A Second Hand Conjecture

All it really takes to get you to ignore the concentration camps right in front you of your eyes and turn you into a robot, is to say “hey, look at this.” That certainly wasn’t the purpose of this video, but it’s a sobering byproduct.

1 Comment »

Hmm. It seems that media reports filed on November 5th explicitly stating that Obama met with Governor Blagojevich to discuss his Senate replacement, are suddenly disappearing from the web.

No Comments »

Lesbian feminist Lily Tomlin once joked that the only reason cretinous men walked upright was to free their hands for masturbation. Fair enough, but the posture of the lady might soon lack for any better purpose. According to a new survey, 92% of British women between 18-30 now masturbate regularly. That’s up from 62% in 1953. And regularity is the key word. Today 2/3rds of British women masturbate more than four times a week. That’s quite a lot.

I suppose you could interpret these results as further evidence of a liberated femininity and/or behavioral equilibration between the genders. Or of course if you’re a social conservative sexually repressed prude, you could lament the finding as evidence of the corrosion of internal moral self-restraint.

But one might also suggest that it is an adaptive reaction to a newly hyper-sexualized external society. As Westerners we’ve already voted to live in a constitutionally protected, sexually intoxicated media environment. One which is thoroughly permeated with permissive sexual suggestion at almost all levels. Men and women are being bombarded with sexually stimulating media on a permanent basis, even for the purpose of advertising something as unstimulating as cheeseburgers. Living in this environment could only be expected to enhance the collective desire on the part of people, to achieve sexual gratification more frequently. One might even suggest that immersion in this environment mandates it for a young and largely unmarried demographic group.

2 Comments »

Delighted with the American election result for whatever reason, Kurdish villagers in Cavustepe, Turkey have sacrificed 44 sheep to honor Barack Obama. They also smeared the blood of the offering on Obama campaign posters, purportedly for good luck. Now there’s a weekend project for the press corps.

On a similar note, here’s another reminder that conservatives desperately need a new commentariat in addition to new leadership in the congress. Krauthammer sees Obama as the next Reagan striding across the globe, and Mary Katharine Ham reminds us of David Brooks in October, confessing to being warm quivering goo in the hands of the giant. One should always demand more than surrogacy from the opposition. One might even insist on opposition.

No Comments »

Stop the ACLU
“Dontcha ya hate it when Old Media outlets beat up on other Old Media outlets?”

No Comments »

Photos of Russian kids mounting a street protest against the banning of South Park by the state. This is no small or meaningless act.

As daily experience, one of the worst aspects of living under a repressive fascist regime is how utterly boring it is. It is a horrible experience to be a teenager in a society where every radio station plays only opera, and every television show is a boring panegyric to the wisdom of the regime.

This is an intrinsic hostility to youthful enthusiasms too. In more than one way fascism can be described as a permanent war conducted by the state on the innate liberality and frivolousness of youth. Under fascism, something as light-hearted as South Park becomes “extremist propaganda” because the fascist is altogether incapable of understanding the necessary playfulness of entertainment. He feels the driving necessity to infect everything with deep political significance.

It is by such a course that the abolition of free expression induces the characteristically pervasive and perverse boredom of its societies. This does not only affect youth either, as a society robs itself of its own vitality by repressing its youth’s enthusiasm.

1 Comment »

Boy, this was an awfully interesting exchange. Democratic strategist Mark Penn, absurdly invited by Brian Goldsmith to argue the press has been soft on Sarah Palin, instead slams the media for counterproductively biased and vindictive coverage:

(more…)

1 Comment »

I would agree that the ‘lipstick on a pig’ controversy is a manufactured bit of political silliness, expressly designed to fill a news cycle. But that’s pretty much all it is in my view. Jason Linkins on the other hand is taking it way too seriously. How seriously? He writes that if he owned a gun he would have shot himself over it. Yeah.

2 Comments »

Andrew Cochran reports that some media organizations he’s familiar with have reassigned terrorism specialists to investigate Sarah Palin. Andrew sees this as part of a long-term decline of media interest in the threat of transnational terrorism and US counterterrorism policy, in favor of more marketable domestic political squabbling. Atlas on the other hand, takes it as a doubling down of media efforts to defame Palin through the investigation of nugatory gossip. Hmm. The two causalities can coexist quite agreeably, says me.

No Comments »

Tom in Paine has a blistering take on the MSNBC commentariat’s demands for the intervention of Hillary Clinton against Palin, as a kind of childhood psychodrama: “The more you listen to them the more you realize that instead of supporting Obama, a package of Pampers will do.”

No Comments »

Warner Todd Huston compiles some of the more egregious untruths being promoted in mass media about Sarah Palin.

No Comments »

According to a new Rasmussen poll, 51% of the public believes the media is intentionally trying to injure Sarah Palin. Only 35% feels the coverage of her has been unbiased.

No Comments »

John Podhoretz thinks the Palin speech might be among the most dazzling debuts in American political history. I don’t know about that, but I do know it was the most powerful, important, and effective speech by a vice presidential candidate since Nixon’s “Checkers.” John later notes that McCain looked relieved by it all. Again, I thought of Checkers and and a smiling Eisenhower addressing the convention: “tonight I saw courage…”

The parallels are pretty striking actually. The week of acrimonious scandal, the uncertainty of the party leadership, the lack of truth to the charges, and ultimately the triumphant personal redemption through a national televised address, which transformed a very young party favorite into a powerful national voice. Interestingly, the most notable departure from this historical recreation is the conduct of McCain throughout. He cut a superior and more loyal figure than Ike did and that’s impressive.

(more…)

2 Comments »

The IMF has come through for Georgia in an enormous way, approving a $750 million credit line for the beleaguered republic. Beyond the much needed aid, it’s a powerful political reminder for Russia of the gargantuan economic advantage the West maintains.

But in that article notice the black banner in the feature photograph. It’s a promotional piece for the slick SOSGeorgia site, written in very literate English and produced by a Georgian IT firm. Have you noticed how much better the Georgians are at appealing to world opinion than the Russians? Granted, theirs is the far more sympathetic cause, but there is some native skill involved in the marketing that may have something to do with the country’s cultural, political and commercial orientation toward the West. I hate to speculate too deeply on it, but it’s possible that disconnection from the West simply leads to bad public relations strategy. At least when you need to persuade the West, as both the Russians and Georgians do.

(more…)

1 Comment »

It would seem the innuendo campaign alleging the illegitimacy of Sarah Palin’s son Trig, inadvertantly uncovered a real family tragedy to media attention. As Jay Tea points out, the circumstances of that situation make it physically impossible for the campaign of whispers to have been true. Don’t wait for any apologies from the whisperers however.

3 Comments »

photo: Michael Levesque

It seems the international media is crawling all over the tiny town Sarah Palin began her political career in. Being fond of leaders for whom membership in the general public is a recent memory, I think it’s great to see.

Although, how strange it must be for the residents of Wasilla to suddenly have the Los Angeles Times looking for perspectives on leadership in the Mocha Moose Cafe, or The Guardian speculating on the size of their town, or Deutsche Welle trying to divine foreign policy perspectives from their suddenly famous neighbor’s vacation travel.

Has to be fun.

No Comments »

Norm Geras, as he often does, cuts away the extraneous aspects of how and why terrorism exists, as well as how the media distorts out thinking about it, and our response.

1 Comment »

Columbia Journalism Review asked me to write an essay criticizing blogger coverage of the War in Georgia. As I’m sure you can imagine, I was scathing.

While this wasn’t necessarily surprising—after all, these blogs all talk in a big circle, and tend to reference each other—it was disappointing. As Reason’s Michael C. Moynihan trenchantly observed, much of the commentary on the conflict resolved into very clear partisan lines: Russia on the Left, Georgia on the Right. Rather than providing the clarity, nuance, and honesty that they promise to provide, the big blogs instead retreated to their comfortable and predictable ideological corners. By keeping to their usual haunts, these blogs did their readers a tremendous disservice: they were just as incurious and ideological as they regularly accuse the MSM of being.

Go read the whole thing.

5 Comments »

Every day, Professor Keith Burgess-Jackson reprints a Letter to the Editor from the New York Times.  This offering left me gape-jawed.

The Professor’s first point is well-taken.

Where is the evidence that Barack Obama is more intelligent than John McCain? Have they taken intelligence tests?

One might argue that because Obama performed better in college than McCain, he is the more intelligent of the two.  Yet, we all know many people where one individual had a superior college record to another, but the first is not more intelligent than the second.  Perhaps Obama is smarter than McCain.  But, I do not know of any overwhelming evidence that this is so.

In any case – let us grant the writer this point.  So what?  While a certain level of intelligence is assuredly required for someone to be a good President – it is but a necessary condition, and not a sufficient one.  A wide variety of other factors matter:  character, experience, leadership, voting record, viewpoints on issues and more.  Essentially, this is Keith’s second point:

Americans want an intelligent president, but not at the cost of good character and good judgment.

If people believe that Obama is a superior candidate to McCain – that is their decision.  Yet, their choice should be based upon this entire set of qualities – not simply which man is smarter than the other.

1 Comment »

Say Anything
How clueless can these folks get?

No Comments »

When you’re Speaker of the House, I guess that, in addition to all your other powers, you can make language mean whatever you wish it to mean.

PELOSI: I’m never certain of anything. Today, I would be certain. I just think that it is the opportunity for our country to move away from Washington.  You know, I’m the Speaker of the House. I’m an outsider in Washington, D.C. .  Business as usual in Washington is not in the people’s interests. It there’s for the special interests.

KING: You would be the ultimate insider, wouldn’t you?

PELOSI: Well, I — you would think. But I…

KING: The speaker of the House isn’t an insider?

PELOSI: Well, they didn’t want me to be Speaker of the House.

KING: But you are.

PELOSI: I had to fight these special interests. And now to make the change, we have to have a Democratic president. And Barack Obama has done more than anyone in terms of passing the toughest ethical bill — ethics bill in Congress, to shed the bright light on transparency on the link between special interests and legislation in Washington.

Even Larry King is incredulous at the notion that a chosen Speaker of the House would not be the ultimate insider!

The amazing thing is that these politicians can get on national TV and make ludicrous statements with a straight face.

Ah, well.  They have got lots of practice at it.

No Comments »

Edwards, 55, now admits that he had an affair with Hunter, now 44,in 2006, but denies that he is the father of the child she had in February. Andrew Young, another former Edwards aide, has said he is the baby’s father. In a statement released Friday, Edwards said he was willing to take a paternity test; doubtless we’ll hear more on that issue.

But what’s really significant here is the cone of silence the nation’s major newspapers — including The Times — and the cable and broadcast networks dropped over this story when it first appeared in the tabloid during the presidential primary campaign. Next, the Enquirer reported that the unmarried Hunter was pregnant. Still no mainstream media interest. Indeed, never in recent journalistic history have so many tough reporters so closely resembled sheep as those members of the campaign press corps who meekly accepted Edwards’ categorical dismissal of the Enquirer’s allegations. Late last month, Edwards came to Los Angeles, and Enquirer reporters trailed him to the Beverly Hilton hotel, where he met Hunter and her daughter in their room.

The Enquirer went with the story, and when no major newspaper or broadcast outlet even reported the existence of the tabloid story, bloggers and online commentators redoubled their demands that the mainstream media explain their silence. The tabloid followed with a story alleging payments of hush money to Hunter and, this week, with a photo of Edwards holding an infant in what appears to be a room at the Beverly Hilton. As pressure mounted on major newspapers to take some aspect of the unfolding scandal into account, editors and ombudsmen issued statements saying it would be unfair to publish anything until the Enquirer’s stories had been “confirmed.”

It’s interesting that what finally forced Edwards into telling the truth was a mainstream media organization. ABC News began investigating the Edwards affair in October, but really began to push after the Beverly Hilton allegations. When ABC confronted Edwards with its story (which confirmed “95% to 96%” of the tabloid’s reporting, according to the network), he admitted his deception.

With that admission, the illusion that traditional print and broadcast news organizations can establish the limits of acceptable political journalism joined the passenger pigeon on the roster of extinct Americana.

No Comments »

I would call this ignorance, but it is worse than that. The Times reporters just believe corporations are such a honey pot they didn’t even stop to think. They just wrote.

No Comments »

Georgian television reporter Tamara Urushadze gets shot by a Russian sniper as she delivered a live report near Gori. Tough girl, she finishes the report without a tear.

No Comments »

Russian units are on the move again in Georgian territory, apparently in violation of the truce agreement. One Russian soldier in a large convoy shouted an ominous flirtation to a press photographer outside Gori, hopefully in jest or lust:

“Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi.”
(AP)

A week in a Caucasian foxhole will make any soldier promise a pretty girl the world, but it’s certainly likely elements of the Russian military leadership wouldn’t mind actualizing his advance.

(more…)

No Comments »

When it seemed like escalation was the modal reality, outcomes looked bleak for Georgia. Dynamics change. Thus Georgia’s ceasefire in South Ossetia cannot be a bad thing under the circumstances. By putting up an initial fight, they drew the attention of the world and now in can come the international community, which is as firmly opposed to Russia’s behavior on an issue since the Afghanistan invasion in 1979.

(more…)

4 Comments »

Cernig at Larisa Alexandrovna’s site had me persuaded for two whole paragraphs.

Now, having little taste for the fine art of distractions-from-distractions, I tend to roll my eyes at the transparently partisan diversionary tactics one sees all over the web from Democrats in defense of John Edwards (eg “who cares about a politician’s adultery when there’s potholes in the streets!”). However, Cernig’s complaint that the national media was focusing on that rather tawdry and meaningless scandal to the exclusion of the crisis in Georgia, had some legitimacy. Reading it I paused for a moment, reflected on the non-Olympic television news coverage I’d watched over the past 24 hours, and decided Cernig had a legitimate point.

(more…)

No Comments »

While I’d generally agree that Maureen Dowd’s style is a kind of cut-rate Dorothy Parker, there’s something to her characterization of McCain as socialite dah-ling scorned. It was inevitable that the press would consider any effort by McCain to actually win the election to be bad form (hasn’t Obama already won?). But McCain isn’t free from the charge that he resents his long-time media suitor’s new object of affection.

No Comments »

Jon Stewart hilariously ridicules the notion that McCain’s advertising contains hidden racist and sexist messages.

No Comments »

After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential.

You could?

The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

So that is what made everybody concerned? The twisted reasoning that could assert that after 9/11 we in any way could think something like that couldn’t happen again, sans those letters, is pretty breathtaking.  Once those letters were delivered however, it suddenly occurred to the American people that it might happen again? What kind of parallel universe is he living in? Oh, and if you couldn’t tell, this is the Sock Puppet talking. (more…)

16 Comments »

Perhaps Mr. Riley’s allegation in Newsday that the McCain “Celeb” ad exposed some sort of crypto-racist subterfuge, is more widely shared among Obama’s media advocates than one might have assumed. For the queen of that kingdom evidently shares the sentiment:

The ad gave us an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives, some of whom work for Mr. McCain now, ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.
(The New York Times via Sister Toldjah)

Everything I wrote about Mr. Riley’s views earlier can naturally be reapplied here to the New York Times. However, there are three additional thoughts which occur to me:

1. The New York Times, at least in its editorial capacity, may be becoming the surrogate response and marketing team for the Obama campaign. As noted earlier today, to the point that it appears the Times is even developing the campaign’s slogans and advertising approach.

2. If that is so, would it not be better for Mr. McCain to merely recast his entire campaign as a contest between himself and the editorial board of the Times, bypassing Mr. Obama altogether. After all, if victory consists largely of picking the right enemies, that’s a contest that Mr. McCain might actually be able to win. It’s no secret that lately the national paper of record isn’t held in the highest esteem by the nation it records. Furthermore, it seems that the Times as a leading agent for Obama, tends to be ahead of the campaign it supports by about a day. Alacrity might demand a more direct approach by McCain against his “real” opponent.

3. Finally –and this is purely suspicion on my part– does anyone else get the feeling in reading the editorials of the New York Times and others, that there are elements of the press that actually resent the fact that race is not a more significant feature of this campaign? Elements who will actually try to inject it as factor, even without the slightest cause. Also, is there perhaps a more wicked remorse that the opportunities to label Mr. McCain a racist are so disappointingly few?

No Comments »

(photo: photosan0)

Yesterday I suggested that it was unwise for Obama to have titled and predicated a video on a line from a rather slanted New York Times editorial, given the growing public perception of media bias in his favor. But he has now built an entire microsite and subcampaign on the title of that editorial, which was and is called the “Low-Road Express” (Times editorial | Obama campaign microsite). It’s a natural question to ask which preceded which in authorship, or whether this sort of thing is now coordinated, or just the inadvertent consonance of devoted admirers.

The phrase itself is fourteen hours old in penetrating the leftblogs and is doing well. Ironically enough it was a pro-McCain blog (citing the Times) that can claim inauguration of the trend.

(more…)

No Comments »

For those of you who love New York Times bashing, I am in rant mode at Risk and Return. What a bunch of balderdash.

Also, if you want a good idea of where housing prices may go, I also have this. Charts, I have lots of charts!

Finally, I really hate the housing bill.

No Comments »

We see this kind of thing in the press all the time:

U.S. and Afghan troops have abandoned a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan where militants killed nine American soldiers earlier this week, officials said Wednesday.

Compounding the military setback, insurgents quickly seized the village of Wanat in Nuristan province after driving out the handful of police left behind to defend government offices there, Afghan officials said.

Factually true, and oh so very misleading. For the real story of these nine men and the fantastic job they and their comrades did I suggest letting McQ enlighten you.

No Comments »

Robert Ariail / The State (Columbia, S.C.) (July 23, 2008

No Comments »

But not forevs. Tomorrow I hope on a plane and fly to Budapest, Hungary, for a well-deserved break from the grunt and grind of every day. At the tail end of the week, I shall be attending the Global Voices Citizen Media 2008 Summit. Despite some closed sessions, I’ll try to report back here what we heard of the state of bloggers and citizen-driven media from around the planet.

4 Comments »

Chris Weigant demands an immediate end to the “pervasive” pro-McCain and anti-Obama bias of the media. Yeah. No word yet on when Chris will take up the equally necessary cause of converting the Pope to Catholicism.

No Comments »

R.I.P. Tim Russert:

Tim Russert, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” died Friday after being stricken at the bureau, NBC News said Friday. He was 58.

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” broadcast when he collapsed, the network said.

He had recently returned from Italy, where his family was celebrating the graduation of Russert’s son, Luke, from Boston College.

No further details were immediately available.

Russert was best known as host of “Meet the Press,” which he took over in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television.

But he was also a vice president of NBC News and head of its overall Washington operations, a nearly round-the-clock presence on NBC and MSNBC on election nights.

This may be a bigger deal to the inside the Beltway crowd, but it is huge for any political junkie.

No Comments »

When the most recent unemployment numbers were released, the media bleated about the highest percentage increase in the jobless rate since 1986. For example, The New York Times lamented:

The unemployment rate surged to 5.5 percent in May from 5 percent, the largest monthly spike in more than two decades, as the economy shed 49,000 jobs for a fifth month of decline, the Labor Department reported on Friday.

Economists construed the weak monthly jobs report as an indication of the pain assailing tens of millions of Americans amid an economic downturn that most experts assume is a recession.

The labor market is continuing to deteriorate, eroding the size of paychecks, just as gasoline and food prices surge, and as the declining value of real estate erodes the wealth and credit of many households.

Ed Morrissey was quick to point out why the numbers don’t support what the media narrative claims:

Up to now, employment had held steady through a rocky economy barely staying out of recession. In May, that changed for the worse, as unemployment rose to its highest level since October 2004. However, only 49,000 workers lost their jobs, which doesn’t nearly account for the four-tenths rise … The real story here is unemployment among entry-level workers to the employment system. In summer, teenagers and college students enter the marketplace looking for seasonal and part-time work. This accounts for the significant rise in job-seekers and the 0.4% increase in unemployment. Otherwise, an overall job loss of 49,000 jobs would account for a 0.04% increase in a market of 138 million workers.

King Banaian also took a look at the May numbers (in comparison with April), and while he disagrees somewhat with Ed’s account for the number of new entrants to the job market, he finds validity with respect to the rise in the unemployment rate: (more…)

6 Comments »

(photo: Department of Defense)

The Obama campaign has categorically rejected John McCain’s proposal for a joint trip to Iraq, calling it a “publicity stunt.” Publicity stunt it most certainly is, but why is it automatically assumed that the publicity would only benefit McCain? Because he proposed it? Or because the facts on the ground are thought to validate his views? Nettlesome matters that McCain would be wise to emphasize in the wake of the rejection.

While Obama’s supporters are snarling at what they consider to be a pattern politics of either immaturity or sage condescension (they’re apparently a bit vexed by the event), the campaign may have missed a tremendous opportunity here.

(more…)

6 Comments »

The New York Times thinks housing was in a bubble and prices are too high. Their solution? Try to keep housing prices too high.

No Comments »

It should be clear by now to anyone who frequently reads blogs that the MSM is not terribly accurate in its reporting, nor does it seem to have any intention of getting better at it. Whether you think the media leans left (as I think it demonstrably does) or right, there is no denying that the vaunted fact-checkers of the MSM are little more than an apparition, devoid of any duty or consequence.

The latest example is pretty innocuous in the grand scheme of things, and yet the mistake so blatantly obvious that it causes one to wonder how it could have been made in the first place. In what is essentially a puff piece about John McCain’s backing of stronger anti-human trafficking laws and enforcement, the NYT declares:

Human trafficking, the transport of victims under false pretenses from one nation to another for forced labor or prostitution, has become an important issue to the Christian right. The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that as many as 800,000 people around the world, including 200,000 in the United States, are enslaved each year.

For the numerically deficient, the NYT asserts that CIA estimates place fully one-fourth (25%) of all humans trafficked in the world within the borders of the United States. Twenty-five percent? That’s a staggeringly large percentage, especially considering the often quite blatant amount of trafficking that occurs in the Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, Africa and the Middle East. Why did that little factoid not set off all kinds of bells and whistles in some fact-checker’s brain?

To get an idea of just how far off (and drastically wrong) the NYT’s assertion is, let’s look at an article from September last year in the Washington Post:

Outrage was mounting at the 1999 hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building, where congressmen were learning about human trafficking.

A woman from Nepal testified that September that she had been drugged, abducted and forced to work at a brothel in Bombay. A Christian activist recounted tales of women overseas being beaten with electrical cords and raped. A State Department official said Congress must act — 50,000 slaves were pouring into the United States every year, she said. Furious about the “tidal wave” of victims, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) vowed to crack down on so-called modern-day slavery.

Those legislative hearings were the precursor to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, passed in the waning days of the Clinton Administration and given full effect in the early days of the Bush Administration. However, despite vigorous enforcement of the Act, few victims were found:

As part of the fight, President Bush has blanketed the nation with 42 Justice Department task forces and spent more than $150 million — all to find and help the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of forced prostitution or labor in the United States.

But the government couldn’t find them. Not in this country.

The evidence and testimony presented to Congress pointed to a problem overseas. But in the seven years since the law was passed, human trafficking has not become a major domestic issue, according to the government’s figures.

The administration has identified 1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000, nowhere near the 50,000 a year the government had estimated. In addition, 148 federal cases have been brought nationwide, some by the Justice task forces, which are composed of prosecutors, agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local law enforcement officials in areas thought to be hubs of trafficking.

In the Washington region, there have been about 15 federal cases this decade.

Ronald Weitzer, a criminologist at George Washington University and an expert on sex trafficking, said that trafficking is a hidden crime whose victims often fear coming forward. He said that might account for some of the disparity in the numbers, but only a small amount.

“The discrepancy between the alleged number of victims per year and the number of cases they’ve been able to make is so huge that it’s got to raise major questions,” Weitzer said. “It suggests that this problem is being blown way out of proportion.”

Now I’m sure you’ll agree, as deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said, “the issue is ‘not about the numbers. It’s really about the crime and how horrific it is.’” With respect to the issue of human trafficking, one is too many. However, that does not speak at all to the gross mischaracterization of the numbers presented by the NYT.

So where did that 200,000 number come from? It does not appear to be from the CIA, which does not provide a number of victims associated with the United States in its World Fact Book or anywhere else that I could find. Indeed, it’s difficult to even find the source of the 50,000 estimate which has been used for quite some time now. According to the Washington Post:

Although there have been several estimates over the years, the number that helped fuel the congressional response — 50,000 victims a year — was an unscientific estimate by a CIA analyst who relied mainly on clippings from foreign newspapers, according to government sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the agency’s methods. Former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales told Congress last year that a much lower estimate in 2004 — 14,500 to 17,500 a year — might also have been overstated.

Considering Gonzales’ statement, a charitable view of the NYT’s obvious mistake would be that the estimate includes an extra zero, and that the writer intended to assert the CIA estimate as (a still overinflated) 20,000 instead of 200,000. Yet, again, why didn’t someone catch this before it went to print? How did such an eyebrow-raising number elude those much maligned fact-checkers at the NYT? It’s clear that nobody checked with the CIA about the number, as it would have been corrected at least to the 50,000 estimate if that had been done. Perhaps the number was gleaned from a press release from McCain, and the reporter was simply too lazy to check it out. Or maybe it just sound about right to the news team, so nobody bothered to see if it was correct. Whatever the reason, the mistake is a perfect reminder of why the MSM is held in such disregard nowadays.

As I said from the outset, the blunder itself is rather mild, even though it paints America in a bad light. Until someone quotes the NYT as source for the number (and gets it past the fact-checkers again), it’s a one off of little consequence. But it’s so indicative of just how unreliable MSM reporting has become. If they could miss this blatant mistake, how many more subtle discrepancies are they passing off as fact? And what’s worse, how many people are buying those mistakes, accepting them uncritically as settled facts because they’re printed in the NYT or WaPo, or stated on the evening news? Before you know it we’ll be hearing about how 200,000 women are beaten and then sold into slavery each year during the Super Bowl.

1 Comment »

This is the latest post in a running commentary on a new meme to emerge from the PR folks in Afghanistan: the security benefits of building roads. The argument, advanced by a few American reporters and one David Kilcullen, is that building paved roads reduces the IED threat and contributes to the security necessary for economic development. I find this highly inplausible, and the lack of evidence—across multiple reports from multiple reporters—deepens this suspicion. If I can arrange it with a magazine, I’m going to try to compile all of these into a single essay addressing the issue of journalist knowledge and gullibility, ethics, and what security really means.

Naturally, this was posted first at Registan.net, which is where you should be going for updates on the Forgotten War in Afghanistan, as well as the latest machinations in the still-simmering Former Soviet Union.

Remember David Ignatius’ pathetic excuse for reporting on Afghanistan? After a whole week in a few provinces in RC-East, he was making pronouncements about how the country was faring. Barnett Rubin properly called him out on this crap, but it’s worth looking at his ludicrous column and seeing if it might tell us anything.

Aside from the many facile references to Rudyard Kipling and British colonial administrators, and a curious inability to look at a map (Naray, in Paktya, is about 100 miles southwest of Asadabad, in Kunar… over Pakistani territory), there is a quite fascinating section.

Alison Blosser, a young State Department officer, is using a similar approach to help guide the Provincial Reconstruction Team for Kunar province, based south of here in Asadabad. An Ohio State graduate, she speaks fluent Pashto, which she learned before taking up her previous assignment at the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan. Dressed in a head scarf and body armor, she might be a modern version of Gertrude Bell, the celebrated British adventurer and colonial administrator of the 1920s.

Blosser and her colleagues have employed what they call a “roads strategy” to bring stability to Kunar. The biggest project so far was building a paved two-lane road from Jalalabad in the lush flatlands up the Kunar River valley to Asadabad. The road is a magnet for economic development in what had been an insurgent stronghold, and the PRT is planning new roads into what Blosser calls the “capillary valleys” where the insurgents have fled.

At least we now know who’s been pushing the Roads thing.

The tribal elders see the prosperity the new roads have brought and want the same for their villages. “We say, ‘Fine, but you have to guarantee security,’ ” Blosser says. That’s the essence of the counterinsurgency strategy U.S. forces are using in Afghanistan. As the military clears new areas, the PRTs follow quickly behind with roads, bridges and schools.

And by this, he directly contradicts what David Kilcullen was able to say with nary a critical peep from the professional counterinsurgency crowd. Whom to believe? I have no idea. Kilcullen says security follows roads. Ignatius says roads follow security, and then reinforce it. Ignatius’ version of causation makes more intuitive sense. But Afghanistan has a habit of defying intuition.

In either case, since Kilcullen is the supposedly serious thinker here, and Ignatius obviously is not, that places the burden of proof on Kilcullen (or anyone else who agrees with his version of causation) to build the case that roads equal security. Right now, there is precious little data and a great deal of pleasing talk in anecdotal generalities. Until there is an actual argument—involving evidence, which is noticeably lacking in Kilcullen’s writing on this subject—then no one can really say for sure.

And is Carlotta Gall the only reporter employed by an American paper to work off something other than official government press handlers?

This topic continues:
Of PR Campaigns and the Utility of Area Knowledge
War Is Peace, and Other Orwells at the Journal
A Practical Look at the Value of Roads
Learning from PRTs
The Strange Benefits of Paving Afghanistan

No Comments »

Question the timing! That old mantra from the halcyon days of 2002-4, when the Left would be mocked by the Right for wondering about the suspicious timing of terror alerts, is universally applicable to the Presidency. In the case of the Syrian nuclear facility—the underlying story of which isn’t significant—what the intelligence community is choosing to say, and even more importantly, not say, is highly significant:

Perhaps most notable in the briefing on Thursday was how coy the analysts were being about the possibility that Syria has a covert nuclear weapons program. They noted very specifically that “there is no reprocessing facility in the region of al Kibar,” but refused to elaborate when asked whether the Syrians might be building such a facility elsewhere. They also refused to comment on how Syria might have been planning to acquire the natural uranium required to fuel the reactor and they dodged a question about how North Korean diplomats have so far reacted to this disclosure.

Yet, in the briefing detailing their findings, the analysts were certain of the design and intent of the reactor. That isn’t to say that Syria was probably up to something bad—it almost certainly was. But the reasons this is being released right now is definitely puzzling. It makes me wonder what Bush has up his sleeve concerning Iran and reviving all that terrible Axis of Evil talk (Syria, recall, did not make the cut last time).

Even more interesting is the reactions of some on the Right.

I was mildly amused to see FP contributor and respected nuclear expert Joe Cirincione labeled “Obama’s radioactive potato” and “an apologist for Syria” this week on Commentary’s “Connecting the Dots” blog and the Powerline blog, respectively…

Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff seems to think Cirincione is biased against Israel — even though the latter has family in Israel and describes himself as “strongly pro-Israel.” Commentary’s Gabriel Schoenfeld, meanwhile, is certain that Cirincione, despite his rather explicit denial, really is secretly the top nuclear advisor to the Obama campaign. I guess conspiracy theories aren’t exclusive to the Middle East.

This is, recall, for the crime of being skeptical of a poorly sourced press leak with no evidence at the time, and wishing for greater detail to emerge before believing the administration’s reports about the incident.

All the while those carping heads keep missing the real point here, which is not that Syria has a high-level relationship with North Korea. It is that this event has highlighted the way the media is spoon fed stories by the government, and has apparently abrogated the lion’s share of its investigative power over to government agencies.

That so many don’t seem to realize this remains baffling.

No Comments »

Gawker Media has decided to sell Wonkette to managing editor Ken Layne. Missing in the “internal emails” published on both Wonkette and Politico is the key fact that after Layne fired associate editor Megan Carpentier (full Disclosure: she’s a good friend), about 2/3 of the site’s regular visitors staged a months-long boycott, tanking the site’s pageviews and thus ad numbers. March is a record month for them, in other words, only because January and February were so bad.

And of course, as Megan notes… Politico scooped Ken Layne on his new purchase by about 30 minutes or so. Not that that is indicative of anything.

No Comments »

h/t Instapundit

I’m not convinced that the two incidents contrasted in this video from Ed Driscoll are similar enough to be compared to each other but he does say something that I said about the Aguilar report at the time.   Someone edited, prepared, and made the decision to air the segment of her badgering the old man who’d defended himself.    It was a team effort.

No Comments »

The inscrutable and vainglorious Boi from Brazil weighs in to explain why Republicans find Obama’s candidacy “scary”:

Conservatives love to claim that Obama supporters have excess reverence for their candidate and see him as some sort of transcendent messiah figure. There is a small minority of Obama supporters — as is true for most candidates and political movements — who probably expect more from Obama than it is healthy to expect from political leaders generally.

But listening to this objection from the right-wing movement is the ultimate irony. There has not been a political figure in a long, long time who was revered, worshiped and transformed into a grotesque Icon of Transcendent Greatness the way the Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush, has been. For years and years, the Right sustained itself as little more than a glorified Cult of Personality around the Great, Conquering War Hero.

Greenwald goes on to detail what he supposes is evidence of George Bush’s cult of personality, consisting entirely of hagiographies written about the President by conservatives, and remarks from politicians. That there are Bush’ophiles in the Republican Party is no big surprise, nor particularly indicative of anything other than party loyalty to a beleaguered President. That Greenwald thinks that is commensurate with a video supporting Obama’s candidacy by having celebrities chant the man’s name is more than silly. Indeed, the Puppet-master’s analysis has all the depth and weight of a ratty old sock, worn thin at the heel and sporting massive holes. Rick Moran makes this abundantly clear:

For one so hysterically inclined to exaggerate, to denigrate, to posit the most outrageously ignorant motivations for conservative actions, our man Mr. Ellison simply lacks the ability to evaluate anything in an adult manner. Instead, he reminds me of a teenage girl in the way he dramatizes the most insignificant events and statements from conservatives as sinister and evil. A true drama queen of the left, he is incapable of the kind of balanced, nuanced judgement ascribed to most grown ups who write about politics and politicians.

Lambchop cannot tell the difference between political hyperbole as given by politicians above and the raw, emotional, slavish, worshipful, and fervent idolatry that millions of Obama supporters demonstrate on a regular basis. They can’t tell you why they are for him. They can’t tell you why they faint and weep in his presence. They can’t tell you why they believe he can “change the world” when he can’t even change the politics of Chicago.

Rick cites a Political Punch entry quoting an Obama supporter:

Obama supporter Kathleen Geier writes that she’s “getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama’s supporters. On listservs I’m on, some people who should know better – hard-bitten, not-so-young cynics, even – are gushing about Barack…

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, “Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of ‘coming to Obama’ in the same way born-again Christians talk about ‘coming to Jesus.’…So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work.”

Joe Klein, no Republican hack, is also quoted in the Political Punch piece:

Joe Klein, writing at Time, notes “something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism” he sees in Obama’s Super Tuesday speech.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said. “This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It’s different not because of me. It’s different because of you.”

Says Klein: “That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is. “

I actually disagree with Klein that Obama has not put any substance on the table, but he is correct that the fervency of the Illinois Senator’s support is not derived from his policies, but from a visceral reaction to his candidacy.

Rick succinctly differentiates between Obama supporters and Bush-bots:

No one has ever accused George Bush of being a rock star. No one has ever said that Bush causes the hearts of women to palpitate uncontrollably thus causing them to pass out.

And yet Lambchop, in what can only be described as one of his more desperate leaps of illogic, tries to assign equal value to the Obama phenomena and the small number of Bush-bots who I’ll bet never thought any impure thoughts about George.

No Comments »

Many of my liberal friends believe that the line “Fox News; Fair and Balanced” is a joke. I happen to think it’s pretty accurate, but – who knows? Perhaps it is indeed my bias that lends me to that opinion.

I defy my friends on the left, however, to read this post by Ed Morrissey and then be able to tell anyone with a straight face that their beloved New York Times is “fair and balanced.”

The Times may have the slickest, sharpest advertising around, in depth feature articles and quality bridge columns. “Fair and balanced,” however, has not been associated with news reporting at the Times for a while.

Think that may be a factor in this?

No Comments »

THE LATEST non-issue hyped by (who else?) the New York Times is that “some” people are questioning whether or not John McCain is eligible to be a sitting President:

The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

[...]

“There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. “It is not a slam-dunk situation.”

Mr. McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a Navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that Mr. McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.

I don’t think the writer of this article, Carl Hulse, could be more melodramatic (”The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president?” — really, Carl? That’s what’s been nagging them?). But then again, there’s not much “there” there, as noted by Dr. Steven Taylor, so I suppose he had to make it at least somewhat suspenseful:

While I will allow that I am not a conlaw scholar, this strikes me as a non-issue. The child of US citizens is a citizen, regardless of where he or she was born. As such, someone like McCain was a citizen by virtue of birth, not via naturalization, and hence he is a “natural born citizen.” Any other interpretation seems ludicrous on its face, to me.

Dr. Taylor points to where Congress previously considered the issue, and quotes the Hulse article:

Quickly recognizing confusion over the evolving nature of citizenship, the First Congress in 1790 passed a measure that did define children of citizens “born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States to be natural born.” But that law is still seen as potentially unconstitutional and was overtaken by subsequent legislation that omitted the “natural-born” phrase.

[...]

Mr. McCain’s citizenship was established by statutes covering the offspring of Americans abroad and laws specific to the Canal Zone as Congress realized that Americans would be living and working in the area for extended periods.

Curiously, despite penning the paragraphs above, Hulse still seems to think McCain’s ability to be President is an issue. Ann Althouse disagrees (emphasis in original):

The real constitutional interpretation is taking place right now, as we decide whether to accept a man with this problem as the nominee, and later, as the candidate. I think we as a people have already answered the question as to McCain. None of his opponents are using disqualification as an argument and no one is concerned about it. Think of how different it would be if Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for President. The issue would be debated and argued, and I think we’d see him as disqualified and, because of that, he’d never reach the point of nomination. Can you picture Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton trying to defeat McCain by making the argument that his birth in the Canal Zone disqualifies him? They’d only make themselves look bad. The argument is so unattractive that no one serious will make it, and therefore the question, for all realistic purposes, has already been answered.

For those keeping score, the NYT has in consecutive weeks (a) smeared the likely Republican candidate for Election 2008 with a story based on mere innuendo, rumor, and decades old news, and (b) raised the non-issue of McCain’s status as a natural-born citizen of the United States. But never fear, for this is all the news that’s fit to print. [/eyeroll]

UPDATE: April Gavaza manages to write what I was thinking but somehow forgot to jot down:

I may not like McCain, but these attacks on him are ludicrous and forcing me into the uncomfortable position of defending him. First the NYT article about nothing and now this, a parsing of the phrase “natural born”. It smacks of desperation.

UPDATE II: Jim Lindgren weighs in with the legal history behind “natural-born citizens,” and concludes:

According to even the most technical meaning of “natural born” citizen in the 1780s, John McCain is a natural born citizen of the United States, but George Washington and Thomas Jefferson may not have been (since they were born before 1776), though they would have been generally treated as such at the time.

Of course, when slinging mud as the NYT is doing the arguments don’t need to be sound, some of the mud just has to stick.

UPDATE III: Via the comments below, Roland Dodds notes the right-wing genesis for this dubious knock on John McCain:

Upon trolling through far right websites today, I found one of the more interesting arguments made against McCain’s candidacy from the right: he apparently isn’t a natural born citizen. From the American Voice, a right wing radio network associated with Bo Gritz (the right wing survivalist associated with the Christian Identity movement, and worked fervently to stop Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube from being removed in 2005) …

And should I found it the least bit surprising that the American Voice is advocating Ron Paul?

5 Comments »

Michael Kraft takes a look back at candidate Hugo Chavez in 1998, being interviewed by Jorge Ramos for Univision. Jorge asks a series of what turned out to be extraordinarily prescient questions. In sequence Chavez denies he will shut down media companies, nationalize private industries, or criticize foreign leaders. He even pledges to facilitate and encourage foreign direct investment. As we now know, each of these statements is a lie.

No Comments »