drat fink
View current page
...more recent posts
Monday, Jun 09, 2003
real squares
"But Blair and Miller have more in common than you might think. Both are in trouble for giving readers dubious information. While Miller's alleged improprieties are of a more subtle nature, and she comes into this rough patch with an estimable reputation built over the course of a long and distinguished career, her case reveals a great deal about the state of today's news media. What Miller did, and the fact that her brand of journalism is encouraged and rewarded by the powers that be, is precisely the kind of topic that the Times's leadership ought to air during its current semipublic glasnost phase. In Blair's case, the only serious damage has been to the paper's image. Miller, on the other hand, risks playing with the kind of fire that starts or justifies wars, gets people killed and plays into the hands of government officials with partisan axes to grind."
brain dread
"A Buzzflash Interview With James Moore, Co-Author (with Wayne Slater) of "Bush's Brain""
history lesions
"The historians' verdict was clear: The impeachment drive against President Clinton lacked constitutional and political legitimacy. The journalists' opinion was equally clear: The impeachment was legitimate, and the historians were really a fusty collection of liberal elitists who had no business sticking their noses into public affairs.
Now an extraordinary thing has happened. Journalists from across the political spectrum are finally acknowledging that impeachment was mostly a partisan crusade on trumped-up charges to bring down a popular president. "From the viewpoint of history," the conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote recently in the New York Observer, "it's going to seem deranged." They have conceded that numerous allegations noisily leveled against Clinton and repeated endlessly in the news media of which they are a part have turned out to be bogus."
pinch me
michael wolff on arthur sulzberger jr.via gawker
only the leo-nely
delong on the conservative misreading of leo strauss.
human be ins
collection of new scientist articles about human nature.via matt yglesias
Thursday, Jun 05, 2003
right on times
just walked in and saw that raines and boyd resigned as top editors from the times. raines always wanted clinton to fall on the sword. guess he took his own advice instead.
Wednesday, Jun 04, 2003
tanked up
"The Democrats are ramping up efforts to launch a liberal think tank in September that they say will give their party the unified message it lacked in 2002 and counter the well-funded network of conservative policy shops.
John Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff during the Clinton administration, is spearheading the project and consulting with Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill.
The think tank, known for now as the American Majority Institute, will have an annual operating budget of at least $10 million, a sum that would immediately make it the largest Democratic think tank in town."via tapped
Tuesday, Jun 03, 2003
funny cide up
"The plot would run like this: old high school buddies buy horse on cheap (although this is a relative term in racing circles), engage trainer who hasn't won a major title in more than 30 years, and a Chilean-born jockey who has struggled to overcome his own demons: a cocaine habit in the 1980s, horrific injuries and career-destroying weight gain, in the 90s.
Against all odds - 14-1 going into the Kentucky Derby - they win, only to see triumph tinged with heartache. One of the owners, Gus Williams, is cruelly mocked for affronting the Kentucky blue bloods by wearing a yellow plaid sports jacket with matching yellow trousers. The jockey, Jose Santos, is accused of using an electric buzzer in his whip hand after a strange blur is spotted in the finish-line photo. The Funny Cide team is devastated - it's the old guard of the racing world fighting to keep control. The jockey is quickly cleared of all irregularities, and goes on to vindication by romping home in the next leg of the Triple Crown by 9 3/4 lengths, a historic margin."
addiction subtraction
"Booth’s description is wrong or grossly misleading in every particular. To understand why is to recognize the fallacies underlying a reductionist, drug-centered view of addiction in which chemicals force themselves on people -- a view that skeptics such as the maverick psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and the psychologist Stanton Peele have long questioned. The idea that a drug can compel the person who consumes it to continue consuming it is one of the most important beliefs underlying the war on drugs, because this power makes possible all the other evils to which drug use supposedly leads."