He knows mindless opposition when he sees it, and says so.
Headline of the week:
Republicans mindlessly oppose Iran nuclear deal
And it gets better from there.
In the eyes of Republicans, the agreement with Iran has a fatal flaw: It was negotiated by the Obama administration. This president could negotiate a treaty promoting baseball, motherhood and apple pie, and Republicans would brand it the next Munich.
No phony even-handedness, no false equivalence. Just straight reporting. Bravo!
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
This morning hanging out at the local cafe which attracts a big Israeli contingent (including many local contractors) I got the right wing (for some reason, local Israeli contractors are inclined right) view on the whole deal.
Bibi is pulling a fast one on the Iranians by pretending to hate the deal. If he liked it they would never go for it. Instead, US and Israel will gather intelligence for the probable next step if Iran cheats.
And, if Iran doesn’t cheat and really gives up its nuke potential, so much the better.
Of course, our local contractors are not entirely devoted to being anti-Obama.
What do your Israel friends say about their country’s efforts to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists?
Are they going to keep assassinating them during the interim or are they going to give them a respite to see if Iran follows through?
“Just straight reporting”? You do realize it’s an opinion piece, right? Those are regularly allowed to be published sans phony even-handedness and false equivalence — nothing special there.
I got a grin out of the “wag the dove” line. Nice jab.
Pundits routinely engage in false equivalence nonetheless, particularly at the Post. Pareene over at Salon has a nice piece on this phenomenon.
Milbank himself is one of the worst – see here for Fallows’ take on one example (second item).
Prof. Kleiman is happy to call out the pundits when they behave badly, but recognizes that they deserve a pat on the back when they say the thing that is.
It’s easily done:
baseball -> inside baseball, Them in Washington
motherhood -> welfare motherhood, other sort of Them
apple pie -> apple pie bed, a teenage prank induced by drug highs.
Found, one nut.
Signed,
Dana “Blind Squirrel” Milbank