Couldn’t Help But Notice (022608)
Michelle Malkin has made a very good business move by snagging Captain Ed Morrissey for Hot Air. Captain Ed’s going there is very astute on his part.
As if to prove a point, one of Captain Ed’s final posts (”Did Saddam Figure’s Millions Influence Obama?”) asks questions about shady Barack Obama connections that only overseas media outlets seem to care about.
Hot Air has added more investigative heft, and by doing so has definitely cranked it up a notch. This is good news heading into an election campaign season that promises to have many nutroots v. rightroots moments. By adding Morrissey, Michelle, who by herself has ‘em outgunned, has just turned it into a totally unfair fight.
Bryan Preston has left Hot Air to become Laura Ingraham’s producer. Congrats to Michelle for handling his move with class. I so despise when someone leaves a company, the employer refuses to say what happened to the person who left, and even acts as if they never existed. Ms. Malkin, as usual, has too much class to do that.
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Victor Davis Hanson on the New York Times’s “McCaingate” (my word; bold is mine):
….. three questions arise about the Times.
1. The Descent. Is this more of the same—when we remember the Jason Blair mess, the leaks of National Security information, the Moveon.org discounted ads, and the serial stories about defeat in Iraq and relative silence about the surge? The Times in the ideological sense has become indistinguishable from the Nation, and in its lack of craftsmanship no different from the British Tabloids or National Inquirer. Like Dan Rather and the crash of CBS, its directors know what their disease is, but also that the medicine is worse, so they will keep at it until they will expire.
2. Why Now? What are we to understand about the timing? That they held it to ensure a scandal-free McCain in the primaries, as the least offensive of the Republican candidates? They hoped he would win the nomination, as they argued in their own endorsement, but almost immediately upon becoming the veritable winner he should be weakened to favor the Democratic candidate in the general election? It is surreal to see the New Republic of recent Scott Beauchamp infamy in a tussle with the New York Times, on matters of conscious and probity. Name an old standby: CBS—Rather and the “memoâ€; Newsweek—the Periscope flushing of the Koran lie; Reuters—the photoshopped smoke over Beirut; New Republic—the Beauchamp mythology. The examples could be multiplied, but the theme is the same: a media elite, well educated and sophisticated, believes that their own biased means are necessary to achieve a utopian and just ends for the rest of us.
3. Open Season? Does the McCain story establish new benchmarks? Now we are going to go carefully through the last ten years of Obama’s personal and professional life to discover whether anyone ever wondered about attractive women in his general vicinity, and whether he was ever familiar with lobbyists?
The last sentences in Numbers 1 and 2 nail it.
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All of a sudden, out of the blue from Associated Press, appears this 15-year summary of Hillary Clinton’s involvement in things such as Whitewater, the White House Travel Office, Paula Jones, etc. I mean, it’s all there as it relates to Mrs. Clinton, including Monica Lewinsky, Ken Starr, etc. Geez, even Vince Foster.
I guess AP is cleaning out the closet, because after next Tuesday few will care.
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Once again, Ralph Nader is running for prezzzzz……
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The Canadians understand the “aid and comfort to the enemy” problem:
Canada: Afghan Debate Endangers Troops
Canada’s top general warned lawmakers Friday that prolonged debate over the military mission in Afghanistan could be encouraging the Taliban to step up attacks on Canadian forces to coerce an early withdrawal.
Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Rick Hillier called for a quick extension of the mission past February 2009, saying that the Taliban is watching the political debate and looking for signs of weakness.
“We are, in the eyes of the Taliban, in a window of extreme vulnerability. And the longer we go without that clarity, with the issue in doubt, the more the Taliban will target us as a perceived weak link,” Hillier said.
Hopefully, Hillier sent transcripts of his statement to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
One of Ed Morrissey’s recent posts:
How Evangelical Leaders Blew It
“Dan Gilgoff does a post-mortem on how the evangelical movement managed to allow John McCain to win the Republican Party nomination over two candidates more amenable to their cause. Gilgoff focuses on their failure to back Romney, and makes it plain that religious bigotry played no small role in their inability to understand which political agenda suited them the best…”
The whole thing is really quite insightful:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/017013.php#comments
Comment by Nasty, Brutish & Short — February 26, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
#1, Morrissey clearly doesn’t have a grip on Romney’s real record in MA. Perhaps his real record is why Dobson hesitated and stayed quiet. He should have spoken out forcefully. Romney would have been a disaster, and still would be a disaster.
Comment by TBlumer — February 26, 2008 @ 2:58 pm
Here’s my take on McCaingate. The NYT’s stock price has been in decline since W took office in 2001. Why? Because liberalism’s shrill voice grates on the American Public. No one likes to listen to angry people rant all the time about how bad everything is without any hint of good news or solutions with positive outcomes. Negative gossip and salacious stories must be balanced by positive outcomes and the knowledge that despite everything all will turn out well in the end. The NYT had that balance when Clinton was in power because they could at least propagandize “for” the Clinton admin even while covering “problems”. During the last 7 years with W, the NYT had no one to really propagandize for in government so they were left with only negatives. Human nature is to turn away from hearing a continual stream of negatives when you are not personally involved in the outcome. Doom and gloom sells for the short term but it does not sell for the long term, people tune out.
The NYT and the rest of the MSM’s only hope for survival is a Democrat President in the WH to propagandize for in a positive manner to balance off the doom and gloom.
Now on to McCaingate: The reason for the NYT hit piece on McCain is the liberal principle of “false moral equivalence”. We already know the Clinton’s scandal ridden history, BooHoo with virtually no record, a blank slate if you will, gave the Dems something to latch onto and propagandize without the baggage of the Clintons. The problem is the Clintons are not ready to go along with the program, they want 8 more years and are willing to sacrifice the Dem party future if necessary. The Clintons believe that the Dems will vote for anyone with D behind their name because of pride, so in their mind no matter how ugly the primary is and how sleazy they act, they will get votes in any event. The Clinton opposition research has dug up so much dirt on BooHoo that once all released, BooHoo will be no better than the Clintons.
The Dems were left with a problem, both of their candidates have major baggage which can not be swept back under the rug because we nasty Repubs won’t let them. So out comes the NYT hit piece on McCain to lower him to the same level of disrepute as Clinton and Obama. Once the public buys into the “all politicians are the same” premise then the negatives of BooHoo get cancelled out for the general election. The NYT fell on it’s sword in the hope that their actions would tip the balance enough that a Dem would win in 2008 and thus set the stage for financial recovery of the paper. Yes folks, the NYT made a crass financial gamble. If McCain wins in November the NYT is going belly up in 2009 or Sulzberger and the editors will be sacked to save the paper.
Comment by dscott — February 27, 2008 @ 9:27 am
#3, I find myself strangely optimistic about a McCain win.
Comment by TBlumer — February 27, 2008 @ 10:51 am
Tom, if the sock puppet wins, I would call myself cynically optimistic. ;-)
If Obama wins, I would be sarcastically euphoric in such a target rich environment.
Comment by dscott — February 27, 2008 @ 2:45 pm
#5, just to be clear, that doesn’t mean I’m optimistic about McCain as a president. It’s all relative.
Comment by TBlumer — February 27, 2008 @ 2:54 pm