired Reich's role as a TV commentator and a founder of the liberal journal American Prospect. "I look for you to return back there, my friend, when I'm governor," Tolman said.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY. From former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson, explaining to The New York Times why we need eccentricity in government:
When you have spirited people, whether you agree with them or not, it adds a little yeast to the dough. In your country club, your church and business, about 15 percent of the people are screwballs, lightweights and boobs and you would not want those people unrepresented in Congress.[posted 7:50 am]
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Tuesday, August 27 This has got to be the funniest thing that's come out of the National Republican Congressional Committee in awhile. It's a memo from NRCC press staffers Steve Schmidt and Carl Forti to GOP candidates on Social Security; we acquired it through use of the same black arts that we typically employ to get such things. It reads:
There has been much confusion in the press on the difference between privatization and personal accounts. This confusion periodically results in inaccurate reporting. Because of this, Republicans must educate reporters on the difference between personal accounts and privatization. We must expose the Democrat strategy to portray 'personal accounts' and 'privatization' as identical. And in conveying our principles on Social Security, we must insist that the press accurately describe our positions.
And:
Despite this, some reporters -- even some national reporters -- continue to inaccurately describe the concept of personal accounts as privatization. To the extent that reporters are wittingly or unwittingly complicit in the Democrat strategy to make 'personal accounts' and 'privatization' one in the same, they are using the power of the press to promote inaccurate Democrat spin and taking sides in the midterm elections.
But guys, the press is accurate portraying your posititions. [posted 2:30 pm]
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ANSWER: NOT A PARODY. Patrick Nielsen Hayden has more on the al-Qaeda-as-Foundation connection. Okay, okay, we admit it, we knew all along it wasn't a parody. But it should have been. You could probably do about as good a job proving that bin Laden was inspired by the Teletubbies as the Guardian did proving he was inspired by Asimov. [posted 2:20 pm]
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JUST ONE MINUTE. The Minuteman says we missed something silly in James Baker's op-ed in our commentary on it yesterday. [posted 2:15 pm]
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NORAH VINCENT'S SPIKED SUN COLUMN. Here's the link. Apparently they told her it was "too rhetorical." From what we know about Seth Lipsky, a smart neocon who's also a real journalist and outstanding editor, here's the translation: "Get off the couch and do some actual reporting instead of stringing together vague platitudes." Or something like that.
P.S. Does Tapped do actual reporting? Only in our day job. [posted 1:25 pm]
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WELL, IF DICK CHENEY SAYS SO. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports that Dick Cheney says he has "no doubt" Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is preparing to use them. Well, gee, why didn't you just say so? Just show us the evidence and ... oh, right. For the conspiracy theorists: "Cheney's speech caused crude oil prices to surge on war expectations, as advocates of such a move interpreted his words, more forceful and detailed than any yet offered by a senior official, as a virtual battle cry."
P.S. You know, Tapped could really easily be convinced this war makes sense. We just find it curious that the White House has done so little to convince us. Why not make public some of the evidence, at least in general form, that Saddam is doing what Cheney says he's doing?
P.P.S. Now Anthony Zinni, Bush's own Middle East envoy, says he's opposed to a war on Iraq. He favors,
sensibly, focusing our efforts on Middle East peace and the elimination of al-Qaeda. [posted 1:00 pm]
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BEINART ON GENERALS. The New Republic's editor argues that "doves" on Iraq are mistaking generals' experience for wisdom. Tapped thinks Beinart is working at too abstract a level. The particulars matter in this case, not just the fact that the brass is opposed to fighting in Iraq. (As Beinart points out, key members of the brass opposed going to war in Kuwait, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and were wrong each time. Actually, someone else pointed this out first.) That is, those who argue for invading Iraq have failed to make a convincing case for doing so -- in fact, have acted as though there is no need to make a case. They have displayed a naivete about the difficulties inherent in such a task -- a naivete that is rightfully alarming to men of military experience, and thus even more alarming to those of us without military experience. Beinart tries to turn around the argument, holding that it is in fact Chuck Hagel et al who are trying to shut down the debate by arguing that only veterans can participate. But remember: The invade-Iraq crowd have been attacking the military for months now, accusing them of being, in essence, wimps. No wonder the brass has its feathers ruffled.
P.S. Nicholas Kristof has a good column on this. [posted 12:55 pm]
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HOW TO FIX J-SCHOOL. Clyde Haberman, the underappreciated metro columnist
for The New York Times, has a few ideas. Among them: "Young
reporters need to be taught to avoid clichés like the plague." And "Forget about courses that teach phrases like 'off the record,' 'background' and 'deep background.' Nobody really understands the distinctions." Think he's
exagerating? He's not. Anyway, this is as
good a time as any to resurrect Michael Lewis's classic New Republic story, "J-School Ate My Brain." For fairness' sake, though, you also have to read the dean's response at the bottom, in which he points out about a half-dozen (minor) mistakes Lewis made. [posted 12:30 pm]
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OUR WITS ARE A LITTLE DULL THIS MORNING... So could somebody tell us, is this supposed to be a parody? And if so, of what? [posted 8:05 am]
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THE MILLION -- SORRY, BILLION -- DOLLAR QUESTION. Tapped gets the impression that much of today on the blogosphere may be devoted to coming up with exceptions to this sweeping, but basically true, statement at the end of the latest Paul Krugman column:
Wouldn't it be nice if just once, on some issue, the Bush administration came up with a plan that didn't involve weakened environmental protection, financial breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations and reduced public oversight?
So, let us begin: Wait, Paul, that's not true of war on Iraq, is it? [posted 6:45 am]
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Monday, August 26
Eric Alterman slams Alexander Cockburn. We know which side we're on, and if you read this post (in case you haven't already), so will you. [posted 5:20 pm]
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"INVESTOR'S RIGHTS" VS. "CORPORATE CORRUPTION." Looks like DLC folks Ed Kilgore, Simon Rosenberg, and others managed to convince the Democrats to alter their fall message. The latest email message from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to arrive in Tapped's inbox is headlined "Today: Pennsylvania
Investors' Rights News Conference." More on this later. [posted 4:35 pm]
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HOW TO UNDERSTAND BUDGET DEBATES. If, like Tapped -- no, wait. Scratch that. Tapped has this friend who has trouble understanding the whole Social Security/trust fund/IOU/lockbox debate. Max Sawicky has a primer that Tapped's friend will find very useful. You will, too. [posted 3:30 pm]
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THE PRESCRIPTION DRUG FIGHT. You may have seen this article in the Post, as well. Prescription drug makers are suing state governments that have incentivized their prescription drug plans so as to encourage the use of lower-cost generics and equivalents whenever possible. Seems prudent, no? After all, nearly every private medical plan already does the same thing. (Tapped has bad allergies, and when we switched drug plans recently, we had to switch back from one newer allergy medication to an older one we had used previously -- one that was cheaper and basically did the same thing.) But the drug industry doesn't like it:
The industry, represented by the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), argues that medications that appear the same may affect patients differently. The state programs, PhRMA says, illegally restrict care for the poor by creating barriers to the most expensive drugs.
The response to this charge, unfortunately, is buried way down in the piece.
Lower-cost substitutes can be made only with medications that provide the same therapy and have the same active ingredients.
Ah-ha. So much for PhRMA's spin. [posted 2:35 pm]
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WHO SAYS AUGUST IS A SLOW NEWS MONTH? It was a big weekend for those following the Iraq debate. First off, no doubt the most important thing to check out is James Baker's op-ed in the New York Times from Sunday. Baker's not exactly opposed to war in Iraq. But he doesn't think the Bush administration should go off half-cocked, which is basically what they've been doing. In his piece, Baker doesn't soft-pedal the challenge of invasion the way some of the Pentagon neocons have, what with their visions of parachuting into Baghdad with a platoon of Army Rangers and taking over the whole country in three days. (Okay, so we're exagerating. But not as much as we'd like to be.)
Among other things, Baker calls for the U.S. to urge Israel to pull troops back to the September 2000 positions while halting settlement activity, so that fighting on the West Bank won't distract us while we're invading Iraq. He calls for the U.S. to build a coalition, both to share the costs of the war and so as to occupy the moral high ground. And most significantly, Baker endorses seeking a U.N. resolution, on the grounds that it would "put the burden of supporting an outlaw regime and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction on any countries that vote no."
This is a big deal. The pro-war boosters in the conservative press can no longer pile on poor Brent Scowcroft. And the idea that The New York Times is on some anti-war vendetta (notice a common Tapped theme today?) is increasingly ridiculous: When respected members of the GOP establishment, the military, nearly all Democrats, a healthy number of Republicans, and the public displays skepticism about a way in Iraq, why shouldn't the Times?
Given the way this debate is turning, it's no surprise to see White House officials now claiming they can wage war on Iraq without congressional approval. Note that this is a Monday story, and Baker's op-ed came out over the weekend. Seems like this was a calculated response on the part of the Bushies -- a war to acknowledge that some pretty heavy GOP foreign policy guns are stacked against them (Baker, Scowcroft) without acually changing their minds on anything. It's worth noting, however, just how tenuous their reasoning is, at least by the lights of those constitutional scholars cited in the article:
Michael J. Glennon, an international law professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, specifically questioned the administration's reliance on the Gulf War resolution. He said that authority "was narrowly circumscribed and was directed at reversing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait."Glennon said the authority apparently ended on April 6, 1991, when Iraq formalized a cease-fire with a notification to the U.N. Security Council. "Once extinguished, the authority did not revive when Iraq failed to comply with its obligations," Glennon said.
Tapped is no law professor. But we are humorists, and even on its face, the idea that the 1991 resolution remains in force doesn't past the laugh test.
What's sad is that their may well be a good case for going into Iraq, but the Bush administration doesn't seem especially interested in making it. Or, if they do make the argument, to being bound in any way by the response. In the end, all this really illustrates just how amateurish, blinkered and irresponsible the Pentagon neocons -- Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, etc. -- are. They don't care that experienced foreign policy hands object to their course of action. They don't care the nearly all the Pentagon brass opposes them. They don't care what the public thinks or wants. They don't even care if such a war is unconstitutional. They've already made up their minds. Do we really we want these guys to be in charge?
P.S. Blogger Jeff Cooper has an excellent post on the degree to which we should care what those military men say. Conservatives, who have been mau-mauing Democrats and liberals for decades on questions of military experience and expertise -- remember how Bill Clinton wasn't fit to serve as commander-in-chief because he was a draft-dodger? -- now say that it's absurd to give special weight to the opinion of soldiers. Cooper wisely points out that "A military background, in my thinking, does not in and of itself convey moral authority; it certainly doesn't guarantee that an opinion about the propriety of commencing military action will be correct. It does, however, grant a perspective about the nature of
warfare that those without such experience necessarily lack." Read the whole post. It's brilliant. [posted 1:30 pm]
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FACT-CHECK SEAN HANNITY! Actually, we don't have to. Ben Fritz and Bryan
Keefer have done it for us in Salon. [posted 12:20 pm]
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BOY, THE TIMES SURE IS BIASED AGAINST THE WAR. Imagine if they gave this guy, say, a weekly column on the op-ed page and a high-profile perch in the Times Magazine? [posted 12:15 pm]
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POOR ENVIRONMENTALISTS. Okay, time for for some classic -- and completely unscientific -- pop psychologizing. Tapped has developed the armchair theory that beating up on The New York Times has come to rival obsessive Clinton-bashing in the conservative psyche. Times bashing, after all, has all the standard characteristics: it's obsessive, it's repetitive, it's quibbling, it's scandal-mongering. Indeed, because the day-in, day-out criticism is frequently so completely out of proportion to the paper's various offenses and betrays such a strong animus, it makes one inevitably sympathize with the Times -- which, despite its inarguable shortcomings, is not exactly evil incarnate. Kind of like Clinton.
That said, we have a quibble with the paper ourselves. On one side of the New York Times editorial page this morning, we're told that Bush's forest fire plan "includes nothing to inconvenience the timber industry, and plenty to worry the environmentalists"; the editorial then proceeds to take the environmentalists' side. But on the other side of the page, we're told in a headline (for an op-ed piece by the new anti-environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg) that "The Environmentalists Are Wrong." Note to Times editors: Why not save the token anti-green op-ed for a day when you're not running a pro-green editorial? (P.S. You can take our advice. We don't hate you.) [posted 9:55 am]
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Note: This section is currently a work in progress.....
Altercation: Eric Alterman has the best-named blog we know -- and the content's great too.
Instapundit: Glenn Reynolds is blogging's 800 pound gorilla.
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