On the News-Weak sale

As far as I’m concerned, there is still no columnist in North American as good as Paul Wells. I started reading Wells when he was the National Post, and I followed him over to Maclean’s.  I don’t agree with him most of the time, but his combination of no-holds-barred commentary and aha-here’s-the-jugular wit is can’t-miss stuff for me.

To see what I mean take a look at his missive on the sale of Newsweek.  The opening paragraph is priceless all by itself:

Here’s the table of contents of this week’s Newsweek magazine. Right there is the best explanation for why the Washington Post put the storied franchise up for sale yesterday: because if you cannot hope to sell the sucker one issue at a time, sooner or later you are going to have to put the whole wheezing enterprise on the block. And maybe the only buyer will be the editor who has been busily flying it into the nearest mountain.

Read the whole thing; you’ll never be able to hear “eyes” and “sofa” in the same sentence without dissolving into hysterical laughter.

Cross-posted to VV

My prediction on the British and Ulster election

In less than two hours, polls will open across Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  It is the closest election since 1992.

That year (1992). I was the only person (I think) who predicted a Conservative majority, and in fact, the Tories’ MP number was one seat outside my range (I predicted between 331 and 335; they won 336).

I’ve been a little sketchy on UK elections since then (and here in the US, I’ve been absolutely awful), but that’s never stopped me before, so here goes.

From what I can see, the Conservatives once again have the momentum – and since UK polls (much like Canada’s) don’t include undecided voters, that can lead to wild swings, especially in an election like this.

Therefore, I suspect the Tories will do better than where the pollsters have them (which in itself is not bad and getting better).

Well, onto the numbers:

• Conservative: 331-335 (majority of 12 to 20), with one Independent Unionist in Ulster supporting them
  
• Labor: 185-190
• Liberal Democrats: 95-100
• Democratic Unionist Party (Ulster/Northern Ireland): 9-10
• Scottish National Party: 6-7
• Sinn Fein (NI – nationalist): 5-6
• Plaid Cymru (Welsh nationalists): 3-4
• Social Democratic Labor Party (NI – nationalist): 2-3
• United Kingdom Independence Party: 1 (Nigel Farage defeats the Speaker)

We’ll see how far off I am . . .

Cross-posted to VV

Kathleen Parker, squish

When Sarah Palin became the Republican nominee for Vice President, columnist Kathleen Parker was (and remains) one of her harshest critics.  Parker became one of the leading voices for elitism within the American right.  Unlike most of the others, however, she did her best to preserve her credentials as a bona fide conservative . . .

. . . until, that is, this morning.

In her latest syndicated column (we’ll use the WaPo – it’s MSM, but it is local), Parker focuses on the efforts of limited-government folks in Utah to rid themselves of U.S. Senator Robert Bennett.  I myself thought Bennett an unusual target, until I noticed that Bennett voted for TARP.  Parker noticed it, too, and spend several paragraphs defending the debacle:

Never mind that a Republican president proposed the bailout, or that many Republicans and free-marketers felt TARP was crucial to keep the economy from capsizing. For those who have forgotten, the point was to prop up the credit system to keep enough money flowing so that the “free market” didn’t collapse entirely.

What was the alternative? What might have happened without TARP? As Mitt Romney, who supported TARP, has said, “We were on a precipice. . . . Now we can sit back and say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t so scary.’ Well, frankly, it was a very scary time for a lot of people. And that’s something which was resolved.”

. . . Would all those running against TARP now have voted against it had they been in Washington with the full weight of economic collapse on their shoulders?

This triggers several responses, most of them involving the digestive system switching gears.  I’ll steer clear of those, and stick to the important point: those of us who opposed TARP did so because we did not feel it would fix the problem.

Perhaps, Kathleen didn’t realize this, having been in the panic-infected hothouse of Washington and all, but there were several economic and financial experts who were immune to the panic, and realized that the “cure” of the bailout was simply another strain of the disease.

What Ms. Parker has done with this column is give elitism a bad name.  She has revealed herself to be completely ignorant of economics, but arrogant enough to assume she knows better than the rest of us.

In the meantime, she has also revealed herself to be far too much a friend of government interference in the economy to be considered a true member of the right.  She is, in fact, a squish.

My fellow rightosphere writers who themselves are critical of Palin should remember this before quoting Parker too frequently.

Cross-posted to VV

WaPo thought Weigel was a conservative. Did they bother to ask anyone?

Fellow VVer Riley has already noted Dave Weigel’s . . . um . . . creativity when it comes to covering the Republican Party and the American right in general.  Now, we discover from Politico (via the Weekly Standard Blog) that the WaPo actually thought he was a conservative.

Perhaps if they had taken the time to ask anyone on the right, they would have found out differently.

This is hilariously bad, even for the WaPo.

Cross-posted to VV

NBA first round is over, and I went six for eight

Moreover, by conference final pairs (Cleveland and Orlando, San Antonio and LA) are still intact, although Boston shook things up a bit tonight, and as of 11:30PM, Phoenix is nursing a small lead.

On the plus side, the more trouble Cleveland has, the better shot Ewing will get his ring as an assistant coach (with the Magic).

Cross-posted to VV