Russia-Ukraine, Week 13B: Who IS the Institute for the Study of War?

Wondering just that issue, the Quincy Institute profiles the Institute for the Study of War, the eminences grisé behind Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, and the bottom feeders of information dispensed to the mainstream media, on the Russia-Ukraine war. "A Case Study in American Propaganda" is about right. The first three grafs will summarize that issue:

A Russian is on an airliner heading to the US, and the American in the seat next to him asks, “So what brings you to the US?” The Russian replies, “I’m studying the American approach to propaganda.” The American says, “What propaganda?” The Russian says, “That’s what I mean.” 

If you don’t get the point, I can help. A few weeks before I heard this joke, I heard a Russian make the point explicitly: Yes, Russia’s state-controlled media is full of propaganda, but at least most Russians are aware of that and take the prevailing narrative with a grain of salt; Americans, in contrast, seem unaware that their own prevailing narratives are slanted.

I think there’s some truth to this, and I think the Ukraine war is a case in point. I don’t just mean that mainstream media’s coverage of the war is biased (though I think it is, as tends to be the case during wars). I mean this coverage exemplifies the difference between American and Russia propaganda—and so helps explain the difference, asserted by that joke, between American and Russian attitudes toward propaganda.

Read the whole thing. And, it's by Robert Wright, whose "everything is nonzero" I generally loathe, and which I think is a cheap knockoff, whether consciously deliberate or not, of Idries Shah's "no twosiderism." But, this is good. Wright, whether he actually believes it or is just using a rhetorical trope, says he thinks the problem is all due to America having a more complicated media ecosystem in a liberal democracy rather than being more gullible than Russians. I wouldn't be so sure of that.

He goes on to note how much the ISW is cited by big media punditry. And, how much it gets big bucks from the military industrial complex.

The bias side? Nothing that sticks out like a sore thumb. Rather, Wright notes that much of it is in ISW's "framing" of what both Russia and Ukraine are doing on the ground, a framing it willingly passes on to the MSM.

Again, read the whole thing.

But, take Wright with a grain of salt. As someone who does NOT fully know the workings of American media, he's too generous to most national media. The ISW is an extension of the DC establishment, so, for many "national security" reporters, citing it uncritically is all about "access." Or with even big newspapers perhaps continuing to be short-staffed in this area, about forced shortcutting. Look at political reporters whose idea of a story any more is half a dozen Tweets linked by connecting and explanatory paragraphs.

Blame Mueller, or yourselves, not Barr — Word to Donut Twitter, Beltway stenos and The Resistance

I said it before, just a few days ago. Some of the reasons why Robert Mueller didn't bag bigger game than he did are the fault of nobody but the man in the special prosecutor's mirror.

He made choices on what he did, and did not do, and that's part of why where we're at. At the same time, to the delight of Donut Twitter and Just.Another.Politician.™,  it's clear that Battling Bob thought there actually was an attempt by Trump to get Russia to help him win the election, and by Russia to offer said help.

Really?

If Mueller truly believes that, he's as dumb as a mud fence. As I've also said before, Vladimir Putin is way too smart to believe that a weathervane like Donald Trump could be controlled.

But, that seems to be the case.

Update, May 27: Michael Wolff, in his new book, "Siege: Trump Under Fire," nails Mueller totally:

Robert Mueller, the stoic marine, had revealed himself over the course of the nearly two-year investigation to his colleagues and staff to be quite a Hamlet figure. Or, less dramatically, a cautious and indecisive bureaucrat.

And with that, back to the original piece.

An Atlantic piece has a number of reasons to blame Robert Mueller's investigation of alleged collusion in its 14-point summary. I'll briefly tackle each of the 14 and why they reflect badly on Mueller, or Donut Twitter/The Resistance.

1. Some interviewees using encrypted devices? Federal judges have ordered Apple to unlock iPhones, or else the Eff Bee Eye has done workarounds.
2. The "can't charge a president"? Gee, I remember the Paula Jones lawsuit against Slick Willie was allowed to go forward while he was Prez, including Jones' team deposing him. If Mueller refused to challenge the OLC "guidance," again, on him. A number of constitutional law scholars have said it's either overbroad or nugatory. It should be nugatory, given that actual impeachment trials ONLY involve removal from office and not actual criminal convictions or penalties. Mueller needed to, and didn't, learn from Jack Brooks, who knew the difference between impeachment and a criminal case.
3. I don't think the Trump Tower/Don Jr. meeting was collusion. Here, Mueller was sniffing The Resistance's chemtrails all along.
4. Trump's "I'm fucked' means nothing legally. Why Mueller has it in the report, I don't know.
5. Sessions, for all his issues, did not unrecuse himself. We're getting close to wanting to criminalize the First Amendment, Atlantic.
6. Ditto on Trump and Don McGahn.
7. Ditto on Trump wishing for Roy Cohn as his lawyer.
8. The late-stage delay "reason" (excuse) for not subpoenaing Trump? As I said on my first piece about the report's release, that never bothered Archibald Cox, Lawrence Walsh, or Ken Starr. And, the idea that you're operating under a different special counsel statute is irrelevant here. You weren't put on a clock. Both here and point 2, at Politico, Paul Rosenzweig says "Mueller flinched." I agree. AND! Rosenzweig served under Shrub Bush AND on Ken Starr's staff. (Alan Dershowitz also agrees, at the link.) And, re flinching and Point 3, Mueller also refused to subpoena Don Jr.
9. Trump "beside himself" is of no more legal relevance than his "I'm fucked."
10. Whoever was the particular person to start writing the draft of what would be Trump's letter to Comey is interesting but irrelevant legally.
11. Direct Russian offers of assistance? Name them or it's not so. At a minimum, state that it's a reference to the Internet Research Agency 12 indictments, and at least hint that it goes beyond what's been publicly revealed there.
12. Sarah Hucksterman Sanders' lies to the press? Again, legally irrelevant.
13. The Papadopoulos rabbit trail is just that, IMO. 
14. Cohen-Trump talks? Asked and answered already. Why does The Lanyard bring them up again?

This whole thing is silly.

Beltway stenos continue to try to absolve themselves from misinterpreting shit, including the idea of collusion. Mueller pulled half his punches, that much is clear, and apparently was brewing his own batch of collusion Kool-Aid to boot. And, Donut Twitter and The Resistance will continue to glom on to this Beltway steno shit and ignore everything I just said about the reality of Mueller.

More along these lines from Aaron Mate.

Once again, the bottom line:

What we really have, as I see it, is a lot of Donut Twitter wishing criminal law worked like civil law — preponderance of evidence instead of beyond a reasonable doubt. But, that AIN'T the way it works, quite fortunately.

Sadly, Mueller was a bit more out on that limb, it seems, than I would have thought.

Oh, and Marcy? Emptywheel? Since the investigation by Mueller is wrapped up, you're free to name your Evil Threatening Journalist you turned in to the Eff Bee Eye. You're free to name why you turned him in.

Update, May 1: According to Greenwald, the FBI itself did nothing but a pro forma investigation and pretty much treated her claim as a joke, and she's done a between the lines admission of that.

Ocasio-Cortez has another unforced error: This time, she botches government shutdown info

Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez, red rose Congressional queen of the House of Lancaster, I mean, the Democratic Socialists of America, has had several unforced errors since beating Joe Crowley to essentially win election to her 14th Congressional District.

First and most notable for people like me who bat outside the duopoly on foreign as well as domestic policy, was her retreat from words of support for BDS.

Second and related was her gushing over the Schmuck Talk Express™,  John McCain, when he died.

Well, now, she's shown that she should tweet less, research more, including knowing some basic constitutional facts, on the government shutdown.

AOC has a set of tweets that The Hill "reported" into a story, and oh, there's so much wrong.

First, she says Congresscritters should have salary cut off, after decrying partisan nature of shutdown (yet being already bipartisan enough to not call out Freedom Fries Caucus head Jim Jordan by name).

Second, she ignores a problem (which The Hill itself gets wrong as to the "why"). You can't cut Congressional salaries.

That relates to her not even mentioning the president's salary during the shutdown. Which, yes, also falls under the same rubric as that of Congresscritters, which The Hill got wrong.

It's not just illegal, which The Hill claims; it is unconstitutional, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. Explicitly so with the president. And for good reason. Although the president wound up much stronger than most members of Team Philadelphia 1787 not named Hamilton intended, the founders didn't want Congress forcing a president to their will by hacking his pay. (Of course, they objected when George III tried to insulate colonial governors from colonial legislative control, so, and far from the only time in America's founding, hypocrisy was at play.)

As for Congress, per the same link, in the current Congress, it's illegal to cut their pay, explicitly, by the 27th Amendment, which The Hill also gets wrong. When the new Congress starts, AOC could push a bill on the first day of the session that they don't get paid until the shutdown ends. She could also ask for it to be part of the standing rules in House and Senate. If I am engaging in correct constitutional interpretation, that could pass muster. But, short of an amendment, she still can't do anything about the president's salary.

Finally, if we're going to criticize Beltway stenos for "reporting" on Trump's tweets, should we not hold the stenos to the same standard re Ocasio-Cortez? I say yes. That piece had no actual reporting and was inaccurate. I've already Tweeted to the particular Beltway steno who "reported" this, specifically on the error, and got no response.

Update, Feb. 20, 2018: She's had other unforced errors, like throwing Rep. Omar halfway under the bus on Israel-Palestine issues.

Sanders vs Clinton: Who's the real "can do" candidate?

For many of the more ardent backers of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, their bottom line, their fallback position, against Bernie Sanders and his supporters is that she will be more effective as president, because she's more pragmatic, and this has made her more effective in the past.

Well, it's time to put this to an empirical test.

And, the survey says?

Bernie Sanders. And, it's not really close, to be honest.

Many of these Clinton backers have made "pragmatism" into a shibboleth, in place of substantive, consistent campaign positions, while at the same time thinking that "pragmatic" always,and "magically," whether with or without substance behind it, translates into "efficacious." And, as far as their claims to pragmatism, they ignore that Sanders as mayor, AND also as Representative/Senator, whether pragmatic or whatever, has gotten a lot accomplished.

There's yet more here from Vox, of all places, on the "can-do" spirit, or the efficacy, of Sanders.

The story, if you will, by Matt Yglesias, comes largely from a Facebook post by Nevada State Rep. Lucy Flores, who is now a candidate for Congress.

It bears extensive quoting. (I won't quote quite as much as Yglesias):

I was a junior in college when the reality of today’s economic and social injustice hit me squarely in the gut with soul crushing force. After managing through my own set of difficult circumstances – escaping the cycle of poverty and dysfunction that included abandonment by my mother, gang-involvement, a stint on juvenile parole, a teenage abortion and becoming a high school drop-out - I was working several jobs to get myself through school at the University of Southern California. 

One of those jobs was assessing kids involved in a long-term study on the impact of early learning on brain development.

She then speaks of a particular case:

And then it struck me: this bright kid, this happy, starry-eyed kid, this kid with all the potential in the world, had nothing. … 

I gave it all to him. Then I said, “Ok, I have to go now. Have fun coloring your sheets. And remember to read at school every chance you get!” He happily nodded as he walked back into his filthy apartment. I walked to the sidewalk, sat on the curb, and sobbed uncontrollably. I sobbed with despair I hadn’t felt, well, ever. I knew as soon as I walked away what was likely in store for that kid – I knew the odds were against him, just like they were against me. … 

And I knew I was powerless to do anything about it. Until I realized that I wasn’t.
Until I realized that change is achieved one person at a time, one day at a time, and one vote at a time. 

I think about this boy all the time. I wonder if he beat the odds. I wonder where he is. I wonder if he’s still alive. He still makes my heart hurt. I thought about him when I first heard Bernie Sanders speak. … 

(O)nly one of these candidates makes me think of that young boy in South Central Los Angeles– and that’s Bernie Sanders.

Yes. 

She ends:

I believe that Bernie Sanders will lead the charge, with many millions of Americans behind him, against the unfettered Wall Street greed that has threatened the very existence of the middle class and shackled so many more to permanent poverty.

And then says she supports a political revolution.

Yglesias, of all people, then brings out the efficacy angle:

(S)he connects Sanders and the Sanders campaign not to a particular policy proposal but to a sense of personal efficacy. … She discusses the merits of both candidates a bit, but she closes again on the efficacy issue.

Interesting, indeed. 

Yes, Republicans will fight him. And? Obama gave them a neoliberal, big-business insurer friendly health care reform bill, and they called him a socialist. 

Sanders didn't get all he wanted as mayor of Burlington on the land trust, which is what that top link is about, but he got a lot, with a mix of fighting against and winning over, both business conservatives and some liberals in town and their voices on the Burlington city council. Along the way, Sanders showed himself to be pragmatic enough to see that, at least in Burlington, this was a better option to rent control and housing subsidies.

In the House and Senate, especially when he entered the House, his potential for effectiveness was again doubted, per that second link. Instead, he helped get bills passed for restitution for white collar crime victims (sounds logical?), funding community health centers, expanding low-income heating assistance, "greening" federal buildings and more. Click that link to see the whole list.

Bernie Sanders as pragmatic — a principled pragmatism — and efficacious. Gee, sounds like an alleged version of Hillary Clinton.

In contrast, Hillary Clinton as senator has a relatively thin track record. (Not as thin as Barack Obama, but, Clinton wasn't making the "pragmatism" or "get things done" in 2008.) Twenty Dems responded to a "takedown" rhetorical question from Carly Fiorina about what Clinton had done in general. Almost all talked about her time as either Secretary of State or as First Lady. Few talked about her time as Senator, and even when they did, it was more in terms of platitudes than actual legislation.

And, as for her Secretary of State accomplishments, trying to give her majority credit for things like the Iran deal that were wrapped up under John Kerry? That's a stretch. It's a huge stretch to claim that she had any real role in taking down bin Laden. Claiming that she made the State Department better than it had been under BushCo? Per one of Shrub's few statements that are often true, that's "soft bigotry of low expectations," the same phrase that explains why her warhawk, drone-loving boss got a shiny prize from some folks in Norway.

It's an even bigger stretch, is Ed Kilgore's comment at the end of the second page, that she's had a formative influence on universal health care. First, we don't even have that yet. Second, Hilarycare was an even greater clusterfuck than Obamacare, something only a true neoliberal could love.

Speaking of that, most the commenters on that page? Mainly neolibs and insiders. Bill Burton, as noted, ran an Obama Super PAC. Howard Dean? Ugh. Harry Reid? Better, but also the top Dem in Congress. Anita Dunn? Dear Leader's first communications director. Chuck Schumer? A Dem who fellates Wall Street even more than Clinton. Bill Richardson?  Suck-up extraordinaire who's been out of the political spotlight for years. Chris Dodd? Another fellator of the Street. Paul Begala? Clinton consigliere.

Bill Scher? Left-neolib at best and apologist for Dear Leader's Spy State. Patrick Leahy? Not horrible, OK. David Alexrod? Puhleeze. Neera Tanden? Neolib of neolibs, working at the shop run by Clinton's campaign chair. Center for American Progress and Center for America's future show why the word "progressive," the way it comes out of their mealy mouths, is worse than the word "liberal." Tracy Sefl? Noted as a Hillary Clinton adviser. Hillary Rosen? Lobbyist. Doug Schoen? Identified as the Slicker's pollster.

Barbara Boxer? Other than in-state enmity against Fiorina, especially since she's retiring, why is she letting herself be quoted? Because she's a gender feminist who endorsed Clinton way back in 2013. Less left than she tries to give the impression of being. Howard Koh? Clinton's legal counsel at State. Probably gave her back-door advice about private emails.

Dennis Kucinch? Has become a fucking laugh who long ago crapped his own bed. Donna Brazile? Clintonista and Inside the Beltway media hack. Ed Kilgore? Neolib who calls himself a Bull Moose Democrat.

In all of this, to me, that response list to Fiorina was kind of an embarrassment for Clinton, if anything. If another Democrat had raised her rhetorical question, many Dems on that list probably wouldn't even have answered.

It's also kind of an embarrassment to the Democratic Party. A dog's breath of ward heelers and hangers on, for the most part. Beyond those are that, this also shows that most elected, or election-connected, Democrats, like Republicans, think their constituents are more conservative than is true.

Beyond that, per Adolph Reed, since Bill Clinton ran for president pledging to "end welfare as we know it," his record of actual accomplishments is kind of thin.

Hell, Bernie's even got better rockers and rappers fronting for his appearances than Hillary does. Let alone the fact that he's got Spin writing about it, which I am sure will NEVER happen with her.

And, speaking of, as for whether Sanders "can do" in this year's Democratic primary slate, along with issues of superdelegates, possible coverage bias and more, I take a look at all of that right here.

The GOP's worst candidates for 2016

I don't have a lot to add to Brains' "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" take on last night's GOP presidential debate, fortunately the last one of this year. No Scrooges stealing Christmas fun from the general public or whomever. That's better than the other side of the duopoly.

(Dems get their last on Saturday, which will probably get drowned in Christmas-related events. "Nice," and possibly deliberate from Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Teh Google sez it's going against a rerun of "The Wiz Live," which means younger black voters for sure won't be watching, and many Americans in general will be at Christmas parties.

Oh, wait, it gets worse, possibly. The next debate after that, for Dems, is on the Sunday of MLK weekend.)

That said, the tenor of the debate and ISIS issues aside, or even including them, I actually don't think The Donald is the worst GOP candidate for the general election.

Look, we know a lot of Americans love money. We also know that, other huffing and puffing aside, if Trump has a plurality of delegates, a brokered convention might be hard to pull off, and that, if he has an apparent pre-convention majority, at least not counting GOP superdelegates, a brokered convention would cause a revolt.

It's actually Cruz who would be the worst. Trump's nuttery is sprinkled with populism enough that he might garner independents. Cruz has none of that skin in the game. Plus, as Brains notes, he got shown to be a public hypocrite for the first time, though Cruz will probably claim Big Biz, vs Big Gummint, has a right to do whatever it wants to your privacy.

So, Havana Ted would be the worst GOP candidate for the general election, in my book.

Second worst? Christie Kreme, or whatever name you want for him.

Why? Picture Bridgegate indictments coming through at about the time of a Chris Christie nomination. Plus, the man can be louder than Trump at times.

Third? We'll slot The Donald here.

Anybody not named Jeb! or possibly Marco, though he seemed to morph into Jeb! Jr. last night, which he can't afford, is probably tied for fourth.

That said, the GOP also had another kids' table debate last night. Lindsay Graham eyerolling at Rick Santorum ... there's a Log Cabin Republicans plus "Santorum" (if you know what I mean) plus Graham joke in there somewhere ... were the highlight there.

Per my poll at top left, why some of the clowns haven't decided the clown car isn't taking them anywhere, I don't know. Why some of their financiers haven't decided that for them is an even greater mystery. I guess vanity candidates have vanity funders willing to pound sand down ratholes, which is what makes the Merika where Donald Trump thinks he was "great," or, per Ann Richards,

The America where George H.W. Bush was born on third base thinking he'd hit a triple ...

"Great."

Merika. On sale now at your local Walmart.

Of course, they're all lying. And Merikan Xceptionalism means denying that Merikans are so base and lowly.

And, any media pundits that didn't award at least one grade of D or lower last night are Inside the Beltway, or locally, Inside the Mopac.

#InsideTheMopac media will go in the tank for the #TPP

For the unfamiliar, or those missing my post of earlier this morning, the Inside the Mopac media is the Texas state-level version of the Inside the Beltway media. I'll be blogging about it more and more in the future, Peter Principle and all.

In fact, in Dallas, the Snooze is already doing it, writing a puff piece about how much ranchers will like the Trans Pacific Partnership. The piece mentions none of the potential problems for the TPP, whose full text is here.

Among things the Snooze doesn't mention is that Japan is still reserving agricultural "safeguards." We've seen how restrictive Japan has been on exports in the past. If this opens the door to other countries doing the same, then it's not much advancement. And, per that link, Japan at least isn't cracking its doors open a lot.

And, the intellectual property rules could allow genetic research on livestock improvement to become more bottled up and pricey than now.

Saying no to the #InsideTheMopac media

Fellow Texans of a political bent, especially fellow bloggers, will, I hope, get the meaning of the hashtag.

Texas has its state-level version of "inside the Beltway" media. The Mopac freeway doesn't run all the way around Austin, but, as the original bypass, it's a handy symbol for calling out the Austin bureaus and the state-level political analysts at Texas' main seven-day daily newspapers for their suckupitis to Austin's ruling class.

I am including the Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News and the Austin American Statesman. I'm not as familiar with the El Paso Times, but since it was bought by Gannett earlier this year, which since then bought Corpus Christi and other Journal Sentinel papers, I'll mark it down as an expected suck-up for the future. Anything smaller than these falls under the state-level version of regional papers (Corpus, Laredo, the lower Valley, Lubbock, Odessa, Midland, Beaumont, Amarillo, Waco, Wichita Falls and even smaller.)

On constitutional amendments? I suspect the Lege could put forth a bill to constitutionally enshrine goat-fucking and the inside the Mopac media would all solemnly sign off on it, and offer reasons to support it.

I know this well with the Snooze; having lived in metro Dallas most of the previous decade, there's not an establishmentarian ass that paper won't kiss. I am 119 percent sure that, within the city of Dallas, if the Dallas Citizens Council said, "We support goat-fucking," the Snooze would do the same, on a dime. The Startlegram, I have enough familiarity with it from my time in the Metroplex to say that it's only better by the soft bigotry of low comparisons.

The Chron? I know less about it, but not nothing. It seems to me to tank pretty well itself. The Express-News, especially with bureau consolidation, just follows its lead.

The Stateless? The paper's not as liberal as traditional Austin, and tilts left-neolib to some degree in deference to "new Austin." Plus, in print, it's barely a seven-day daily newspaper anymore, and if Cox can't sell ads into it on Mondays, why keep pretending?

The EP Times? Already checked that box; it's a Gannett paper.

And, per this follow-up post, expect to see more and more "tanking" on the Trans-Pacific Partnership by the Inside the Mopac media.

The New Republic is on life support? Good. #TNR is trash

Really, TNR died long ago.

It died when Marty Peretz inflicted his ultra-Zionism, plus his racism, on the journal. That's why, contra this former intern's claim, it's far, far away from "heterodox liberalism." Hell, Vox isn't the first place to halfway note that, as I blogged a few years back. Well, if you're on the Council for Foreign Relations, it's probably flat-out liberalism.

And, Mr. Greenberg, if it's impolite for me to email you calling Marty Peretz a racist? If you'd had a Twitter account, I would have done it more publicly, so consider yourself lucky.

And, if I had wanted to be impolite, I would have called Peretz a fucking racist, not just a racist.

Besides, The Nation publicly called you out. So did Gawker (insert irony, since new TNR owner Chris Hughes wants a new Gawker or something), but with more snark.

But, back to TNR's nearly 40 years of history being owned by ... a racist.

Instead, it had a nearly 40-year history of racism, racism fueled in part by a particular version of ultra-Zionism that is part of why some blacks have long been less than fully trusting of all Jews. Sorry, but I went there.

And, for Jews, especially with some degree of Zionism, to stay on, and to stay on not just through Peretz's craptacular management in general, but his racism, well ... it's no wonder that a lot of black journalists like Ta-Nehisi Coates feel little sadness for your loss.

Hell, I wouldn't blame them if they had a shade or two of schadenfreude. It would be well-deserved.

That said, back to the racism.

It's racism that was only further fueled when Andrew Sullivan (anybody calls him a liberal, I'll kick you in the nads) devoted a full issue of the magazine to singing a paean to Charles Murray's and Richard Herrnstein's love song to racialism, "The Bell Curve," a move that inspired my bit of Photoshopping at left. And a bit of punditry about that Photoshopping.

Dylan Byars at Politico has the inside-the-Beltway mourning for the mag, which is cutting its print issues in half, looking to go digital first, and ... moving to New York!

Quelle horreur!

In reality? TNR was a training ground for some neoliberals, and even more a lot of neoconservatives.

You know, the type that, at various levels of alleged liberalism, worked to give Shrub Bush pseudointellectual, pseudoliberal "cover" for invading Iraq.

Yes, since Peretz finally let go of the paper, it's gotten better on not being racist. But, the inside-the-Beltway thinking otherwise? From the occasional articles I've grokked online, little has changed there.

For those who claim TNR wasn't racist, an old cover.
Via Ta-Nehesi Coates' Twitter feed.

Who, outside the Beltway, would mourn that, or call it "heterodox liberalism"? Speaking of, I wonder how national Democrats will pontificate. Or national bloggers? Why am I not surprised that Josh Marshall called TNR, Peretz version, "really good"?

Additional serious points about its current status.

The Daily Beast nails one other angle.

Current owner Chris Hughes is a co-founder of Facebook. He's been a partner in Gawker.

You can form some idea of what the new TNR is going to look like just from that.

Clickbait articles. Political gossip. Political picture. A bit gussied up, still. Commentary to hold that together.

In other words, a kinder, gentler version of the UK's clickbait newspaper, The Daily Mail.

On the other hand, for the Dylan Byars types and beyond? Some people at TNR, and probably starting with Leon Wieseltier, probably did need some kicking around.

As for what this does, or does not, say about #JournalismIsDying, political/opinion mags have been money-losers for decades. Ask National Review and The Nation. Rich benefactors is the only way they stay afloat.

Chris Hughes will either become a rich benefactor, or his Facebooky click-bait model will fail without his wallet, and he'll move on. If we're lucky, Hughes will screw up enough to kill it.

That said, said failure will be blamed on anything and everything else but neoliberalism, and Net 2.0 related items.

===

Corey Robin has some interesting thoughts. While acknowledging that TNR was racist and warmongering, he says that's not what's caused its semi-demise. Rather, in what's probably going to be infuriating to Sully of my Photoshopping, down through the sacked Franklin Foer and everybody who quit in sympathy this week, Robin said that it ran out of intellectual steam.

I would modify that. I'd say that it was rather that its intellectual steam got adopted by so much of the modern GOP, as well as neoliberal Democrats, that its one big idea became an inside-the-Beltway commonplace.

Andrew Sullivan: fellator of #Yglesias and #MSM #BratPack punditry

Andrew Sullivan well deserves the Photoshopping I did at left, with the absurdity of some of his end-of-year awards.

The worst of them? Per the header, his Yglesias Awards, named after roving, self-branding Brat Pack inside-the-Beltway opiner Matt Yglesias.

Matty Y, along with Ezra Klein and other early 30-somethings, or however old they are, are right up there in my world, and I presume the likes of wordsmith Charles Pierce's, along with Tiger Beat on the Potomac.

But, no, not for Sully. 

Here's why he calls these awards what he does.

The Yglesias Award is for writers, politicians, columnists or pundits who actually criticize their own side, make enemies among political allies, and generally risk something for the sake of saying what they believe.

And, when and where has that ever happened?

Matt, Ezra Klein, et al, are as reliable as a grandfather clock in striking the hourly virtues of inside-the-Beltway thinking on serious issues.

Now, Matty Y's bio on Wikipedia claims the award is tongue-in-cheek.

I actually doubt that. It seems seriously awarded in the name of a not-at-all liberal neolibera (Yglesias says he voted for Romney) who represents a whole genre of people trying to seriously prove they're not liberal. And, Sully's (Michael) Moore Award and  Dick Morris Award are both straight up. Plus, I checked a nominee on the Yglesias Award, and the quote was true, and the sentiment was properly captured.

That said, let's look at one of those other awards before I go too far.

Per the Morris description:

The Dick Morris Award (originally the Von Hoffman Award, until readers pushed for a name-change last year) is given for stunningly wrong political, social and cultural predictions.

Nobody who devoted a full issue of The New Republic, when he was editor, to touting the virtues of the original Bell Curve, has any business handing out Dick Morris Awards, either. Except maybe to himself.

But, as I said when I Tweeted Sully a copy of his Poseur Alert of the Year Award nominees, he's missing one obvious candidate there, too.

Sidebar:

That all said, I've posted an edit to Yglesias' bio. We'll see if it sticks.

And, this is why I still don't trust Wikipedia to have correct information on living people, especially if they're at all connected to U.S. politics.