New York Times

We've learned more this week about liberal Republican wrestling promoter Linda McMahon, a/k/a "the Wild RINO"

For one thing, we've ascertained that she must be the Pinch Sulzberger approved Republican in the field of candidates in Connecticut. On Sunday, the New York Times decided to put its candidate profile of Mrs. McMahon on page A1 

A Senate Candidate Accustomed to Being Thrown in the Ring

“I don’t think anyone should ever question Linda’s resolve or tenacity,” said Dick Ebersol, the chairman of NBC Universal Sports, who has collaborated on projects with the McMahons. “If anybody thinks she is the little woman, they are out of their minds. She put the business together.”

OK, any question who the MSM is in the tank for in this race, folks?

Jeez, you wonder what's going through Rob Simmons's head about now. All he did was spend a career in the CIA and on Capitol Hill, a decade in the CT Legislature, won a Democrat congressional district three times, and he's been obscured by someone who produced a soap opera on steroids.   

What is not going through Republican minds in Connecticut is much respect for this stuff. Just this week, a legislator from McMahon's  home town endorsed the thoughtful conservative in the field,  State Senator Sam Caligiuri

 “Representative Camillo’s endorsement is very humbling. As a relative newcomer to the political scene, Fred brings the fresh perspective of an outsider who is very much in touch with the people he represents. The Greenwich community is fortunate to have such a bright, rising star representing them in the General Assembly, and I am honored to have his support,” said Caligiuri.

And McMahon's trouble extend to the stump. Here's what a Hartford Courant political reporter said of her appearance this week in Windsor. "her delivery is about as interesting as listening to an assistant principal read the morning announcements"

On the other hand, Caligiuri's performance won praise

 I'd give Caligiuri a B+ for his engaging, lively stump speech, which told us about how he snatched Waterbury from the jaws of corruption and reminded us of his immigrant roots. He's a proud Reagan Republican and he earns points for at least mentioning the achievement gap.

One of the reasons that McMahon is having problems on the stump is she keeps having to explain why she claims to be a Republican today despite having done little in the past to demonstrate a modicum of interest in the party's agenda or principles.

Here's another story about McMahon's painful performance in Windsor.  

The tens of thousands of dollars given to the Democratic party and Emanuel is simply the cost of doing business, McMahon said Thursday night following a meeting of the candidates at a Windsor restaurant.

“I’ve been the CEO of a publicly traded company, which has given money to both Democrats and Republicans,” McMahon said.

McMahon said it had nothing to do with politics or personal beliefs. She said she has known Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ari Emanuel, for years.

Ari Emanuel runs a talent agency in Hollywood, California, which does business with WWE, she said. She said he called up and let her know his brother would be in Stamford and “may do a little arm twisting.” She said when she gave money to Emanuel, he was still a Congressman from Illinois, not the current president’s chief of staff.

OK, a billionaire who thinks throwing cash at liberal Democrats (Emanuel was getting Pelosi elected House Speaker at the time) is just a "cost of doing business" Now THERE'S a committed principled conservative if I ever heard one. Or perhaps she's a plant by her good friends the Emanuel family sent to muck up the Connecticut primary and save Chris Dodd's sorry keester.   

While we are on the topic of Rahm Emanuel and his brothers, maybe we could elicit an opinion from the Wild RINO on the topic of "death panels"....then again, she might think it's a new form of steel cage bout 

Maybe subsidizing leftists makes friends for Linda in Hollywood, the White House and with the New York Times, but it most certaintly is not endearing her to her opponents,

"For me it’s not just business,” former U.S. Congressman Rob Simmons said.

Simmons said McMahon’s donations undermined his efforts in 2006 and allowed his opponents, who are now expanding government to win elected office.

Simmons wasn't done

“If donating tens of thousands of dollars to Democrats was ‘the cost of doing business’ for Linda McMahon and her professional wrestling empire, one wonders what she aimed to get in return for her generosity. This sort of influence peddling would not make her ‘a different kind of Senator.’ It would make her exactly the same as the one we have.”

Sam Caligiuri wasn't very pleased with this lame effort to defend the indefensible, either. His spokeswomen issued this statement.

“What we’re hearing from Republicans as we travel around the state is that they are insulted by Ms. McMahon working against their efforts to elect Republicans, then trying to sweep these personal contributions under the rug as if no one would ever notice.  Pro wrestling might be fake, but this practice of choosing expediency over principle is the very real way in which Washington currently works, and is exactly what Sam is fighting to fix.  If McMahon is already a part of the problem, it is hard to believe she can ever become part of the solution,” said Grossman

Linda McMahon says she'll be a "different kind of Senator", but if that means she'll be a liberal glad-handing gazillionaire there's quite enough already, don'tcha think?  We need someone who cares more about folks in Hamden than Hollywood.

There's nothing "different" about hypocrisy in politicians, Linda

====UPDATE====

In this morning's' New London Day, a columnist suggests that McMahon will run a third party bid for the Senate similar to that of her political mentor, former liberal Connecticut Governor and WWE Board member Lowell Weicker

If this wouldn't be a premeditated sabotage of the effort to oust Chris Dodd, I don't know what else would be

First, a big shout out to my buds @ The New York Times. While the "Paper of Record" chose not to use my name or the name of RedState's Moe Lane we were both quoted verbatim as the authoriative voice on what ought to be done about the "Cap & Tr8-ors"

Thanks for giving this a wider audience

 "I don't think one can minimize why this was a truly hideous vote for those eight folks," a commentator on the conservative blog the "Next Right" wrote. "Here we had a chance to derail the Obama socialism train and restore the Republican party to policy relevance, and these guys bailed out so they could get a nice mention in the NY Times."

Guess it still feels like John Mellencamp sang in "Small Town" "hey, look at who's in the big town"

I digress

Here's the choice for the Cap &Tr8-ors

former Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Lieberman has come out against Obama's "public option" health care scheme.

“If we create a public option, the public is going to end up paying for it,” Lieberman said following an hour-long confab with public-health experts at the Ashmun Street community center of the Monterey Homes public housing complex. “That’s a cost we can’t take on"

I've disagreed with Joe frequently, but on this one he is clearly part of the "reality-based community".  Evidently "Countrywide Kent" Conrad is also not sipping the public option kool aid either.

So, here's the deal for Rep. Bono Mack, Castle, Kirk, Lance, LoBiondo, Reichert and Smith (I omitted McHugh on purpose; he's already been bought).

 You can go with Joe Lieberman and publicly break with the central element of Obamacare.  

Or you can get sent to the ice floe.

Choose Wisely. (if you you choose poorly, this will do you more good than Pac $$ and endorsements)

In today's New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman belatedly notices major changes that have been occuring in the Middle East for at least five years:

[S]omething is going on in the Middle East today that is very new. Pull up a chair; this is going to be interesting.

What we saw in the Lebanese elections, where the pro-Western March 14 movement won a surprise victory over the pro-Iranian Hezbollah coalition, what we saw in the ferment for change exposed by the election campaign in Iran, and what we saw in the provincial elections in Iraq, where the big pro-Iranian party got trounced, is the product of four historical forces that have come together to crack open this ossified region.

First is the diffusion of technology. The Internet, blogs, YouTube and text messaging via cellphones, particularly among the young — 70 percent of Iranians are under 30 — is giving Middle Easterners cheap tools to communicate horizontally, to mobilize politically and to criticize their leaders acerbically, outside of state control. It is also enabling them to monitor vote-rigging by posting observers with cellphone cameras.

I knew something had changed when I sat down for coffee on Hamra Street in Beirut last week with my 80-year-old friend and mentor, Kemal Salibi, one of Lebanon’s greatest historians, and he told me about his Facebook group!

The evening of Lebanon’s election, I went to the Beirut home of Saad Hariri, the leader of the March 14 coalition, to interview him. In a big living room, he had a gigantic wall-size television broadcasting the results. And alongside the main TV were 16 smaller flat-screen TVs with electronic maps of Lebanon. Hariri’s own election experts were working on laptops and breaking down every vote from every religious community, village by village, and projecting them on the screens.

Well, Mr. Friedman, it's good of you to notice what's been going on in the region for several years now; it's better late than never.  Where this story gets interesting, however, is to whom Mr. Friedman (unlike Fareed Zakaria) gives credit for this monumental development:

for real politics to happen you need space. There are a million things to hate about President Bush’s costly and wrenching wars. But the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades. “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic, and at that particular moment simple ideas were what was needed, even if he was disingenuous,” said Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star. “It was bolstered by the presence of a U.S. Army in the center of the Middle East. It created a sense that change was possible, that things did not always have to be as they were.”

When I reported from Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s, I covered coups and wars. I never once stayed up late waiting for an election result. Elections in the Arab world were a joke — literally. They used to tell this story about Syria’s president, Hafez al-Assad. After a Syrian election, an aide came in and told Assad: “Mr. President, you won 99.8 percent of the votes. It means that only two-tenths of one percent of Syrians didn’t vote for you. What more could ask for?”

Assad answered: “Their names!”

Lebanese, by contrast, just waited up all night for their election results — no one knew what they’d be.

In other words, President Bush's grand strategy for winning the global war on terror is working, albeit more slowly than anyone predicted.  Of course, as in any war, there have been setbacks along the way:

the Bush team opened a hole in the wall of Arab autocracy but did a poor job following through. In the vacuum, the parties most organized to seize power were the Islamists — Hezbollah in Lebanon; pro-Al Qaeda forces among Iraqi Sunnis, and the pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Mahdi Army among Iraqi Shiites; the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan; Hamas in Gaza.

Fortunately, each one of these Islamist groups overplayed their hand by imposing religious lifestyles or by dragging their societies into confrontations the people didn’t want. This alienated and frightened more secular, mainstream Arabs and Muslims and has triggered an “awakening” backlash among moderates from Lebanon to Pakistan to Iran. The Times’s Robert Mackey reported that in Tehran “chants of ‘Death to America’ ” at rallies for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week were answered by chants of “Death to the Taliban — in Kabul and Tehran” at a rally for his opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi.

To those of us who were paying attention, of course, this was apparent back in 2007.  Finally, Friedman closes with a mush brained sop to his liberal readers:

along came President Barack Hussein Obama. Arab and Muslim regimes found it very useful to run against George Bush. The Bush team demonized them, and they demonized the Bush team. Autocratic regimes, like Iran’s, drew energy and legitimacy from that confrontation, and it made it very easy for them to discredit anyone associated with America. Mr. Obama’s soft power has defused a lot of that. As result, “pro-American” is not such an insult anymore.

On the other hand, maybe what's going on right now is the result of a process that was set off five years ago that we have become increasingly irrelevant to over time.  FWIW, Bush probably was too hands off in 2005 and 2006, which probably did allow the Islamists more room to make their move than we had to allow them.  At the same time, doubling down in Iraq in 2007 definately convinced the locals we were there to stay.  Now, in 2009, the process seems to have taken on a life of it's own.

Over the next few years, this will be interesting....

I hope this helps.

That is all.Cahnman out.

When do you know your energy policy is on precarious footing? If you are Barack Obama, it is when your most trusted rubber stamp media voice is also calling your bluff.

New York Times Editorial: Follow the Science on Yucca

The administration’s budget for the Energy Department raises a disturbing question. Is President Obama, who has pledged to restore science to its rightful place in decision making, now prepared to curtail the scientific analyses needed to determine whether a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be safe to build?...

...Before approving this truncated budget, Congress needs to ensure that it contains enough money to sustain a genuine licensing effort. We have no idea whether Yucca Mountain would be a suitable burial ground for nuclear wastes. But after the government has labored for more than two decades and spent almost $10 billion to get the site ready for licensing hearings, it would be foolish not to complete the process with a good-faith evaluation. Are Mr. Obama and Mr. Reid afraid of what the science might tell them?

Read the whole thing.

Crossposted at Conservatives for Science

Two stories emerged this week that demonstrate the absolute intellectual bankruptcy of the media reform agenda. It is just another attempt to gain power for the left.

A Huffington Post writer argued that Clear Channel and Rupert Murdoch's media empire should be broken up by the FCC and the DOJ's anti-trust division:

The Obama Administration's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a revivified Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice could pursue all sorts of reforms that would open up the nation's political discourse. A few minor changes in the rules and regulations governing the public airwaves and corporate media consolidation could transform the political economy of the media sector. Such reforms would make it more difficult for networks to shove people like Cheney, Rove, and Fleischer down our throats because enhanced competition would mean that rivals might be broadcasting more attractive fare. Breaking up Rupert Murdoch's empire (starting with revoking the waiver that allows him to own the New York Post), and busting up Clear Channel's monopoly of radio would be a good place to start. Congress, working with the Obama Administration, could then revisit the odious Telecommunications Act of 1996 and remove or rework its worst provisions. Look at what the media monopolies did during the Bush years. The Bush Administration never could have lied us into going to war in Iraq if it were not for the duplicity of the corporate media.

But ... Nancy Pelosi argues that the New York Times should be exempted from anti-trust laws.

At 5:19 pm I received an e-mail entitled "Breaking News Alert" from the Washington Post: 

Poll: Most Americans Back Obama on Stimulus, Mortgage Plans Large majorities support president's $787 billion economic stimulus package and $75 billion plan for stemming mortgage foreclosures, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Obama's bipartisan support, however, has eroded substantially in the past month, with just 37 percent of Republicans approving of how he has done his job. 

At 7:02 pm, a fellow contributor here at The Next Right received a similarly titled email from The New York Times: 

Poll Shows Broad Support for Obama's LeadershipPresident Obama is benefiting from high levels of confidence among Americans about his leadership, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.A majority of people surveyed in both parties said Mr. Obama was striving to work in a bipartisan way, but most Americans faulted Republicans for their response to the president.Mr. Obama will deliver his first address to Congress on Tuesday evening against a backdrop of deep economic anxiety among the public, with worries spanning party, class and regional divides.

This is "breaking news?" That the media released a poll? Are bottom lines that pressed that both the Gray Lady and the Post feel it necessary to spam their readers on a daily basis with mundane tidbits that are most definitely not breaking news? These e-mails get sent almost daily, and this is only the worst infraction, but certainly not the only one.

As an online professional, I'd say that these e-mails break all the rules and break trust with readers, enticing people to click on the presumption that something extraordinary has happened -- maybe a fighting has unexpectedly broken out somewhere, or a notable historic figure has died. Instead, it's just more puffery from news outlets who, having failed to sell real newspapers or enlightening content to their readers, resort to hawking t-shirts and commemorative plaques of the November 5 and January 21st editions. 

Who should the New York Times pick to replace Bill Kristol on their op-ed pages?  Unlike Patrick Ruffini, I think Rush Limbaugh would be a horrifying choice for many of the same reasons he didn't work out as a football commentator.

There are many better options for the New York Times.  On the chance that the New York Times is undecided and looking for advice, let me name some of the people I think would be exceptional contributors, both to the New York Times and to our national political discourse.

I would start with a few of the people mentioned by David Brooks in a recent NYTimes column about a group of smart, young writers. Will Wilkinson, Julian Sanchez, and James Poulos are fascinating and thoughtful writers. Matt Continetti is an exceptional story-teller.  Ramesh Ponnuru approaches policy as an intellectual, rather than a mad partisan.

Brooks also mentioned Megan McArdle, now writing at The Atlantic. Unpredictable, intellectual, policy-oriented, witty, with a brain the size of a planet.  If there a better public intellectual for our day, I don't know who it is.  In Megan McArdle, I see the potential to transform the Right; to tear down the sacred cows and rebuild a much more coherent, effective movement.

I also read an article at BeliefNet recommending Josh Trevino for the role. Josh and I don't always see eye to eye on issues, but he's an exceptional writer who always makes me think.  I would be very pleased to see the NYTimes select a superlative writer like Trevino.

It might also be interesting to see the NYTImes pick up James Lileks or Mark Steyn, each of whom  has the sharpest wit and the most devastating turn of phase.  Don't undermestimate the power of ridicule as a tool of persuasion. 

We have a small army of showmen, agitators, bomb-throwers, partisans and hacks.  Enough.  It is a measure of the health of the Right that we have gone from Bill Buckley to Bill O'Reilly,  Our goal should be to develop and promote our best public intellectuals, our smartest writers, and our most perceptive analysts.   Like those mentioned above,

Let me first state that I don't particularly care who writes for the New York Times op-ed page, and think all the handwringing about who will replace Bill Kristol is a collosal waste of time for conservatives. I long ago stopped reading the editorial pages, and rely mostly on RSS and the news section for my daily fill of politics. If I ever want opinion, which is a rarer and rarer thing in a media environment that prizes raw information, I read the smart blogs on highly relevant topics, like Marginal Revolution.

I will, however, say this about the selection process for the New York Times op-ed page.

The goal of conservative new media should not be to legitimize the status quo in media, but to challenge it and shift the balance of power. To hang on the prestige of a Times appointment is a mostly useless exercise by navel-gazing pundits whose sole concern is accurately describing the status quo, not moving the ball forward.

Doubly disturbing is the notion that the Times' token conservative should be someone who is acceptable to sensibility of liberal (and hence more civilized) Times readers; that only a certain type of conservative will do -- a "smart," "reasonable" figure worthy of dining with President Obama. 

I have a great deal of respect for Bill Kristol and David Brooks (or for that matter, Charles Krauthammer and George Will), but they play a very defined role in the process -- which is to represent a safe flavor of Beltway-centric conservatism that is acceptable within the Acela corridor. I appreciate that someone has to play this role, but by engaging in this parlor game, we are playing with fire: feeding the left's desire to elevate a narrow elite of Times-worthy conservative pundits whose job it is to hold the braying Coulterite masses in check.

We shouldn't play this game. Either we engage the liberal media on our terms or on none at all. The Times needs someone who is as far to the right, in as hard-edged and partisan a way, as Paul Krugman is to the left. The fact that strident left-wing voices one step voice up from Kos appear on the op-ed page is not considered a problem, so why shouldn't the same be true on the right? Perhaps it would be better if both sides' columnists were as reasonable and fair-minded as Brooks and Kristol. But if the Times continues to select liberal columnists who are locked and loaded for bear, we should accept nothing less for the right. To wit, the Times should pick Rush Limbaugh or a comparable full spectrum heartland conservative who defended Palin. Someone who would shock the Upper East Side, not reinforce its worldview in subtle ways. If not Rush, then Steyn or Lileks or someone with the intestinal fortitude for a fight.

The poor seem to be getting richer and richer in the New York Times editorial pages...

Debra, a single mother who works in health care administration, is one of millions of Americans who do their jobs, believe in paying their bills and are still facing the threat of losing their home. Debra ... bought a home in the East New York section of Brooklyn for more than $600,000 in 2006. The house has plenty of room for herself, for her son and for tenants. ...

At Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens, Debra found some relief. They gave her $1,650 from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund for her mortgage and utility bills. But her payment plan is unsustainable. Catholic ... Debra is still waiting for a workout that she can afford, hoping to stay in her home. “I wanted my son to have a home, a place to live. This is the legacy I have for him,” she said.

Won't you donate to the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, so that Debra doesn't have to move into a house she can afford?

John McCain looks like he's closing the gap, or even taking the lead, in some national polls. RealClearPolitics now gives him a 274 to 264 edge in the electoral college without toss-up states. There are plenty of explanations for this, and they all might be valid: McCain starting to hit Obama hard, Obama's failure to come up with a coherent strategy in the midst of great tactics (something Soren points out), etc.

One of the new theories is Obama's failure to sell his economic message to voters. David Leonhardt of the New York Times Magazine released his Sunday story today on Obama's academic battle on economic policy:

"With Obama, there is vast disagreement about just how liberal he is, especially on the economy. My favorite example came in mid-June, shortly after Obama named Jason Furman, a protégé of Robert Rubin, the centrist former Treasury secretary, as his lead economic adviser. Labor leaders recoiled, and John Sweeney, the head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., worried aloud about “corporate influence on the Democratic Party.” Then, the following week, Kimberley Strassel, a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, wrote a column titled, 'Farewell, New Democrats,' concluding that Obama’s economic policies amounted to the end of Clintonian centrism and a reversion to old liberal ways."

"Some of the confusion stems from Obama’s own strategy of presenting himself as a postpartisan figure. A few weeks ago, I joined him on a flight from Orlando to Chicago and began our conversation by asking about his economic approach. He started to answer, but then interrupted himself. 'My core economic theory is pragmatism,' he said, 'figuring out what works.'"

Pragmatism? Figuring out what works? Really? Fantastic! Not only is there a fight between the netroots and grassroots of the Left, there's a fundamental fight within the academic wing of the Left on the principles of free markets vs. the principles of European social democracies. They're obviously trying to merge the two in some sort of coherent fashion, but have failed miserably. So how can McCain take advantage of this and continue his surge in the polls?