My arrogant opinions about politics, culture, science fiction, and whatever else I feel like talking about.

The News -- Just Make Stuff Up, Believe What You Want

        The latest news from the Plamegate affair is that Richard Armitage was the source for the Robert Novak story that caused most of the mess — something that was first suggested last November.  There have been a lot of stories on this subject, but few of them are reliable.  A brief review is in order, to show how bad reporting has become.

        Let's start with the Matthew Cooper et al story A War On Wilson? from July of 2003.

        The story alleges that the Bush Administration was out to get Wilson.  The evidence for this?  None, really.  Administration officials criticized Wilson, therefore there was a war on Wilson.  You might notice a bit of a gap in the logic there.

        Cooper's reasoning appeared when he later testified before the Grand Jury.  Cooper wrote that he couldn't understand why the Administration was critical of Wilson, when they admitted they'd made a mistake in including the "sixteen words" in the President's speech.  You know, that is puzzling.  Wilson accused the Administration of deliberately lying, twisting intelligence to push the nation into a war that the President wanted on other grounds.  Why would anyone object to that?  And who cares if it was low level intelligence people who ordered Wilson's trip, not Cheney; that Joe was picked for the trip because his CIA wife suggested him; that the wife thought the report was "crazy" before investigating it; that no one thought Wilson's report was important; that the only new evidence in the report tended to undercut Joe's 'no sale' conclusion; that, contrary to Wilson's op-ed, the report was never seen by the VP; that, contrary to what Wilson told reporters, Joe never proved the alleged sales documents were forged, because he never saw them?  Don't you understand, the Bush Administration admitted to making a mistake!  From then on, they were morally required to let Wilson say anything he wanted, and never answer him.

        The Washington Post upped the ante with a story that claimed a "senior administration official" had told the Post that two "top White House Officials" had called "at least" six journalists and told them that Wilson's wife was Valerie Plame, girl CIA agent extraordinaire.  This was supposedly pure "revenge."

        The language in that story is a little vague, but it appears that the Post had only one source for the allegation, the unnamed senior administration official (assuming he existed at all).  He allegedly refused to tell the Post who the White House officials were, and also whom the journalists were.  That last point is key.  There was no way for the Post to check that story except by calling every reporter in town and asking them to confirm the allegation.  Since the Post didn't feel like doing that, the story should have been dropped.  Instead, it saw print.

        Well, it's been almost three years since that story ran, and the only journalists who have spoken about their contacts with sources concerning Wilson and Plame all say that they sought out the sources and asked them about Wilson.  No one has ever said, as far as I can discover, that White House officials called them out of the blue to reveal Plame's identity and employer.  Under the circumstances, that strongly suggests to me that the alleged calls never happened.  Yet, in the story outing Armitage, we still see that charge, and Karl Rove is now named as one of the people who called up reporters to tell them about Plame.  What we don't see is any reason to believe this story.

        As for the Armitage outing, there have been two stories in Newsweek with Richard Isikoff's name on them about Armitage being Novak's source.  The first story, from last November, noted that Armitage didn't deny being the source, and fit Novak's description of not being a "partisan gunslinger."  It also noted that if Armitage was the source of the leak, then it wasn't an Administration smear against Wilson, it was just gossip.  Altogether, a good, objective piece of work.

        This week's story is different.  First, it definitely names Armitage as the source, but doesn't say when Isikoff found this out.  Nor does it say why it wasn't reported sooner.  The November story said that it wasn't clear if Rove was "out of the woods," but noted that Armitage-as-the-source tended to acquit Rove of any wrongdoing.  The new story, as noted, asserts without any source or evidence that "But officials at the White House also told reporters about Wilson’s wife in an effort to discredit Wilson for his public attacks on Bush’s handling of Iraq intelligence."  Not true as far as I can tell, and in Rove's case, Novak mentioned Valerie's role in sending Wilson abroad, and Rove replied something like 'Oh, you know that too,' or 'Yeah, I heard that too.'  This is just transparent spin on Isikoff's part.

        There are other problems with the new story, as Tom Maguire notes at length.  I'll sum them up by saying that the picture painted of Armitage is a bit hard to believe, and is spun to make Armitage look good.  He was against the Iraq invasion, you see, so he must be protected as much as possible.

        Is it a blessing or a curse that the MSM can't tell plausible lies?

Posted by: saintonge at 01:41 | link | comments
msm, bush administration, incompetence, dishonesty, plamegate, war with jihadism, honest joe wilson

Fake News -- Is It Something In the Water?

        I really don't know what to make of the epidemic of phony and apparently phony news stories that have been published lately.  Has it always been this bad, and we're just now finding out?  Or is there more fakery today?  When I'm not trying to install a new bathroom faucet, I'll have a series of posts on this subject.

        First up, a minor but symptomatic story.  Back in 2003, while covering the Jayson Blair mess, Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher wrote about how he once faked a news story, in 1967 when he was a 19 year old summer intern at a Niagara Falls paper — unless he faked it when he was 21, or maybe didn't fake it at all.  Mitchell claims to have been 19 in 1967, which is born out by this story on him, saying he was 54 in 2002.  However, the event he claimed to have faked a story on took place in 1969, according to numerous sources — the shutdown of Niagara's American Falls.

        Recently, Mitchell wrote two editorial posts defending war photographers.  They were the same old same old — 'They're risking their lives, it's all a bunch of propaganda by right-wingers, anyone who agrees with me is automatically believable, anyone who disagrees with me is a liar or a nutcase.'  But Confederate Yankee was tipped to the existence of the 'I faked my Niagara Falls story' piece, and wrote a post pointing this out.

        So far, I wouldn't have cared.  Three years ago, Mitchell claimed he made up a story when he was 19 (or 21), and last week he deployed typical leftist 'logic' by saying those who doubt the MSM should be more trusting.  But after Confederate Yankee and five more anti-Mitchell bloggers copied the original story, someone altered it!

        Now, the alteration is not really very significant in itself.  The second sentence of the piece originally began:

        Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette)

        It now, on Sunday morning, reads (alterations boldfaced):

        Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern,

        In both of the versions, paragraph five reads identically:

        Still, I felt bad about it for years and (obviously) have never forgotten it.  On the other hand, I was, at the time, just 19, it was a summer internship, and I'd only been on the job about a month. [my emphasis — St. Onge]

        So two of the three added items were in the original piece, and were just inserted into paragraph one.  The third new item, saying the shutoff of the Falls occurred in 1967, seems to be wrong.  Therefore, I won't get on Mitchell's case for dishonesty in slightly altering the story.  I'll get on his case for stupidity, bad reporting, and incompetence at lying.

        First, as mentioned, American Falls were shut off in 1969, not 1967, according to the three sources above (and these five additional web sources).  I haven't found any source mentioning American Falls being dewatered in 1967.  I really can't believe that eight sources got the story wrong, and independently the identical mistake.  If Mitchell was 19 when the Falls shutoff occurred, then he's been going around telling people he's two years older than he really is.  Why?

        On the other hand, if he was 19 in 1967, and 54 in 2002, then the Falls were shut off when he was 21.  Did Mitchell lie about his age at the time of the Falls shutoff?  Did he think 'I was only 21' wouldn't have sounded as good as 'I was only 19'?  Or did he lie about when it happened because he didn't want to say 'I was working as a summer intern for the third year in a row when I faked this story. . . '?  Or what?  Am I being charitable in suggesting that Mitchell couldn't remember how old he was when he made up a story?

        Or maybe Mitchell didn't make up a story in 1969 after all.  Maybe he made one up in 2003, when he was writing about Jayson Blair?  Perhaps he thought that would make a good joke — a fake story about news fakery.  Perhaps someone with access to the files of the Niagara Falls Gazette will check them and find out if there is a story there about the Falls being shut off in 1967, or 1969, or both, and if Mitchell's name is on any of them.

        But the one thing that seems obvious is that Mitchell didn't bother to confirm his recollection of when the American Falls were dewatered before writing the Blair piece, or we wouldn't be faced with this date discrepancy.  Didn't you ever hear of fact checking, Greg?  And altering the original article, after it was quoted six times, shows true stupidity.  For that matter, Allahpundit thinks he has detected some changes in the war photography posts, though he admits he's lacking evidence.

        So, we return to our original question, with some additional ones.  Is there more fakery in MSM 'news' stories now, or are we just better at detecting it?  Did Mitchell really fake a story for the Niagara Falls Gazette in 1969, or did he lie about faking in 2003?  Did he change his recent posts about war photography without notice?  Does Mitchell not know how old he is, or did he just think no one would check that claim?  What's going on here?

        And can't they at least do a better job of making stuff up?  I'm insulted at the number of easily detected falsehoods I'm being subjected too.

Posted by: saintonge at 08:26 | link | comments

We'll See

        Glenn linked to a couple of posts that say Israel didn't lose it's recent "war" in Lebanon, how in the long run everything will work out badly for Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, etc.  I remain dubious.

        Yes, lots of damage to the Arabs of Lebanon, some scaring of Arab leaders, etc.  But the Israeli government was afraid to fight (it's gone, next elections), and the terrorists showed that they weren't afraid.  By their standards, they are better off now then before the invasion.  By Israel's standards, it's probably worse off than before the invasion.  So from here, it looks like advantage Iran, Syria, Hezbollah.

Posted by: saintonge at 21:24 | link | comments
israel, iran, war with jihadism

Zinger

        Over at Powerline, Paul notes the way that Shi'a Islam has come to be perceived as more dangerous than Sunni Islam, and asks why.  His answer: Sunni Islam's state terrorism sponsors, the Afghani and Iraqi governments, were removed.  Shi'a Islam's state terrorism sponsors, Syria and Iran, continue.

Posted by: saintonge at 16:37 | link | comments

A Great Post From Dean Barnett

        From cystic fibrosis (a disease I have a bit of experience with, as an ex-Respiratory tech), to the War with Jihadism, Barnett looks at the world and describes what he sees:

        THERE’S AT LEAST ONE good thing about being born with a life threatening disease.  As the years roll by, you get well practiced at looking into abysses.

        That’s been my experience with Cystic Fibrosis, anyway.  Having had this disease for four decades, I’ve had several occasions to see worst case scenarios come true.  Things that are “unimaginable” to others who have never been part of a community where bad luck is a fixture become commonplace to us.

[SNIP]

        BUT NOW WE’VE REACHED a historical juncture where we’re looking into an abyss.  The amount of people in the region who desire war is unknown, but we do know that their numbers go far beyond Al Qaeda and its spin-offs.  The threat is not limited to terrorism; the truly existential threat comes from popular governments that intend us harm and who are unlikely to be deterred or contained.

        In late 1938, Winston Churchill passed a London restaurant and heard great bonhomie coming from within. Churchill said to his companion, “Those poor people. They little know what they will have to face.”

        The same can now be said of American society today.  Some people choose to believe that the greatest threat to our way of life is George W. Bush.  These people deserve the condemnation that history will heap on them.

        Others more acutely recognize the threat, but are hamstrung by their fealty to political correctness.  If a major daily paper ever wrote an essay like this one, CAIR would pitch a fit.  Writing pieces like this invariably brings angry rebukes from those who refuse to look into the abyss and would rather focus their considerable capacity for rage at less formidable targets than hundreds of millions of angry, dangerous people.

        But an abyss is what we face.  And looking away won’t change a thing.

        Go read it all.  Aside from using the meaningless word 'dangerous,' it's perfect.

Posted by: saintonge at 21:01 | link | comments

A Blast From the Past

        Reading yet again about the Iraq Campaign, and the cost to U.S. prestige if we pulled out, a memory struck.

        You may recall the Carter administration.  (If so, you have my sympathies, and I hope that the nightmares one day stop.)  Anyway, in November 1979, the hostage "crisis" began, and in the spring of 1980, there was an attempt to rescue the hostages.  It failed disastrously.

        Later, someone attempted to cost out the rescue attempt for a magazine article.  Destroyed plane, so much, destroyed copter, so much, dead Delta Force members, do much, and loss of prestige, one dollar.  'One dollar?' 'Actually, it may have been a net plus.' The author of the article thought that the U.S. was a crazed, stupid country that went off half cocked, and maybe this would control our reckless tendencies.

        As I read the calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, I can't help but remember that article.  I strongly suspect that the people calling for withdrawal are hoping we lose, because we need a lesson.

Posted by: saintonge at 20:09 | link | comments (2)

'The Enemy of my Enemy . . .

        is an Islamofascist, but still, reluctantly, at least an ally.'  That, at least, seems to be Kevin Drum's opinion.  Functionally, he's an ally of the Tehran nutjobs.

        Drum isn't happy about this.  He says:

        For example, should I be more vocal in denouncing Iran?  Sure.  It's a repressive, misogynistic, theocratic, terrorist-sponsoring state that stands for everything I stand against.  Of course I should speak out against them.

        And yet, I know perfectly well that criticism of Iran is not just criticism of Iran.  Whether I want it to or not, it also provides support for the Bush administration's determined and deliberate effort to whip up enthusiasm for a military strike.  Only a naif would view criticism of Iran in a vacuum, without also seeing the way it will be used by an administration that has demonstrated time and again that it can't be trusted to act wisely.

        So what to do?  For the most part, I end up saying very little.  And Beinart is right: there's a sense in which that betrays my own liberal ideals.  But he's also wrong, because like it or not, my words — and those of other liberals — would end up being used to advance George Bush's distinctly illiberal ends.  And I'm simply not willing to be a pawn in the Bush administration's latest marketing campaign.

        You might notice a few things Drum doesn't say.  There's no attempt to weigh how a military strike on Iran might go.  There's no mention of what Iran may do (like acquire nuclear bombs and use them).  Drum's over-riding political principle is opposition to the current President, and hang the consequences.

        Perhaps the fairest and best commentary made against U.S. foreign policy during the second half of the Seventy Years War was that we would side with any dictator, no matter how odious, if he was "anti-Communist."  As a result, we betrayed our own principles, and helped the enemy in the long term.  Drum's viewpoint is similar.  He'll side with anyone against George W. Bush.  And if one day there're mushroom clouds where Washington, D.C. and Tel Aviv were, and we end up in a war that kills more USAmericans in a day than all previous wars combined, well, a man's got to prioritize.

Posted by: saintonge at 16:48 | link | comments
leftists, george w bush, stupidity springs eternal

Skin him, Ann!

        Ms. Althouse lays into Lawrence Tribe, for suggesting that the job of blogging lawyers is to make sure the proles despise Bush, rather than say anything intelligent about law.  Blogging lawyers especially shouldn't point out judicial activism, lest judicial activists be hindered in their lust to rule us.  Feh!  Good work, Ms. Althouse.

Posted by: saintonge at 14:32 | link | comments

Correction to a Correction?

        I've been corresponding with James Taranto over my post A Minor Correction to Tarranto.  In underhanded MSM style, he's used politeness, facts, and logic to undercut my case.  How am I supposed to deal with tactics like that?

        Taranto was less than impressed with my suggestion that the fourteen thousand new voters who registered for the Democratic Party, and the fourteen thousand who switched from independent were what put Lieberman over the top.  He said (he not only answered me politely, he gave me permission to quote from his e-mails!  Is there no end to this insidious policy of cooperation and good manners?):

        I am troubled enough by the Lamont phenomenon that if I lived in Connecticut, I would have changed my registration to Dem so I could vote for Lieberman last week.

        . . . I did hear anecdotally of people switching registration to vote for Lieberman.  Of course, such reports not only are anecdotal but are biased toward the kind of people I hear from.

        If turnout among this group [of new Democratic primary voters] was, say, 75% (still very high), Lamont would need three-fourths of them to have a 10,000-vote margin.  If turnout was 50%, Lamont would need 85%. My guess is that it was somewhere in the 50% to 75% range.  It's not impossible that these voters accounted for Lamont's margin, but it seems unlikely.

        Seventy five to eighty five percent does not strike me as completely implausible.  In a recent Washington Post story, it's mentioned that:

        The Quinnipiac poll also showed that Lieberman has become the de facto Republican nominee.  Seventy-five percent of Republicans backed the incumbent, compared with 13 percent for Lamont and 10 percent for Schlesinger.  Asked whether Lieberman deserves reelection, 80 percent of Republicans said yes, compared with 57 percent of independents and 32 percent of Democrats.

        If three fourths of Republicans support Lieberman, than I can believe as many as 85% of the new Democrats opposed him.  It's a race that has aroused a lot of passion.  But it doesn't look like the slam dunk I thought it was.  So, I may have been wrong.  (Dammit, I hate to type things like that!)

        Of course, if I was wrong, it's George W.'s fault.

Posted by: saintonge at 14:08 | link | comments
politics, democrats, republicans, elections, bush administration, fairness, annoyance, would-be greasy pole climbers

Some Good News

        My man Rudy wowed them in the Palmetto State.

Posted by: saintonge at 13:17 | link | comments

I May Have to Read a Book by Two Democrats

        It's by Rahn Emmanuel and Bruce Reed, entitled The Plan, and it is being attacked so hysterically by lefties that I suspect it must have something going for it.

Posted by: saintonge at 13:09 | link | comments (1)

Undercutting Your Own Argument

        If you want to know why the West is having such a hard time getting a handle on the Islamic terrorism problem, I can think recommend a two day old article from The Australian.  It's notable in that the author wants to fight against multi-culturalism and in defense of the West, but ends up undercutting his own case.

        Nixon says Britain suffers from “cultural cowardice,” and blames multiculturalism for a large part of the rise of Islamic radicalism.  I agree completely.  But unlike moi, Nixon is a Leftist, and can't help undercutting his own case.  This leads him to say:

        The idea that Britain should become a joyous melting pot of different cultures and religions living side by side in mutual toleration and respect is a noble vision.  But it's not working out that way.

      Bosh.  ‘The melting pot’ was a metaphor used to describe the United States, where people of many cultures came together and were absorbed into the common culture, giving up most of their own culture, while contributing something to the common USAmerican one.  The idea of “different cultures living . . . side by side” is the antithesis of what the ‘melting pot’ is about.

        And a quick look at history will tell you that when cultures lived “side by side,” they were almost always enemies.  In the cases where they were part of one political entity, the entity was an empire, with the people of the seperate cultures having no say in its governance (except for the one, imperial, overarching culture).  Most human beings dislike and distrust strangers, and regard those who are different in culture with the gravest suspicion.  Nixon's multicultural vision is just the old Leftist temptation to believe that human nature is infinitely malleable, and that we will someday live in a utopia of perfect peace.  It ain't gonna happen.

        Nixon goes on:

        Clearly, British and US policy in the Middle East has fanned the flames of extremism.  The Iraq war was a catastrophic error of judgment.  George Bush and Tony Blair claimed to be spreading Western liberal values, yet never seemed to realise how corrupt those values appeared when imposed at the barrel of a gun, in breach of international law and on the pretext of lies.

        Leftist cant.  The Islamist movement began with the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928.  That group wasn't opposed to Bush and Blair, as neither had been born.  And they weren't opposed to imperialism, either.  Imperialism is a fine old Muslim tradion.  What they were opposed to was the West.

        Nixon's reasoning on multiculturalism and cultural cowardice is sound, but he can't help undercutting his own argument.  This is because, as a Leftist, he too wishes to see Western culture destroyed and replaced.  It's just that Nixon wishes to keep aspects of the culture that the jihadis would destroy.

        It's worth recalling another such conflict: the Seventy Years War, aka World War III and The Cold War.  The former Soviet Union (OOH!  I just LOVE to type "former Soviet Union!") also wished to destroy our culture, against our will.  The war ended when they acknowledged that we had the right to live as we pleased, that we might never live the way they wanted us to, and that nonetheless it would be wrong for them to try to force us to adopt Communism against our will.

        The War with Jihadism, aka World War IV and the War on Terrorism, will end the same way.  But in order for it to end, the defenders of the West must start by acknowledging that the majority has a right to its culture, that the only legitimate way to change it is through persuasion, and that some things the advocate of change may ardently wish may never happen.  In short, the biggest obstacles to an effective defence of the West by the Left are two key parts of the Leftist vision: its utopianism, and its totalitarian streak.

        Which leaves the key question: Can the Left give these up?  I'll be interested to find out.

Posted by: saintonge at 13:05 | link | comments
leftists, war with jihadism

Go Read

        Edward Jay Epstein's WSJ book review of Without Precedent, and the way the 9/11 Commission allowed itself to become a flack for the "see no Iraqi/Iranian evil" in the intelligence community, while pretending to be doing an indepenent investigation of what went wrong in the failure to detect the 9/11 plot.

        <sarcasm>I doubt we mere citizens will ever be allowed to know the truth about That Day.  But then, that's above our pay grade, and we shouldn't go questioning our betters, now should we?</sarcasm>

Posted by: saintonge at 13:20 | link | comments (1)

A Minor Correction to Taranto

        In a post on the Connecticut Senate race, James Taranto asks:

        But can he [Lamont] win independents over the way he did Democrats?

        With all due respect, that should be 'Can he win over additional independents the way he did Democrats and his current independent supporters?'  Though I seem to be the only one who noticed, Lamont won the primary by only about 10,000 votes, while there were 14,000 new voters registered as Democrats, and another 14,000 existing independent voters who changed their registration to Democratic.  So it looks to me that Lamont reached into the well of new and existing independent voters to achieve his primary victory, and will need to win over a lot more Connecticut independents to beat Lieberman.

        That said, I have to agree with Taranto's bottom line:

        There may be a way for Lamont to win, but we don't see what it is.

Posted by: saintonge at 13:03 | link | comments

Whistling In the Dark

        Over at Powerline, John Hindraker has a post expressing the realistic case for viewing Feingold as the man the Democrats will nominate in 2008, and the incredibly optimistic sentiment that a President Feingold would behave, in foreign policy and anti-terrorism, like 'Dubya-lite.'  To this I say six words: Jimmy Carter, Les Aspin, Bill Clinton.

        When Jimminy Peanut ("that grinning, glad-handing sack of shit.  The night he was elected was a night of horror for him, and every thinking man in the country": Stephen King), I say, when Jimminy Peanut ran for office, he presented himself as a moderate southern Democrat, a veteran, an anti-McGovern.  He promptly made an attempt to do an arms reduction deal with the Soviets that failed so ignominiously, the MSM had to bury it.  (See Thinking In Time by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May for the pathetic details).  Carter reacted to this humiliation by negotiating SALT II, another arms reduction plan designed to put the Soviets in the lead in nuclear weapons, permanently.  Meanwhile, the Soviets intervened in Africa with special forces and Cuban mercanaries.  Yet Carter was surprised when the USSR invaded Afghanistan.  Carter campaigned as an anti-McGovern, but when in office, he made foreign policy like McGovern.  He was a Democrat, and he just couldn't help himself.

        Les Aspin was Clinton's first Secretary of Defense, a Congressman who had a reputation as a tough-talking, realistic Democrat with great knowledge of defense issues.  Immediately he took office, he went along with Clinton's plans to expand the Somalia mission from 'protecting aid workers as they distributed food' to 'nation building by taking sides in a civil war.'  Aspin then refused to send the troops and armor necessary for this expanded role.  The result was the 'Black Hawk Down' fiasco.  Aspin wasn't supposed to act like a McGovernit, but once in office, he couldn't help himself.

        Clinton got rid of the fool Aspin, but he then pulled out of Somalia.  He had no stomach for actually fighting wars.  Bin Laden noticed this, and stepped up terror attacks against the U.S.  Clinton knew that perceived weakness in foreign affairs had cost the Democrats, but as President, he did what McGovern would do.  He couldn't help himself.

        I hereby predict that if Feingold becomes President, he will immediately act like every Democrat, and end up encouraging terrorist attacks on the U.S.  As a Democrat, he just won't be able to help himself.  As a McGovern Democrat, he won't even want to.

Posted by: saintonge at 16:14 | link | comments (1)

And Neo-Neocon Nails Them Too

        She catches the AP in a deliberately misleading headline, where an honest news source would have printed "Hezbollah breaks cease-fire, fails in attempt to kill Israelis."

Posted by: saintonge at 15:46 | link | comments
msm, dishonesty

And So Does Gateway Pundit

        He catches the Treason making a fool of itself.

        Geez, guys, don't you pay any attention to what you publish?

        But as Locrian said, it's times like this you thank God that Al Gore invented the Internet.

Posted by: saintonge at 15:23 | link | comments
msm, dishonesty, stupidity springs eternal

Betsy Catches Them In the Act

        Or, "Going along with press manipulation," here, here, and here.

Posted by: saintonge at 13:43 | link | comments

The Coming Nuclear War With Iran

        It's sorta predicted, here.

        Yes, it's definitely time to stock up on survival gear.

        Hat tip: Betsy.

Posted by: saintonge at 13:33 | link | comments

More on MSM Dishonesty

        In this useful Dave Kopell column.  The criterion of "fact-checking" at most MSM outlets now seems to be: 'Does it conform to our preconceptions of how we'd like the world to be?  If so, it's true till proven otherwise . . . and no matter how many mistakes that criterion leads us to make, we won't consider changing it.'  The specific illustration is the anti-Israel propaganda they publicize as true, until they get caught by a particularly egregious fraud.

        Meanwhile, over at bloggingheads.tv, Bob Wright jumps all over Mickey Kaus for being honest.  When Kaus gets up in the morning and considers what he will blog about, he shouldn't, says Wright, actually say what he thinks.  Instead, Kaus should engage in editing as lying.  It was one thing to look at Kerry and think 'This guy is a dork who'll lose to W.,' but Kaus shouldn't have written that.  Instead, he should have relentlessly attacked Bush in an effort to get Kerry elected.

        Wright doesn't consider it dishonest to leave out interesting, true stuff from your blog because the effect it might have might be the electoral defeat of your candidate.  I do.  And I think it's a slippery slope here.  Reuters and the rest of the MSM start by not telling you that the only way to get access to certain countries and areas is by allowing 'minders,' and not criticizing the powers-that-be-there too harshly.  They soon end up printing one side's propaganda, while they tell themselves how 'objective' they are.  Real objectivity would consist, for example, of saying that they can't get any honest reporting out of Lebanon because Hezbollah would kill an honest reporter, and putting "alleged" on ALL reports emanating from Arab sources.  But that might make people think badly of Jihadi terrorists, and well of Bush and the Republicans, so the truth is suppressed.

        All this illustrates nicely why so many of us don't bother with the MSM anymore.  I don't read blogs so the author can get a shot at manipulating me into voting for the author's preferred candidate.  I read so that I can actually learn something.  I frequently learn things from Kaus.  I don't bother reading Bob Wright.

Posted by: saintonge at 11:21 | link | comments
msm

Today's MSM Insane Stupidity

        Byron Calame caught his bosses at The New York Treason lying to the public.  He finds that praiseworthy.

        But hey, there's an implication that it may have been done for a good reason: to avoid admitting that the Treason was trying to use its "news" pages to elect Kerry.

        That possibility makes me feel so much better.  And incidentally, call me "Your Highness Marie."

Posted by: saintonge at 09:15 | link | comments
msm, insanity, stupidity springs eternal

The Worst Insanity I Ever Encountered

        I've probably mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again.

        In 1975, when Patricia Hearst, Bill Harris, and Emily Harris were arrested, the "Fairness Doctrine" was still in effect.  An editorial on a news station about the crimes of the Harrises led to a reply by a "responsible" opposing view, from a So. Cal. ACLU spokesman.  He started out by telling us that the Harrises had committed no crimes

        Instantly, there flashed through my mind all the crimes the SLA had committed: murder, kidnapping, brainwashing, bank robbery, attempted robbery, etc.  All of these crimes were admitted by the SLA, and the Harrises were admitted members.  How could he say that?

        Answer: they hadn't been convicted of any crimes, so they hadn't committed any!   Of course, no one had been convicted of committing those crimes, so no one had done them.  The bullets fired into Marcus Foster hadn't been fired by a human being, they'd just appeared mysteriously.  The videotapes of the SLA robbing a bank weren't pictures of human beings committing a crime, they were a peculiar illusion cameras are subject to.  Up until the moment someone has been convicted of committing a crime, he hasn't done it.  Afterwards he has, reality having been retroactively altered.  "We have always been at war with Eurasia."  And of course, the police are all fascist pigs, because they go around arresting people for crimes they KNOW weren't committed by the those they arrest.  After all, if they were guilty, the people would already have been convicted, before arrest.

        I think in retrospect that the ACLU guy set me on the road to a permanent rejection of left-wing ideology.  Thank you, ACLU guy, whatever asylum you inhabit.

Posted by: saintonge at 07:24 | link | comments
insanity

Some More Insanity

        Another piece of craziness that occurs to me is isolationism.  In a Wall Street Journal column, Michael Barone writes:

        The working class Democrats of the mid-20th century voted their interests, and knew that one of their interests was protecting the nation in which they were proud to live.  The professional class Democrats of today vote their ideology and, living a life in which they are insulated from adversity, feel free to imagine that America cannot be threatened by implacable enemies.  They can vote to validate their lifestyle choices and their transnational attitudes.

        Isolationism used to be an imbecility confined to us Midwesterners.  Now, it afflicts the entire Democratic Party, which is, ironically, strongest on the coasts.  But it is still insane.

Posted by: saintonge at 06:54 | link | comments
politics, insanity, democrats

The Crazy Years

        If by "crazy" you mean out of touch with obvious realities, denying the facts of the real world, then much of the world is crazy, and has been for decades.

        A great example of obvious craziness was Neville Chamberlain.  Faced by dictators who threatened war if their demands weren't met, Chamberlain believed that said dictators really wanted peace.  This was madness pure and simple.

        Another modern example is the entire Muslim world, which believes that saying black is white actually makes black into white.

        In the West, the fact that anyone trusts the MSM is another example of madness.  All human beings are capable of lying, and every human older than about three has told a lie.  Further, in some parts of the world, the MSM knows that telling people the truth will endanger the lives of the truth-tellers and their friends.  The MSM tells us it is against their policy for anyone to alter or stage photos, while hiring local reporters and photographers who have every incentive to do those things, and then treating their reporting as trustworthy.  Other MSM members, in search of "exclusive" interviews with professional liars, toss them slow softball questions guaranteed not to arrive at the truth, then print/air the resulting propoganda piece as if it were actual news.  Yet their are people out there who treat the MSM as reliable reports about reality.

        And we might as well mention Israel.  I recently ran across the Socialist Workers Party attitude on Israel, which is something like 'The Brits were anti-Semites, as were most Europeans, so Balfour decided to solve the Jew problem by dumping their Jews on a bunch of brown-skinned people.  Typical European colonialism, fob the people you don't want off on some of your conquered territory.'  Of course, this has almost nothing in common with reality.  The facts, easily looked up, are that Zionism was founded by Herzel, as a result of the railroading of Dreyfus for treason because he was a Jew on the general staff.  Israel was picked as the site for the future Jewish state by the Jews themselves, at a time when the Caliph of Islam ruled it from Istanbul.  During WWI, the British issued a propoganda document, the Balfour Declaration, saying they would "look with favor," on the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, provided that, in Britain's opinion, it didn't infringe the unspecified "rights" of unspecified people already living there.  At no time did Britain say 'We will definitately establish a Jewish state in Palestine.' Then serious numbers of Jews started migrating to Palestine (Hitler's first "final solution to the Jewish problem" was to help every Jew who wanted to leave Germany to get out; Adolf Eichmann ran the emigration program, and for a while it was easier for a Jew to get a passport with exit visa than a 'pure Aryan').  Almost immediately, the Brits did everything they could to keep them out of Palestine.  Only intense post-war, post-Holocaust pressure forced Britain to relinquish it's Palestine "Mandate," and then the Jewish state was set up in the expectation that it would be immediately destroyed by its new Arab neighbors.  Yet the Totskyists seem to take this nonsense about Britain estabilish Israel seriously.  Further, the SWP contends that they aren't Jew haters because they were hypothetically willing to give part of Germany up for a Jewish state in 1946!

        As for Israel itself, it was at war with the Arabs before it formally existed.  In the entire history of the Zionist movement, it managed to make peace with two Arab neighbors, one of whose leaders was murdered for making said peace.  Further, it's enemies are insane people who take any 'succesful' show of resistance (such as slowing the Israelis down for a few moments) as a sign of triumph.  Israel's proper response to the Hezbollah rocket attacks would have been to drop leaflets explaining that since south Lebanon was being used as to attack them, in a few days Israel would consider ANY PART OF LEBANON IN ROCKET RANGE OF ISRAEL AND EVERY "PALESTINIAN" REFUGEE CAMP WHERE HEZBOLLAH HAD A PRESENCE IN ANY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD a military target, and then opened fire/bombed anyplace they considered MIGHT have Hezbollah rockets.  They should have invited Hezbollah to put one rocket in the middle of a group of school children, to set up cameras, and to tell Israel where it was, so Israel could blow up the rocket and the children in full view of the world.  They should probably have used dirty nuclear weapons, deliberately intended to make much of Lebanon uninhabitable for years.  Instead, they attacked, then accepted a "cease-fire" which the crazy Muslims will view as an encouraging victory, thus setting the stage for future attacks.  Meanwhile, Israelis will spend the coming years in debate about how they can achieve peace with the Muslim world without Israel being destroyed, or Israel slaughtering so many Muslims that sheer terror forces a real end to hostilities.  The answer to the debate question, obvious to the non-crazy, is that 'There is no foreseeable prospect of that ever occurring.  We can opt for endless war, slaughter, or the end of Israel, but short of miracle there's no reason to expect anything else in our future.'  But most of Israel is crazy too, so this won't be faced.

        I'm old enough that I don't worry much about the future anymore, but if I were young, I'd be thinking survivalism.  I have serious doubts civilization can endure.

Posted by: saintonge at 05:53 | link | comments
europe, israel, msm, insanity, illegal immigration, jew hatred, demographics, human nature, reality

Laughing Out Loud

        Frank G. calls our attention to this:

        UK Panel Asks: Why Do They Hate Airplanes?

        Thanks, buddy.

Posted by: saintonge at 08:15 | link | comments

Interesting

        I was computered out for a while.  Sorry if you missed me.

        I haven't paid attention to anyone elses's comments on this (I haven't been using the computer at all, really), but I note that Lamont beat Lieberman by about ten thousand votes, while there were twenty eight thousand new Democratic registrations.  There were also sixteen thousand more votes cast in the Democratic Senate Primary than the Democratic Gubernatorial primary.  That suggests that the nutroots can sign up fellow leftists to dominate a primary, but they don't really reflect the sentiment of most Democrats.  'Cause I betcha that almost all those new registrations and switches from independent went to Lamont.

        And now, let's root for Joe to kick Lamont's ass in November.

Posted by: saintonge at 06:25 | link | comments (2)
politics, democrats, leftists