From The Loonatic Left

Great Minds Work Alike

The Opinionated Bastard has a way with words...Goose-stepping Hippies...gotta love the mental imagery there!

He is commenting on the same theme that I wrote about and was kind of enough to link to it.  He has practical real world experience with inflexible liberals and notes:

"In the 20th century, left-wing governments killed more people and caused more misery then right-wing governments."

As a particular pundit might say...

Indeed.

The Insecure Canadian Border

Lets play make believe for a second...what if the poverty in Mexico existed in Canada?  Think for just a moment about what causes the number of illegal aliens to risk their lives sneaking across the U.S. southern border.  It is poverty in Mexico, a lack of jobs and prospects.

Having spent a lifetime studying history I can assert that Mexico is in the condition it is in for two reasons: (1) Europeans robbed them blind during the colonial period only casting them off when the natural resources had been nearly sucked dry; (2) An utter lack of conscience on the part of the European colonial powers who cared not a whit about nation building.  With that historic back drop, it is the ultimate irony that European fat heads are preening themselves over their diplomatic skills and acting all condescending to the United States.  Only the ignorance of the public allows them to behave in that manner.

Compare the poor economic condition of Mexico with that of Canada.  No question Mexico is in tough shape.  High unemployment and a large poverty stricken population contribute to Mexico's current economic plight.  Canada is facing growing unemployment and stagnant economic growth itself.  Looking at the two nation's future prospects, I was struck by something rather interesting.  If you were betting on a nations future, would you see brighter prospects in Mexico or Canada?  One is creeping toward European style socialism and the other is growing through cheep labor and capitalism as business relocate to the country.  At one point I would have decried the corruption in Mexico as holding the nation back, but I look at Canada now and the massive scandals in the liberal party and I really don't see much to separate the two nations there.  If you are betting on the future, would you bet on Capitalism with its track record, or socialism?

That said, what are we doing to secure our northern border?  I don't want a bunch of Canadians coming down here willing to work for peanuts stealing good jobs from Americans!  One good thing about the northern border though, it is hard as hell to swim across the St. Lawrence River!

A Washington Post Columnist Rants

This opinion piece in the Washington Post contains everything in it that is wrong with the media.  It disguises opinion as fact, tries to pin the blame on the Bush administration for things beyond it's control and assumes that the reader is naturally going to agree with the interpretation of the past provided by the columnist.  Read it and see if you think I'm off the mark, but it reads like a column that was written in anger.  On the web we refer to these as 'rants'...I can't remember a rant like this from a respected news organization.

In this piece there are clipped sentences that scoff and snear at the Bush administration, drag into the question of Newsweek's story the intelligence lapses that 'led' to War in Iraq (Yes that's right Saddam had no responsibility for that!).  As a tool to disprove the notion of liberal bias, it fails totally.  On the contrary it reads like a poorly written liberal screed of all that has been wrong with the Bush administration. 

Regarding its professionalism, frankly it looks like some of the things I have posted and wished I hadn't later.  The best thing that you can say about it is that it doesn't have a lot of typos but that's what editors are for...

In an effort to bore the hell out of my readers, I've decided to deconstruct it:

"A certain and clear pattern has emerged when a damaging accusation or claim against the Bush administration or the Republican-led Congress is publicized: Bush supporters laser in on a weakness, fallacy or inaccuracy in the story's sourcing while diverting all attention from the issue at hand to the source or the accuser in the story.

This is a bad start to any piece of news analysis...I should know because it looks like the first draft of everything that I have ever written to post on my web site.  The phrase 'seeing a pattern emerge' should be banned from every pundit's writing arsenal.  I've come to realize that patterns don't emerge, they actually represent a mixture of my bias and me seeking to create order from chaos.

Think about what the columnist is saying...the 'pattern' is that Bush supporters pick on weaknesses, fallacies and inaccuracies in stories critical of Bush.  Wow, who would have imagined that Bush supporters would defend their guy by identifying weaknesses in critical articles.

OK so the 'pattern' the columnist noticed involved the 'sourcing' of the story.  Never mind that the sourcing of a story gets to heart of whether it is even a true story...What is it that the columnist finds surprising or unique about questionable sourcing being identified by partisan advocates?  I would think that this would be an expected pattern regardless of partisan bias.  Perhaps another view of this is that there has emerged a pattern of media stories critical of Bush with questionable sourcing.  I'm sure I could find many folks willing to buy into that theory...we call these folks 'Republicans' here-abouts.

"Often this tactic involves efforts to delegitimize the entire news media based on the mistakes or sloppy reporting of a few. We saw this with the discrediting of CBS's story on irregularities in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service in the 1970s. Although the CBS "scoop" was based on faked documents, the administration's response and backlash from both conservative and mainstream media essentially relieved Bush of having to deal with the story. In other words, the allegedly "liberal" media dropped the story like a hot rock.

Let me pick up my jaw and respond to this little bit of wisdom.  The columnist agrees that the Bush AWOL story was based upon faked documents, but he faults the administration for not responding to this story as if it was NOT based upon fake documents.  Apparently the fact that there was no factual basis for making the allegation in the first place does not relieve the accused politician from addressing the allegation as if it were true.  With this standard of media responsibility any accusation must be treated as true even if it is without merit.  My question to the columnist is if this is the standard we should be applying to every politician or just George W. Bush.

"We saw ex-members of the Bush administration - former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill, former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John M. Shalikashvili and former director of faith-based charities John J. DiIulio Jr. -- similarly attacked by conservative bloggers and columnists. The mainstream media eventually backed away from coverage of their claims as well."

The mainstream media discovered that many of the 'claims' made by these ex-members of the Bush administration were false and self-serving.  That is what we call journalism...you know researching what someone claims to see if it is true?  Apparently the practice of researching claims is also inappropriately biased as well.  When a disgruntled former administration official makes a claim, however bizarre, the administration can not try and point out that it is false but must treat it as if it were true.  It is also inappropriate for the media to look into whether the claims are true...that is kowtowing to the administration.

I personally looked into the claims made by Richard Clarke and those by Paul O'Neill and found that both of these men made self-serving observations that were grounded in falsehood.  In short...there were times when the guys were lying.  Specifically Clarke had to back off from some of his testimony and some of the things in his book regarding events on 9/11 and Paul O'Neill had to do the same regarding planing for the War in Iraq.  I would love to claim credit for this quality reporting but I think much of the credit goes to members of the news media who looked into some of the charges made by both these men and found that they were false.  That helps explain why the media 'backed away from coverage of their claims' far better than anything else could.

"And of course, we saw this most recently with the Newsweek debacle, in which the news magazine repeated an accusation that military interrogators had flushed a Koran down a toilet. The Newsweek report was used by militants in Afghanistan to incite violent protests in which 17 people died. The ensuing backlash among conservative critics has included accusations that the report proves that media hate the military, hate the United States, hate George W. Bush and purposefully lied to hurt all of the above."

The fact that Newsweek had nothing but the word of an anonymous official claiming, not that he had written a report, but that someone else had written a report, not that the person writing the report had said, but that someone had told the person writing the report that they heard that a Koran had been flushed down the toilet...is completely lost on the columnist.  Calling this thinly sourced heresay does not do it justice.  I'm not suggesting that news organizations need to adopt the evidentiary standards of the judicial system, but surely this type of third hand anonymous sourcing about the religious persecution and torturing of prisoners should require some further proof before you publish it.

Here is ABC's Chief White House Correspondent Terry Moran speaking on Hugh Hewitt's radio show and responding to a question about media bias:

"There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous."

Starting with an assumption that the military is lying and the administration is lying may sound like a good start for a skeptical reporter, and in many ways it would be, but the combination of tight deadlines and inadequate sourcing has helped create a problem.  If you start with the assumption that the military is wrong, and you don't adequately research your material, you run the risk that you will publish information that is wrongly critical of the military.  When you do this over and over again, do not be surprised if the public stops believing you to be an unbiased source of information.

"True, the Newsweek story was based on a single source, who turned out not to be as reliable as Newsweek thought he or she was. But the conservatives who view the Newsweek report as proof positive that a cabal of liberal baddies is out to persecute powerless conservatives are conveniently ignoring the fact that the main Newsweek reporter in question, Michael Isikoff, was among the people most responsible for Bill Clinton's impeachment. (It was the Drudge Report's item about Isikoff's spiked story and his subsequent stories that set off the Monicagate frenzy.) Also, Isikoff's questionable use of a single source is fairly standard practice among Washington journalists of all ideological stripes."

So keep this in mind, the columnist agrees that the source was 'not reliable' but the columnist is willing to defend the use of a single source by this journalist because this journalist picked on Clinton over Monica Lewinski in the past.  I'm puzzled about the relevance of this...does the columnist assume that the fact that the Newsweek journalist got the facts right about Clinton means that he should get a pass over this mistake?  If the reporter was wrong about the information and his source, which I've already described, was weak; why should we be so forgiving of this kind of mistake?

The columnist seems desperate to turn this into a republican/democrat rift...I'm not sure this qualifies...it is a liberal media vs. conservative politician issue.  I really hate to burst this columnists bubble but we didn't elect him to any public office that I'm aware of.  He is just a member of the media with an over sized ego and apparently a chip on his shoulder.

"For conservatives and liberals alike, attacking the media has become a cottage industry, the very thing that drives both talk radio and blogs. Delegitimizing the media is seen as a legitimate way by some to protect those you support politically from the media's critical eye.

The media is delegitimizing itself...an attack on the credibility of the media would be completely ineffective if the media was not in the wrong so often.  It is not illegitimate to criticize that which is wrong!  The media have no right to be exempt from public criticism...and for a columnist to complain that legitimate complaints against the media are having an impact is a little disingenuous.

"To be clear about something, the Bush administration's attacks on Newsweek don't represent a new phenomenon. The Clinton administration often attacked its accusers and criticized unflattering media reports. The big difference is that the Clinton administration didn't have any such supportive echo chamber of talk radio and blogs that now exist to amplify it."

At the risk of repeating myself...this is not a left/right thing...the media has been criticizing not just the Bush administration, they have been attacking the U.S. military and the morale of the U.S. soldiers.  I may just be a 'supportive echo chamber' but attacking U.S. soldiers who can't defend themselves publicly, is a slimey way to sell papers; especially when you are wrong.

"It was almost surreal listening to White House spokesman Scott McClellan describing the fallout from the now-retracted Newsweek."

For me it is more surreal listening to the press try to defend themselves when they were clearly wrong.

"The report had real consequences," McClellan said last Monday. "People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged. There are some who are opposed to the United States and what we stand for who have sought to exploit this allegation. It will take work to undo what can be undone."

When a news organization makes a mistake, they should be held accountable.

It was equally mind boggling listening to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who used information from a now discredited source known as "Curveball" to take make the case for war against Iraq, calling out Newsweek: "Newsweek hid behind anonymous sources, which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny. Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage they have done to this nation or those that were viciously attacked by those false allegations."

When an administration makes a mistake, they are treated like a pinanta by the news media, why should the media be forgiven when they make a mistake?  Does the columnist think the criticism endured by Rumsfeld for his mistake was inappropriate?  Of course not...just when a similar mistake is made by the media, Rumsfeld is not allowed to fire back.  Free speech for me and not for thee...the mantra of our media elites.

"It was almost as if the Newsweek fiasco had occurred in a vacuum, or in an alternate reality, where the Iraq war, fought over non-existent weapons of mass destruction, had never occurred. The scenario unfolded over the past two weeks in a Twilight Zone-like atmosphere in which an administration that has held neither itself nor any of its underlings accountable for a war that has so far cost more than 1,600 American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives worked itself into a tizzy for a brief report in a news magazine -- based on an anonymous source -- that turned out to be unsubstantiated.

It's a curious line of attack from an administration known for rarely admitting a mistake."

The administration is elected to lead the country...when they make mistakes they are answerable to the voters...not the media.  The media are free to criticise the politicians and offer opinions and anything else they want to offer.  I, as a humble citizen (echo chamber), have exactly the same rights.

As it relates to the issue of WMDs in Iraq, I do not remember the media distinguishing themselves with regard to this issue any better than Donald Rumsfeld.  If I recall correctly, every politician of note on both sides of the aisle had made the same conclusion regarding the existance of WMDs in Iraq going back three administrations.  Leaving aside for a moment that issue...lets be sure and note that of the many reasons for military action in Iraq, the existance of WMDs, was only one of them.

"In this alternate reality universe, the president never bestowed upon former director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, who told the president that the Iraq WMD intelligence was a "slam dunk," the nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom.

In this alternative reality universe, Vice President Cheney never suggested that the evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were "overwhelming." In this alternate reality universe, the president never warned that Iraq was seeking "yellowcake" uranium from Nigeria to build a nuclear weapon."

Well here we have a member of the news media repeating discredited Democratic Party talking points to try and get even with the administration for criticizing Newsweek's report which they admitted was wrong.  Now that is truly an 'alternative universe'...lets repeat the often debunked talking points:

The criticism of George Tenet is fair but puzzling, are we now suppose to believe that the same folks at the CIA and the State Department who were beat up by Bolton for their inadequately supported intelligence opinions were good guys or bad guys?  This same journalist waxed apoplectic over the Bolton confirmation hearings and what an awful guy he was for picking on State Department and CIA analysts.  Puzzling...

...but back to the talking points!  The question of 'ties' between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden raises its head again.  Whack!  Got another mole!  There were numerous ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.  Amongst those ties, lest the columnist forget, is the Zarqawi connection.  Zarqawi ran to Iraq for shelter after his injury in Afghanistan.  For those who are chronologically impaired...this was BEFORE the war in Iraq.  In addition to that 'tie' there has been reported in his own newspaper a list of connections going back many years between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden but lets play along with the idiot, does he now dispute that the War in Iraq did indeed turn out to be a key requirement for democracy to grow in the Middle East?  Leaving the other questions out of it, what of the result?  Got a better plan? 

If not...shut up...If so...put up. 

If this columnist thinks there was a better way to protect ourselves, maybe he had better spit it out.  As for my view of the world, we have seen way more than enough evidence for any reasonable rational person to conclude that the course of action pursued by the Bush administration was the right choice.  From Democratic elections in Iraq, to elections in Saudi Arabia, to elections in Palestine, to elections in Egypt, ... 

The argument against this course of action would appear to suffer from a fatal flaw...success.

Finally we must debunk again the yellowcake issue...even his own newspaper has had to admit that the report that Iraq was seeking Uranium in Africa was accurate.  Why does he recycle this talking point here?  The rest of the country already has admited that Bush was right to include those sixteen words in the State of the Union Address, but we need to see it again?  Get this point...recycling failed Democratic talking points does not constitute a valid argument against media bias.

"In this alternative reality universe, former Secretary of State Powell did not go to the U.N. to make an extensive argument about Iraq's renewed WMD program. In this alternate reality universe, America's image with Arabs and Muslims was pristine until Newsweek showed up, with its little Periscope item, and ruined everything.

This is all hyperbole, of course. This is not to suggest that the media shouldn't be held accountable for its mistakes. It should.

Lord almighty all of these failed talking point arguments to arrive at the conclusion that the media should be held accountable for their mistakes?  Lets ask ourselves one more question...how was the image of America in Arab nations before the Bush administration?  You must remember way back then...this was the period of time when Osama bin Laden was plotting to fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  Apparently in this 'alternate reality' the U.S. had a rosy relationship with the Arab and Muslim world right up until the Iraq war...eh?  Just the little problem of 9/11 hanging around that argument like a damp sack.

What is it about the media that blanks that event out of existance?  It is as if the world starts all over when a new administration comes into existance.  Lets call this 'Election cycle amnesia'...the inability to recall that history did not start at the swearing in of a new President.  It only affects some members of the mass media.

Some mistakes, such as the one Dan Rather made, are more serious and compounded by a string of mistakes that include not quickly acknowledging error. The Newsweek mistake is something that could have happened to almost any journalist who relies or has relied on a single source for information.

"There but for the grace of God go I," most Washington reporters are saying this week.

The mistake that both Dan Rather and Newsweek made is that they allowed their bias to affect their judgment.  If there is another explanation that can withstand scrutiny for the long litany of mistake after mistake, I have never heard it.  How every single mistake is always biased against the same administration is only puzzling to the professionally indifferent.  To the rest of us it is pretty clear what is causing all of these mistakes.

But is that proof of liberal conspiracy?

Stand up that strawman...

"Excuse me, guys, but this is craziness," wrote David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, on Thursday. "I used to write for Newsweek. I know Mike Isikoff and the editors. And I know about liberals in the media. The people who run Newsweek are not a bunch of Noam Chomskys with laptops. Not even close. Whatever might have been the cause of their mistakes, liberalism had nothing to do with it."

Golly imagine that...a journalist for the New York Times defending another journalist of a charge of bias!  That is about as useful as a journalist from the Washington Post doing the same thing...

Yes I know that David Brooks is supposed to be a 'conservative' voice on the New York Times editorial page, but surely these journalists realize how empty these defenses sound.  You know the one: 

"Well I know ('insert journalist name here') from when we worked together on ('insert trendy publication here') and I can tell you that ('insert pet nickname for journalist') is definately not the sort of person to ('insert alleged improper action here')."

As a mere humble person who does not actually know ('insert journalist here') all I have to go on is the work product.  Actually when you think about it, that is all we should be going on.  The fact that you personally know the journalist is all very nice, but we are not criticizing them for their choice of coffee or fashion sense but for their work product.  I'm sure they love their kids and have a real fine dog or cat, but when I am looking at evidence of bias...all I can go on, and all anyone ought to be going on, is their work product.  Bias in any other phase of their life is none of my business.

As a defense for liberal bias, or anti-American bias, or anti-military bias in the media...this work is pitiful.  Maybe the evidence is just piling up so high that no one can hope to explain it all away.

The columnist is still not done...on we go with this rant...

"The historic role of the free press in free democratic societies is that of government watchdog. There have always been journalistic mistakes, controversies and scandals, and there always will be, as long as media are run by human beings. Today, however, what's clearly objectionable is how those mistakes are being used to deflect attention from more important government and political scandals and controversies.

Now just a minute, in each of the instances this columnist specifically mentioned, the story behind the the scandal or controversy has not stood up to scrutiny.  In each of the cases the media went with an incompletely researched story that later turned out to be false.  It is not clearly objectionable for an administration who repeatedly find themselves treated to poorly sourced false media ballyhoos to take offense at it.

Some conservative bloggers have suggested that the media should never criticize or raise critical questions of the military in wartime. Some have extended that criticism, conveniently, to cover the president's wartime policies. But that's such a different standard than what most journalists are taught. No wonder people think most reporters are liberal. It's because journalism is in itself, as a profession, by definition liberal.

This is another strawman raised frequently to deflect criticism of the media.  No reasonable person thinks the media should never question the military, but surely the media has much to answer for when they are producing Vietnam era pieces about quagmires and Vietnam era pieces about the noble resistance when reality and truth are far different from that position.  If Iraq were Vietnam, there would not have been a huge turnout for an elected government.  If Iraq were Vietnam, it would be the military responding to charges of dishonest information.  If Iraq were Vietnam the U.S. would have had a huge loss of life, not 1,600 soldiers.

There is nothing wrong with raising critical questions about the military at any time, but surely a line is crossed when a U.S. media outlet becomes more of a disinformation outlet for terrorists!  How close has the media come to crossing that line?

"I think you can second guess whether Newsweek should have had two sources or not," Thomas G. Weston, a 35-year career U.S. diplomat who left his post as ambassador to Cyprus last year and now teaches at Georgetown University, told me. "You will always have, if you have a free press . . . to deal with stories that can have very adverse reactions, both in our own public and other publics in the world. I think that's one of the costs we bear for having a free press."

All the administration is asking for is balanced accurate reporting...not fault free reporting.  Accurate reporting on prison conditions would include plenty of information on how PoWs are being treated in other countries.  The press has been strangely silent about Middle East prisons...care to guess why?

"Whatever the case, had the White House accepted the same kind of accountability it now seeks from Newsweek, Bush would have taken complete responsibility for the faulty WMD claims, rather than blaming the intelligence community. He would have accepted Rumsfeld's resignation last year. And he never would have given Tenet the Medal of Freedom."

Now hold on a minute sparky, you've gone from regurgitating Democratic talking points to writing Howard Dean's speeches for him.  Bush was held accountable for his behavior...we call that process an election.  The voters looked at what he had done while he was in office and decided that on balance he deserved another four years.  That is the only accountability that actually matters.  No one can hold Newsweek or any other member of the media to anywhere near that level of accountability.  As I see it, Newsweek and the media in general has gotten a tiny taste of accountability, the reaction has been quite instructive.  The media faints in fear from a very modest requirement to be accountable for their actions.

"Since this is the accountability era, and it is widely agreed upon that Newsweek should account for its errors and apologize for its mistakes, perhaps we can get back to applying similarly stringent requirements on the elected officials who make grave decisions, such as whether to go to war."

Those grave decisions were given the best accountability possible...we had an election.  It does not seem that this columnist likes result of that election and does not feel that submitting to voters qualifies as accountability.  It is as if the columnist feels that the election was inadequate because it arrived at the wrong answer.

"When the media finish scrutinizing Newsweek, it should get back to asking tough questions of the Bush administration. Questions like:

Who should be held responsible for the faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that led the United States to declare war against Iraq?"

Right because we haven't beat that horse to death or had an election about it...lets get back to asking the same damn questions over and over again because we don't like the election result.

Why has the president not apologized for warning America that Iraq presented an imminent threat, when that turned out to be the case?

This talking point again?  Lord almighty!  To quote the President of the United States:  "The threat is not imminent, but we can not wait until it is..."  Now since that is in fact a direct quote from the President of the United States when he was addressing Congress about the need to go to war with Iraq, is it fair of me to ask why this talking point, originally crafted by the Dean Campaign for President, is resurfacing now in a Washington Post article?  A less restrained blogger might use this as evidence of liberal media bias...it is at a minimum evidence of a poorly researched column.

Will Rumsfeld, who claimed prior to the war to know the precise locations of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, personally apologize to the families of the troops who died in the search for those weapons?

Huh?  The troops died to free an oppressed people and depose an anti-American dictator who had spent his entire 30 years fueling hate and despair in the Middle East.  The best thing that Donald Rumsfeld could do for those families would be, after kicking this columnist in the teeth, dedicate the magnificent democratic movement that is sweeping across the middle east to the memory of the brave soldiers who made it possible.

Given that McClellan has suggested that Newsweek editors need to go on Arab TV and explain and apologize for their errors, will Bush also go on Arab television to explain and apologize for the mistakes made in gathering and analyzing the pre-war intelligence?

Yes and he should wear a clown costume and maybe juggle some balls while he does it...just to loosen them up a bit...they are real uptight over there.  What an ass-dart! 

Perhaps when Bush is done apologizing, we could have Zarqawi join him on Arab television and apologize for beheading all those folks, then we could have Saddam apologize to all of the Iraqis he didn't kill and then the three of them could whip out a guitar and sing Kumbaya together!

Will the administration, which downplayed the costs of the war in Iraq, publicly apologize to taxpayers now that the costs have already exceeded $300 billion?

Right after he's done singing Kumbaya...

"Some will argue that such questions are irrelevant or miss the point..."

Gee ya think...

"...because Bush's bold action in Iraq got rid of a tyrant who was abusing his own people and because it will eventually lead to the spread of democracy in the area."

That would include me...

"Both may be true. But the case for war was built neither on humanitarianism nor on spreading democracy. Those arguments were, at most, used to bolster the main case, which was that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction and presented an imminent threat to America and its allies."

Wrong, that is the justification presented to the United Nations...but we were talking about apologizing here...for in the words of this columnist...'spreading democracy'.  Is that what he wants an apology for?

"Some will also argue that the media only push aggressively to investigate Republican administrations. That's a difficult case to make. A simple Lexis search shows, for instance, that the Washington Post ran 415 stories about Monicagate on its front page in the 1998 calendar year."

Many of us recall the extensive coverage of Ken Starr...and how the media allowed the Clinton administation to demonize the man for doing his job.  I have seen transcripts of news conferences during the Clinton administration in which most of the press behaved like a bunch of Democrat versions of Jeff Gannon, asking the President how he was dealing with all of the public criticism.  The transcripts are public record so with a little effort I could dig them up and embarass this columnist some more...maybe I will some day.

"Some on the left will argue that the Clinton scandal was trumped up, overblown, media madness. I disagree. It was an important story and deserved the front-page treatment it was given. But it also seems true that questions about a war that was fought on an acknowledged false premise are at least as important as questions about one president's efforts to lie about a consensual affair with another adult."

...and what better way to end this weak defense of the media than with a weak analogy.  To compare the Clinton administration to the Bush administration in terms of accomplishments is silly.  One of them will be remembered for boldly attacking terrorism where it lived and bred, the other will be remembered for his sex scandals.  Even columnists unwilling to honestly assess the partisan media behavior should be able to see that difference.

Anti-American Media Bias - Evidence Mounts

Have you seen this news story?  If not, why not?  Read this site's take on the lack of coverage.  Ask yourself like I am: What editorial decision went into not covering this story, but covering this one?  Why does one story require universal media review and coverage, but the other story does not?

These are the kinds of questions that the public is beginning to ask of its news media.  The media are feeling very defensive over the Newsweek story which allegedly that the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay flushed a Koran down the toilet.  Newsweek actually ran an entire story on the treatment of prisoners at this facility, the Koran flushing incident is all anyone remembers at this point.  Missing from all Newsweek coverage is any comparison to what is happening in any other prison.  One might assume that the U.S. is alone in having prisoners complain about abuse.  Of course being dead, some prisoners have no opportunity to complain...

You might remember the question and answer session with Scott McClellan in which Scott suggested that Newsweek's apology and retraction was a 'good start' but it would be nice if Newsweek tried to help rehabilitate the U.S.'s image that they just helped to damage.  A reporter jumped all over Scott by asking if he was the editor of Newsweek now.  There was almost a moment of shocked silence around the country.  This was not an arch conservative demagoguing the press...this was a member of the press responding in an offensive and belligerent manner.  The public will not forgive this kind of media egotistical aggrandizement.  To us, Scott's request sounded pretty reasonable. 

Welcome to PR hell members of the MSM.  The press is already less well respected than any other profession...OK we hate drug dealers more but only barely!  Think about this...almost any individual politician can claim more public trust than collectively trust the media in general.  That's right we trust politicians more than we trust the media.  I think we find them to be more honest!  This is both strange and troubling.  The strange part is that the members of the press are not viewed as individuals in the mind of the public, but as a collective increasingly caricatured version of reality.  They have become like the stereotyped dishonest used car salesman...a con man.  I would like to see if the public believe and trust individual members of the press as much as the trust individual politicians, that would be interesting to know.  The troubling part is that the press historically played a role of keeping the government honest.  That is no longer happening.  What do you do when the government is view as the one being honest and the press is being dishonest?

Frankly defending the media as an unbiased source of the news is becoming increasingly difficult...even for its own members.

"There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous."  (from Hugh Hewitt)

That is a quote from the same person who asked Scott that hard nosed question in the press conference.  It is a startling admission to hear from a member of the press.  I hope he has not paid a high price for his honesty.

Evidence of the misguided media is everywhere...to borrow a phrase, it is a target rich environment.  Lets look at just this issue of prisoner treatment...briefly.

Iran has been in the news a great deal lately over its nuclear enrichment program.  Nothing about the treatment of prisoners in Iran, mind you, just about their nuclear ambitions.  The U.S. is under fire for our treatment of prisoners when in fact Iran's treatment of prisoners is awful...far worse.  You might recall a story two years ago about a Canadian photographer who was brutally tortured to death...or the story about a sixteen year old girl who was put to death because a mullah found her to be outspoken.  Iran is a horrible place with a horrible indefensible treatment of its own people.  You won't see media coverage of this...it is politically incorrect...but it is a fact!  Why is the media focusing upon clearly rubbishy nonsensical prisoner complaints in the U.S., when sixteen year old girls are being beheaded for being outspoken?  We actually have the media wringing their hands over the way a book is handled by U.S. jailers, when people are being routinely tortured to death daily.  Don't they realize how stupid they sound?

I don't honestly expect anyone to defend the media or answer for the routine nonsense that passes for intelligence amongst the rank and file members of the fourth estate, I'm just pointing out that something is clearly wrong.  It needs to be addressed.  If the media wants to investigate outrageous treatment of prisoners...flushing a book down a commode doesn't rank real high on the list of on-going offensive practices in the world today...and...most importantly...the public knows this.

What makes the prisoner treatment in the U.S. newsworthy, to the media folks at Newsweek, but the horrible treatment of prisoners in Iran unworthy of coverage?  This is an important question.  I have no answer to it except to wonder why the media wants to beat up the U.S. military for behavior that would not get even a mention if it were done in other countries.  Why has no media outlet set out to compare U.S. treatment of PoWs to the treatment received in other nations?  Do they not want to offend other countries?  Does that qualify as insensitive to other cultures?

The public wants to know why the media regularly targets the U.S. military.  As a member of that class, the public not the military, I know I want to know.  By virtue of my obsessional reading of international news, most of it from non-traditional media outlets, I know how incredibly biased our media coverage is in the U.S.  It is not anti-Republican.  It is anti-American.  Newsweek is a clear example of this.

Now Newsweek might try and claim that they are hard on the U.S. because the periodical is sold in the U.S. and targeted for a U.S. audience.  That would be a valid claim but for the type of coverage that Newsweek provides in other countries.  Newsweek's foreign editions are even more anti-American than their domestic editions.  They actually produced a Newsweek edition which contains a cover depicting the U.S. Flag in a trash can.  The caption "The Death of the U.S."  Is this defensible?

If you are like me you can not comprehend anyone willing to defend the media.  The defenses are getting lamer and even more subdued as the mountain of evidence begins to pile up.  We are not just talking about anti-Republican bias, we are talking about anti-American bias.  Let no one try and tell American consumers that there is some kind of moral equivalence between the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and the treatment of U.S. PoWs.  One gets free meals, a free Koran and better living conditions than they would have at home, the other...beheaded and dragged around Iraq.  This distinction is not lost upon the public...you have to be a part of the mainstream media group-think to be unable to see the difference.

It is mind boggling to me that members of the media aren't seeing this! 

The entire media industry needs to be completely reformed and if it does not happen soon, market forces may cause it to occur on its own.  Who would want to advertise their product in a periodical or newspaper which has such a negative perception in the mind of the public?  Maybe in their next edition they could print a cover with a picture of Newsweek in that trash can...at a minimum it would be more accurate.

Want to be Sick?

Read This.  There are very bad people in the U.S. military.  I think it is important that we do not react with knee jerk defense every time a disclosure like this is made...

but... 

Would it have been to much to ask for the New York Times to acknowledge prominently within the piece that the source for this entire article was a report by the U.S. Department of Defense who investigated the incident and are in the process of trying the perpetrators for murder?

or...

Would that have violated the unwritten purpose for the article? 

...been too balanced?

...Don't they realize what this makes them look like?

I would never defend the behavior, but I think the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world who will actually punish the perpetrators.  Recall the United Nations covering up this type of illegal behavior by its 'peace keepers' in the Congo.  In the U.S., the military command gives their investigation to the press.

Fair and balanced?  Not even close.

UPDATE:

This is the extent of the sourcing disclosure in the story:

"The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths." (emphasis added)

It would be hard not to recognize that the nature of the detailed report which carries with it extremely graphic imagery, should prominently acknowledge that the military corrected the problem and is punishing the perpetrators.  Burying this information in the story provides quite an insiders look into what the New York Times is trying to accomplish with the piece.

Why it is enough to make you want to excuse the Newsweek article, or hate the U.S. military, or hate America...or hate the George W. Bush administration!

The New York Times is so transparent.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

New slogan for the New York Times:

"Hating the U.S. Military Since Vietnam!"

Liberal Fundamentalism

There is a new insidiousness to the liberal left wing (here-abouts we call them barking moonbats) which attempts to force all of its adherants to tow the liberal party line.  It restricts not just behavior but reaches even into a practisioners thoughts.  If you think even one non-progressive or, earth mother help you, conservative thought you must keep it to yourself.  The retaliation can be excruciating.

In this next paragraph...you must pretend that I am a barking moonbat...

Lets say for example that you don't think abortion is all that fine a means of birth control...keep it to yourself.  What if you don't believe that Ohio voters were disenfranchised?  Better never admit it around an orthodox liberal!  What if you think that Iraq is going far better than anyone has any right to expect?  Especially don't say anything about this issue!  You don't think Chimpy W. McBush lied to all of us...to steal the oil?  What if the ten commandments don't bother you on the Supreme Court door?  You are a blasphemer!  Damned to a red state.  If you think for a moment that the Supreme Court doesn't need to be knocked down and rebuilt with only unoffensive (non-Christian) images, I mean the fresco has Moses for Christ-sake he's a Jew!  YEeeeAAAaaaRGH!  ::pant:: ::pant::  Sorry...I'll do my deep breathing exercises...happy thoughts...happy thoughts...where was I?

Oh right...expressing support for a conservative or even religious concept can get you banned from liberal whine tasting, I mean wine tasting parties; but it won't stop there.  Some have experienced shunning even by their own family members for expressing unorthodox thoughts.  There is even a ceremonial damning that occurs when you dare to vote for non-approved candidates.  Whispered reports exist of families who claim that their children are dead, when in fact they are only born-again.

Many conservative conversions have occured where the individuals have bravely come out of the closet and expressed there new found intellect.  They are welcomed into the tolerant and growing community of believers but they have expressed both frustration and hurt at the behavior expressed toward them by their old associates.  Treated as pariahs in their old haunts, many retreat to safer locations (away from the northeast and west coast).

Some in the Liberal community have tried to pretend all non-believers (i.e. non-liberals) believe the same thing.  This is clearly not the case.  Non-liberals are such a diverse group!  They include atheistic libertarians, catholics, baptists, lutherans, methodists, jews, etc... one thing they all do share in common is a firm belief in the fact that liberals are off their nut.

Recent behavior has convinced me that liberals have become the new fundamentalists!  Non-believers are driven from their ranks!  They do not believe that reasonable people can disagree about the liberal cannon.  They are intolerant toward dissenters.  They hate America because it is a tolerant nation and permits non-liberals to live here.  They want to move to Canada or Europe to live among the intolerant socialistic oligarchies with rules to govern every aspect of life...cradle to grave.  I think freedom scares them...they want to regulate political speech, religious speech and expression, they want to control what advertisers can say,  they want to control corporations...the list goes on.  What they really want if you look at the commonalities is to completely control people's behavior...to 'help' them.

It is always nice when recognizing a new trend like this, to see some bright side to end the post with.  Sadly the only good thing I can think up about the liberal fundamentalists is that they provide an excellent bad example.  At least the right wing fundamentalists agree that they are rigid and rules based intolerant folks.  The platitudes of tolerance from the liberal fundamentalists, along with the rigid belief structure, smacks of mental illness.

The Newsweek Blunder

The Hawk hits it hard.  Probably the best satire I have read on Newsweek's behavior, the awful behavior of the radical Islamic fundamentalists and the charge that the 'religious right' is somehow similar to radical Islam. 

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Islamic fundamentalists rioted in response to a report by Newsweek that Guatanamo Bay interrogators flushed a Koran down a toilet.  Seventeen people died...that 'peaceful' religion is at it again!  Am I insensitive or just accurate?  Um...probably both... 

Iowahawk provides a sarcastic response to the liberal line of thinking which attempts to equate religious conservatives with fundamentalist Islam...

Fact #1:  Labeling them both fundamentalist, doesn't mean as much as some liberals think it does...

The Democrats And The Filibuster

The title of this post sounds like a fable, before this event is over it will probably be a fable.  A fable is a story that provides a lesson.  The fable of the filibuster is that a democratic country should behave in a democratic fashion, and when they don't, the public doesn't like it.

The most recent election in the minds of the public settled the question of who gets to appoint judges.  Democrats that attempt to stand in the way of the public are even losing support from their own party.  This truly is a nuclear option and the public is blaming the Democrats for the necessity of using it.

In many respects the current strategy employed by the Democrats hark-ens to the days of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his heavy handed treatment of President Bill Clinton.  Shutting down the Federal Government was his 'nuclear option'.  It backfired and is one of the reasons he is now an excellent book reviewer for Amazon.com!

Compare this poll with the phony poll from the Washington Post.  First off the questions are direct and do not try and feed a bias.  Notice the result to the question, 'Should every nominee receive a vote?'  49% say yes, 23% say no.  This is a pretty good indicator that some of the answers were falling into the 'I'm not sure EVERY nominee should receive a vote.'  This is the only bipartisan view a person can take on this issue since some nominees might be extremely inappropriate and should never get out of the Committee.

Look at the Senate Rules Question...Wow, 57% say change them and only 25% say don't change them.  That correctly places in context the radical nature of what the Senate Democrats are actually doing.  The American people know that the filibuster has never been used on judicial nominees and all of the muddy arguments which attempt to drag legislation filibusters into the mix are failing rather miserably.  This is not that confusing an issue and the attempts by both the media and Senate Democrats to make the issue more confusing are failing.

A final question that I can post about is the issue of Senate Democrats 'shutting down' the Senate.  Surely it is no accident that 25% of the respondents favored not changing the rule and 25% of the respondents favored shutting down the Senate if the rule was changed.  I think it is fair to say that the poll is capturing the feelings of the partisan left and that it represents only 25% of the country.  When the Democrats and the media play to that fringe, they are radicalizing their message and the radicalization of their message is not resonating with the majority of the public.

In summary, just like Newt Gingrich, Democrats had better not misinterpret the voter's message from the last several elections.  Playing to an energized fringe is no way to win elections, though it may help you raise money.  Based upon these poll numbers, I would advise Senator Clinton to even potentially vote against the filibuster (or conveniently be out of the Senate at the time).  She needs to lose her Liberal fringe label and this is a litmus test. 

If after the rules change obstructionism is the tactic employed, woe to the Democrats in the next election cycle.  This is going to be a defining issue in the coming mid-term election and I would also expect it to be an issue in the next Presidential election.  Senator Clinton had better weigh in on this issue to establish her moderate credentials.  Her silence about both the tactic and the nominees will hurt her with the moderates she has been trying to court.

Thank You Ms. Huffington

We are going to all owe Ariana Huffington so much for providing this wonderful forum for idiots to sound off.  Where else can the likes of me, a humble blogger, get a member of the House of Representatives to put his thoughts in writing about the massive voter fraud that occurred in Ohio.  OK, I admit it, I'm using the term 'thoughts' loosely.  The extreme joy of watching a dunce like this demonstrate, in writing mind you, that he thinks exit polls provide evidence of voter fraud.  So. much. fun.

Lets deconstruct this gem...

"The exit poll discrepancies are to the evidence that massive disenfranchisement occurred in Ohio, as the canary is to the detection of harmful gases in a coal mine. When a canary dies in a coal mine, that alone is not proof positive that something is wrong (maybe the cause of death was just old age or as John Cleese once said, maybe he is "just sleeping"). But -- if you are working in the coalmine -- you just might want to check things out.

And so it went for me and the exit polls. Seeing that there was an unprecedented discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results in Ohio, I was concerned and I decided to check things out a little more closely. Like Jim Lampley, when I see something that is apparently unprecedented and incredibly anomolous, I ask questions. I am just curious that way."

Incidentally the fraud had to be massive...we're talking a 130,000 vote margin, that is a whole bunch of fraud!...or it might be evidence of a bad exit poll.  Let's not go there until we have first found something far more sinister.  Cue your Dr. Evil laughs...

"Why was there a scarcity of voting machines in Democratic leaning areas, and an abundance in Republican areas, leading to lines as long as ten hours for Democrats and little or no wait for Republicans? How many votes were affected? In Franklin County alone, according to the Washington Post, “27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush. At the other end of the spectrum, six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry.”

Ah HA!  Here we have evidence of...poorly run local election planning.  Notice that this poorly run election planning is only happening in Democratic counties.  This is why you should not vote Democratic...oh wait!

"Why did Blackwell change longstanding rules with respect to provisional ballots to disallow a voter from casting a provisional ballot who was in the correct jurisdiction but wrong precinct? Such a voter would be voting on the right ballot, but the wrong place (in some instances the wrong line in the right building)? Was Ohio’s Republican Governor wrong when he said this was likely to result in the loss of as many as 100,000 votes?"

Does Rep. Conyers have any actual evidence that this prevented only Kerry voters from casting ballots?  Does he assume that only the easily confused would vote Democratic?...he might have a point there.  Who are these voters that have magically appeared only in Ohio when surprisingly the President appeared to carry the entire national vote by over 3 million votes and Ohio appears to be completely consistent with every other jurisdiction in the country.

Ignore for a moment the fact that Rep. Coyers howled about Al Gore's stolen election, when he won the popular vote.  Lets focus just upon Ohio, which prior to election night no one knew was going to be the state that put Bush over the top.  No one that it unless you count the evil RINO Governor.  This evil Governor knew that he needed 130,000 votes...somehow before the election...and knew that by changing the rules on the provisional ballots it would only help Bush.

I can't hear your Dr. Evil laughs...louder please.

"Why did Blackwell order that voter registration forms, printed on the incorrect weight of paper, but otherwise valid, should be discarded? How many such registrations were discarded before Blackwell was forced, amid public outcry, to rescind the order?"

Apparently the only voter registrations that were discarded were Democratic ones...right?  Surely you have actual evidence of this...because to assert that crimes were committed I would hope you would have more evidence than these open ended questions that appear to lead nowhere.  Surely these registrations resulted in voters who actually were not allowed to vote, because it would be completely unethical of you to assert voter fraud without any evidence of actual fraud...as it related to votes which I'm told is required for voting fraud.

"Why did the Republican Party employ so-called caging tactics and partisan challengers in primarily minority voting areas when such tactics has previously been held to be a violation of the Voting Rights Act? If these tactics were to uncover fraudulent voters, how many such voters were found?"

Maybe the Republican party is concerned that the Democrats were going to cheat?  By placing challengers in the minority voting areas perhaps they hoped to prevent the massive vote fraud that actually occurred and was documented in other parts of the country.  You know the ones which were documented where people went to jail...Democrats of course.

"According to the Washington Post, voting machines in Ohio flipped an unknown number of votes from Kerry to Bush? How and why did this happen? Did it happen anywhere else? How many votes were affected?"

Finally a question that can actually be answered!  Exactly 65,001 votes were 'flipped' by these voting machines, 1 more than we actually needed for the comfortable 130,000 vote margin.  Glad you asked!  We Republican cheaters like to maintain a certain amount of ethics.  I mean why go through all that effort intimidating minorities at the polls when you can just 'flip' voting machines?

As Rep. Conyers points out, canaries were used in the mines to determine when the gasses were building up.  When the canary dies you got a problem!  As Rep. Conyers apparently is incapable of recognizing, we don't use canaries today, we have far better technology to determine when mines are unsafe.  We also have far better technologies to steal elections...voter machine 'flipping'.

Clearly no one is taking Rep. Conyers seriously about the voter irregularities in Ohio.  For some reason, call me crazy, but the irregularities magically transferring from Florida to Ohio at just the time when it turns out that Ohio, not Florida, would make a difference, is just too far a stretch for me to take.  To believe the kind of tin foil hat wearing nonsense spouted by Conyers, you actually have to accept that someone knew, before the election, that Ohio, not Florida is where the election is going to be decided.

If canaries die from exposure to bull shit, they must be piling up around this guy.

I'm Speechless...Is He a Nazi Apologist or is this Alzheimers

What can you say to this theme?  I mean besides, hell yes.  Pat Buchanan asks if World War II was 'worth it'.  Imagine, if you can, a person who would even ask this question.  You would expect them to be pretty ignorant of the facts, right?  Maybe a high school student who couldn't remember history lessons or a strident pacifist.  Buchanan is neither of these...what is Buchanan's excuse?  One is left with the thought that there is another group of individuals who could or would make this argument...Neo-Nazis or Hitler apologists.

Buchanan sets up his argument by railing about Yalta.  That is fine, there is much to rail about.  At the Yalta conference the British and American leadership were outmanuevered by Joseph Stalin.  Winston Churchill who stood up so powerfully to the Germans was unable or unwilling to stand up to the Russians.  Roosevelt, who endured so much, was so war weary that he caved to Stalin's demands.  Reprehensible surely, also pretty widely understandable.  After fighting for three years the allies just wanted this to end.  Stalin took advantage of the war weariness to advance his empire.

Pat Buchanan is right to point out that these men doomed hundreds of millions of people to death.  Clearly any act that yields such an awful outcome is hardly praiseworthy.  This is an defendable conclusion, it is where he leaps from this that is reprehensible.

Based upon the premis that the allies primary purpose was to free Poland and Eastern Europe, coupled with the fact that Hitler had not attacked Western Europe until war was declared against Germany, Buchanan leaps to two conclusions.  One is supportable and the other is astonishing.

The supportable conclusion is that World War II was hardly a 'win' for the allies of freedom.  This statement he backs up by pointing out correctly that when half of Europe replaced one dictator, Hitler; with another dictator, Stalin; no one should consider this a resounding success.  Perhaps the term 'win' is too simplistic, we should use the term 'strategic victory' as half of Europe was freed from Hitler's tyranny.

I suppose to the people who are murdered, being murdered by one reprehensible murderous thug is no different from being murdered by another one.  Stalin's gulags are hardly much more defensible than Hitler's ovens.  Both Stalin and Hitler engaged in genocide and the two of them represent histories most despicable evil.

Yet Pat Buchanan raises one point to many when he tries to claim that the entire War was unworthy of our sacrifice because it merely replaced Hitler with Stalin.  It is especially disturbing that he wants to use the declaration of war against Hitler as an explanation for Hitler attacking Western Europe.  He essentially argues that if we had left Hitler alone, we could have avoided the cold war.  He doesn't acknowledge that we also would have none of those Jews around to upset our Aryan race...but that is the only way to distinguish his argument from one which Adolf Hitler himself might make.

After reading his article and deconstructing his arguments I feel like there is only one question which Buchanan should be asked:  Are you THAT anti-semetic?