The comix

I know, Dear Reader, you wouldn't have thought they could top this, but in Fred Hiatt's quest to prove his wicked sense of teh funny, Kaplan Test Prep Daily gets even more AWESOME.

The WaPo abets "epistemic closure"

I knew that headline would grab you.

But really, if Fred Hiatt and the rest of the Wise Men running the WaPo Opinion section had any scruples about forwarding an honest discourse in our society, they would fire Michael Gerson, former wordsmith for George W. Bush, current liar on the WaPo Opinion page.

Sadly, they have no such scruples.

Circling the wagons

My mouth gaped wider and wider as I read this attack on "backpack journalists."

In a way, Amanpour, scheduled to leave CNN after 18 years of international coverage and take over the program in August, could be seen as the opposite of the perfect candidate. "This Week" deals mainly in domestic politics and inside-the-Beltway palaver, an area where Amanpour is widely considered to be deficient. Consider: Whenever CNN has thrown one of its big election-night, convention, or presidential debate spectaculars, drafting nearly every living staff member to appear, Amanpour has had a conspicuously low profile.

I'd like to say something insightful about The Village and its self-absorbed citizens, but I don't really have to, now, do I?

The WaPo starts the new year as it ended the old one: hackishly

Broder: Janet Napolitano exudes quiet confidence and she's really competent. She's my kind of "run down the middle" pol.

Krauthammer: Napolitano is a fool and an incompetent and Obama's linguistic war on the word "war" will get us all killed.

Kristol: Because Thomas Jefferson said a lot of stuff about the evil of tyranny, Obama has to do something about Iranian internal unrest.

"Shorter" is the trademark of blah, blah, blah...I am aware of all internet traditions.

Happy New Year.

Don't fuck with The Dean

Harry Reid's grave mistake.

And, yes, Reid criticized my friend and colleague David Broder. It’s true that Reid was hitting back, since David is not wild about Harry. Nonetheless, I dearly love Broder, as does everyone who has ever worked with him.

Via.

Palinography

One assumes that the Washington Post carries some influence in our nation's capitol. So you would expect it to have an op-ed policy that calls for submissions that elevate discourse, bring some expertise to a subject, raise little known or surprising viewpoints, illuminate a current debate, etc., albeit with strong doses of the various writers' own biases. Other than on that last point, evidence shows one's assumption would be wrong.

The Palin op-ed is like a caricature of an op-ed submission. "Written" by someone with absolutely no credibility on matters of climate change, science, reading, the English language, or involuntary breathing, what is the point of it being published?

Oh, I know, because Fred Hiatt shares a hobby with many on the right these days -- do something only because it will, supposedly, piss off a liberal. Not a good way to run a newspaper.

UPDATE: Ambinder annotates.

You could be the next Bill Kristol

The Washington Post, apparently unable to find a suitable colleague for the surrealistic stylings of Broder, Kristol, Will, Applebaum, and Cohen, are having a contest.

Start making your case.
Use the entry form to send us a short opinion essay (400 words or less) pegged to a topic in the news and an additional paragraph (100 words or less) on yourself and why you should win. Entries will be judged on the basis of style, intelligence and freshness of argument, but not on whether Post editors agree or disagree with your point of view. Entry deadline: Oct. 21, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Then get ready for the great debate.
Beginning on or about Oct. 30, ten prospective pundits will get to compete for the title of America’s Next Great Pundit, facing off in challenges that test the skills a modern pundit must possess. They’ll have to write on deadline, hold their own on video and field questions from Post readers. (Contestants won’t have to quit their day jobs, but they should be prepared to put in about eight hours a week for three weeks.) After each round, a panel of Post personalities will offer kudos and catcalls, and reader votes will help to determine who gets another chance at a byline and who has to shut down their laptop.

Eyes on the prize.
The ultimate winner will get the opportunity to write a weekly column that may appear in the print and/or online editions of The Washington Post, paid at a rate of $200 per column, for a total of 13 weeks and $2,600. Our Opinions lineup includes a dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, regulars on the national political talk shows and some of the most influential players inside the Beltway. We’ll set our promising pundit on a path to become the next byline in demand, the talking head every show wants to book, the voice that helps the country figure out what’s really going on.

Indeed.

Anne Applebaum's outrage

Clearly, this is another example of the pressing need for a blogger ethics panel.

Drill baby, drill

When I first saw the link, I thought it was a joke.

Look, even Sarah Palin has First Amendment rights, and since the WaPo editorial page has already proven itself to be an embarrassment, with a miasma of Fred Hiatt, George Will and Charles Krauthammer, I don't think this will cause any further damage. But, really, there are other avenues for Sarah Palin to repeat right wing misdirection about cap and trade to shore up her bona fides for the base. No where in the column does she mention that the energy policy is an attempt to do something about carbon emissions. And somehow a provision to retrain workers in the oil sector to find jobs in other, green technology fields is a bad thing. And, as one would expect of her, she blatantly lies about "progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history" -- a pipeline that right now has about as much chance of being built as is Sarah Palin's chance at being taken seriously on energy policy. But I love this:

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:

This is like something off of SarahPac website.

"A tincture of lawlessness"

George Will once again plays fast and loose with...um...the truth.

After eight years of an administration he supported riding roughshod over the rule of law, he is now accusing the Obama administration of -- gasp -- corruption. Why? Because the Obama administration went toe to toe with the hedge fund Chrysler creditors that played chicken with the government and lost.

Anyway, the Obama administration, judging by its cavalier disregard of contracts between Chrysler and some of the lenders it sought money from, thinks contracts are written on water. The administration proposes that Chrysler's secured creditors get 28 cents per dollar on the $7 billion owed to them but that the United Auto Workers union get 43 cents per dollar on its $11 billion in claims -- and 55 percent of the company. This, even though the secured creditors' contracts supposedly guaranteed them better standing than the union.

Among Chrysler's lenders, some servile banks that are now dependent on the administration for capital infusions tugged their forelocks and agreed. Some hedge funds among Chrysler's lenders that are not dependent were vilified by the president because they dared to resist his demand that they violate their fiduciary duties to their investors, who include individuals and institutional pension funds.

The Economist says the administration has "ridden roughshod over [creditors'] legitimate claims over the [automobile companies'] assets. . . . Bankruptcies involve dividing a shrunken pie. But not all claims are equal: some lenders provide cheaper funds to firms in return for a more secure claim over the assets should things go wrong. They rank above other stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. This principle is now being trashed." Tom Lauria, a lawyer representing hedge fund people trashed by the president as the cause of Chrysler's bankruptcy, asked that his clients' names not be published for fear of violence threatened in e-mails to them.

Except...no.

The judge overseeing the bankruptcy of Chrysler on Tuesday took a significant step toward allowing the sale of most of the automaker to Fiat, approving the bidding procedures advocated by the company and backed by the Obama administration.

The decision by the federal bankruptcy judge, Arthur J. Gonzalez, is a setback for a group of Chrysler creditors who have argued that liquidation of the company or some other transaction could yield greater value. These lenders, primarily investment firms, have said that the plan for the Fiat transaction ran afoul of bankruptcy law and would chill efforts by others to produce competing, potentially higher bids.

But Judge Gonzalez disagreed, saying, “The court concludes that the bidding procedures are appropriate and necessary.”

The judge’s decision was a victory for Chrysler and the government, which together argued that a speedy sale was the only way to protect tens of thousands of jobs and help along the American economy.

“It’s a very big first step,” said Howard Seife, the head of the bankruptcy practice at the law firm Chadbourne & Parke. “It’s clear that the company is moving down the road to a Fiat sale.”

The judge’s decision was the second blow dealt to the holdout lenders during a marathon hearing on Tuesday that began mid-afternoon and ended at 11 p.m.

Judge Gonzalez earlier ordered the disclosure of identities of the Chrysler creditors, who had said making them public could lead to retaliation. A lawyer representing them claimed that the creditors had been harassed, and some had even received death threats.

Judge Gonzalez, said that their lawyers had not presented enough evidence of risk and gave the creditors until Wednesday morning to reveal their identities. The primary evidence cited by their lawyers was a set of anonymous comments on The Washington Post Web site.

Funny, that last bit. Must be time for another blogger ethics panel.

Anyway, Will, like so many of his fellow conservative shills for unethical financiers, sees favoritism for unions when in fact, in the midst of a recession, the administration, rightly, has a favoritism for jobs.

More fun facts on the legality of this here.

The WaPo -- by and for elites only

This has been another episode of "Go Read Dean Baker"

The Washington Post is Unhappy About Taxing Bailout Bonuses

Okay, this is not a surprise. After all, we're not talking about auto workers getting $57,000 a year.

The editorial's warning that the bonus tax may jeopardize the Geithner-Summers plan to subsidize zombie banks through the back door, could be viewed by some as an argument in favor of the tax.

One size fits all

I'll second Kevin Drum's note: raising the gasoline tax will not be nearly as effective at lowering consumption as will raising fuel economy standards. I'm no economist, but that's just intuitive sense as it would take a huge -- and politically suicidal -- increase to alter drivers' behavior to the extent it would have much of an effect on our consumption. That's just ignurant on the Post's part.

But even worse is the Post's repetition of the auto industry lobby talking points: that allowing states such as California to set their own standards would be detrimental to the ailing industry in trying to meet them and would also result in multiple standards.

Bullshit. Never have increases in fuel standards had the kind of effects these lobbyists always predict. The auto engineers take the standards and design engines and cars that meet them. Every. Time. As for multiple standards, you really think they're going to build one set of cars for California and the other states that want higher standards -- that also happen to have the most cars on the road -- and another set for, say, Idaho?

It's increasingly clear, the Post should not write about anything related to economics.