Once again, the New York Times is setting up a false debate over healthcare policy, contrasting White House-style "pragmatism" with left-wing "ideology." The lead of Sheryl Gay Stolberg's piece today (12/18/09):

In the great healthcare debate of 2009, President Obama has cast himself as a cold-eyed pragmatist, willing to compromise in exchange for votes. Now ideology -- an uprising on the Democratic left -- is smacking the pragmatic president in the face.

In this worldview, "ideologues" are those who push for reforms--including single-payer--that they believe will lower costs and offer more comprehensive coverage. "Pragmatists," meanwhile, are moving in the opposite direction, toward higher costs and less coverage, in order to theoretically win the political support of some conservative lawmakers.

Using language like this doesn't tell you much about the debate in Washington, but it speaks volumes about where the New York Times is coming from.

The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is getting attention for one rather unusual finding: that the right-wing Tea Party movement is more popular than either the Democratic or Republican parties. The point was made on MSNBC's First Read website and on the channel's Morning Joe program this morning (12/17/09).

Don't buy it.

The MSNBC headline-- sure to be repeated everywhere on Fox News today-- is straight-forward: "Tea Party More Popular Than Dems, GOP." The numbers tell you that Republicans are viewed positively by 28 percent of the public, the Democrats are at 35 percent, while the Tea Party is at 41 percent.

But look at the poll a little more closely. The first thing to know is that most people don't know what the Tea Party movement is--25 percent said they "know very little," 23 percent "know nothing at all." So the question that elicited the 41 percent approval mark had to give people some idea of what it's about. And NBC's poll question offered a remarkably upbeat description:

As you may know, this year saw the start of something known as the Tea Party movement. In this movement, citizens, most of whom are conservatives, participated in demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and other cities, protesting government spending, the economic stimulus package and any type of tax increases. From what you know about this movement, is your opinion of it very positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative or very negative? If you do not know enough to have an opinion, please say so.

In other words, the "no-tax-hike, responsible spending" party that you've never heard of is a little bit popular.

Yesterday's Washington Post (12/16/09) reports that the public isn't sold on healthcare reform. As the headline puts it:

Public Cooling to Healthcare Reform as Debate Drags On, Poll Finds

The story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen explains that "there is minimal public enthusiasm for the kind of comprehensive changes in healthcare now under consideration." Now, how "comprehensive" the reforms under consideration are is certainly debatable, but these conclusions seem to be drawn from questions about costs and Barack Obama's handling of the issue.

But the Post did ask other, more interesting questions--and then buried the results. Deep into the article we learn that "more than six in 10 favor expanding Medicare to people ages 55 to 64 who lack insurance--a proposal included in one Senate compromise effort that appears unlikely to survive final negotiations." In the next graph, readers are told:

On the issue of whether and how to expand coverage to those who do not have it, 36 percent favor a government plan to compete with private insurers, 30 percent prefer private plans coordinated by the government and 30 percent want the system to remain intact.

As with the so-called Medicare "buy-in," this finding of strong support for a public option suggests that the public is much more supportive of fundamental health care changes than the Congress or White House. In other words, the public isn't really "cooling" to health care reform;  they want more than the politicians are likely to deliver.

The Israeli government's near-total blockade of the Gaza Strip has been roundly criticized by international human rights groups as a harsh form of collective punishment. Some U.N. investigations have labeled it much worse--that Israel's actions amount to crimes against humanity.

Back in medialand, the Washington Post's Howard Schneider has a story today (12/15/09) comparing life in Gaza with the West Bank. While the latter is still under Israeli occupation, its economy is (predictably enough) much stronger, and its standard of living relatively higher. This is a somewhat familiar theme in the press--noting that while Hamas' rule in Gaza is a disaster, the West Bank's more moderate political leadership is getting results. (Tom Friedman wrote two columns about this in August.)

The Post 's examination offers only glancing mentions of the Israeli blockade. The piece employs unusually soft language in the fifth paragraph in describing "Israeli policies that restrict travel into and out of the Gaza Strip and limit its economic growth in a bid to undercut support for the area's ruling Islamist Hamas movement." Near the end of the article, we read that "Israel's rules have choked off the economy in Gaza, increasing poverty and despair among its 1.5 million people." Somewhat better, but buried.

If one is going to compare Gaza to the West Bank- or to anywhere else, for that matter--one would have to point out the punishing effects of this blockade. And if one were to do that, you might want to come up with a word other than "rules" to describe what some see as potential crimes.

On Sunday (12/13/09), the New York Times Book Review offered a brief take on Malalai Joya's A Woman Among Warlords:  The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice.  Times reviewer Marc Tracy seemed to like the book OK, with a few notable caveats: Joya's arguments, we're told, "have earned the plaudits of people like Noam Chomsky, [and] are sometimes extreme, simplistic and misguided, but they are rarely without a grain of truth." It's hard to tell what the "grain of truth" might be, but throwing Chomsky's name into the mix seems to be a sign to a certain audience that the person being discussed is not to be taken seriously.

Tracy goes on to express frustration at Joya's "tendency to choose rageful denunciation over calm observation is immensely frustrating." This is someone who has faced off against the Taliban and various warlords in her home country. Is someone really going to chide her for choosing "rageful denunciation over calm observation"?

New York Times' climate change reporter Andrew Revkin is taking a buyout from his employer after a tough year, the Columbia Journalism Review's website (12/14/09) reports. Revkin, whom CJR's Christine Russell describes as "one of the most influential and respected reporters on the environment," says that 2009 "has been the hardest year I’ve experienced on this beat"--in part because

Revkin has increasingly found himself--and his paper’s coverage--the target of critics on both the right and the left, particularly in the often vitriolic blogosphere. He described himself as "an advocate for scientific reality," not for either side of the debate.

"The right," in this sense, means people who dispute the idea that humans are causing global climate change, whereas "the left" means people who affirm that we are--in other words, people who believe in scientific reality. Revkin's willingness to pretend that science is not on one side of the debate explains a lot of the criticism he's taken lately from pro-science bloggers.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz spends his Sunday mornings as the host of Reliable Sources, the media criticism show on CNN. Yesterday (12/13/09), one segment concerned the Washington Post's decision to print an op-ed (12/9/09) on "Climategate" by Sarah Palin.

It prompted this exchange with guest John Aravosis of Americablog:

ARAVOSIS: What newspapers aren't supposed to do is present an issue that's already decided as being a he said/she said of, hey, half the people say yes, half the people say no.

KURTZ: So you say it's already decided.

ARAVOSIS: Ninety percent of scientists believe global warming is manmade.

KURTZ: And Sarah Palin has said that manmade activity contributes to global warming.

I'm not sure where Palin said that, but in her Post op-ed she wrote this:

But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes.

We've noted the corporate media's double standard on Nazi analogies: When conservatives are compared to the Third Reich, however obscurely, it's an outrageous slur, but when leaders of the right charge progressives with Hitler-like tendencies, it's unremarkable political rhetoric.

Political Animal's Steve Benen (12/8/09) rounds up some similar examples of criticisms that are outrageous when applied by the left to the right, but no big deal when they go the other way--starting with the manufactured controversy over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's likening Republican foot-dragging over healthcare reform to conservatives' lack of urgency over women's suffrage and ending slavery:

If we're to believe the faux-outrage, the reference to slavery was the rhetorical element that went too far. But this, apparently, is a new concern--the right has been far more direct in making the same comparison. Harry Reid was talking about key moments in history in which the right was wrong, but Michele Bachmann recently called the Democrats' legislative agenda "nothing more than slavery," and no one said a word. Indeed, conservatives routinely insist that the left is trying "enslave" America, and the political mainstream just shrugs its shoulders in response.

This is not uncommon. In 2005, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) described the Bush administration's torture policies and system of secret prisons as being reminiscent of "Soviets in their gulags." At the time, the media and Republicans were apoplectic about Durbin's remarks, sparking a week-long frenzy. Several conservatives called on the Senate to censure Durbin, and Karl Rove, at the time a high-ranking White House official, argued that Durbin's quote was evidence that liberals are traitors. Durbin eventually offered a tearful apology.

But notice that just a few days ago, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Republican leadership, called Medicaid a "health care gulag." Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) recently called Dems' health care reform efforts "Soviet-style gulag health care." Neither reporters nor other members of Congress batted an eye.

Also note, when Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said Republicans are promoting lethal healthcare policies, it was a huge national controversy. When Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said the same thing, no one seemed to care.

Journalists really ought to try putting the next GOP press release on this topic in the circular bin. "He called me a name back" is a complaint that you should have learned not to take seriously by the second grade.

Forbes.com has an article up called "The Fiction of Climate Science" (12/4/09). Thanks no doubt to a link from Drudge, it's currently one of the website's "top rated," "most popular" and "most emailed" items. "Fiction" is a polite word for what the author, Gary Sutton, does with evidence.

Sutton grinds the already well-worn denialist ax about "global cooling"--scientists were predicting an imminent ice age in the 1970s, the argument goes, so why listen to those eggheads now about global warming? See FAIR's Action Alert from last February 18 for a debunking of this myth.

But wait! Sutton provides a quote:

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age."

First of all, this isn't one quote--this is two quotes from two separate National Science Board documents stapled together. The first comes from a 1974 report titled Science and the Challenges Ahead, and it was accurate at the time. The report goes on to talk about potential human impacts on the global climate--both in adding dust to the atmosphere for a potential cooling effect, and by "activities of the expanding human population--especially those involved with the burning of fossil fuels--[that] raised the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, which acts as a 'greenhouse' for retaining the heat radiated from the Earth's surface." The report notes that "the state of knowledge regarding climate and its changes is too limited to predict reliably whether the present, unanticipated cooling trend will continue."

The second half of the quote comes from another report, from 1972, called Patterns and Perspectives in Environmental Science. Reader David McManus pointed out the games Forbes played with this quote; here's the sentence in full, with emphasis added:

Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end, to be followed by a long period of considerably colder temperatures leading into the next glacial age some 20,000 years from now.

The report immediately adds: "However, it is possible, or even likely that human interference has already altered the climate so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path." It goes on to discuss "increased atmospheric opacity" as a possible cooling factor, counterbalanced by the fact that "increasing concentration of industrial carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should lead to a temperature increase by absorption of infrared radiation from the Earth's surface."

Needless to say, someone who is unable to correctly report what a book says is unlikely to be able to perform the much more complicated task of independently analyzing climate data and pointing out where all those scientists went wrong.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank (12/6/09) thinks there's something wrong with left-wing critics of Barack Obama. As his lead put it:

Some parishioners in the Church of Obama discovered last week that their spiritual leader is a false prophet.

 Milbank starts with Michael Moore, who wrote an open letter urging Obama not to escalate the Afghanistan war. This makes no sense to Milbank, since Obama never said he'd withdraw troops. Well, yes. I suspect many of Obama's critics--maybe even Michael Moore--are aware of that.  Moore also supports single-payer healthcare, and wishes Obama would too. Does that mean that continuing that advocacy with Obama in the White House is a waste of time? Or is the idea that no one should ever advocate for any political cause that upsets the power structure?

Maybe that'd be OK with Dana Milbank. As he put it,  Obama is an "incrementalist....  His Afghanistan policy, likewise, is above all a pragmatic, nonideological strategy." Opposing that policy, then, is ideological and anti-pragmatic.

Milbank closes with this:

You'd think his supporters might applaud this sort of thoughtful, methodical leadership as a repudiation of the Bush style of government by political theory. Instead, they're using words such as "O'Bomber" to describe the president. MoveOn.org launched a petition drive against the policy. Code Pink, the group that heckled Bush officials for years, heckled Obama advisers on Capitol Hill last week. The liberal Web publisher Arianna Huffington told Charlie Rose that the policy "puts into question his whole leadership."

Moveon's petition is not  "against the policy"--their petition, if anything, supports it, since it only calls on Congress "to push the Obama administration to outline firm benchmarks and a binding timeline."

Code Pink is against the war; the fact that they're still against is a sign of their consistency.  Milbank might see the process by which Obama decided to escalate the war "thoughtful," but if resulting policy is one you oppose, you continue to oppose it. 

Arianna Huffington, likewise, is saying she opposes Obama's decision, based on a variety of factors. Milbank's point, at face value, is that these people should have all been clear-eyed about Obama's position. That's obviously true--and some of them were. But one gets the sense that his real point is that those to the left of Obama should just leave him alone.

Today's Los Angeles Times (12/7/09) gives us a story headlined "The Fight's Back in John McCain." In the subhead we learn that McCain is "Bipartisan No More, Especially on Healthcare."

The Times tells us that "the Mac is back" because he's sounding an awful lot like a Republican politician: "Gone is the maverick bridge-builder who bucked his party on high-voltage issues such as immigration, climate change and campaign finance reform."

The paper explains that "some Democrats see McCain turning more partisan because of bitterness at his 2008 defeat, but his friends say the increasingly polarized political environment makes it harder for anyone to cross party lines."

An easier explanation comes from neither unnamed Democrats nor McCain's friends: John McCain's voting record, which has been long been solidly conservative, despite the media's long-standing crush on their favorite "maverick." In short, McCain is being McCain--a conservative Republican.  Sometimes a journalist notices this and wonders what happened to their beloved maverick John McCain, or they take a few rather trivial anecdotes (as the Washington Post did early this year) and salute the Return of the Maverick.  It'd be less confusing if the media hadn't created the myth in the first place.

Time columnist Joe Klein (12/3/09) was not altogether impressed by Obama's announcement of a 30,000 troop escalation in Afghanistan (an "iffy proposition," as Klein put it). But Klein's main point was that Obama should have justified the war differently: "Once you have made the decision to go, or to redouble your efforts, you must lead the charge--passionately and, yes, with a touch of anger."

Then he describes the better way:

Ronald Reagan would have done it differently. He would have told a story. It might not have been a true story, but it would have had resonance. He might have found, or created, a grieving spouse--a young investment banker whose wife had died in the World Trade Center--who enlisted immediately after the attacks ... and then gave his life, heroically, defending a school for girls in Kandahar. Reagan would have inspired tears, outrage, passion, a rush to recruiting centers across the nation.

It's hard to know what's creepier: suggesting that a president should lie to drum up support for a war, or suggesting he should do so to fight a war you're not so sure about in the first place.

Washington Times, the paper of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, has announced it will be going to free distribution and laying off at least 40 percent of its staff. Which positions won't make the cut? Well, one that's been mentioned is that of editor.

That's right; former editor John Solomon resigned last month after less than a year at the Times, and the company's new president and publisher, Jonathan Slevin, told the Washington Post that "there is no search for a Solomon successor and that his job may not be filled under a reorganization." Who, exactly, will be in charge of news content in the absence of an editor is unclear.

Over at the Dallas Morning News, meanwhile, who will be in charge of news content was made painfully clear to several section editors on Wednesday: the sales department. In a memo to staff at the News and A.H. Belo's other papers, editor Bob Mong and senior vice president of sales Cyndy Carr told editors of departments ranging from sports and entertainment to health and education that they would be reporting to sales managers instead of the editor, as part of the paper's "bold new strategies" of "business/news integration."

As Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer commented (Unfair Park, 12/3/09), "In short, those who sell ads for A.H. Belo's products will now dictate content within A.H. Belo's products, which is a radical departure from the way newspapers have been run since, oh, forever."

It's not entirely radical, given that the vaunted wall between the news and business ends of newspapers have been steadily eroding over the years. (See Extra!'s annual Fear & Favor reports.) But at a certain point, it seems like you have to stop calling yourself a news outlet and admit you're just an advertising supplement.

Sometimes reading the corporate media is like receiving dispatches from an alternate universe--like the one Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan (12/02/09) lives in, where Obama "bucked overwhelming conventional wisdom" to send more troops to Afghanistan, in the face of a "stunningly large number of American thinkers, strategists and pundits who have been perfectly prepared to lose wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan." The version of Obama who was elected U.S. president on Kagan's Earth-2 realized that he "might be applauded for losing in the salons of Washington and New York, the American public would not look on defeat so kindly," so he stood up to "willingness of the intellectual and foreign policy establishments to accept both decline and defeat."

Meanwhile, back on this side of the dimensional portal, an overwhelming majority of the intellectual and foreign policy establishment--as represented by the opinion writers for the real-world Washington Post as well as the New York Times--support continued war in Afghanistan, with only a small minority suggesting that it's possible to bring home the troops (Extra!, 12/09).  In this world, it's the public that's skeptical of an endless pursuit of victory, with a majority of respondents in recent polling saying they oppose the war (e.g., CNN/Opinion Research, 11/13-15/09) .

It's fun to get a glimpse of Kagan's what-if world.  But maybe Washington Post opinion writers could spend more time writing about the real world, since it's the one the rest of  us live in.

A meeting of the minds between NBC host Chris Matthews and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius (Chris Matthews Show, 11/29/09):

IGNATIUS: The long period of analysis, very deliberative, robs this of passion. This is--he was going to be a wartime president now, and he has to sell the country on the idea that our young men and women are going to go there, fight and get killed.

MITCHELL: Yes.

IGNATIUS: And, you know, I think this, you know, this is not going to....

MATTHEWS: So too much Chamberlain, not enough Churchill.

IGNATIUS: Well, too much--too much college professor.