The Future of News(papers)
Craig Henry surveys two pieces from the recent "How to save the dying newspaper industry" meme that's been going around and sounds a much more optimistic note than generally seen in the blogosphere. He points to a February TIME piece by Walter Isaacson ("How to Save Your Newspaper") that advocates a micropayment system. While pretty much every blogger who wrote about ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 5, 2009 07:34
Obama Going Gray!
The Old Gray Lady has another of the epic scoops that made them the Newspaper of Record. Ace correspondent Helene Cooper breaks the news in a piece of journalism titled "For Young President, Flecks of Gray." Well, that didn’t take long. Just 44 days into the job, and President Obama is going gray. It happens to all of them, of course ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 5, 2009 08:18
Jefferson Defeated by 1st Vietnamese Congressman
William "The Freezer" Jefferson, who has been under federal indictment for three years, narrowly lost a hurricane-delayed election yesterday to Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao. Nine-term Democratic Rep. William Jefferson, who has been battling scandals and a federal indictment for the past three years, lost his bid for re-election on Saturday. Republican challenger Anh "Joseph" Cao, an attorney and community organizer, defeated ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 7, 2008 08:06
Iraq WMD’s Revisited
Bernard Finel, to say the least a fan of neither the Bush Administration nor the Iraq War, throws cold water on the Bush Lied, People Died meme that refuses to die: I’d like to urge folks to think through what standards should be applied to inherently ambiguous information. Here is what we knew in 2002: (1) Saddam had a WMD program in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 3, 2008 14:53
Twitter Revolution Will Not be Televised
Kathleen Parker seems vaguely annoyed by the Twitter phenomenon. Shorter than a blog posting, a "tweet" consists of a concise sentence or two and essentially answers the question: What are you doing? [...] On Planet Facebook, nothing in one's life is not worth mentioning. To what end, one can only surmise. I am, therefore I am, therefore I am. But what are friends ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 3, 2008 11:44
Obama and Bush Economic Advisors Compared
Greg Mankiw, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2003 to 2005, takes exception to Paul Krugman's assertion "Isn’t it amazing just how impressive the people being named to key positions in the Obama administration seem? Bye-bye hacks and cronies, hello people who actually know what they’re doing." He points to the standard RePEc data, ranking ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 28, 2008 07:34
Palin Derangement Syndrome
Two lawyer-bloggers who I've followed for years are upset with me for buying into the "Sarah Palin was in over her head" meme. Xrlq accused me of drinking "the anti-Palin Kool-Aid" for buying into claims that Palin didn't know which countries were in NAFTA while Bill Dyer is "genuinely concerned for [my] mental health." As to the more "outlandish" ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 9, 2008 09:30
Defining ‘Racism’ Down
I've noted for months the rise of a meme, first in the Democratic primaries then, and especially, in the general election campaign that the only thing that could possibly keep Barack Obama from winning is racism. Given that he appears to be coasting to victory, drawing in staggering levels of contributions and spending massive sums to advertise in states he ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 20, 2008 08:35
Questioning Their Motives II
Yesterday morning, I noted a meme of Questioning Their Motives, i.e., charging that conservative (or is that "so-called conservative"?) critics of John McCain and/or Sarah Palin with trying to curry favor with the Establishment Elite. David Frum has noticed the same thing, albeit in a more personal manner, getting attacked even by his fellow contributors to NRO's The Corner. Let's develop ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 14, 2008 08:42
McCain Supporters Angry! Mean! Scary!
The latest media meme is that McCain rallies are full of angry, bitter (and presumably racist) Americans who hate Obama. Both, apparently, are based a single rally yesterday in Waukesha, Wisconsin -- and just two outbursts from the crowd, at that. Slate's John Dickerson was on the case last night with a piece titled "A Republican Mob Scene: John McCain's supporters ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 10, 2008 09:58
Bailout Politics (Updated)
An interesting meme is developing among smart commenters from across the political spectrum that the House's failure to pass the bailout bill demonstrates the soft underbelly of our political system itself. Ezra Klein: Above all, though, this is a failure of politics. Like with global warming, with health care, with the national debt, with immigration. It is further proof that we have ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 29, 2008 15:45
Sarah Palin, “Small Town Mayor”
Those who've read my previous commentary on Sarah Palin, notably yesterday's post on the announcement of Palin as McCain's VP pick, know that I think she's a poor choice. While she has many fans and may be possessed of some remarkable political gifts, she's a tough sell as "Ready On Day One" and thus undercuts McCain's best argument against Barack ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 30, 2008 08:58
Blog Diffusion Experiment
Marc Danziger is trying to spread this "Happy Flu" meme, part of an experiment to see how these things spread. If you've got a blog and you saw this here first, click "Spread It" and get the code to embed on your own site. As people do that, little circles will appear which will in turn do somethingoranother ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 23, 2008 12:17
