Posted 6:52 PM by Robert

And Here I Go!

The Man Without Qualities and brood will be attending a family reunion in Sao Paulo, Brazil, starting tomorrow. A relative there exports a majority of the black pepper that the United States consumes - and he is turning 80. So everyone - in excess of 200 people - will be flying in for the festivities.

Blogging will be sporadic, at best, until June 16.

I am certainly looking forward to being comforted by the aircraft captain's new-style chatter from the cockpit tomorrow morning.

Posted 9:03 AM by Robert

And There They Go!

New York Times executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resigned.

The Times article on the event says:

Mr. Raines, 60, told [the assembled Times multitude]: ``Remember, when a great story breaks out, go like hell.'' The remark ... could have been spoken by ... the legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant ...

But one would have to be complete, pretentious nerd writing for a swooning, out-of-touch New York newspaper to even imagine Bear Bryant giving a rat's ass about any "great story" breaking out.

And why couldn't Raines just say something simple and classy like: "When I make a mistake, it's a beaut - so now they're making me leave"? The subtle allusion to LaGuardia would have been just right.

The Times also notes with more inappropriate, self-preening sentimentality that the decapitations occurred In a hastily arranged ceremony in the third-floor newsroom, on the same spot where the paper had celebrated winning a record seven Pulitzer prizes just 14 months ago...

Sure. Just like Nixon leaving the White House only months after he won a record re-election victory.

Actually, if we're all really lucky, it will turn out to be more like Spiro Agnew leaving - with Pinch's departure still to come for that final, Nixonian moment!

POSTSCRIPT: A bizarre aspect of the Times resignations is the appointment of Joseph Lelyveld as Interim Executive Editor. This appointment is bizarre because the resignations are apparently attributable to the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg disasters. But as this Slate article points out, Lelyveld is already sullied on just these counts:

Lelyveld's stock protects him still. Nobody blames him for the Blair and Bragg fiascos, but he's as culpable as Raines. He hired and promoted both reporters and gave Bragg the idea that regular newsroom rules didn't apply to him. Bragg suggests as much in his memoir, All Over but the Shoutin'. Lelyveld, then managing editor, stops at Bragg's desk to discuss his second story for the Times, one that Bragg thought his bosses might reject. Writes Bragg, "I do not remember exactly what [Lelyveld] said, but it was something to the effect of, 'I know we said we would try to get you some gentle editing, but …' and my heart froze. 'But we had to change the comma in your lead.' "

Lelyveld is not hated in the newsroom, but Raines is. Since both men are equally culpable in the Blair and Bragg fiascos, the resignations of Raines and Boyd seem not to be directly prompted by those fiascos - but rather by the newsroom hatred of Raines that condensed around them. That hatred seems to have made the Times all but ungovernable - which, come to think of it, is often the way affirmative action programs - and all hiring and promotions systems not based on merit - play themselves out.

And, speaking of "merit" and people who have it - let's not forget, now that Raines is gone it again may be possible for Andrew Sullivan to write for the Times magazine!

UPDATE: Don Luskin finds shocking, unexpected and probably unintended honesty at the Times. Goodness - how did honesty get through all the baloney plating?

Posted 10:48 AM by Robert

Erosion? Heck No, It's Just Rot: Towards A General Theory Of The Krugman/DeLong Rhetorical Inflationary Cycle

Astute reader Patrick Sullivan notes that Paul Krugman grossly misrepresents the position of Max Hastings in this Krugmanaical misquote:

... Max Hastings, the veteran war correspondent — who supported Britain's participation in the war — writes that "the prime minister committed British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit, and it stinks."

But it is not true that Hastings supported Britain's participation in the war or that he has ever been fond of the Bush Administration. What Hastings actually wrote was:

I hardly know anyone, and I doubt if you do, who is eager to join President George W Bush's war with Iraq. Before reaching an unpalatable conclusion, however, let us summarise some good reasons for having nothing to do with this adventure. ... One of the most dangerous developments since the attack on the Twin Towers is that Israel's hawks have persuaded some influential Americans to equate the terrorists of al-Qaeda with the Palestinian suicide-bombers. ... The US refusal to match an attack on Iraq with a show of opposition to the excesses of the Sharon regime on the West Bank seems one of the gravest weaknesses of American policy. But the British Government, which espouses this view, has so far entirely failed to persuade Washington of its validity. ... Fighting al-Qaeda demands a long, unglamorous struggle dominated by intelligence and diplomacy. Invading Iraq provides an opportunity to deploy American military power to maximum effect, but is irrelevant to combating Muslim terrorism. America appears to lack any credible policy for the future of Iraq after deposing Saddam. ... All these seem substantial objections to starting a war. Yet set against them is an overwhelming reality: the United States is determined to fight. ... If Britain now withdrew its contingent unilaterally from the invasion force, US anger would be unrestrained.... If we piled arms now, in American eyes we would look not merely ridiculous, but treacherous. ... Mr Bush and Mr Blair have made a miserable job of explaining their purposes in Iraq.... US policy, as explained so far, appears to reflect the visceral instincts of Mr Bush, rather than any comprehensible legal framework. ...

I feel deeply uncomfortable about war against Iraq, but I now see no alternative to British participation. This is scarcely a dignified intellectual position. But the alternative, a decisive breach with the US when the West faces grave threats to its security, seems too painful to contemplate. I suspect Mr Blair thinks the same.

The excellent Atlantic Blog points out that Brad DeLong has also served up this whopper:

Brad DeLong ... offers up a piece by Max Hastings ... that is critical of the Bush administration, leading it with this comment: "Britain's genuinely conservative Daily Telegraph is now filled with unhappy campers... " But [DeLong] does not bother to mention that Hastings has been opposed to the war from the beginning .... And Hastings has continued to be hostile (reg. required) to the Bush administration. ...

Yesterday, James Taranto termed this particular Krugman effort an unusually deranged column even by his standards. The same might be said of the more subtle and evasive DeLong effort - but then no major, if swooning, media outlet has provided DeLong's derangements wide circulation. Faced with what they see as an increasingly desperate political situation, Messrs. Krugman, DeLong and other liberal commentators are resorting to increasingly preposterous rhetorical inflation in apparent efforts to pump up aggregate support from their political base. As Taranto puts it: But now an argument is developing on the Democratic left that somehow the policies themselves are corrupt--that because Bush doesn't agree with liberal ideas, he is a liar. And, as I noted yesterday, Democrats and Herr Doktorprofessor seem to feel the need to reach their respective bases - in each case apparently a base presumed by them to be ever more lacking in intelligence and education.

I believe that we must face the unpleasant facts. There is a clear need for a Friedman-Phelps type correction of the Krugman/DeLong rhetorical inflationary cycle. As Professor Phelps reminded in the Wall Street Journal yesterday in the economic context:

Behind that view is the "aggregate demand" fallacy: the government can deliver high employment simply by pumping up high aggregate demand -- by easier money or bigger budgetary deficits. A.W. Phillips sensed the mistake here, arguing in 1958 that a pumped-up employment level typically brings a higher rate of inflation (illustrated with his famous curve). Milton Friedman and I corrected Phillips , explaining in 1968 that, to keep on doing the pumping trick, the rate of inflation would have to be driven higher and higher -- until the payments system broke down or the policy was halted.

And so too with now-ongoing liberal rhetorical inflation: the rate of inflation will have to be driven higher and higher -- until the system breaks down or the policy is halted. Indeed, Herr Doktorprofessor's rhetoric has already reached Weimarian dimensions, comparable to the benighted German era in which one routinely brought a wheelbarrow of currency to market just to buy a loaf of bread. Similarly, here are some samples that Herr Doktorprofessor yesterday wheel barrowed into the marketplace of ideas:

[T]his administration... — to an extent never before seen in U.S. history — systematically and brazenly distorts the facts ...

[T]he Republican National Committee declared that the latest tax cut benefits "everyone who pays taxes." That is simply a lie. ...

[T]he bald-faced misrepresentation of an elitist tax cut offering little or nothing to most Americans is only the latest in a long string of blatant misstatements. Misleading the public has been a consistent strategy for the Bush team ...

Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters — a group that includes a large segment of the news media — obediently insist that black is white and up is down.

[T]he neoconservatives who fomented this war were nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders by Central American death squads in the 1980's ...

[T]he selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history ...

[O]ur political system has become utterly, and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted.

Surely, given the current credibility crisis at the Times, draconian inflation fighting solutions are appropriate. Yes, yes, one could bring in a new columnist and impose some harsh rhetorical conversion ratio (say, 100,000-to-one) between the new rhetorical currency and the outgoing, debased Krugmark, much the way Argentina and those banana republics which Herr Doktorprofessor adores comparing to the United States do repeatedly. But exactly that banana republic experience cautions us that without some ongoing rhetorical discipline, the salutary effects of the new currency would soon be lost - just as endless versions of pesos or reales or or whatevers flow meaninglessly into each other.

Perhaps Herr Doktorprofessor's rhetoric could be pegged to some relatively stable standard. Yes, it would be uncomfortable for Herr Doktoprofessor to receive that memorandum from Pinch or Howell requiring that a Paul Krugman column be no more than, say, 8 times as inflated or preposterous than, say, the E.J. Dionne effort then in circulation. A rhetoric board, modeled on the currency boards that have helped some inflation-prone nations so much, might also be an option. Or perhaps the Times should admit the extent of the problem and consider full-sale Dionneization. I realize that each of these suggestions would be strong medicine - even humiliating at first. But surely Times administration, Democrats and liberals (or is it just "liberals?" - must ask Paul) generally must come to understand that something serious must be done! And if some of those those banana republics can pull themselves together - at least for a while from time to time - the Times Op-Ed page can do it, too!

UPDATE: More good things - from Luskin.

FURTHER UPDATE: Some non-Times examples of hyperinflation of liberal rhetoric to the point of prevarication or close to it: a Guardian retraction (In our front page lead on May 31 headlined "Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims," we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.) and the hideous, fake Wolfowitz ("What WMD? It was all about the oil!") misquote that has been globally disseminated by the left.

Posted 10:38 AM by Robert

Further Erosions

A terrible editorial gaffe has been committed!

It appears that the Times has inadvertently run another, earlier draft of Waggy Dog Stories instead of Herr Doktorprofessor's actual column today! That seems to be the case because today's "new" column differs in substance from the prior column only in that the "new" column cites to the Times of London instead of the Financial Times, although there is again no cite to Herr Doktorprofessor's own employer. The entire intellectual and analytic substance of the "new" column is as follows (contrary to current Times and Maureen Dowd practice, MWQ will attempt to retain the original meaning in redacting):

Bush administration "grossly manipulated intelligence" about W.M.D.'s. ...[A]nyone who talks about an "intelligence failure" is missing the point. ... Bush and Blair administrations ... demanded reports supporting their case, while dismissing contrary evidence. ... The Times of London ... drew parallels between the selling of the war and other misleading claims: "The government is seen as having `spun' the threat from Saddam's weapons just as it spins everything else." ... "[S]pin" is far too mild a word for what the Bush administration does, all the time. ... the public was manipulated ... the fact that misrepresentation and deception are standard operating procedure for this administration, which — to an extent never before seen in U.S. history — systematically and brazenly distorts the facts. Am I exaggerating? …

Republican ... declared that the latest tax cut benefits "everyone who pays taxes." That is simply a lie. ... eight million children denied any tax break by a last-minute switcheroo [and] 50 million American households ... [A] great majority ... do pay taxes. ... [L]atest in a long string of blatant misstatements. Misleading the public has been a consistent strategy for the Bush team ... So why should we give the administration the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy? ...

Each time, the administration comes up with another whopper ... a large segment of the news media ... obediently insist that black is white and up is down. ... Meanwhile the "liberal" media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up. Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies.

It's no answer to say that Saddam was a murderous tyrant. ... [The] neoconservatives who fomented this war were nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders ... by Central American death squads in the 1980's. ... The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. ... [T]he selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history ...

But here's the thought that should make those commentators really uncomfortable. ... Mr. Bush can fight ... a "khaki election" next year. ... our political system has become utterly, and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted [!!!!!]

But here's the thought that should make Herr Doktorprofessor really uncomfortable. Suppose that this "new" column really is a new column, not the accidental printing of an earlier draft from the prior column. Then, despite Herr Doktorprofessor's best efforts, some new information has, in fact, percolated through! For example, he asks why should we give the administration the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy? So Herr Doktorprofessor implicitly admits that his criticisms would be defeated if his readers do, in fact, give the President the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy. And the people will give the President that benefit of the doubt, no matter how high the volume of the Krugmania or how wide the floodgates open at the Times. For God's sake, people gave the Augusta National the benefit of the doubt even after those Times floodgates were opened wide for what seemed like months.

Herr Doktorprofessor also signals by this column his understanding that it is, in fact, an answer to these Krugmanaical rants to point out that Saddam was a murderous tyrant, although there are lots of other effective answers, too. I will credit even his eroding intellect with the ability to understand that American legitimacy in overthrowing a murderous dictator is not undermined by the presence in the Administration of some functionaries who had opinions in the 1980's of which Herr Doktorprofessor does not approve. Or maybe he does approve of those opinions, and is just insisting on consistency from his opponents, since his current argument amounts to a demand that they be nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders in Iraq. In any event, his is not a point likely to find its way soon into a stump speech by any of the various Democratic contenders for the Presidency.

Perhaps the most curious piece of new information appears in his assertion: The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. Perhaps they were. The news pages of the Times made the same assertion a few days ago ("Mr. Powell ... in a dramatic presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5 ... argued that Iraq's weapons programs and links to Al Qaeda made it an imminent threat to the world."). But during the entire United Nations dust-up it was always quite clear that the United States was not arguing that Iraq needed to pose "an imminent threat" in the meaning of that term in international law for its invasion to be justified. If the public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat, it certainly wasn't President Bush or his main opponents who were doing the telling. In fact, much of the public debate over the emerging "Bush Doctrine" concerned whether the United States was constrained by arguably out-of-date notions of "imminent threat," as described in this report and the materials it cites:

In September, President Bush unveiled a new military strategy that supports US right to preemptive strikes. "Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat—most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack," the strategy document states. It continues, "We must adapt the concept of imminent threat," and goes on to assert the right to strike first even if no imminent threat exists.

The Administration and Secretary Powell did argue that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in violation of international law - but the Administration and Secretary Powell did not argue that Iraq was imminently threatening to use those weapons. That's what the Administration's opponents claimed the Administration had to show. Had Herr Doktorprofessor and the Times' reporter perhaps drunk too much iced tea and left the room while all this was going on?

One need not tarry for more than a moment over Herr Doktorprofessor's parroting the Democrats' silly "complaint" that the tax cut doesn't benefit "everyone who pays taxes." The people who have been saying that obviously mean that the tax cut benefits every individual who pays federal income taxes, which is correct. Contrary to the nutty Democrat-Krugmania construction, claims that the tax cut benefits "everyone who pays taxes" were not intended to imply that the cut will result in direct government payments to everyone who pays state and local sales taxes, government "user fees" or foreign income taxes, Parisian airport duties and corprate income taxes. (All of those persons will ultimately benefit from the general stimulative effects of the cut. But that, too, is not what claims that the tax cut benefits "everyone who pays taxes" were intended to mean.) Democrats and Herr Doktorprofessor seem to feel the need to reach their respective bases - in each case apparently a base presumed by them to be ever more lacking in intelligence and education. Those presumptions are errors.

What to make of his hysterical rant that each time the Administration "comes up with another whopper" a large segment of the news media "obediently insist" that "black is white and up is down" while "Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies?" No doubt the Administration deeply shares Herr Doktorprofessor's desire that Democratic politicians viciously attack the Administration's "lies" as he suggests. Indeed, the image of every single Democratic politician in the nation reading Herr Doktorprofessor's own columns - and then publicly and wholeheartedly adopting Herr Doktorprofessor's thoughts and rhetoric as that politician's own - no doubt brings tears of delirious joy to the eyes of everyone working in the West Wing, right down to the janitors.

Am I exaggerating?

POSTSCRIPT:

Herr Doktorprofessor writes: Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters — a group that includes a large segment of the news media — obediently insist that black is white and up is down. Meanwhile the "liberal" media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up.

Where does the New York Times fall in this peculiar taxonomy? Surely Herr Doktorprofessor doesn't think that the Times obediently insist[s] that black is white and up is down! But is he admitting that the Times is liberal - or is his employer only "liberal?" If the Times is only "liberal" - but not actually liberal - then Herr Doktorprofessor says it report[s] only that some people say that black is black and up is up. But the Times does more than that! Why, Herr Doktorprofessor himself is proof! So he must be admitting that the Times is actually liberal - not just "liberal."

My goodness! Who would have thought it would be Paul Krugman, of all people, who would break ranks and admit that the New York Times has a liberal bias?! How will that go down with embattled Times management?

The evidence that he is planning his departure from the Times - perhaps for a home in the media of that green and pleasant land he now loves to cite - surely continues to mount!

MORE: Taranto decks Krugman: "But now an argument is developing on the Democratic left that somehow the policies themselves are corrupt--that because Bush doesn't agree with liberal ideas, he is a liar. ... [A]n unusually deranged column even by [Krugman's] standards." So very true. And so very indicative that Democrats peer with increasing panic towards 2004 elections to see looming an image of their prospects that resembles the interior of a roach motel.

Posted 11:39 PM by Robert

Naive Was I Ere I Saw Evian

According to the Wall Street Journal:

European and Japanese officials expressed concern that the U.S. is pushing down the already-weak dollar and threatening to snuff out any signs of a global economic recovery. President Bush, despite statements from his Treasury secretary that have helped weaken it, reassured them he is committed to a strong U.S. currency. ...A[n expected ECB interest] rate cut could provide some stimulus for the euro zone's beleaguered economies and add momentum to an economic and stock-market rebound in the U.S., the driver of the world's growth. But if the ECB's action fails to cushion the dollar's fall, the greenback's continued weakness could send struggling Japan and Germany, the world's second- and third-largest economies, into an even longer slump.

Let's see. There's a US Presidential election coming up next year. A softening US dollar will likely help employment and industrial conditions in the US for probably a couple of years. But, dear me, it looks like Germany and Europe generally would be badly hit. Perhaps Germany's development minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, let all that slip her mind as she attempted to advance Germany's development by joining "a chorus of criticism in Europe" over coalition forces' failure thus far to find substantial stocks of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.... "We see in the current discussion that it was about oil, it wasn't about weapons of mass destruction."

But, of course, Messrs. Schroeder and Chirac can take complete comfort in the President's advice that what his Administration and Treasury Secretary are doing is contrary to Presidential policy! Yes, over the next couple of years they can count on that reassurance for all it was intended to be - as they count their own unemployment rates.

And, by the way, why was it just fine for the world when the Euro fell about 20% from its original value against the US dollar? But for the US dollar to decline to about where it was at the creation of the Euro - never mind a bit below that - is a looming global economic catastrophe? Europe is seeking and asserting its economic superpower status. Isn't it about time for the Europeans and the rest of the world to stop arguing that the US has special asymmetric obligations as the "engine of world growth?" Isn't it time that Europe got off its collective and collectivized welfare-state duff and started acting like an economic superpower - say, by restructuring itself to be more economically efficient and "engine-like"?