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Fareed Zakaria was lucky with the timing of the Ryan pick, but Pickerhead will not miss reminding readers of what a fraud he has become. Allahpundit does the honors for Hot Air.
Cam Edwards and Newsbusters caught him in the act; follow the link to read the offending passage from his new gun-control column side by side with a similar paragraph in a gun-control piece published in April by “The New Yorker.” Not the first time that Zakaria’s been accused of pinching stuff, either. The Atlantic remembers that Jeffrey Goldberg accused him of lifting quotes from Goldberg’s own interviews with Israeli officials. And just this afternoon, Michael Moynihan — who caught The New Yorker’s Jonah Lehrer making up Bob Dylan quotes just two weeks ago — noticed that a sentence in Zakaria’s column on China in the May edition of Time reads a lot like a sentence from a Time story on China published in 1968. If he were a lesser name, he’d probably already have been canned. As it is, I wonder how many lucky Time staffers will end up on the inevitable task force charged with going through his old stuff to see just how bad the problem is. …
Jim Sleeper from HuffPo has more.
A few hours ago Fareed Zakaria apologized publicly for passing off New Yorker writer Jill Lepore’s work as his own in an essay he wrote for Time magazine. Not to put too fine a point on it, Zakaria committed egregious plagiarism, as Alexander Abad-Santos of the Atlantic Wire reported.
But the offense does not end there. Zakaria is a trustee of Yale, which takes a very dim view of plagiarism and suspends or expels students who commit anything like what he has committed here. If the Yale Corporation were to apply to itself the standards it expects its faculty and students to meet, Zakaria would have to take a leave or resign.
Worse still: Lepore, whom Zakaria wronged by misappropriating her work, is herself a Yale PhD. If anyone knows what it means to steal another scholar’s work, it’s Zakaria, who holds a PhD from Harvard.
Zakaria is a busy man, of course. Although he’s been judged by The New Republic to be one of America’s “most-overrated thinkers,” …
Michael Rubin wonders when Yale will set Fareed free by kicking him off the board.
There is now little question that Fareed Zakaria is guilty of plagiarism. He has admitted copying a portion of a New Yorker essay and apologized. Time, where Zakaria works as a columnist, has suspended Zakaria for a month, and CNN—owned by the same parent company—has suspended him pending an investigation. This represents a mere slap on the wrist for someone whose standard speaking fee is $75,000.
As YaleUniversity lecturer Jim Sleeper notes, however, Zakaria has a perch not only at CNN and Time, but also at Yale University, where he sits on the Yale Corporation, the University’s governing board and policy-making body. There is no greater academic sin than plagiarism. Students can be expelled for plagiarizing papers, and professors can be fired. To let Zakaria off the hook on his own recognizance would be to eviscerate the principle of academic integrity for which Yale says it stands.
Whether Yale President Richard Levin will do the right thing, however, is another issue. While Levin has distinguished himself as a master fundraiser, he has also shown a disturbing willingness to undercut free speech (ironically, with Zakaria’s acquiescence), compromise academic integrity to foreign interests, and embrace fame over principle. Seldom is an issue as cut-and-dry as Zakaria’s plagiarism. Unless Yale seeks to demonstrate that cheating is acceptable and that there is no principle to which it will not turn a blind eye, then it really has no choice: It is time to give Zakaria the boot.
Erskine Bowles is the Dems go-to-guy for deficit reduction. Obama picked him to be the Dem co-chair of the deficit commission that the president ignored. Ed Morrissey has a great video of Bowles praising Paul Ryan and his budget.
Why is this important? Erskine Bowles has a long pedigree as a Democratic budget thinker — and presidential adviser. When Barack Obama needed to pick the co-chair for his deficit committee, which he roundly ignored in the end, he chose Bowles to represent his side on the panel. Bowles served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, and earlier ran the Small Business Administration for Clinton. Ezra Klein predicted on Friday that Bowles would be the front-runner for Tim Geithner’s job at Treasury if Obama wins a second term. …
“Have any of you met Paul Ryan? We should get him to come to the university. I’m telling you this guy is amazing, uh. I always thought that I was OK with arithmetic, but this guy can run circles around me. And, he is honest. He is straightforward. He is sincere.
And, the budget that he came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion…just like we did.
The President came out with his own plan and the President came out, as you will remember, with a budget and I don’t think anyone took that budget very seriously. Um, the Senate voted against it 97 to nothing. …
Roger Simon likes Paul Ryan as much as Erskine Bowles does.
Mitt Romney did something that a lot of supposed wise men said he wouldn’t — pick a vice presidential candidate who is more charismatic than he. In choosing Paul Ryan, Romney took the risk he would be outshone, but he did America a favor. He selected the brightest young politician we have.
He also underscored his best line of the campaign so far, “It’s the economy – and we’re not stupid!” No one in Congress has thought more creatively or acted with more determination to solve the great economic problems we face than Ryan. He has virtually stood alone among higher elected officials in the battle for serious entitlement reform, being criticized by none other than Newt Gingrich for recommending remedies that were, if anything, too mild for the monumental fiscal crisis confronting us. But at least Ryan has tried to do something about it. Few others have had the courage to attempt it.
Through nominating Ryan, Romney has signaled that his campaign is going to be about the economy, the economy, and, yes, you guessed it, the economy (with healthcare thrown in as an aspect of the economy). It is not going to be about immigration, marriage, the legalization of marijuana, whether candidates cause cancer, who has a dog on his car, or even who was born where. It’s going to be about the one thing America is obsessed with, the one thing that if we don’t correct nothing else is possible…. Okay, I won’t say it again, but you certainly know. …
Toby Harnden agrees with Erskine Bowles too, and lists 10 reasons why Ryan could help Romney.
1. The image of Romney as a safety-first campaigner hoping to win the presidency by default as voters turfed out Barack Obama will now disappear. The Ryan pick indicates Romney is prepared to take a calculated risk and be decisive. He’s going big, rather than small. At a time when the US faces huge problems, that could be a major advantage.
2. Fears of the Republican base not turning out for Romney will now evaporate. In terms of unifying Establishment conservatives and grassroots activists, Ryan is a winner.
3. Ryan undoubtedly aspires to be president but at 42 he knows time is on his side. He quickly developed a good rapport with Romney – I saw the two of them together in Milwaukee, Wisconsin back in March when Romney clinched the nomination. There is every chance they’ll complement each other well and Ryan will be an assiduously loyal wing man. …
Jennifer Rubin likes the 10 ways the Ryan pick annoys the media.
The selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as Mitt Romney’s running mate blows up a bunch of phony story lines the media have been peddling.
1. “Romney has no ideas.” Actually, he and Ryan have the new policy ideas. Tons of them. If you doubt it, wait for the vice-presidential debate.
2. “Romney is excessively cautious.” Tim Pawlenty would have been the cautious pick. Ryan is young and vibrant and stands ready to battle for conservative ideas.
3. “The media are really important.” If Romney thought the mainstream media were critical, he’d duck the Mediscare fight. The pick is one that reflects confidence in the conservative agenda. …
Senator Blutarsky Blog says the administration’s admitted costs of the GM bailout are just the start.
Via Instapundit, the Treasury Department now estimates taxpayers’ losses on the auto bailout at $25 billion. This figure, however, relies on some optimistic assumptions; the reality is likely to be far worse.
One optimistic assumption is noted by the Detroit News in the linked article: GM’s stock price. The $25 billion figure (equal to 46.7 solyndras) is based on GM’s closing price at the end of May, $22.20. However, the stock has continued to decline through the Summer and despite rallying off its late July lows, the stock now stands at $20.47, at which price the loss on GM is $850 million (or 1.6 solyndras) greater than in May. Were the stock to retest its 52-week low of $18.72, the loss would be $1.75 billion (or 3.3 solyndras) more than the Treasury estimate.
Optimistic assumptions are also embedded in GM’s balance sheet, for example in its pension plan accounting. At the end of 2011 GM estimated that its domestic pension plans were underfunded by $25.4 billion, but this figure relied on an assumed long term return on plan assets of 8.00%. When ten-year US Treasuries are yielding 1.65%, “optimistic” doesn’t quite capture the full measure by which GM’s estimate is detached from reality. The term “lunatic” springs to mind as a more accurate substitute. …
Late Night Humor from Andrew Malcolm is only Conan O’Brien because the rest are on August hiatus.
The U.S. leads China in both gold medals and total number of medals. In response, China said, “That’s nice but we still have all your money.”
The US women win the soccer gold medal. All of us in America are happy for the athletes and thrilled we don’t have to watch soccer for four more years.
A brief history of the lawnmower from Popular Mechanics.
“Gentlemen will find using my machine an amusing … healthful exercise.” — BRITISH MECHANIC EDWIN BUDDING’S PATENT APPLICATION FOR THE FIRST LAWNMOWER, 1830
1868: The reel-type spiral-bladed cutter makes its stateside debut via manufacturer Amariah Hills, who receives the first U.S. patent for the machine.
1921: Knud and Oscar Jacobsen introduce a mower with a purpose-built gas engine. The reel-mowing machine cuts a blistering 4 acres a day—perfect for the golf courses, parks, and cemeteries it’s intended to maintain. …