Hillary's New Friends?

"The only really interesting question is why the president did not fire this vain and useless person on the very first day of the war. Instead, he awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom! Tenet is now so self-pitying that he expects us to believe that he was 'not at all sure that [he] really wanted to accept' this honor. But it seems that he allowed or persuaded himself to do so, given that the citation didn't mention Iraq. You could imagine that Tenet had never sat directly behind Colin Powell at the United Nations, beaming like an overfed cat, as the secretary of state went through his rather ill-starred presentation . . .

"A highly irritating expression in Washington has it that 'hindsight is always 20-20.' Would that it were so. History is not a matter of hindsight and is not, in fact, always written by the victors. In this case, a bogus history is being offered by a real loser whose hindsight is cockeyed and who had no foresight at all."

I thought I'd seen every possible study of racial bias, but the New York Times finds a new one, involving fouls in the NBA.

The Dow Jones union isn't enamored of Rupert Murdoch's bid for the Wall Street Journal:

"Mr. Murdoch has shown a willingness to crush quality and independence, and there is no reason to think he would handle Dow Jones or The Journal any differently."

The question, the Journal itself says, "is how much is a buyer willing to pay for what now is viewed as one of the media world's high-profile prizes? . . .

"The offer's premium raises the question of whether Mr. Murdoch views Dow Jones as a trophy property that would cap decades of media deal making. If so, the deal would be more akin to high-price acquisitions of sports teams and skyscrapers. That would also mean few other bidders might challenge him, leaving the Bancroft family [which controls the company] as his only hurdle.

"But even if Mr. Murdoch views Dow Jones as a trophy, there are strategic reasons for him to do the deal. Dow Jones's content and brands could help him build a global business brand, which would include the soon-to-be-launched Fox business news channel, which could benefit from an alliance with The Wall Street Journal."

Joe Nocera ticks off "all the reasons the deal makes sense for Mr. Murdoch -- and only him. There's the Journal's powerful editorial page, which meshes with his own conservative politics. The fact that he has a new financial network in the works that will compete with CNBC -- and CNBC has a critical alliance with the Wall Street Journal he'd like to bust up. His belief that he can use the News Corporation's online expertise to leverage Dow Jones's content in ways the company itself hasn't been able to. Plus, he's proved with The New York Post that he's willing to lose money on an asset that serves a strategic purpose."

What about the NYT's business acumen?

"So Tishman Speyer just sold the New York Times building for $525 million. It bought the building from the paper in 2004 for $175 million," Jeff Jarvis observes.

"So the building the Times no longer owns is worth more than the Boston Globe, according to most valuations.

"In the time the Times Company has owned the Globe, its value has gone down by 50 percent.

"In the [time the] Times Company has not owned its building, it has increased in value threefold."

I'm not the only one who has noticed Jarvis. From his new site, PrezVid:

"We here at PrezVid are proud to announce that we have done a deal with washingtonpost.com to contribute content to a new blog in their political section and to get promotion, traffic and revenue in return."

Finally, the D.C. Madam had all kinds of business acumen, according to ABC's The Blotter:

"In a January 1994 newsletter, she wrote, 'Congress is back in session. This always helps to boost business.'

"In another edition, she complained, 'That damn Monday night football . . . ruines [sic] business every single Monday night!' "