Scott Ott at Scrappleface is devastating:
(2005-03-19) -- The National Organization for Women (NOW) today held a jubilant news conference to celebrate the latest advance in women's rights -- the right to have your estranged husband choose to end your life.
"First, it was women's suffrage -- the right to vote -- then abortion, the right to privacy," said an unnamed NOW spokesman. "Finally, a man has led the way in freeing us from the antiquated bigotry that has kept our former husbands from choosing a slow, painful death for us."
The NOW source said the court-ordered removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, based on the testimony of Michael Schiavo alone has "opened a world of opportunities for women to freely die at the hands of the men they love."
"The next time you tell your husband 'I'd rather die than go to that party,' you can rest assured that your words have legal weight and, if the occasion arises, your wishes will be respected," said the NOW source. "What's more, you're free from the worry that your man will be prosecuted for your murder."
Read more....
UPDATE:
And of course there's this:
Schiavo Hailed as Anti-Obesity Champion
by Scott Ott
(2005-03-18) -- The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today praised Michael Schiavo for leading the fight against the obesity epidemic by removing the feeding tube from his wife, Terri, who has led a largely-sedentary life since taking to her bed some 15 years ago.
Read the rest...
Saturday, March 19, 2005
The World Turned Upside Down?
WE live in a strange world. A world in which the party that has historically pushed the boundaries of free speech is now the party of speech restrictions. The party which objects to sentiment like this:
Why? Because this is an example of "Heteronormative" speech; treating heterosexuality as the norm.
It’s also the party of those who see a Hitler under every bed. Who claim that Bush is Hitler; who shout out that the dark night of Nazism is descending on America.
From Victor David Hansen:
The final irony? The president who is most slandered as Hitler will probably prove to be the most zealous advocate of democratic government abroad, the staunchest friend of beleaguered Israel, and the greatest promoter of global individual freedom in our recent memory. In turn, too many of the Left who used to talk about idealism and morality have so often shown themselves mean-spirited, cynical, and without faith in the spiritual power of democracy.
What an eerie — and depressing — age we live in.
"Women, you can have it all - a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career. We are a new generation of women. We got to set a new standard of rules around here. To my men, open your mind, open your eyes to new ideas. Be open."
Why? Because this is an example of "Heteronormative" speech; treating heterosexuality as the norm.
It’s also the party of those who see a Hitler under every bed. Who claim that Bush is Hitler; who shout out that the dark night of Nazism is descending on America.
From Victor David Hansen:
The final irony? The president who is most slandered as Hitler will probably prove to be the most zealous advocate of democratic government abroad, the staunchest friend of beleaguered Israel, and the greatest promoter of global individual freedom in our recent memory. In turn, too many of the Left who used to talk about idealism and morality have so often shown themselves mean-spirited, cynical, and without faith in the spiritual power of democracy.
What an eerie — and depressing — age we live in.
Racism Revisited
Gregory Kane in the Baltimore Sun. Isn’t this the racism of low expectations?
FOR THE LOVE of heaven, won't somebody just call this thing what it is?
It's racism, pure and simple. And it comes from those folks at the Justice Policy Institute, who apparently believe that more than half of the black men in Baltimore between the ages of 20 and 30 have no control over their actions and shouldn't be held accountable for them.
That was, for decades that stretched into centuries, the justification for slavery and Jim Crow, wasn't it? Black folks were simple-minded, childlike creatures who were unable to control their emotions and needed only the civilizing influences of slavery and segregation to bring them to heel. ….
FOR THE LOVE of heaven, won't somebody just call this thing what it is?
It's racism, pure and simple. And it comes from those folks at the Justice Policy Institute, who apparently believe that more than half of the black men in Baltimore between the ages of 20 and 30 have no control over their actions and shouldn't be held accountable for them.
That was, for decades that stretched into centuries, the justification for slavery and Jim Crow, wasn't it? Black folks were simple-minded, childlike creatures who were unable to control their emotions and needed only the civilizing influences of slavery and segregation to bring them to heel. ….
Terri Schiavo Must Live
Peggy Noonan has one of the most compelling reasons to fight for her right to live that I have read or heard:
Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?
No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It's a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"
Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.
But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he'd say, "Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something's in it and you don't know if it's alive, you don't kick it, do you?" No, you don't.
Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?
No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It's a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"
Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.
But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he'd say, "Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something's in it and you don't know if it's alive, you don't kick it, do you?" No, you don't.
And what of the husband?
On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But that's not true. There's just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures.
He has fought the battle to kill her with a determination that at this point seems not single-minded or passionate but strange. His former wife's parents and family are eager to care for her and do care for her, every day. He doesn't have to do a thing. His wife is not kept alive by extraordinary measures--she breathes on her own, is not on a respirator. All she needs to continue existing--and to continue being alive so that life can produce whatever miracle it may produce--is a feeding tube.
Friday, March 18, 2005
FREEZE! I JUST HAD MY NAILS DONE!
An Ann Coulter must-read (did I tell you I had dinner with her once?:
How many people have to die before the country stops humoring feminists? Last week, a defendant in a rape case, Brian Nichols, wrested a gun from a female deputy in an Atlanta courthouse and went on a murderous rampage. Liberals have proffered every possible explanation for this breakdown in security except the giant elephant in the room — who undoubtedly has an eating disorder and would appreciate a little support vis-a-vis her negative body image.
The New York Times said the problem was not enough government spending on courthouse security ("Budgets Can Affect Safety Inside Many Courthouses"). Yes, it was tax-cuts-for-the-rich that somehow enabled a 200-pound former linebacker to take a gun from a 5-foot-tall grandmother.
Atlanta court officials dispensed with any spending issues the next time Nichols entered the courtroom when he was escorted by 17 guards and two police helicopters. He looked like P. Diddy showing up for a casual dinner party.
How many people have to die before the country stops humoring feminists? Last week, a defendant in a rape case, Brian Nichols, wrested a gun from a female deputy in an Atlanta courthouse and went on a murderous rampage. Liberals have proffered every possible explanation for this breakdown in security except the giant elephant in the room — who undoubtedly has an eating disorder and would appreciate a little support vis-a-vis her negative body image.
The New York Times said the problem was not enough government spending on courthouse security ("Budgets Can Affect Safety Inside Many Courthouses"). Yes, it was tax-cuts-for-the-rich that somehow enabled a 200-pound former linebacker to take a gun from a 5-foot-tall grandmother.
Atlanta court officials dispensed with any spending issues the next time Nichols entered the courtroom when he was escorted by 17 guards and two police helicopters. He looked like P. Diddy showing up for a casual dinner party.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
On Terri Schiavo
The torture will take about two excruciating weeks, and its sole and only purpose is to kill the victim. -- Andrew C. McCarthy on Terri Schiavo
The Cost of Subverting an Amendment
“Congress shall make no law respecting … the freedom of speech …”
Amendment 1, US Constitution
How is it possible to get Congress to pass a law restricting the people from speaking freely about political candidates around election time? Well, if you have $140 million dollars, you can do just that.
It turns out that The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy , the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros' Open Society Institute, the Jerome Kohlberg Trust, the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation came up with almost all of this sum.
The leader of this cabal was one Sean Treglia who explained the strategy:
Charged with promoting campaign-finance reform when he joined Pew in the mid-1990s, Treglia came up with a three-pronged strategy: 1) pursue an expansive agenda through incremental reforms, 2) pay for a handful of "experts" all over the country with foundation money and 3) create fake business, minority and religious groups to pound the table for reform.
"The target audience for all this activity was 535 people in Washington," Treglia says — 100 in the Senate, 435 in the House. "The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot — that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform."
Why were our elected representatives ready to go along with this charade? Well, as one of the Senate leaders of this movement, Senator John McCain explained, he really, really dislikes attack ads aimed at him. It makes it so much easier to get re-elected if your opponents are prevented from revealing unpleasant things about you around election time.
Amendment 1, US Constitution
How is it possible to get Congress to pass a law restricting the people from speaking freely about political candidates around election time? Well, if you have $140 million dollars, you can do just that.
It turns out that The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy , the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros' Open Society Institute, the Jerome Kohlberg Trust, the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation came up with almost all of this sum.
The leader of this cabal was one Sean Treglia who explained the strategy:
Charged with promoting campaign-finance reform when he joined Pew in the mid-1990s, Treglia came up with a three-pronged strategy: 1) pursue an expansive agenda through incremental reforms, 2) pay for a handful of "experts" all over the country with foundation money and 3) create fake business, minority and religious groups to pound the table for reform.
"The target audience for all this activity was 535 people in Washington," Treglia says — 100 in the Senate, 435 in the House. "The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot — that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform."
Why were our elected representatives ready to go along with this charade? Well, as one of the Senate leaders of this movement, Senator John McCain explained, he really, really dislikes attack ads aimed at him. It makes it so much easier to get re-elected if your opponents are prevented from revealing unpleasant things about you around election time.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Kerry Loves the Mainstream Media
P.J. O’Rourke thinks that Kerry has sealed his fate with a particularly witless denunciation of those members of the media who are not “mainstream.” I’m not at all sure, since all the evidence point to the fact that a majority of the Democrats agree with is assessment of the dangers of points of view other than the MSM’s.
It’s always a treat reading O’Rourke.
It’s always a treat reading O’Rourke.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Are Debunkers Bunk?
Glenn Reynolds recently linked to Cliopatria which claims that David Horowitz is perpetrating an urban myth about a case of academic repression of a conservative student by a liberal professor.
As an admirer of Horowitz, I wanted to track down the evidence for this accusation. Keeping in mind that everyone is fallible, it is certainly possible that Horowitz, in his desire to make his point that Universities are hotbeds of liberalism – of a fairly totalitarian type – has used examples that, on closer examination, turn out not to be true.
Since blogs use links to original sources, I went to the links provided in the. The first is to Media Matters. There is no dispute that Media Matters (David Brock’s website) is pretty much a website devoted to criticizing conservatives. Nevertheless, it is true that we are rarely the subject of opposition research by our friends; it takes our enemies to expose our failures. Reading the article, we can state unequivocally that Media Matters has failed to find proof of the veracity of Horowitz’ statement. However, that is scarcely proof that Horowitz is repeating – or creating – an urban legend.
A second link in the Cliopatria story was to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which is a virtual verbatim repeat of the Media Matters story. In fact the Plain Dealer story by Mano Singham makes up a large part of the Media Matters story.
Yet a third link brings us to Butterfliesandwheels. The authors of this blog also have an ax to grind with Horowitz. In fact, the following explanation of their position regarding the selection of professors is revealing:
There are two motivations for setting up the web site. The first is the common one having to do with the thought that truth is important, and that to tell the truth about the world it is necessary to put aside whatever preconceptions (ideological, political, moral, etc.) one brings to the endeavour. The second has to do with the tendency of the political Left (which both editors of this site consider themselves to be part of) to subjugate the rational assessment of truth-claims to the demands of a variety of pre-existing political and moral frameworks.
Here we have it: since they (the professors) have determined the good and the right we must subjugate our search for truth to those truths that fit within our moral framework. And that means that conservatives are out of luck when it comes to being hired.
They cite a statement by Horowitz regarding vetting of his proposal for an academic bill of rights that appears to be contradicted by the people who mentioned. I would like to see the quotation by Horowitz in context since it seems improbable that Horowitz would ask people who he should have known would be opposed to his proposal to vet it and expect them to approve it.
Glenn Reynolds is a university professor with a vested interest in this issue. Prior to the Churchill fiasco, this argument would be contained within the academic community. Thanks to the faux Indian, it has spilled out of the gown and into the town.
UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. Unfortunately Glenn Reynolds misinterpreted my comments regarding him and Ward Churchill. I would certainly not classify him as a Churchill shill and am puzzled by his interpretation of what I said. I am a big fan of his and his web site.
Glenn is a university professor and all members of the academy have a vested interest in how that community is perceived. The “issue” in question is that of academic intolerance and general Left wing bias best exemplified by Churchill. Thanks to Churchill (the faux Indian) the general public is becoming more vocal and angry. The arguments are spilling out into the streets and are no longer contained within the halls of academe.
I’m sorry that Glenn misunderstood my comment as either an attack on him or as any way to equate him to Churchill.
UPDATE 2: Some commentators have accused me of both misidentifying and misinterpreting Butterfliesandwheels. I am embarrassed to say that both accusations are true. The bloggers are not professors and I misinterpreted their position on the superimposition of ideology over truth. However, despite their protestations, they have little respect for either truth or dissenting opinions. They are vociferous about their hatred of Horowitz’ Academic Bill of Rights, in effect calling him a liar. They then refer to respected pollster Frank Luntz as “notoriously mendacious,” using as proof of their claim a 1997 AAPOR rebuke of an ethics code. It is only in the last line of the AAPOR press release that we find that Luntz is not a member of this organization.
Toward the end of their screed they posit this possible outcome of the creation of an Academic Bill of Rights:
"The real difficulty, of course, is that if you create rights, you also have to have remedies. And at some point even the genuinely dumb conservatives will notice that the Horowitz proposal will create causes of action for Marxist economists who can't be hired by economics departments, for postmodernists who can't get hired by philosophy departments, and on and on."
On reading that I nearly fell out of my chair with laughter. Can one get hired as an economics professor today unless one is a Marxist, or a philosopher unless postmodernist? Can one get to be the chair of the UC Department of Ethnic Studies unless one is a fake Indian with a penchant for fake art, plagiarism and a tendency to compare the victims of 9/11 to Adolf Eichmann? I suppose it's possible, it just hasn't been tried.
As an admirer of Horowitz, I wanted to track down the evidence for this accusation. Keeping in mind that everyone is fallible, it is certainly possible that Horowitz, in his desire to make his point that Universities are hotbeds of liberalism – of a fairly totalitarian type – has used examples that, on closer examination, turn out not to be true.
Since blogs use links to original sources, I went to the links provided in the. The first is to Media Matters. There is no dispute that Media Matters (David Brock’s website) is pretty much a website devoted to criticizing conservatives. Nevertheless, it is true that we are rarely the subject of opposition research by our friends; it takes our enemies to expose our failures. Reading the article, we can state unequivocally that Media Matters has failed to find proof of the veracity of Horowitz’ statement. However, that is scarcely proof that Horowitz is repeating – or creating – an urban legend.
A second link in the Cliopatria story was to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which is a virtual verbatim repeat of the Media Matters story. In fact the Plain Dealer story by Mano Singham makes up a large part of the Media Matters story.
Yet a third link brings us to Butterfliesandwheels. The authors of this blog also have an ax to grind with Horowitz. In fact, the following explanation of their position regarding the selection of professors is revealing:
There are two motivations for setting up the web site. The first is the common one having to do with the thought that truth is important, and that to tell the truth about the world it is necessary to put aside whatever preconceptions (ideological, political, moral, etc.) one brings to the endeavour. The second has to do with the tendency of the political Left (which both editors of this site consider themselves to be part of) to subjugate the rational assessment of truth-claims to the demands of a variety of pre-existing political and moral frameworks.
Here we have it: since they (the professors) have determined the good and the right we must subjugate our search for truth to those truths that fit within our moral framework. And that means that conservatives are out of luck when it comes to being hired.
They cite a statement by Horowitz regarding vetting of his proposal for an academic bill of rights that appears to be contradicted by the people who mentioned. I would like to see the quotation by Horowitz in context since it seems improbable that Horowitz would ask people who he should have known would be opposed to his proposal to vet it and expect them to approve it.
Glenn Reynolds is a university professor with a vested interest in this issue. Prior to the Churchill fiasco, this argument would be contained within the academic community. Thanks to the faux Indian, it has spilled out of the gown and into the town.
UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. Unfortunately Glenn Reynolds misinterpreted my comments regarding him and Ward Churchill. I would certainly not classify him as a Churchill shill and am puzzled by his interpretation of what I said. I am a big fan of his and his web site.
Glenn is a university professor and all members of the academy have a vested interest in how that community is perceived. The “issue” in question is that of academic intolerance and general Left wing bias best exemplified by Churchill. Thanks to Churchill (the faux Indian) the general public is becoming more vocal and angry. The arguments are spilling out into the streets and are no longer contained within the halls of academe.
I’m sorry that Glenn misunderstood my comment as either an attack on him or as any way to equate him to Churchill.
UPDATE 2: Some commentators have accused me of both misidentifying and misinterpreting Butterfliesandwheels. I am embarrassed to say that both accusations are true. The bloggers are not professors and I misinterpreted their position on the superimposition of ideology over truth. However, despite their protestations, they have little respect for either truth or dissenting opinions. They are vociferous about their hatred of Horowitz’ Academic Bill of Rights, in effect calling him a liar. They then refer to respected pollster Frank Luntz as “notoriously mendacious,” using as proof of their claim a 1997 AAPOR rebuke of an ethics code. It is only in the last line of the AAPOR press release that we find that Luntz is not a member of this organization.
Toward the end of their screed they posit this possible outcome of the creation of an Academic Bill of Rights:
"The real difficulty, of course, is that if you create rights, you also have to have remedies. And at some point even the genuinely dumb conservatives will notice that the Horowitz proposal will create causes of action for Marxist economists who can't be hired by economics departments, for postmodernists who can't get hired by philosophy departments, and on and on."
On reading that I nearly fell out of my chair with laughter. Can one get hired as an economics professor today unless one is a Marxist, or a philosopher unless postmodernist? Can one get to be the chair of the UC Department of Ethnic Studies unless one is a fake Indian with a penchant for fake art, plagiarism and a tendency to compare the victims of 9/11 to Adolf Eichmann? I suppose it's possible, it just hasn't been tried.
We Have Always Been At War With Oceana
Playboy has nothing on the Left. Photo editors in that soft-porn mag exhibit a light touch compared to the way certain segments of the Left-Liberal chattering classes are air-brushing their recent screeds against the Bush policy in the Middle East.
For some the “quagmire” has disappeared, the “resistance” has morphed into “terrorists” and the self-evident “failure” of the invasion of Iraq has turned into a success that everyone knew would happen. Like the collapse of Communism in the USSR, the inevitable was pre-ordained and statements to the contrary are even now being flushed down the “memory hole.”
It is odd, and a little frightening, to see a repeat of Orwell’s 1984 replayed right in front of our eyes.
Victor David Hansen has been right about the big picture for so long, it is only right and fitting that he should do a victory lap in an essay entitled “ A Look Back, Turning point since September 11.”
An excerpt:
Without much appreciation that error is the stuff of war, that by any historical benchmark the removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein was nothing short of miraculous, that our ongoing assessments of success and failure changed hourly within the fluid 24-hour newscycle, or that acrimonious hindsight was often used to save face about earlier wrongheaded pronouncements, we continued to tally up the "I told you so's."
Lapses were, of course, numerous and easy to spot from our armchairs in America the morning after — laxity in securing borders and arms depots and reforming the Iraqi army, a too-prominent televised American profile from the Green Zone, tardiness in elections, too large and plodding an interim American bureaucracy, slowness in dispersing allotted aid, the April pullback from Fallujah, and so on. Add in Abu Ghraib, plus Syria's and Iran's agents and subsidies, and the reconstruction proved more difficult than the three-week victory might otherwise have presaged.
Many erstwhile supporters from the boomer generation — one that is more utopian and therapeutic than practical and tragic — simply bailed on the entire enterprise. They would not return until the successful elections on January 30 and the amazing aftershocks throughout the Middle East convinced them that their continued hypercriticism might leave them on the very wrong side of history.
For some the “quagmire” has disappeared, the “resistance” has morphed into “terrorists” and the self-evident “failure” of the invasion of Iraq has turned into a success that everyone knew would happen. Like the collapse of Communism in the USSR, the inevitable was pre-ordained and statements to the contrary are even now being flushed down the “memory hole.”
It is odd, and a little frightening, to see a repeat of Orwell’s 1984 replayed right in front of our eyes.
Victor David Hansen has been right about the big picture for so long, it is only right and fitting that he should do a victory lap in an essay entitled “ A Look Back, Turning point since September 11.”
An excerpt:
Without much appreciation that error is the stuff of war, that by any historical benchmark the removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein was nothing short of miraculous, that our ongoing assessments of success and failure changed hourly within the fluid 24-hour newscycle, or that acrimonious hindsight was often used to save face about earlier wrongheaded pronouncements, we continued to tally up the "I told you so's."
Lapses were, of course, numerous and easy to spot from our armchairs in America the morning after — laxity in securing borders and arms depots and reforming the Iraqi army, a too-prominent televised American profile from the Green Zone, tardiness in elections, too large and plodding an interim American bureaucracy, slowness in dispersing allotted aid, the April pullback from Fallujah, and so on. Add in Abu Ghraib, plus Syria's and Iran's agents and subsidies, and the reconstruction proved more difficult than the three-week victory might otherwise have presaged.
Many erstwhile supporters from the boomer generation — one that is more utopian and therapeutic than practical and tragic — simply bailed on the entire enterprise. They would not return until the successful elections on January 30 and the amazing aftershocks throughout the Middle East convinced them that their continued hypercriticism might leave them on the very wrong side of history.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Eason Jordan's Lies Live On
Eason Jordan may no longer head CNN News, but his lies live on. As Roger Simon points out on his blog, the accusation that the US deliberately kills reporters is now a constant theme in the Arab press.
Here is an article from Arab News, which bills itself as the Middle East’s leading English language daily. The article, headlined: They Shoot Reporters, Don’t They? Begins:
The killing of Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari by US troops in Iraq is another twist in the diabolical tactics employed by members of the occupation forces in manipulating the veracity of their adventurism in this immoral crusade.
It may be unpopular to say, but the Press Lords helped defeat the US in Viet Nam and it is only thanks to the Internet that they have not managed to do the same in this war.
Here is an article from Arab News, which bills itself as the Middle East’s leading English language daily. The article, headlined: They Shoot Reporters, Don’t They? Begins:
The killing of Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari by US troops in Iraq is another twist in the diabolical tactics employed by members of the occupation forces in manipulating the veracity of their adventurism in this immoral crusade.
It may be unpopular to say, but the Press Lords helped defeat the US in Viet Nam and it is only thanks to the Internet that they have not managed to do the same in this war.
"In Defense of Terrorism: When is it Permissible to Target Children?
One can be absolutely sure that if a country is named a “People’s Republic” it will be a totalitarian hellhole. It is now becoming clear that at the University level, “ethicists” are anything but. Like Princeton’s Pete Singer who deems it ethical to kill children, or to have sex with (presumably) consenting animals, we now have a Doctoral candidate in Applied Ethics who has found a rationale for murdering children in another setting via an essay entitled "In Defense of Terrorism: When is it Permissible to Target Children?"
On Thursday, March 10, the "philosopher" in question, a Mr. Jason Gatliff, returned to Boise State University, his alma mater, to give a speech on just this topic. The speech was paid for by the Boise State University Philosophy Department - and BSU, like BGSU, is a public institution. This fact, it must be noted, imbues the following account of his argument with an irony that is infinite, sweet, and rich.
On Thursday, March 10, the "philosopher" in question, a Mr. Jason Gatliff, returned to Boise State University, his alma mater, to give a speech on just this topic. The speech was paid for by the Boise State University Philosophy Department - and BSU, like BGSU, is a public institution. This fact, it must be noted, imbues the following account of his argument with an irony that is infinite, sweet, and rich.
Welcome to Canada
Matt Labash writes a great article on Canada and interviews a few Americans who have moved there to escape the Bush Gulag.
IN A SENSE, Canada is the perfect place for American quitters, as it evidences self-loathing masquerading as self-congratulation. This I learn over dinner in Vancouver. A delightful realtor named Elizabeth McQueen has enticed me with a promise any American boy likes to hear--that we'd be dining with "two very attractive lesbians." She didn't lie. One of them could make a killing as a Courteney Cox celebrity impersonator. Besides, they're psychotherapists from San Francisco. They ask me to change their names to Cocoa and Satchi since their patients don't yet know they're leaving America.
They've come to Vancouver to look for real estate, having gotten married on an earlier trip to Canada. They were politically active back home. They wrote letters to the editor for every cause: "Save the whales, save the trees, save the lesbians," says Cocoa. They hate the war and the Patriot Act and the results of the gay-marriage resolutions. They hate the conservative agenda and fundamentalist crackers and all the other usual suspects. They hate it that Karl Rove, in Cocoa's words, helped to elect "an alcoholic butthead who can't put two sentences together, cocaine addict, married to a frigid drunk-driver-murderer-Martha-Stewart wannabe."
But beneath all her gracious sentiments is something else: a loss of faith. When describing how she feels traveling abroad, Cocoa sounds like the old joke about how Canadians apologize when you step on their shoes: "I felt ashamed as I was going everywhere with my American passport. It was just like 'I'm so sorry.' . . . After the last election, I kind of lost faith in what we Americans are doing in our country."
IN A SENSE, Canada is the perfect place for American quitters, as it evidences self-loathing masquerading as self-congratulation. This I learn over dinner in Vancouver. A delightful realtor named Elizabeth McQueen has enticed me with a promise any American boy likes to hear--that we'd be dining with "two very attractive lesbians." She didn't lie. One of them could make a killing as a Courteney Cox celebrity impersonator. Besides, they're psychotherapists from San Francisco. They ask me to change their names to Cocoa and Satchi since their patients don't yet know they're leaving America.
They've come to Vancouver to look for real estate, having gotten married on an earlier trip to Canada. They were politically active back home. They wrote letters to the editor for every cause: "Save the whales, save the trees, save the lesbians," says Cocoa. They hate the war and the Patriot Act and the results of the gay-marriage resolutions. They hate the conservative agenda and fundamentalist crackers and all the other usual suspects. They hate it that Karl Rove, in Cocoa's words, helped to elect "an alcoholic butthead who can't put two sentences together, cocaine addict, married to a frigid drunk-driver-murderer-Martha-Stewart wannabe."
But beneath all her gracious sentiments is something else: a loss of faith. When describing how she feels traveling abroad, Cocoa sounds like the old joke about how Canadians apologize when you step on their shoes: "I felt ashamed as I was going everywhere with my American passport. It was just like 'I'm so sorry.' . . . After the last election, I kind of lost faith in what we Americans are doing in our country."
Fighting in the Gap
Among the most irritating themes that I hear about the war we are in is: this is a war for oil and it’s largely the fault of those selfish people who drive gas guzzling SUVs. Here is a fascinating article about the war, and why we are in it and what it means to us.
Read the whole thing. It’s long but thought provoking. Here is a great quote:
The knee-jerk reaction of many Americans to September 11 is to say, “Let’s get off our dependency on foreign oil, and then we won’t have to deal with those people.” The most naïve assumption underlying that dream is that reducing what little connectivity the Gap has with the Core will render it less dangerous to us over the long haul. Turning the Middle East into Central Africa will not build a better world for my kids. We cannot simply will those people away.
Read the whole thing. It’s long but thought provoking. Here is a great quote:
The knee-jerk reaction of many Americans to September 11 is to say, “Let’s get off our dependency on foreign oil, and then we won’t have to deal with those people.” The most naïve assumption underlying that dream is that reducing what little connectivity the Gap has with the Core will render it less dangerous to us over the long haul. Turning the Middle East into Central Africa will not build a better world for my kids. We cannot simply will those people away.
The Argument for Killing Peter Singer
Who is Peter Singer, you ask? Princeton named him Professor of Bioethics a number of yeas ago. Based on his writings, Mr. Singer shares the ethics of the Nazis, who only wanted to purify the human race.
The Right Coast has some interesting thoughts on Singer:
You may recall the name Peter Singer from a while back when he published an article on the internet allowing that it was OK to have sex animals. Not only do a lot of people do it, according to Professor Singer, but there's no reason they shouldn't.
The Right Coast has some interesting thoughts on Singer:
You may recall the name Peter Singer from a while back when he published an article on the internet allowing that it was OK to have sex animals. Not only do a lot of people do it, according to Professor Singer, but there's no reason they shouldn't.
The McCain Feingold Corruption Act
McCain-Feingold was such an obvious effort to restrict free speech that I watched in amazement as it passed congress, was signed by the President and then confirmed by the Supreme Court. I never understood how this could happen. After all, the first amendment is now interpreted so broadly as to define a crèche in a park as the establishment of religion, but telling people they cannot organize to endorse political candidates within 60 days of an election is NOT “abridging the freedom of speech?”
How did this movement got started and who paid for it is the subject of this revealing essay at TechCentralStation.
Here are some revealing facts:
Consider a report just out from the folks over at Political Money Line, "Campaign Finance Reform Lobby: 1994 to 2004." Ignored by the media to date, it details how the supposedly grass-roots campaign-finance reform movement has been funded over the last decade to the tune of $140 million. Of that $140 million, the vast majority ($123 million) came not from retirees scraping together their last nickels for the cause of democracy, nor from schoolchildren collecting deposits on cans plucked from dilapidated playgrounds.
No, the money came from just eight ultra-liberal foundations (including the Ford Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute), the same folks who fund: the Earth Action Network, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the Naderite Public Citizen Foundation and the Feminist Majority Foundation.
[snip]
Yet, by maintaining the fiction of independence from one and other, they appear to much of the press to be a pack of scrappy underdogs sinking their teeth into the ankles of the big-money men.
Well, it's a sham. It's a charade. It's a lie. They are the big-money men. And, with the release of the Political Money Line report, it's time the media started treating them as such. The billionaires and liberal foundations constantly calling for more restrictions on the freedom of ordinary Americans to assemble and speak are not a movement -- they are a lobby.
And the first lobbyist who should be called out is none other than the Reformer-in-Chief, Sen. John McCain. The senator has been caught with his pants down this week, accepting what are essentially campaign contributions to a phony think tank called the Reform Institute.
Read the whole thing.
How did this movement got started and who paid for it is the subject of this revealing essay at TechCentralStation.
Here are some revealing facts:
Consider a report just out from the folks over at Political Money Line, "Campaign Finance Reform Lobby: 1994 to 2004." Ignored by the media to date, it details how the supposedly grass-roots campaign-finance reform movement has been funded over the last decade to the tune of $140 million. Of that $140 million, the vast majority ($123 million) came not from retirees scraping together their last nickels for the cause of democracy, nor from schoolchildren collecting deposits on cans plucked from dilapidated playgrounds.
No, the money came from just eight ultra-liberal foundations (including the Ford Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute), the same folks who fund: the Earth Action Network, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the Naderite Public Citizen Foundation and the Feminist Majority Foundation.
[snip]
Yet, by maintaining the fiction of independence from one and other, they appear to much of the press to be a pack of scrappy underdogs sinking their teeth into the ankles of the big-money men.
Well, it's a sham. It's a charade. It's a lie. They are the big-money men. And, with the release of the Political Money Line report, it's time the media started treating them as such. The billionaires and liberal foundations constantly calling for more restrictions on the freedom of ordinary Americans to assemble and speak are not a movement -- they are a lobby.
And the first lobbyist who should be called out is none other than the Reformer-in-Chief, Sen. John McCain. The senator has been caught with his pants down this week, accepting what are essentially campaign contributions to a phony think tank called the Reform Institute.
Read the whole thing.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
The Worst Thing I Have Ever Seen
Despair was once described to me by a college english professor as "the death throes of hope." That day in the minefield was despair incarnate, and it was the worst thing I have ever seen with mine own eyes.
A soldier describes the actions of a group of people trying to escape the Worker's Paradise otherwise known as Cuba.
A MUST read.
A soldier describes the actions of a group of people trying to escape the Worker's Paradise otherwise known as Cuba.
A MUST read.
Steyn on Assad
Mark Steyn has another great piece on the process of tranforming the Middle East.
Two years ago, Colin Powell took Jordan's King Abdullah to one side and told him, modifying a Rumsfeldian paradigm, that America saw him as part of "the new Middle East". The Sauds, Mubarak and Gaddafi are not entirely on board with this "new Middle East" thing, but since January 30 they've been doing their best to pretend they are - and the easiest way to do that is to stick some loser with the label of "old Middle East". Syria's prestige, such as it is, rests on its subordination of Lebanon. Abandoning that on a time frame demanded by Bush and the Beirut babes doesn't exactly communicate strength. The Iranians are still officially Assad's pals, but the word is that even they wouldn't be averse to a palace coup.
Two years ago, Colin Powell took Jordan's King Abdullah to one side and told him, modifying a Rumsfeldian paradigm, that America saw him as part of "the new Middle East". The Sauds, Mubarak and Gaddafi are not entirely on board with this "new Middle East" thing, but since January 30 they've been doing their best to pretend they are - and the easiest way to do that is to stick some loser with the label of "old Middle East". Syria's prestige, such as it is, rests on its subordination of Lebanon. Abandoning that on a time frame demanded by Bush and the Beirut babes doesn't exactly communicate strength. The Iranians are still officially Assad's pals, but the word is that even they wouldn't be averse to a palace coup.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Bringing Disrepute on the House
Thanks to Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom we have a truly bizarre reaction from some Leftist democrats who want to make a literal federal case out of poor Jeff Guckert. Click HERE for the link and read the story.
In response, I have written to a member of the House Ethics Committee:
The following is the first rule of the House:
A Member, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives shall conduct himself at all times in a manner which shall reflect creditably on the House of Representatives.
Members Conyers, Slaughter, Waxman, Rangel and Bennie Thompson have acted in a manner that brings discredit on the House. To wit, they have made the House look ridiculous in the case of Mr. Guckert. In a public statement they have engaged in misrepresentation of fact (Mr. Guckert, a right-wing activist with no press credentials), have accused another branch of the government of nefarious acts based on bizarre conspiracy theories without a shred of proof (Mr. Guckert's efforts as a propaganda machine for the White House), and have recklessly and demagogically implied that a majority of the American people (Mr. Guckert and his ultra-conservative organization) are outside what they perceive to be the mainstream. In so doing, they have not only exposed their personal prejudices but by their actions have made the House of Representatives a subject of self-parody and ridicule.
At a time when each American citizen finally has the power to speak out, via the Internet, and be his or her own reporter, editor, publisher and/or broadcaster it appears that the aforementioned members wish to create new barriers to the vigorous public debate of vital national interest by creating a "credentialed" priesthood of the press. They will not succeed. But in their efforts to reduce access to members of government, including not only the President, but also members of congress and other public officials; those who would try to impose a new, government "press guild," bring discredit on the House.
I am asking for a formal investigation of their actions and a vigorous condemnation of these actions. I want to know if they are acting in concert with powerful members of the commercial press, or other shadowy groups who have a vested interest in suppressing the free expression of ideas.
In response, I have written to a member of the House Ethics Committee:
The following is the first rule of the House:
A Member, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives shall conduct himself at all times in a manner which shall reflect creditably on the House of Representatives.
Members Conyers, Slaughter, Waxman, Rangel and Bennie Thompson have acted in a manner that brings discredit on the House. To wit, they have made the House look ridiculous in the case of Mr. Guckert. In a public statement they have engaged in misrepresentation of fact (Mr. Guckert, a right-wing activist with no press credentials), have accused another branch of the government of nefarious acts based on bizarre conspiracy theories without a shred of proof (Mr. Guckert's efforts as a propaganda machine for the White House), and have recklessly and demagogically implied that a majority of the American people (Mr. Guckert and his ultra-conservative organization) are outside what they perceive to be the mainstream. In so doing, they have not only exposed their personal prejudices but by their actions have made the House of Representatives a subject of self-parody and ridicule.
At a time when each American citizen finally has the power to speak out, via the Internet, and be his or her own reporter, editor, publisher and/or broadcaster it appears that the aforementioned members wish to create new barriers to the vigorous public debate of vital national interest by creating a "credentialed" priesthood of the press. They will not succeed. But in their efforts to reduce access to members of government, including not only the President, but also members of congress and other public officials; those who would try to impose a new, government "press guild," bring discredit on the House.
I am asking for a formal investigation of their actions and a vigorous condemnation of these actions. I want to know if they are acting in concert with powerful members of the commercial press, or other shadowy groups who have a vested interest in suppressing the free expression of ideas.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
How Liberals Think
The Corner on NationalReview Online has an interesting exchange regarding the issue of Liberal rationalizations.
Examples:
-Fidel Castro has brought prosperity to Cubans despite the U.S.'s toothless embargo--an embargo that the U.S. must end in order to feed the starving Cubans.
-The winter of 2003-2004 was the coldest on record, a direct result of global warming.
-There are no WMD in Iraq and we must not put our children in harm's way there because Saddam will use WMD on them.
Examples:
-Fidel Castro has brought prosperity to Cubans despite the U.S.'s toothless embargo--an embargo that the U.S. must end in order to feed the starving Cubans.
-The winter of 2003-2004 was the coldest on record, a direct result of global warming.
-There are no WMD in Iraq and we must not put our children in harm's way there because Saddam will use WMD on them.
And on Lebanon
What's going on in Lebanon and the issue of Syrian withdrawal forms part of the skein of tangled yarn that Bush and his team are attempting to unravel.
The willingness of the Bush team to think outside the box makes this the most refreshing administration since the late great Ronald Reagan. Reagan got us out of the box of “containing” Communism, asking the question: “why not win?” Bush got us out of the box of supporting and nursing the status quo in the Middle East which was creating the most deadly political and religious toxin since Communism fell in the USSR and retreated to the campuses.
I am, frankly, surprised at how brittle these dictatorships are. How quickly they can be destabilized and how eager the “Arab street” is for individual freedom. It point out how out of touch the chattering classes are with ordinary people. They imagine that after meeting the leaders, the hangers-on and the beneficiaries of the ruling classes they have met “the people.” God bless these self deluded fools because it makes their discomfiture all the more obvious. Gloating is a sin, but, Lord, just one more sin … for old time’s sake.
The willingness of the Bush team to think outside the box makes this the most refreshing administration since the late great Ronald Reagan. Reagan got us out of the box of “containing” Communism, asking the question: “why not win?” Bush got us out of the box of supporting and nursing the status quo in the Middle East which was creating the most deadly political and religious toxin since Communism fell in the USSR and retreated to the campuses.
I am, frankly, surprised at how brittle these dictatorships are. How quickly they can be destabilized and how eager the “Arab street” is for individual freedom. It point out how out of touch the chattering classes are with ordinary people. They imagine that after meeting the leaders, the hangers-on and the beneficiaries of the ruling classes they have met “the people.” God bless these self deluded fools because it makes their discomfiture all the more obvious. Gloating is a sin, but, Lord, just one more sin … for old time’s sake.
The Virginian Pilot Fixes Social Security
… we need to move quickly so baby boomer retirees can deal with the fact that Social Security benefits will have to be cut, and taxes raised. Those are the solutions for Social Security’s problems that the president has assiduously avoided mentioning….
There you have it, Baby Boomers, your social security benefits have to be cut and taxes raised.
We tried to get the editorial writer on the phone but were not entirely successful. Had they agreed to talk, the conversation may have gone something like this:
Virginian (V): Read your editorial about cutting Baby Boomer benefits and raising taxes. Baby Boomers are going to be retiring in about 5 years and are counting on their benefits. That’s not a long time to change the plans of a lifetime. Do you think that’s playing fair?
Virginian Pilot editors (VPE): Look, we have no choice. The Boomers are just going to have to suck it up.
V: If we raise taxes, will that solve the problem?
VPE: Sure. The added taxes will go into the Social Security Trust Fund and that will be used to pay benefits.
V: I’m a little hazy on the Social Security trust fund, can you help me out?
VPE: Sure. After all, we are the fount of wisdom here in downtown Norfolk. Ask away.
V: Well, tell me about this trust fund, and is that the same thing as a lockbox?
VPE: I see you have a lot to learn. The lockbox was the place Al Gore wanted to put the Social Security payments, but Bush (aka smirkingchimphitler) would have none of that. So Social Security payments go into the Social Security trust fund.
V: Ok so there is this big pile of dollar bills in this trust fund, sort of like my savings account at the bank?
VPE: Well, not exactly. The trust fund holds government bonds.
V: Where did the dollar bills go?
VPE: Oh, they were used to pay for current government programs.
V: So, just to be absolutely clear, there is no cash in the trust fund. Just a pile of government bonds?
VPE: Sure. But you know that government bonds are safe, and the government can cash them in to pay for the benefits.
V: OK, but when the government starts to cash the bonds in, where will it get the money? I mean, will the Social Security trust fund turn to the treasury and give it a bond and ask for cash? After all, the government doesn’t have the income it needs now and keeps borrowing money to pay for its programs. According to the Social Security administration “…tax income will begin to fall short of outlays in 2018.” So by 2018 Social Security is going be paying out more money that it’s taking in. Where is the cash that retirees are counting on going to come from?
VPE: Like I told you when I wrote the editorial, we’re going to cut retiree benefits and raise their taxes.
V: That’s your answer? You criticize Bush for trying something new and your answer is to cut benefits and raise taxes? That’s the best you can do?
VPE: Shut up kid, you bother me.
Clinton Admires Iran!
With a hat tip to Charles Johnson at LGF, here's an article by Amir Taheri about comments made by Bill Clinton at the now-famous Davos conference. You know, the one at which Eason Jordan accused the US military of deliberately killing reporters. Perhaps another reason that tapes of the Davos conference have never been made public (other than to protect Jordan) is that Clinton's remarks would have caused outrage in the US - at least in Red States.
Clinton was later gave an interview to Charlie Rose in which he repeated his admiration and support of the rulers of Iran.
Where is the country that Bill Clinton, a former president of the United States, feels ideologically most at home?
Before you answer, here is the condition that such a country must fulfill: It must hold several consecutive elections that produce 70 percent majorities for “liberals and progressives.”
Well, if you thought of one of the Scandinavian countries or, perhaps, New Zealand or Canada, you are wrong.
Believe it or not, the country Bill Clinton so admires is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Here is what Clinton said at a meeting on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just a few weeks ago: “Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.”
Clinton was later gave an interview to Charlie Rose in which he repeated his admiration and support of the rulers of Iran.
Where is the country that Bill Clinton, a former president of the United States, feels ideologically most at home?
Before you answer, here is the condition that such a country must fulfill: It must hold several consecutive elections that produce 70 percent majorities for “liberals and progressives.”
Well, if you thought of one of the Scandinavian countries or, perhaps, New Zealand or Canada, you are wrong.
Believe it or not, the country Bill Clinton so admires is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Here is what Clinton said at a meeting on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just a few weeks ago: “Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.”
Friday, March 04, 2005
Election Shock Treatment
From the Weekly Standard:
WITH THINGS LOOKING UP for a change, this has been a rough patch of time for the Democrats. They have been suffering from Election Shock Treatment; which means the success of the Iraqi elections has shocked them into the realization that they may have to seek treatment, because of the trauma induced by the growing suspicion that President Bush has been right all along: right in the decision to go into Iraq; right in the decision to hang tough in Palestine; right in the belief that Muslims and Arabs may also want freedom; that elections there can be held, and succeed.
But even before this last "bad" (read, good) news, things had turned grim for the quagmire addicts, with the terrible realization that events elsewhere had not taken a turn for the worse. In August 2004, for instance, Australian Prime Minister John Howard was not defeated for his sin of backing Bush in the Iraqi invasion, dealing no blow at all to the Bush coalition. Then the Afghan elections went all too smoothly, despite the fact that the country, three years earlier, had been a perfect model of 13th century governance. Then the Palestinians, after Arafat's death, had the gall to start edging somewhat away from their ideological precipice, suggesting we might face a third non-disaster, a prospect too ghastly to contemplate.
In December, some of the savvier commentators had begun suggesting that Bush's democracy project was showing signs of working, and Martin Gilbert, the biographer of Winston S Churchill, had written
that Bush and his main man Tony Blair might stand some day with Churchill and Roosevelt. Among the in crowd--which had been appalled when Ronald Reagan, the amiable dunce, was declared by serious people the liberator of the people of Communist Europe--the idea that history might repeat itself was too much to bear.
WITH THINGS LOOKING UP for a change, this has been a rough patch of time for the Democrats. They have been suffering from Election Shock Treatment; which means the success of the Iraqi elections has shocked them into the realization that they may have to seek treatment, because of the trauma induced by the growing suspicion that President Bush has been right all along: right in the decision to go into Iraq; right in the decision to hang tough in Palestine; right in the belief that Muslims and Arabs may also want freedom; that elections there can be held, and succeed.
But even before this last "bad" (read, good) news, things had turned grim for the quagmire addicts, with the terrible realization that events elsewhere had not taken a turn for the worse. In August 2004, for instance, Australian Prime Minister John Howard was not defeated for his sin of backing Bush in the Iraqi invasion, dealing no blow at all to the Bush coalition. Then the Afghan elections went all too smoothly, despite the fact that the country, three years earlier, had been a perfect model of 13th century governance. Then the Palestinians, after Arafat's death, had the gall to start edging somewhat away from their ideological precipice, suggesting we might face a third non-disaster, a prospect too ghastly to contemplate.
In December, some of the savvier commentators had begun suggesting that Bush's democracy project was showing signs of working, and Martin Gilbert, the biographer of Winston S Churchill, had written
that Bush and his main man Tony Blair might stand some day with Churchill and Roosevelt. Among the in crowd--which had been appalled when Ronald Reagan, the amiable dunce, was declared by serious people the liberator of the people of Communist Europe--the idea that history might repeat itself was too much to bear.
McCain the Censor
McCain-Feingold (pace the Supremes) is the most blatant attack on free speech in my lifetime. When I was a mere lad, pornographers were sold “underground” and political speech was robust and free. Today, pornography is broadcast and you can be arrested for participating in politics, thanks to the efforts of McCain (thinskinnedwhitemale-AZ) and Feingold (governmentknowbest – WI).
Just as the people of this country have broken the chains of the gatekeepers of information (known as the MSM), McCain-Feingold threatens – like a vampire emerging from its crypt – to kill the blogosphere.
For the details, click HERE for Michelle Malkin and links to other sites.
UPDATE: Powerline explains why the internet is being targeted. It is based on a judicial ruling that that the internet, unlike the MSM, is not exempt from restictions on political speech.
Just as the people of this country have broken the chains of the gatekeepers of information (known as the MSM), McCain-Feingold threatens – like a vampire emerging from its crypt – to kill the blogosphere.
For the details, click HERE for Michelle Malkin and links to other sites.
UPDATE: Powerline explains why the internet is being targeted. It is based on a judicial ruling that that the internet, unlike the MSM, is not exempt from restictions on political speech.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Problems with the CIA
Gabriel Schoenfeld begins his discussion of the CIA's problems with this humorous anecdote. But the article has a very serious side and well worth a read.
The agency man, who was perhaps the same age as my KGB contact, had a studied nondescript appearance. Before his present assignment, to a unit debriefing Americans who had had contact with foreigners of interest to the government, he had been stationed in Rome for two years; he could not, he told me, say anything more about what he had been doing there. After a few minutes of such talk, we opened our menus. As he perused the choices, a question sprang from his lips that, when its implications sank in, shocked me to the core: "What's prosciutto?"
The agency man, who was perhaps the same age as my KGB contact, had a studied nondescript appearance. Before his present assignment, to a unit debriefing Americans who had had contact with foreigners of interest to the government, he had been stationed in Rome for two years; he could not, he told me, say anything more about what he had been doing there. After a few minutes of such talk, we opened our menus. As he perused the choices, a question sprang from his lips that, when its implications sank in, shocked me to the core: "What's prosciutto?"
A Dumb Ass All My Life
Dan Rather - in his own words, from the Media Research Center.
Read the whole thing.
“Look, we’ve made mistakes in the past. Somebody wrote in the paper the other day that I was, quote, ‘boneheaded.’ Well, of course, it’s a matter of record I’m boneheaded, said, ‘well, this is bizarre.’ Well, of course I’m bizarre, you know, we’ve known that for a long time...Somebody, I don’t know if he put it exactly this way, but he said, ‘well, you know, it’s a dumb-ass thing he’s doing.’ Well, you know, I’ve been a dumb-ass all my life.”
Read the whole thing.
“Look, we’ve made mistakes in the past. Somebody wrote in the paper the other day that I was, quote, ‘boneheaded.’ Well, of course, it’s a matter of record I’m boneheaded, said, ‘well, this is bizarre.’ Well, of course I’m bizarre, you know, we’ve known that for a long time...Somebody, I don’t know if he put it exactly this way, but he said, ‘well, you know, it’s a dumb-ass thing he’s doing.’ Well, you know, I’ve been a dumb-ass all my life.”
High Court to Decide on God
From Scappleface:
However, the second case on the high court docket this week asks a thornier question: 'Is God's knowledge of the private lives, and even thoughts, of all Americans an unconstitutional invasion of privacy."
The case involves a Texas man, identified in court documents simply as 'Jonah A.', who alleges that God has been "stalking" him for years, and seems to know things about his personal life that happened even when he was alone.
"Just because the Lord is omniscient and omnipresent, that doesn't mean he should be allowed to know everything and be everywhere," said Jonah. "The court needs to protect citizens from Divine intrusion."
The plaintiff's case rests on the foundation of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling which found that the long-lost constitutional right to privacy protects women who want to abort their children.
However, the second case on the high court docket this week asks a thornier question: 'Is God's knowledge of the private lives, and even thoughts, of all Americans an unconstitutional invasion of privacy."
The case involves a Texas man, identified in court documents simply as 'Jonah A.', who alleges that God has been "stalking" him for years, and seems to know things about his personal life that happened even when he was alone.
"Just because the Lord is omniscient and omnipresent, that doesn't mean he should be allowed to know everything and be everywhere," said Jonah. "The court needs to protect citizens from Divine intrusion."
The plaintiff's case rests on the foundation of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling which found that the long-lost constitutional right to privacy protects women who want to abort their children.
Supremes Cite European Opinion on Death Penalty
From Powerline:
Justice Kennedy relied on international law and practice to "confirm" his view that the juvenile death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. He also cited the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. signed only subject to the reservation of its right to impose the death penalty for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age.
In my view, the reliance of foreign law and practice is a symptom of the Court's problem, not the problem itself. The Court has appropriated from the American people the role of social arbiter. Thus, it strikes down longstanding policies and practices adopted through the democratic process on the grounds that five or more Justices personally don't approve. This creates a question of legitimacy which causes the Justices to scrounge for support. Since the Justices preferences often don't correspond to the preferences of majorities here, they naturally look to Europe. They lack the political savvy to realize that doing so only makes their work seem even less legitimate.
Or perhaps I'm completely wrong. Maybe the offending Justices don't really care about whether the Court is perceived as legitimate, and just refer to international stuff because they are trained to cite things.
Justice Kennedy relied on international law and practice to "confirm" his view that the juvenile death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. He also cited the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. signed only subject to the reservation of its right to impose the death penalty for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age.
In my view, the reliance of foreign law and practice is a symptom of the Court's problem, not the problem itself. The Court has appropriated from the American people the role of social arbiter. Thus, it strikes down longstanding policies and practices adopted through the democratic process on the grounds that five or more Justices personally don't approve. This creates a question of legitimacy which causes the Justices to scrounge for support. Since the Justices preferences often don't correspond to the preferences of majorities here, they naturally look to Europe. They lack the political savvy to realize that doing so only makes their work seem even less legitimate.
Or perhaps I'm completely wrong. Maybe the offending Justices don't really care about whether the Court is perceived as legitimate, and just refer to international stuff because they are trained to cite things.
Lileks on Dean and Byrd
Hitler! It would be an irrelevant rant by an irrelevant old man if it didn’t underscore the remarkable comments of one Howard Dean, who remarked that the Republicans are evil. No, that’s a broad mischaracterization. They’re on the side of evil, that’s all. “This is a struggle of good and evil,” he said in a recent Kansas appearance. “And we're the good." Also on the side of evil: “right-wing pastors” who oppose abortion.
Such nuance! Persuasive fellows, Misters Dean and Byrd.
Big thinkers. The Middle East is poised to remake itself and repudiate all the tired tropes about Arabs and democracy, and Byrd trots out Adolph’s bones to complain about Senate rules, and Dean jumps up and down in Kansas about the perfidy of personal ownership of a tiny percentage of your Social Security money. Big picture men.
Such nuance! Persuasive fellows, Misters Dean and Byrd.
Big thinkers. The Middle East is poised to remake itself and repudiate all the tired tropes about Arabs and democracy, and Byrd trots out Adolph’s bones to complain about Senate rules, and Dean jumps up and down in Kansas about the perfidy of personal ownership of a tiny percentage of your Social Security money. Big picture men.
Free Speech for Terrorists
This article discusses a controversial issue: can speech be a criminal act? Who is responsible for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993? The people who made and planted the bomb, or Sheik Omar who was:
Blind, diabetic, and beset by other maladies, Sheik Omar never fired a shot in the war against the “enemies of God.” He never mixed an explosive compound, never beheaded a single infidel or apostate. As a renowned Quranic scholar, his weapon was merely words. But those words were backed by his prestige in a movement that insists on authoritative words to license deadly deeds. So it was that, upon being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996, Sheik Omar issued a decree, declaring of Americans that “Muslims everywhere [should] dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, . . . shoot down their planes, [and] kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.”
One student who heard well was the wealthy Saudi upstart Osama bin Laden, eventually the leader of an international terror network, al Qaeda, whose size and efficacy dwarfed even Sheik Omar’s ambitious hopes. Over the next years, bin Laden would issue his own declarations against America, and follow them regularly with murderous deeds. Only days after 9/11, with fires still raging from the finally destroyed twin towers, and the murder toll rising, bin Laden jubilantly explained to the international media that his war on America was fully justified under the authority of the Islamic fatwa issued from prison by the blind sheik.
Read the whole thing at Commentary
Blind, diabetic, and beset by other maladies, Sheik Omar never fired a shot in the war against the “enemies of God.” He never mixed an explosive compound, never beheaded a single infidel or apostate. As a renowned Quranic scholar, his weapon was merely words. But those words were backed by his prestige in a movement that insists on authoritative words to license deadly deeds. So it was that, upon being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996, Sheik Omar issued a decree, declaring of Americans that “Muslims everywhere [should] dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, . . . shoot down their planes, [and] kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.”
One student who heard well was the wealthy Saudi upstart Osama bin Laden, eventually the leader of an international terror network, al Qaeda, whose size and efficacy dwarfed even Sheik Omar’s ambitious hopes. Over the next years, bin Laden would issue his own declarations against America, and follow them regularly with murderous deeds. Only days after 9/11, with fires still raging from the finally destroyed twin towers, and the murder toll rising, bin Laden jubilantly explained to the international media that his war on America was fully justified under the authority of the Islamic fatwa issued from prison by the blind sheik.
Read the whole thing at Commentary
Osama & Zarqawi
What does the intercepted message between these two mean? There are many opinions, but this one by Wretchard is compelling:
That particular message could mean anything. But in general it would be surprising if the enemy were content to simply watch events unfold. The problem is that democratization creates a whole new species of "cool". At the risk of oversimplifying things, in the past young people had the piss-poor choice of being a mustachioed Mukhabarat thug or a fiery Jihadi; that is to say between embracing the autocratic status quo and signing on the 72 virgins in Paradise. But now there's the prospect of going into the future on local terms; not as a 'stooge' but in a way that suits the culture of the area. In a word recent events have created a new 'scene' and it's a scene that OBL can't afford to take over his little crafted tableau.
Bottom line. If he's got any juice left, now's the time to let it rip.
That particular message could mean anything. But in general it would be surprising if the enemy were content to simply watch events unfold. The problem is that democratization creates a whole new species of "cool". At the risk of oversimplifying things, in the past young people had the piss-poor choice of being a mustachioed Mukhabarat thug or a fiery Jihadi; that is to say between embracing the autocratic status quo and signing on the 72 virgins in Paradise. But now there's the prospect of going into the future on local terms; not as a 'stooge' but in a way that suits the culture of the area. In a word recent events have created a new 'scene' and it's a scene that OBL can't afford to take over his little crafted tableau.
Bottom line. If he's got any juice left, now's the time to let it rip.
More Speech Codes
Douglas Kern makes the case that academia would be better served by making its speech code prohibitions more, rather than less, explicit in TechCentralStation.
Let us have more speech codes on college campuses -- many more. Let us have more detailed, carefully wrought Indices of Forbidden Opinions. Every institution of higher learning in the United States should present its incoming students with a list of all the beliefs that will lead to official disfavor.
It's not a matter of free speech. It's a matter of transparency.
The Larry Summers fiasco has taught us that, at Harvard University, faculty members are not permitted to believe in differences of intellectual capacity between the sexes. Do you suppose Larry Summers might have wanted to know that fact before presenting his now-infamous remarks? Similarly, it seems that comparing 9/11 victims to "little Eichmanns" is not the path to career success at the University of Colorado. But no one told Ward Churchill until it was too late. And for Ward Churchill, the criticism is especially cruel. Oh, how thin a line separates the good anti-American moon-battery that gets you a tenured sinecure from the bad anti-American moon-battery that gets you sacked!
Big academia promulgates the illusion of free speech while quietly enforcing the de facto reality of opinion censorship. It's the worst of both worlds.
Read the rest/
Let us have more speech codes on college campuses -- many more. Let us have more detailed, carefully wrought Indices of Forbidden Opinions. Every institution of higher learning in the United States should present its incoming students with a list of all the beliefs that will lead to official disfavor.
It's not a matter of free speech. It's a matter of transparency.
The Larry Summers fiasco has taught us that, at Harvard University, faculty members are not permitted to believe in differences of intellectual capacity between the sexes. Do you suppose Larry Summers might have wanted to know that fact before presenting his now-infamous remarks? Similarly, it seems that comparing 9/11 victims to "little Eichmanns" is not the path to career success at the University of Colorado. But no one told Ward Churchill until it was too late. And for Ward Churchill, the criticism is especially cruel. Oh, how thin a line separates the good anti-American moon-battery that gets you a tenured sinecure from the bad anti-American moon-battery that gets you sacked!
Big academia promulgates the illusion of free speech while quietly enforcing the de facto reality of opinion censorship. It's the worst of both worlds.
Read the rest/
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Social Security Reform
The National Center for Policy Analysis has an excellent article on just how other countires have dealt with the issue of "privatizing" or "reforming" social security-type retirement income systems. The Chilean example is instructive:
The Chilean individual account system started more than 20 years ago and many workers have retired under the reformed system. Two-thirds of them have purchased an annuity at retirement.
An annuity is a contract with an insurance company that provides the purchaser with a monthly income. The prices of lifetime annuities reflect the predicted life expectancy at retirement for individuals born in a particular year.
These annuities are offered by insurance companies that compete for retirees’ business. Because of the highly competitive annuities market, retirees get the same rate of return they would get on government bonds, plus longevity and inflation insurance. The insurance companies cover their costs by investing in higher-yielding financial instruments such as corporate bonds or mortgage-backed securities. The annuity industry in Chile has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years.
Annuities are popular in large part because regulations encourage workers to annuitize. For example:
The Chilean individual account system started more than 20 years ago and many workers have retired under the reformed system. Two-thirds of them have purchased an annuity at retirement.
An annuity is a contract with an insurance company that provides the purchaser with a monthly income. The prices of lifetime annuities reflect the predicted life expectancy at retirement for individuals born in a particular year.
These annuities are offered by insurance companies that compete for retirees’ business. Because of the highly competitive annuities market, retirees get the same rate of return they would get on government bonds, plus longevity and inflation insurance. The insurance companies cover their costs by investing in higher-yielding financial instruments such as corporate bonds or mortgage-backed securities. The annuity industry in Chile has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years.
Annuities are popular in large part because regulations encourage workers to annuitize. For example:
- Chile requires workers to purchase an annuity or take their money out of the system in very gradual installments. Lump-sum withdrawals are not permitted unless very stringent conditions are met.
- Insurers offer annuities that are required to adjust for inflation, protecting workers against a rise in the price level.
- The government guarantees three-fourths of an annuity’s value in case the insurance company becomes insolvent; however, insurance companies are heavily regulated to make sure that doesn’t happen.
- A worker can withdraw money from his account before the normal retirement age of 65 only if his account balance is adequate to purchase a pension that replaces at least 70 percent of his preretirement wage and 150 percent of the minimum guaranteed pension.
- After adjusting for inflation, accounts in Chile earned an average annual rate of return of more than 10 percent from 1982 to 2002.
Because of these high returns — and the favorable terms of annuities — many workers are able to purchase an annuity or start gradually withdrawing their personal account funds in their 50s. If they continue working after retirement, they are exempt from the pension payroll tax. This reduction in payroll taxes has led to a dramatic rise in the labor supply of older workers — which is good for the economy.
Read the Adobe Acrobat version; the plain text version has some errors.
Tipping Points?
Is it an accident that there are new signs of freedom in the Middle East? Here's the Ace of Spades. And Captain's Quarters.
And from FrontPage:
No words can do justice to the march of freedom underway in the Middle East and what it took to lead us there. Liberals will not want to hear this, but they know it’s true: What has happened in formerly Saddam’s Iraq and the Taliban’s Afghanistan—which, hopefully, could propel a flowering of freedom in a region more resistant than any other—is a tribute primarily to the efforts of one man: George W. Bush. For students of international relations, the elections in Iraq, capping those in Afghanistan in October, serve as a case study of how individuals, as opposed to larger global-systemic forces, can change events—can alter history.
And from FrontPage:
No words can do justice to the march of freedom underway in the Middle East and what it took to lead us there. Liberals will not want to hear this, but they know it’s true: What has happened in formerly Saddam’s Iraq and the Taliban’s Afghanistan—which, hopefully, could propel a flowering of freedom in a region more resistant than any other—is a tribute primarily to the efforts of one man: George W. Bush. For students of international relations, the elections in Iraq, capping those in Afghanistan in October, serve as a case study of how individuals, as opposed to larger global-systemic forces, can change events—can alter history.
Update on Ward Churchill
Ward "The people who died in the World Trade Center are little Eichmanns" Churchill has his detractors and his defenders.
Go to Belmont Club for an analysis of Churchill's views (links are provided to his speeches). A second post indicates that UC may be trying to buy off Churchill.
From Little Green Footballs:
Hey! Sounds like a great deal. Libel 9/11 victims, lie about your ancestry, forge artwork, teach anarchists how to commit terrorism, assault reporters—and end up with 10 million bucks and a quick easy retirement! Who knew the halls of academe could be so lucrative?
Go to Belmont Club for an analysis of Churchill's views (links are provided to his speeches). A second post indicates that UC may be trying to buy off Churchill.
From Little Green Footballs:
Hey! Sounds like a great deal. Libel 9/11 victims, lie about your ancestry, forge artwork, teach anarchists how to commit terrorism, assault reporters—and end up with 10 million bucks and a quick easy retirement! Who knew the halls of academe could be so lucrative?
Mark Steyn on the EU
But either way the notion that it's a superpower in the making is preposterous. Most administration officials subscribe to one of two views: a) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater; or b) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg's about to go up.
Read the whole thing HERE
Monday, February 21, 2005
Iraq, Oil and Canada
There is a common meme on the Left that the Iraq war was all about Bush stealing oil for his buddies in Texas. At least I think that is the reason they keep saying "It's all about oil!" If I'm wrong, somebody please correct me.
HERE is a very interesting exploration by New Sisyphus of the connection between the head of the Canadian government and oil interests, and why it was VERY profitable for the Canadians to oppose our invasionof Iraq.
HERE is a very interesting exploration by New Sisyphus of the connection between the head of the Canadian government and oil interests, and why it was VERY profitable for the Canadians to oppose our invasionof Iraq.
Who is Maurice Hinchey?
Well, he is a Democrat, and a congressman from upstate New York. He also believes that Karl Rove created and planted the forged papers that Dan Rather used to crucify himself with the fake "Bush got favored treatment" story in the TANG.
Go to LittleGreenFootballs to hear the audio and read the transcript.
The Leftist blogosphere has been full of this kind of tinfoilhattiness for days, but for a member of congress to start spouting this stuff is incredible. And here's the point: there is literally no one in the Democratic party who will try to rescue its reputation for being serious. No one on that side of the aisle will say "he doesn't represent us." With increasing rapidity, this party is being revealed as the residence of moonbats. Just when you think that the left can't get any battier, they surprise you.
It is not good for this country that a major party is led by Howard "Yeaaaaaah" Dean, Teddy "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy, and that hosts such dim bulbs as McKinney, Waters, Sanchez, Rangel, Deutsch, Hastings, Nadler, Weiner, Lee, Stark, Lofgren and Waxman.
Partisan Republicans may get a huge amount of enjoyment out of this. But those who are serious about the future of the republic cannot rest easy in the knowledge that these people run a major party. Other countries have succommed to loons and nuts when times got bad. Are there no grownups on the Left?
Go to LittleGreenFootballs to hear the audio and read the transcript.
The Leftist blogosphere has been full of this kind of tinfoilhattiness for days, but for a member of congress to start spouting this stuff is incredible. And here's the point: there is literally no one in the Democratic party who will try to rescue its reputation for being serious. No one on that side of the aisle will say "he doesn't represent us." With increasing rapidity, this party is being revealed as the residence of moonbats. Just when you think that the left can't get any battier, they surprise you.
It is not good for this country that a major party is led by Howard "Yeaaaaaah" Dean, Teddy "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy, and that hosts such dim bulbs as McKinney, Waters, Sanchez, Rangel, Deutsch, Hastings, Nadler, Weiner, Lee, Stark, Lofgren and Waxman.
Partisan Republicans may get a huge amount of enjoyment out of this. But those who are serious about the future of the republic cannot rest easy in the knowledge that these people run a major party. Other countries have succommed to loons and nuts when times got bad. Are there no grownups on the Left?
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Kos: The CBS Memos Faked by the White House and spread by Gannon/Guckert.
Thanks to Charles Johnson at LittleGreenFootballs we now know who faked the CBS memos that got Dan Rather into trouble. It was Karl Rove!
A Kos Kid is connecting the dots and abusing the punctuation, in one of the best Daily Kos posts ever: Gannon scoop shows White House Forged TANG/CBS memos?!?! (Hat tip: Tim Blair.)
Kos has to be a leading candidate to help Dean run the DNC.
UPDATE:
This has to be the funniest comment on the LGF thread:
Cabinet Meeting:
Rove; Ok, here's the plan..we fake tang documents to make it look like George got special treatment in the guard, release them to some dumbass Dem to give to CBS News, but we make them obvious forgeries...
cabinet..blank stares
..and then..and then they run with it, Rathers a dumbass, and then we call Charles over at LGF to run with the story..it will blow up in there faces and then George gets reelected!
Cabinet..blankstares
GWB..Anybody know what the fuck he's talking about? Lets get some lunch
Rove: Wait! I didn't tell you about the supercript TH!
A Kos Kid is connecting the dots and abusing the punctuation, in one of the best Daily Kos posts ever: Gannon scoop shows White House Forged TANG/CBS memos?!?! (Hat tip: Tim Blair.)
Kos has to be a leading candidate to help Dean run the DNC.
UPDATE:
This has to be the funniest comment on the LGF thread:
Cabinet Meeting:
Rove; Ok, here's the plan..we fake tang documents to make it look like George got special treatment in the guard, release them to some dumbass Dem to give to CBS News, but we make them obvious forgeries...
cabinet..blank stares
..and then..and then they run with it, Rathers a dumbass, and then we call Charles over at LGF to run with the story..it will blow up in there faces and then George gets reelected!
Cabinet..blankstares
GWB..Anybody know what the fuck he's talking about? Lets get some lunch
Rove: Wait! I didn't tell you about the supercript TH!
The Liberal Dilemma.
Belmont Club discusses the Martin Peretz article on the state of Liberalism. some excerpts:
Martin Peretz in Not Much Left says what many have been saying for a while: that Liberalism is out of ideas. The curious thing about his intelligent and literate essay is that he never manages to explain why this condition has taken place.
Liberalism has lost its books because it has burned them. The campaign to dismiss Harvard President Larry Summers for remarking that women may have less aptitude than men for mathematics and sciences is a case in point. The Boston Globe reports:
Martin Peretz in Not Much Left says what many have been saying for a while: that Liberalism is out of ideas. The curious thing about his intelligent and literate essay is that he never manages to explain why this condition has taken place.
I think it was John Kenneth Galbraith, speaking in the early 1960s, the high point of post-New Deal liberalism, who pronounced conservatism dead. Conservatism, he said, was "bookless," ... At this point in history, it is liberalism upon which such judgments are rendered. And understandably so. It is
liberalism that is now bookless and dying. ... Liberalism now needs to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let's hope we still have the strength.
Liberalism has lost its books because it has burned them. The campaign to dismiss Harvard President Larry Summers for remarking that women may have less aptitude than men for mathematics and sciences is a case in point. The Boston Globe reports:
Late yesterday, one of Harvard's most famous faculty members, law professor Alan Dershowitz, issued a statement backing Summers's presidency, in which he said the storm of opposition "sounds like the trial of Galileo. In my 41 years at Harvard, I have never experienced a president more open to debate, disagreement, and dialogue than Larry Summers," wrote Dershowitz, adding that "professors who are afraid to challenge him are guilty of cowardice."
Dershowitz noted that he disagreed with Summers's comments last month that innate differences might help explain why more men than women are top achievers in science and math, but
he defended the university president's right to raise the proposition. "This is truly a time of crisis for Harvard," he wrote. "The crisis is over whether a politically correct straightjacket will be placed over the thinking of everybody
in this institution by one segment of the faculty."
Bad New for the Media = Good News for the People.
The Baltimore Sun reports "News is bad all around for journalists."
as Instapundit would say: "Heh."
as Instapundit would say: "Heh."
Media Blows it! Dog Bites Man!
Did you hear about "Baby 81?"
According to the MSM (including the NY Times) a baby found after the tsunami in Sri Lanka was claimed by nine different couples. Well, guess what, the "Prestige Press" that has drummed Gannon/Guckert out of its hallowed ranks reported a story and got none - not ONE - of its facts right.
Read the whole story in LankaBusinessOnline. Here is an excerpt:
For the New York Times, it was the case of Sri Lanka's "most celebrated tsunami orphan." Networks broadcast how "nine" women fought over the baby who survived the island's worst natural disaster.
The unprecedented media attention brought more misery and heartache to a young Tamil couple who survived the December 26 tsunamis, but ended up in jail trying to get back their only son Abilash amid an avalanche of mis-reporting.
The infant dubbed "Baby 81" could have been reunited much earlier if not for the media madness, according to the judge, the police and social service officials involved in the case.
Sri Lankan courts preferred to call him "Tsunami Baby" because the "Baby 81" tag itself was in doubt.
Even the much respected New York newspaper was caught up in the flood of mis-reporting, mis-interpreting and mis-translating. The paper said his "awful burden" was not in being unwanted, but in being wanted too much.
"So far, nine couples have claimed him as their own son," the New York Times said in a story headlined: "For Tsunami Orphan, No Name but Many Parents."
But, baby 81's real burden was having too many journalists of the type of Jason Blair, the New York Times reporter who made up sensational stories and eventually was forced out of his job in 2003.
If there is a Pulitzer award for embellishing, exaggerating, and outright lying and misleading in print, the coverage of "Baby 81" would merit top billing.
District judge, M.P. Moahaidein, on Wednesday (Feb 16) made it clear that there never, repeat never, were nine couples claiming the child as their own and only Junita and Murugpillai Jeyarajah had said they were the parents.
So how did the "Baby 81" make international headlines.
It had all the ingredients of a fascinating story. A "miracle" survivor. Nine parents fighting over him. Mothers threatening suicide. DNA tests. Court drama.
All based on one "fact" -- that nine mothers were claiming the baby. How would this report make it to print without a single quote from any of the other couples claiming the child.
The New York Times said national newspapers had carried "almost daily narratives" about the baby's fate. Wrong. The national press jumped on the band wagon much later.
"The hospital has been so mobbed that for a while, the staff hid the baby in the operating theatre every night for his own protection," the Times said. Wrong again.
Click on the link above for the whole story.
According to the MSM (including the NY Times) a baby found after the tsunami in Sri Lanka was claimed by nine different couples. Well, guess what, the "Prestige Press" that has drummed Gannon/Guckert out of its hallowed ranks reported a story and got none - not ONE - of its facts right.
Read the whole story in LankaBusinessOnline. Here is an excerpt:
For the New York Times, it was the case of Sri Lanka's "most celebrated tsunami orphan." Networks broadcast how "nine" women fought over the baby who survived the island's worst natural disaster.
The unprecedented media attention brought more misery and heartache to a young Tamil couple who survived the December 26 tsunamis, but ended up in jail trying to get back their only son Abilash amid an avalanche of mis-reporting.
The infant dubbed "Baby 81" could have been reunited much earlier if not for the media madness, according to the judge, the police and social service officials involved in the case.
Sri Lankan courts preferred to call him "Tsunami Baby" because the "Baby 81" tag itself was in doubt.
Even the much respected New York newspaper was caught up in the flood of mis-reporting, mis-interpreting and mis-translating. The paper said his "awful burden" was not in being unwanted, but in being wanted too much.
"So far, nine couples have claimed him as their own son," the New York Times said in a story headlined: "For Tsunami Orphan, No Name but Many Parents."
But, baby 81's real burden was having too many journalists of the type of Jason Blair, the New York Times reporter who made up sensational stories and eventually was forced out of his job in 2003.
If there is a Pulitzer award for embellishing, exaggerating, and outright lying and misleading in print, the coverage of "Baby 81" would merit top billing.
District judge, M.P. Moahaidein, on Wednesday (Feb 16) made it clear that there never, repeat never, were nine couples claiming the child as their own and only Junita and Murugpillai Jeyarajah had said they were the parents.
So how did the "Baby 81" make international headlines.
It had all the ingredients of a fascinating story. A "miracle" survivor. Nine parents fighting over him. Mothers threatening suicide. DNA tests. Court drama.
All based on one "fact" -- that nine mothers were claiming the baby. How would this report make it to print without a single quote from any of the other couples claiming the child.
The New York Times said national newspapers had carried "almost daily narratives" about the baby's fate. Wrong. The national press jumped on the band wagon much later.
"The hospital has been so mobbed that for a while, the staff hid the baby in the operating theatre every night for his own protection," the Times said. Wrong again.
Click on the link above for the whole story.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Have They No Shame?
Power Line analyzes the Gannon/Guckert story. In comparison to the haters on the Left, Joe McCarthy was a saint.
The American left has been guilty of many contemptible actions over the past twenty years, but few are so deeply offensive as its treatment of Jim Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon (His real name is Guckert, but he adopted Gannon as a pen name). Gannon is, apparently, a homosexual with a rather sordid past, including stints working as a gay escort. He is now trying to make a career for himself as a reporter; until a week or two ago, he worked for the online Talon News Service. He was able to get one-day-at-a-time passes to attend White House press briefings, where he committed the unpardonable sin of asking questions that had a pro-Bush administration twist. (Sort of like Helen Thomas, only in reverse, and nowhere near as one-sided.)
The presence of a Bush-friendly journalist in the White House press corps was taken by the left as a deep affront. A study conducted a few years ago found that the White House press corps is 90% Democratic; apparently the left won’t be satisfied until the figure is 100%. So liberals began “investigating” Gannon. They found that he was a homosexual and started posting photos of him on their web sites, along with vicious personal attacks. Gannon, stunned by the virulence of the left’s attack on him, quit his job at Talon. Subsequently, a low-life named John Aravosis who is a gay activist and has a web site, found nude photos of Gannon and posted them online.
Ever since this “story” broke, we have been inundated by emails from leftists demanding to know why we aren’t covering it. Actually, we have done a single post on the controversy, which explained why we don’t think there is any story there. The claims against Gannon are:
1) He isn’t a “real” journalist. News for the left: you don’t have to take a test. He was working as a reporter until you drove him out of the business.
2) He was a Bush administration plant. There is, of course, no evidence for this whatsoever. And don’t you think that if the administration decided to “plant” a journalist to ask friendly questions, they could come up with someone with a bit more distinguished pedigree? The real issue here is that Democrats believe that Democratic press secretaries should be asked friendly questions, and Republican press secretaries should be asked unfriendly questions.
3) He had something–God knows what–to do with the Valerie Plame story. Again, no one has ventured a coherent explanation of this theory, let alone bothered to hint at what the evidence for it might be. Given that Ms. Plame was last seen posing for Vanity Fair in a “spy” outfit, I don’t think we’re on the trail of an espionage breakthrough here. And wasn’t it supposed to be Karl Rove who tipped off Bob Novak?
Read the rest HERE.
The American left has been guilty of many contemptible actions over the past twenty years, but few are so deeply offensive as its treatment of Jim Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon (His real name is Guckert, but he adopted Gannon as a pen name). Gannon is, apparently, a homosexual with a rather sordid past, including stints working as a gay escort. He is now trying to make a career for himself as a reporter; until a week or two ago, he worked for the online Talon News Service. He was able to get one-day-at-a-time passes to attend White House press briefings, where he committed the unpardonable sin of asking questions that had a pro-Bush administration twist. (Sort of like Helen Thomas, only in reverse, and nowhere near as one-sided.)
The presence of a Bush-friendly journalist in the White House press corps was taken by the left as a deep affront. A study conducted a few years ago found that the White House press corps is 90% Democratic; apparently the left won’t be satisfied until the figure is 100%. So liberals began “investigating” Gannon. They found that he was a homosexual and started posting photos of him on their web sites, along with vicious personal attacks. Gannon, stunned by the virulence of the left’s attack on him, quit his job at Talon. Subsequently, a low-life named John Aravosis who is a gay activist and has a web site, found nude photos of Gannon and posted them online.
Ever since this “story” broke, we have been inundated by emails from leftists demanding to know why we aren’t covering it. Actually, we have done a single post on the controversy, which explained why we don’t think there is any story there. The claims against Gannon are:
1) He isn’t a “real” journalist. News for the left: you don’t have to take a test. He was working as a reporter until you drove him out of the business.
2) He was a Bush administration plant. There is, of course, no evidence for this whatsoever. And don’t you think that if the administration decided to “plant” a journalist to ask friendly questions, they could come up with someone with a bit more distinguished pedigree? The real issue here is that Democrats believe that Democratic press secretaries should be asked friendly questions, and Republican press secretaries should be asked unfriendly questions.
3) He had something–God knows what–to do with the Valerie Plame story. Again, no one has ventured a coherent explanation of this theory, let alone bothered to hint at what the evidence for it might be. Given that Ms. Plame was last seen posing for Vanity Fair in a “spy” outfit, I don’t think we’re on the trail of an espionage breakthrough here. And wasn’t it supposed to be Karl Rove who tipped off Bob Novak?
Read the rest HERE.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Gannons on the Left of Them.
There has been a flurry of controversy on the Left about a correspondent named Gannon who asked openly partisan questions of Bush. For those who are interested in this issue, there is a good article on this subject ... with some context. From NR Online:
Montopoli cannot be serious. If anyone who asked softball questions at the White House "had to go," the White House briefing room would have almost emptied out in the Clinton years. The problem for Montopoli and other liberals is they seem to think that the need for an adversarial press emerged in 2001, when President Bush was first inaugurated. If we travel back to the Clinton era, it's not hard to discover a whole chorus of White House reporters who, to use Montopoli's words, squandered their access to Clinton with helpful softball questions, who put his agenda ahead of the public good and made a partisan spectacle of themselves in front of a large number of Americans who wanted the press to act as a watchdog of President Clinton.
Review the press conference transcript from March 19, 1999 — President Clinton's first solo press conference in almost a year (blame the Lewinsky scandal) and his first meeting with the press since the impeachment process crumbled in the Senate, and since Juanita Broaddrick charged on the February 24 edition of NBC's Dateline that Clinton had raped her in 1978.
After some questions about Kosovo and Chinese espionage came what liberals might call Gannon #1, Wolf Blitzer of CNN: "Mr. President, there's been a lot of people in New York state who've spoken with your wife, who seem to be pretty much convinced she wants to run for the Senate seat next year. A, how do you feel about that? Do you think she would be a good senator? And as part of a broader question involving what has happened over the past year, how are the two of you doing in trying to strengthen your relationship, given everything you and she have been through over this past year?" Clinton replied: "Well, on the second question, I think we're — we're working hard. We love each other very much, and we're working on it. On the first question, I don't have any doubt that she would be a magnificent senator." That might be a question people would like to hear answered, but it definitely placed the Clintons' agenda ahead of the public's agenda.
After that came Gannon #2, batty Sarah McClendon, once the classic poster girl for the loose credentialing process at the White House. Reporters laughed when Clinton went beyond the front row to pick her as she yelled to get his attention. Standing to show her snappy navy-blue beret, McClendon asked: "Sir, will you tell us why you think the people have been so mean to you? Is it a conspiracy? Is it a plan to treat you worse than they treated Abe Lincoln?" That allowed Clinton to make jokes. I don't remember the Columbia Journalism Review huffing that she "had to go" and her hard pass should be revoked.
Montopoli cannot be serious. If anyone who asked softball questions at the White House "had to go," the White House briefing room would have almost emptied out in the Clinton years. The problem for Montopoli and other liberals is they seem to think that the need for an adversarial press emerged in 2001, when President Bush was first inaugurated. If we travel back to the Clinton era, it's not hard to discover a whole chorus of White House reporters who, to use Montopoli's words, squandered their access to Clinton with helpful softball questions, who put his agenda ahead of the public good and made a partisan spectacle of themselves in front of a large number of Americans who wanted the press to act as a watchdog of President Clinton.
Review the press conference transcript from March 19, 1999 — President Clinton's first solo press conference in almost a year (blame the Lewinsky scandal) and his first meeting with the press since the impeachment process crumbled in the Senate, and since Juanita Broaddrick charged on the February 24 edition of NBC's Dateline that Clinton had raped her in 1978.
After some questions about Kosovo and Chinese espionage came what liberals might call Gannon #1, Wolf Blitzer of CNN: "Mr. President, there's been a lot of people in New York state who've spoken with your wife, who seem to be pretty much convinced she wants to run for the Senate seat next year. A, how do you feel about that? Do you think she would be a good senator? And as part of a broader question involving what has happened over the past year, how are the two of you doing in trying to strengthen your relationship, given everything you and she have been through over this past year?" Clinton replied: "Well, on the second question, I think we're — we're working hard. We love each other very much, and we're working on it. On the first question, I don't have any doubt that she would be a magnificent senator." That might be a question people would like to hear answered, but it definitely placed the Clintons' agenda ahead of the public's agenda.
After that came Gannon #2, batty Sarah McClendon, once the classic poster girl for the loose credentialing process at the White House. Reporters laughed when Clinton went beyond the front row to pick her as she yelled to get his attention. Standing to show her snappy navy-blue beret, McClendon asked: "Sir, will you tell us why you think the people have been so mean to you? Is it a conspiracy? Is it a plan to treat you worse than they treated Abe Lincoln?" That allowed Clinton to make jokes. I don't remember the Columbia Journalism Review huffing that she "had to go" and her hard pass should be revoked.
Then Endless CBS Saga.
CBS Executives who were blamed for the Dan Rather fiasco refuse to leave, via the New York Observer:
Five weeks later, the crisis is not yet behind Mr. Moonves. And far from resolving the problem of the network’s credibility, the independent report commissioned by CBS appears instead to be leading to a confrontation, with defenders of both the ousted CBS staffers involved in the debacle and top CBS management asserting two different truths from the same document.
Mr. Howard and two other ousted CBS staffers—his top deputy, Mary Murphy, and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West—haven’t resigned. And sources close to Mr. Howard said that before any resignation comes, the 23-year CBS News veteran is demanding that the network retract Mr. Moonves’ remarks, correct its official story line and ultimately clear his name.
Five weeks later, the crisis is not yet behind Mr. Moonves. And far from resolving the problem of the network’s credibility, the independent report commissioned by CBS appears instead to be leading to a confrontation, with defenders of both the ousted CBS staffers involved in the debacle and top CBS management asserting two different truths from the same document.
Mr. Howard and two other ousted CBS staffers—his top deputy, Mary Murphy, and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West—haven’t resigned. And sources close to Mr. Howard said that before any resignation comes, the 23-year CBS News veteran is demanding that the network retract Mr. Moonves’ remarks, correct its official story line and ultimately clear his name.
The Empire Strikes Back ... Stupidly.
Captain's Quarters receives an e-mail:
I just received a hilarious e-mail from Danny Schechter at Democracy in Action, which wants to alert me to the vast conspiracy by Fox News to discredit CNN by attacking Eason Jordan. This mass e-mail has so many holes and fallacies in its arguments that it's hard to know where to begin -- but I'll just start at the top:
Er, no. Not that I mind seeing what they produce, but I'm not a member, nor have I subscribed to any of their services.
Allegedly? Even Jordan admitted making the remarks; he just claimed that people in attendance misinterpreted them. Eight different witnesses verified Rony Arbovitz, including Rep. Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd, hardly members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
It was so off the record, in fact, that the WEF quoted its participants in its own summary posted on the WEF website.
Not exactly. What we demanded was that the tape be released and that if Jordan had indeed made unsubstantiated allegations of atrocities against the US military, then CNN either needed to produce evidence of such or dismiss Jordan. If CNN failed to act, we argued, that was tantamount to supporting an act of slander, and CNN's credibility would suffer greatly as a result. Everyone I've read on the subject who accused Jordan specifically of "sliming the troops" leveled that accusation only at Jordan himself.
Etc., Etc. Etc. Read the whole thing.
I just received a hilarious e-mail from Danny Schechter at Democracy in Action, which wants to alert me to the vast conspiracy by Fox News to discredit CNN by attacking Eason Jordan. This mass e-mail has so many holes and fallacies in its arguments that it's hard to know where to begin -- but I'll just start at the top:
Dear Media for Democracy Member,
Er, no. Not that I mind seeing what they produce, but I'm not a member, nor have I subscribed to any of their services.
CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit late last week amid a furor over remarks he allegedly made about American soldiers intentionally killing journalists in Iraq.
Allegedly? Even Jordan admitted making the remarks; he just claimed that people in attendance misinterpreted them. Eight different witnesses verified Rony Arbovitz, including Rep. Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd, hardly members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
Jordan delivered the remarks while sitting on an off-the-record panel of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
It was so off the record, in fact, that the WEF quoted its participants in its own summary posted on the WEF website.
While no actual tape of his comments has yet to be released,
an attendee disseminated news of the event into the blogosphere and ignited a firestorm, which included charges that CNN itself -- not just Jordan in his personal capacity -- had "slimed our troops."
Not exactly. What we demanded was that the tape be released and that if Jordan had indeed made unsubstantiated allegations of atrocities against the US military, then CNN either needed to produce evidence of such or dismiss Jordan. If CNN failed to act, we argued, that was tantamount to supporting an act of slander, and CNN's credibility would suffer greatly as a result. Everyone I've read on the subject who accused Jordan specifically of "sliming the troops" leveled that accusation only at Jordan himself.
Etc., Etc. Etc. Read the whole thing.
Biters Bit?
AceOf Spades makes a good point:
How many government officials and business executives have lost their jobs due to the media reporting (occasionally selectively) on their malfeasance
Quite a few, I think. And yet the media never shed tears about this; it's quite necessary, they assure us. They are the watchdogs, and sometimes watchdogs need to take a bite. And sometimes those bites costs people their jobs and even ruin careers.
I think that's more or less true, although I also think that "investigative journalists" tend to sweeten their stories for maximum impact-- making for a more dramatic story, with more clear malfeasance, than a straight reporting of the facts might show.
But now several journalists have lost their jobs due to their malfeasances being investigated and critiqued and publicized by bloggers and other alternative media sources.
And now we have David Gergen blubbering like a heartbroken eighth-grader about how tremendously unfair this is. Others suggest it might even be a danger to democracy itself.
How many government officials and business executives have lost their jobs due to the media reporting (occasionally selectively) on their malfeasance
Quite a few, I think. And yet the media never shed tears about this; it's quite necessary, they assure us. They are the watchdogs, and sometimes watchdogs need to take a bite. And sometimes those bites costs people their jobs and even ruin careers.
I think that's more or less true, although I also think that "investigative journalists" tend to sweeten their stories for maximum impact-- making for a more dramatic story, with more clear malfeasance, than a straight reporting of the facts might show.
But now several journalists have lost their jobs due to their malfeasances being investigated and critiqued and publicized by bloggers and other alternative media sources.
And now we have David Gergen blubbering like a heartbroken eighth-grader about how tremendously unfair this is. Others suggest it might even be a danger to democracy itself.
Biters Bit?
AceOf Spades makes a good point:
How many government officials and business executives have lost their jobs due to the media reporting (occasionally selectively) on their malfeasance?
Quite a few, I think. And yet the media never shed tears about this; it's quite necessary, they assure us. They are the watchdogs, and sometimes watchdogs need to take a bite. And sometimes those bites costs people their jobs and even ruin careers.
I think that's more or less true, although I also think that "investigative journalists" tend to sweeten their stories for maximum impact-- making for a more dramatic story, with more clear malfeasance, than a straight reporting of the facts might show.
But now several journalists have lost their jobs due to their malfeasances being investigated and critiqued and publicized by bloggers and other alternative media sources.
And now we have David Gergen blubbering like a heartbroken eighth-grader about how tremendously unfair this is. Others suggest it might even be a danger to democracy itself.
How many government officials and business executives have lost their jobs due to the media reporting (occasionally selectively) on their malfeasance?
Quite a few, I think. And yet the media never shed tears about this; it's quite necessary, they assure us. They are the watchdogs, and sometimes watchdogs need to take a bite. And sometimes those bites costs people their jobs and even ruin careers.
I think that's more or less true, although I also think that "investigative journalists" tend to sweeten their stories for maximum impact-- making for a more dramatic story, with more clear malfeasance, than a straight reporting of the facts might show.
But now several journalists have lost their jobs due to their malfeasances being investigated and critiqued and publicized by bloggers and other alternative media sources.
And now we have David Gergen blubbering like a heartbroken eighth-grader about how tremendously unfair this is. Others suggest it might even be a danger to democracy itself.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Media Standards ... an Oxymoron?
From NationalReviewOnline:
Does the Media Live Up To Its Standards?
What we need from the Davos conference organizers is simple - the tape of what Jordan said. It would be good to get the entire event, but really, what is at issue here is what Jordan said, and how much he backtracked. If the Davos organizers refuse to release it, and CNN refuses to call for its release, and the BBC refuses to call for its release, and every other news agency refuses to call for its release...
...then remember this, the next time the media gets up on a high horse about the public's right to know. Remember this the next time Dick Cheney has a meeting with energy executives. Remember this the next time reporters complain about Bush not holding enough press conferences, and not doing enough interviews. Remember this the next time they talk about the importance of a free press, and an informed citizenry.
Because it's all conditional. None of this applies when the situation includes a media executive says something in a big forum that he later realizes he doesn't want the public to hear. Then all of a sudden, none of this matters, because it's bad form for other news agencies to look into the story if he wants it to go away. "Bad manners, old chap. We journalists have to stick together."
Also, remember the top excuse of Dan Rather and the CBS memos? Those infamous, all-powerful "competitive forces." Mary Mapes, Dan Rather and company just had to do the sloppy, unfair, and shoddy work that they did, because they were just so worried about being beaten by another news agency. And yet in this case... it seems like no news agency is rushing to be first on this. Everybody's taking their time. Nobody wants to be the first to demand Davos release the tape. For days, it seemed like nobody wanted to be the first to write about this, or put it in their news section.
Just where the heck are these powerful, intense, unavoidable, healthy "competitive instincts" now?
Does the Media Live Up To Its Standards?
What we need from the Davos conference organizers is simple - the tape of what Jordan said. It would be good to get the entire event, but really, what is at issue here is what Jordan said, and how much he backtracked. If the Davos organizers refuse to release it, and CNN refuses to call for its release, and the BBC refuses to call for its release, and every other news agency refuses to call for its release...
...then remember this, the next time the media gets up on a high horse about the public's right to know. Remember this the next time Dick Cheney has a meeting with energy executives. Remember this the next time reporters complain about Bush not holding enough press conferences, and not doing enough interviews. Remember this the next time they talk about the importance of a free press, and an informed citizenry.
Because it's all conditional. None of this applies when the situation includes a media executive says something in a big forum that he later realizes he doesn't want the public to hear. Then all of a sudden, none of this matters, because it's bad form for other news agencies to look into the story if he wants it to go away. "Bad manners, old chap. We journalists have to stick together."
Also, remember the top excuse of Dan Rather and the CBS memos? Those infamous, all-powerful "competitive forces." Mary Mapes, Dan Rather and company just had to do the sloppy, unfair, and shoddy work that they did, because they were just so worried about being beaten by another news agency. And yet in this case... it seems like no news agency is rushing to be first on this. Everybody's taking their time. Nobody wants to be the first to demand Davos release the tape. For days, it seemed like nobody wanted to be the first to write about this, or put it in their news section.
Just where the heck are these powerful, intense, unavoidable, healthy "competitive instincts" now?
The People Who Bring You CNN.
From Captain's Quarters:
Eason Jordan is not the only CNN Honcho to Who's Nuts.
So Chris Cramer, president of CNN International and a former hostage of terrorists himself, appears to have gotten a lifetime case of Stockholm Syndrome from the experience.
He considers British commandos to be terrorists -- actually, worse than terrorists, because they freed people from the clutches of murderous thugs. Had Cramer not faked a heart attack, of course, he would have owed his life to the SAS, but apparently his sympathies lie with the gunmen who caused him all of his PTSD.
Now the man who considers these British commandos to be worse than terrorists says much the same thing about the American military -- and CNN put him in charge of its international news coverage, including everything we and the world see coming from such places as Iraq and Afghanistan. No wonder Eason Jordan hired him to run CNNi.
With his twisted sense of judgment and his sympathetic ear for conspiracy theories, he seems a perfect fit for the CNN chief who likes to make up wild accusations overseas about the American and Israeli military.
These are the people who have given us the news for the past several years on CNN. Now you understand the origins of the bias that you see in their "version" of the news. CNN has a lot of housecleaning to do, and firing Jordan won't be enough to restore their credibility. Chris Cramer has to go.
Eason Jordan is not the only CNN Honcho to Who's Nuts.
So Chris Cramer, president of CNN International and a former hostage of terrorists himself, appears to have gotten a lifetime case of Stockholm Syndrome from the experience.
He considers British commandos to be terrorists -- actually, worse than terrorists, because they freed people from the clutches of murderous thugs. Had Cramer not faked a heart attack, of course, he would have owed his life to the SAS, but apparently his sympathies lie with the gunmen who caused him all of his PTSD.
Now the man who considers these British commandos to be worse than terrorists says much the same thing about the American military -- and CNN put him in charge of its international news coverage, including everything we and the world see coming from such places as Iraq and Afghanistan. No wonder Eason Jordan hired him to run CNNi.
With his twisted sense of judgment and his sympathetic ear for conspiracy theories, he seems a perfect fit for the CNN chief who likes to make up wild accusations overseas about the American and Israeli military.
These are the people who have given us the news for the past several years on CNN. Now you understand the origins of the bias that you see in their "version" of the news. CNN has a lot of housecleaning to do, and firing Jordan won't be enough to restore their credibility. Chris Cramer has to go.
Berlin Wall's Revenge
Here's the start of an article about the people who were NOT overjoyed by the fall of the Berlin Wall:
THE BERLIN WALL’S REVENGE
By Nelson Ascher
Maybe we, or at least many of us, were too busy commemorating the fall of the Berlin wall in late 1989. Thus, we overlooked all those people who weren’t exactly happy with the outcome of the Cold War. Well, perhaps “overlooking” is not the appropriate term.
I, for instance, had an acquaintance (deceased since then), a hardliner Trotskyite who should have felt partly vindicated by the failure of the system erected by his hero’s archenemy, Stalin. But he didn’t look vindicated at all.
It wasn’t easy for him, in that climate of euphoria, to give full vent to his disappointment, but still he managed to mutter a few words about the “wrong” turn events were beginning to take in Eastern Europe, and he was not talking about the looming shadows of the Balkan wars (which were clearly visible by then).
No: he complained that those societies, instead of using their newly conquered freedom to correct their course and head full-speed towards the socialist utopia, were rather turning to Western style “alienated” consumerism.
Read the whole thing.
THE BERLIN WALL’S REVENGE
By Nelson Ascher
Maybe we, or at least many of us, were too busy commemorating the fall of the Berlin wall in late 1989. Thus, we overlooked all those people who weren’t exactly happy with the outcome of the Cold War. Well, perhaps “overlooking” is not the appropriate term.
I, for instance, had an acquaintance (deceased since then), a hardliner Trotskyite who should have felt partly vindicated by the failure of the system erected by his hero’s archenemy, Stalin. But he didn’t look vindicated at all.
It wasn’t easy for him, in that climate of euphoria, to give full vent to his disappointment, but still he managed to mutter a few words about the “wrong” turn events were beginning to take in Eastern Europe, and he was not talking about the looming shadows of the Balkan wars (which were clearly visible by then).
No: he complained that those societies, instead of using their newly conquered freedom to correct their course and head full-speed towards the socialist utopia, were rather turning to Western style “alienated” consumerism.
Read the whole thing.
Race Against Time - Steyn Alert
The incomparable Mark Steyn points out the elephant in the room.
... the "war on terror" is more accurately a race against time - to unwreck the Middle East before its toxins wreck South Asia, West Africa, and eventually Europe. The doom-mongers can mock Bush all they want. But they're spending so much time doing so, they've left themselves woefully uninformed on some of the fascinating subtleties of Iraqi and Afghan politics that his Administration turns out to have been rather canny about.
Will the naysayers continue forcing their ever more strained dribble of urine over the Bush landscape? Well, the Parisian journalist Frederic Royer has just launched a new weekly tabloid called L'Anti-Americain. The first issue includes a parodic diary by George W Bush with the entry: "Ask the CIA: Where's China?" Hilarious! Bush is so dumb he can't even find the real 21st-century superpower on a map!
As it happens, it was the Canadian prime minister, a renowned sophisticate and indeed a fluent franco-phone, who last year declared in public that China was the most important nation in the southern hemisphere.
... the "war on terror" is more accurately a race against time - to unwreck the Middle East before its toxins wreck South Asia, West Africa, and eventually Europe. The doom-mongers can mock Bush all they want. But they're spending so much time doing so, they've left themselves woefully uninformed on some of the fascinating subtleties of Iraqi and Afghan politics that his Administration turns out to have been rather canny about.
Will the naysayers continue forcing their ever more strained dribble of urine over the Bush landscape? Well, the Parisian journalist Frederic Royer has just launched a new weekly tabloid called L'Anti-Americain. The first issue includes a parodic diary by George W Bush with the entry: "Ask the CIA: Where's China?" Hilarious! Bush is so dumb he can't even find the real 21st-century superpower on a map!
As it happens, it was the Canadian prime minister, a renowned sophisticate and indeed a fluent franco-phone, who last year declared in public that China was the most important nation in the southern hemisphere.
Kennedy ... is ... Small
From Strategy Page:
Ted Kennedy's Politics is Blind and Bitterly Small.
The week before the Jan. 30 Iraqi election, Sen. Ted Kennedy branded Iraq a hopeless quagmire. "Bush's Vietnam," Kennedy bellowed. "Quagmire." "Vietnam." "Bush." Indeed, the Massachusetts senator's dire sermon invoked his fundamentalist faith's demons old and demons au courant. Sen. Barbara Boxer joined the snake dance, adding her own poisonous sanctimony.
The Iraqi people, braving car bombs and waving ink-stained fingers, demonstrated that Ted is more than a bit "tetched," to use the colloquial term. Iraqis weren't going to miss the chance to damn Saddam's legacy of theft, murder, thuggery and war.
Beltway political experts explain Kennedy's action as a tactical political gamble. See, Bay, ole Ted was simply staking out political territory. If the Iraqi elections failed --as the conventional media wisdom said they would -- he was positioned to "take the moral high ground" from the Bush administration. "Moral high ground," accompanied by appropriate friendly media magnification, would translate into the political power to dominate the Bush administration.
It's tactical, Bay, tactical.
No, it's sad. It's blind. It's also bitterly small. That's why I pity Mr. Kennedy
Ted Kennedy's Politics is Blind and Bitterly Small.
The week before the Jan. 30 Iraqi election, Sen. Ted Kennedy branded Iraq a hopeless quagmire. "Bush's Vietnam," Kennedy bellowed. "Quagmire." "Vietnam." "Bush." Indeed, the Massachusetts senator's dire sermon invoked his fundamentalist faith's demons old and demons au courant. Sen. Barbara Boxer joined the snake dance, adding her own poisonous sanctimony.
The Iraqi people, braving car bombs and waving ink-stained fingers, demonstrated that Ted is more than a bit "tetched," to use the colloquial term. Iraqis weren't going to miss the chance to damn Saddam's legacy of theft, murder, thuggery and war.
Beltway political experts explain Kennedy's action as a tactical political gamble. See, Bay, ole Ted was simply staking out political territory. If the Iraqi elections failed --as the conventional media wisdom said they would -- he was positioned to "take the moral high ground" from the Bush administration. "Moral high ground," accompanied by appropriate friendly media magnification, would translate into the political power to dominate the Bush administration.
It's tactical, Bay, tactical.
No, it's sad. It's blind. It's also bitterly small. That's why I pity Mr. Kennedy
Moral Clarity in a Time of War
From First Things:
Moral Clarity in a time of War
International terrorism of the sort we have seen since the late 1960s, and of which we had a direct national experience on September 11, 2001, is a deliberate assault, through the murder of innocents, on the very possibility of order in world affairs. That is why the terror networks must be dismantled or destroyed. The peace of order is also under grave threat when vicious, aggressive regimes acquire weapons of mass destruction-weapons that we must assume, on the basis of their treatment of their own citizens, these regimes will not hesitate to use against others. That is why there is a moral obligation to ensure that this lethal combination of irrational and aggressive regimes, weapons of mass destruction, and credible delivery systems does not go unchallenged. That is why there is a moral obligation to rid the world of this threat to the peace and security of all. Peace, rightly understood, demands it.
One of the more distasteful forms of post-September 11 commentary can be found in suggestions that there were "root causes" to terrorism-root causes that not only explained the resort to mass violence against innocents, but made the use of such violence humanly plausible, if not morally justifiable. The corollary to this was the suggestion that the United States had somehow brought the attacks on itself, by reasons of its dominant economic and cultural position in the world, its Middle East policy, or some combination thereof. The moral-political implication was that such a misguided government lacked the moral authority to respond to terrorism through the use of armed force.
[snip]
The root causes school blithely ignores the extant literature on the phenomenon of contemporary terrorism, which is emphatically not a case of the wretched of the earth rising up to throw off their chains. But it is the moral-political implication the root causes school draws that I want to address. Here, Lutheran scholar David Yeago has been a wise guide. Writing in the ecumenical journal Pro Ecclesia, Yeago clarified an essential point: The authority of the government to protect the law-abiding and impose penalties on evildoers is not a reward for the government's virtue or good conduct. . . . The protection of citizens and the execution of penalty on peace-breakers is the commission which constitutes government, not a contingent right which it must somehow earn. In the mystery of God's providence, many or indeed most of the institutional bearers of governmental authority are unworthy of it, often flagrantly so, themselves stained with crime. But this does not make it any less the vocation of government to protect the innocent and punish evildoers. A government which refused to safeguard citizens and exercise judgment on wrong out of a sense of the guilt of past crime would only add the further crime of dereliction of duty to its catalog of offenses.
Moral Clarity in a time of War
International terrorism of the sort we have seen since the late 1960s, and of which we had a direct national experience on September 11, 2001, is a deliberate assault, through the murder of innocents, on the very possibility of order in world affairs. That is why the terror networks must be dismantled or destroyed. The peace of order is also under grave threat when vicious, aggressive regimes acquire weapons of mass destruction-weapons that we must assume, on the basis of their treatment of their own citizens, these regimes will not hesitate to use against others. That is why there is a moral obligation to ensure that this lethal combination of irrational and aggressive regimes, weapons of mass destruction, and credible delivery systems does not go unchallenged. That is why there is a moral obligation to rid the world of this threat to the peace and security of all. Peace, rightly understood, demands it.
One of the more distasteful forms of post-September 11 commentary can be found in suggestions that there were "root causes" to terrorism-root causes that not only explained the resort to mass violence against innocents, but made the use of such violence humanly plausible, if not morally justifiable. The corollary to this was the suggestion that the United States had somehow brought the attacks on itself, by reasons of its dominant economic and cultural position in the world, its Middle East policy, or some combination thereof. The moral-political implication was that such a misguided government lacked the moral authority to respond to terrorism through the use of armed force.
[snip]
The root causes school blithely ignores the extant literature on the phenomenon of contemporary terrorism, which is emphatically not a case of the wretched of the earth rising up to throw off their chains. But it is the moral-political implication the root causes school draws that I want to address. Here, Lutheran scholar David Yeago has been a wise guide. Writing in the ecumenical journal Pro Ecclesia, Yeago clarified an essential point: The authority of the government to protect the law-abiding and impose penalties on evildoers is not a reward for the government's virtue or good conduct. . . . The protection of citizens and the execution of penalty on peace-breakers is the commission which constitutes government, not a contingent right which it must somehow earn. In the mystery of God's providence, many or indeed most of the institutional bearers of governmental authority are unworthy of it, often flagrantly so, themselves stained with crime. But this does not make it any less the vocation of government to protect the innocent and punish evildoers. A government which refused to safeguard citizens and exercise judgment on wrong out of a sense of the guilt of past crime would only add the further crime of dereliction of duty to its catalog of offenses.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
The Media Spike Their Own Scandals
From Ace of Spades HQ we get another in a series of questions about why the media are not all over the claim by Eason Jordan's accusation that the US Military is deliberately killing reporters. He supplies some answers:
This search -- for "Dobson Spongebob," for Dobson's largely deliberately misquoted remarks about Spongebob Squarepants being gay -- turns up a fair number of MSM articles. CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, BBC News -- all weigh in on how horrible it was for Dobson to not claim that Spongebob Squarepants was gay (although of course the party line is that's precisely what he said).
On the other hand, this search -- "Eason Jordan Davos target journalists" -- turns up nothing but blog references, at least for the first five pages. (I assume an MSM source would at least make it to the first five pages.)
Why the interest in the first story and the glaring disinterest in the second?
The simple truth is obvious. The media is an near-oligopoly of interlocked corporations, the same as auto manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, or cigarette makers. They claim their first priority is reporting the truth to the American people-- but then, car makers claim their first priority is delivering the best-made, most-affordable cars to the American people, too.
In fact, the first priorities of anyone in a corporate culture are 1) protect and advance your own career; 2) curry favor with those who can help with priority 1; 3) protect and advance the corporation generally, as that will advance priorities 1 and 2; and 4) protect and advance the industry generally, as you never know when you'll wind up working for another corporation within the industry, and doing so advances priorities 1, 2, and 3.
Just as in Rathergate, the media was far behind the curve in reporting on the egregiously-bad hoaxes perpertrated by CBSNews; the Boston Globe wen so far as to deliberately mischaracterize an expert's remarks (as were correctly reported by Bill from InDC). The media had a corporate and industry interest in avoiding the story, and, once avoiding it became impossible, defending it (and themselves, generally) from external critique and attack.
And so it goes. We are now on Day 7 after Eason Jordan "reported" that the American military had targeted and murdered 12 journalists in Iraq, and the MSM has not seen fit to report this story at all.
This search -- for "Dobson Spongebob," for Dobson's largely deliberately misquoted remarks about Spongebob Squarepants being gay -- turns up a fair number of MSM articles. CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, BBC News -- all weigh in on how horrible it was for Dobson to not claim that Spongebob Squarepants was gay (although of course the party line is that's precisely what he said).
On the other hand, this search -- "Eason Jordan Davos target journalists" -- turns up nothing but blog references, at least for the first five pages. (I assume an MSM source would at least make it to the first five pages.)
Why the interest in the first story and the glaring disinterest in the second?
The simple truth is obvious. The media is an near-oligopoly of interlocked corporations, the same as auto manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, or cigarette makers. They claim their first priority is reporting the truth to the American people-- but then, car makers claim their first priority is delivering the best-made, most-affordable cars to the American people, too.
In fact, the first priorities of anyone in a corporate culture are 1) protect and advance your own career; 2) curry favor with those who can help with priority 1; 3) protect and advance the corporation generally, as that will advance priorities 1 and 2; and 4) protect and advance the industry generally, as you never know when you'll wind up working for another corporation within the industry, and doing so advances priorities 1, 2, and 3.
Just as in Rathergate, the media was far behind the curve in reporting on the egregiously-bad hoaxes perpertrated by CBSNews; the Boston Globe wen so far as to deliberately mischaracterize an expert's remarks (as were correctly reported by Bill from InDC). The media had a corporate and industry interest in avoiding the story, and, once avoiding it became impossible, defending it (and themselves, generally) from external critique and attack.
And so it goes. We are now on Day 7 after Eason Jordan "reported" that the American military had targeted and murdered 12 journalists in Iraq, and the MSM has not seen fit to report this story at all.
Bill Moyers smears....
Powerline takes Bill Moyers to task for his most recent smear of red staters in general and Christians in particular:
On January 30, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published as an op-ed the text of a speech by liberal commentator Bill Moyers. Moyers delivered the speech upon the occasion of his receiving an environmental award from a group at Harvard Medical School. Like pretty much everything Moyers writes, the article was an attack on the Bush administration. Specifically, he alleged that the Bush administration's policies, as they relate to the environment, are "based on theology" and therefore "delusional." Moyers' theme was that the Bush administration, and Republicans in general, don't care about the environment because they are crackpot Christians who believe that the world is about to come to an end. That being the case, why worry about future generations?
The "evidence" for this is based the "Left Behind" series of books, and two fraudulent quotation, one from James Watt and the other from Zell Miller.
Read the whole thing and don't forget that it was Moyers, as Lyndon Johnson's communications director who created the infamous "daisy ad" accusing Barry Goldwater of planning to blow up the world.
On January 30, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published as an op-ed the text of a speech by liberal commentator Bill Moyers. Moyers delivered the speech upon the occasion of his receiving an environmental award from a group at Harvard Medical School. Like pretty much everything Moyers writes, the article was an attack on the Bush administration. Specifically, he alleged that the Bush administration's policies, as they relate to the environment, are "based on theology" and therefore "delusional." Moyers' theme was that the Bush administration, and Republicans in general, don't care about the environment because they are crackpot Christians who believe that the world is about to come to an end. That being the case, why worry about future generations?
The "evidence" for this is based the "Left Behind" series of books, and two fraudulent quotation, one from James Watt and the other from Zell Miller.
Read the whole thing and don't forget that it was Moyers, as Lyndon Johnson's communications director who created the infamous "daisy ad" accusing Barry Goldwater of planning to blow up the world.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
NY Judge Bans Heterosexual Marriage
If you have never read Scrappleface before, click on the link.
"...heterosexual marriage finds justification in little more than religious myth, antiquated tradition and a few unconstitutional state and local laws."
"...heterosexual marriage finds justification in little more than religious myth, antiquated tradition and a few unconstitutional state and local laws."
More on Churchill - and Fascism
Belmont Club revisits the Churchill controversy (the professor who called the people who died in the Twin Towers on 9/11, “little Eichmans.”)
Austin Bay links to an opinion piece written by Paul Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado, describing his fellow faculty member Ward Churchill as "a pathetic buffoon" peddling a fascist ideology. The most interesting part of Professor Campos' article lies in his description of fascism, all the elements of which, he argues, are present in Churchill's work.
As a political inclination and an aesthetic style, fascism is marked by, among other things, the following characteristics:
The worship of violence as a purifying social force.
A hyper-nationalistic ideology, that casts history into a drama featuring an inevitably violent struggle between Good and Evil, and that obsesses on questions of racial and ethnic identity.
The dehumanization and scapegoating of opponents ... demands that the evil in our midst be eradicated "by any means necessary," up to and including the mass extermination of entire nations and peoples.
The treatment of moral responsibility as a fundamentally collective matter.
Austin Bay links to an opinion piece written by Paul Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado, describing his fellow faculty member Ward Churchill as "a pathetic buffoon" peddling a fascist ideology. The most interesting part of Professor Campos' article lies in his description of fascism, all the elements of which, he argues, are present in Churchill's work.
As a political inclination and an aesthetic style, fascism is marked by, among other things, the following characteristics:
The worship of violence as a purifying social force.
A hyper-nationalistic ideology, that casts history into a drama featuring an inevitably violent struggle between Good and Evil, and that obsesses on questions of racial and ethnic identity.
The dehumanization and scapegoating of opponents ... demands that the evil in our midst be eradicated "by any means necessary," up to and including the mass extermination of entire nations and peoples.
The treatment of moral responsibility as a fundamentally collective matter.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
CNN Head Claims US Killing Reporters
You heard it right. Eason Jordan [chief news executive of CNN] asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.
Click HERE for the full story.
The Ace of Spades comments, as does PowerLine. More HERE, HERE, and HERE.
This is big and will grow bigger. The MSM will not be able to keep this one "in the bottle." Either Jordan comes up with proof of his accusations, or the entire CNN organization has just committed journalistic suicide.
Click HERE for the full story.
The Ace of Spades comments, as does PowerLine. More HERE, HERE, and HERE.
This is big and will grow bigger. The MSM will not be able to keep this one "in the bottle." Either Jordan comes up with proof of his accusations, or the entire CNN organization has just committed journalistic suicide.
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