MSM Wins

I see I'm not alone in the belief that the MSM has become more "nakedly partisan" & their smears, sneers, slanders & calumny dressed up as "newz" had a big impact on this election:

Powerline highlights from a forum post:

... one only has to understand what Hamilton refered to as the "Ignorant Masses" and their susceptibility to the old media's influence to identify one of the greatest contributing factors to Republican losses.

I've encountered a lot of people in my travels and I must say that I find it depressing how astonishingly ignorant most are in regards to all things political. I also find it amazing how readily these people parrot conventional wisdoms and clichés created by the mainstream media regardless of any factual basis....

.... Not only is the old media still more powerful, but they are - in my opinion - doing an effective job at marginalizing the new media. Conventional wisdoms created by the old media include: Fox News is a right wing news service, Talk radio consist of a bunch of mean spirited right wing nut-jobs, and the blogosphere is comprised of a bunch of pajama wearing wannabes that don't have any more credibility than any other source on the internet.

John Hinderaker notes:

I think he's mostly right. In my view, the old/mainstream/legacy/drive-by media have taken the gloves off, and have become more nakedly partisan than ever over the last two election cycles. I think this has a lot to do with the Democrats' victory on Tuesday.

From The American Thinker:

Can you imagine this election with an evenhanded media? The GOP would still be in control of Congress. Our foreign policy would still be robust, rather than maidenly. Our enemies abroad, like Ahmadinejad and Chirac, would not be having a good day today. And the constant revision of history—such as the “no WMD” slur—would not be crystallizing into received truth even now.

The New Media have not yet beaten the Old. They are making a difference, but the Old Liberal Media have protected their power, at the cost of major alienation from millions of America. Over time, the Old Media will continue to move to the Net, but the political debate will continue. The New Media have a voice, but not as powerful as ABCCBSNBCPBSNPR....

.... The media is the core institution of the Left, and it is striking that no Old Media outlet has moved to the Right—or even the Center—in the past fifteen years, while losing credibility and audience. So the Left has protected its existing fortress in the Old Media.

From Brent Bozell III at Townhall.com:

If we rigidly applied truth-in-advertising laws to the national media in their coverage of the 2006 campaign, we would have first declared that the stuff between the commercials wasn't "news" as much as a boatload of free infomercial advertising for the Democrats. The news reports should have led with the sentence, "I'm Nancy Pelosi, and I approved this newscast"....

.... I will say this unequivocally: In 25 years of looking at the national media, I have never seen a more one-sided, distorted, vicious presentation of news -- and non-news -- by the national media. They ought to be collectively ashamed. They have made a mockery out of the term "objective journalism" and a laughingstock of themselves at the idea that they should be considered objective journalists.

They distorted the record time and again with a blame-everything-on-Republican-misrule formula....

.... This was not an election campaign like 1994, when the networks spent weeks exploring how "bombastic and ruthless" Newt Gingrich would burn Washington down with the Contract With America should the GOP capture the House....

.... You think their coverage of Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi was fair and balanced? Then consider this jaw-dropping fact: Since Pelosi was elected as the House Democratic leader in November of 2002, all the way through to late October of 2006, the networks have not once described her as a "liberal." You read that correctly. Not once. That's not news coverage. That's a four-year masquerade party. In 1994, Gingrich was the "national poster boy for resentment and rage." In 2006, Pelosi was "a mother and a grandmother" who was "known for her trademark smile."....

.... The 2006 campaigns are over. It will go down as the year it was almost impossible to discern where the negative political commercials against Republicans ended and the news coverage began.

My thoughts on the 206 election results

I'll continue to say it until I'm blue in the face; I'm amazed at the success of the GOP in the face of a BDS inflicted, liberal MSM.

Sure the GOP dropped the ball on several key issues.

Yes, the American public has grown weary of the terrorist insurgency in Iraq.

Republicans in Congress grew fat & took far too many liberties that run counter to conservative values (pork, spending like drunken sailors, etc.).

And even corruption by a select few Republicans hurt us badly.

For all of that they deserved to be sent a message from the voting public.

However, the message that needed sent was NOT to give power to the current moonbats that now run the DNC.

But the main reason we got this election result, IMO, has more to do with the relentless slanders, smears, lies, distortions, deceit & calumny by the MSM. No issue that remotely relates to politics is presented to the American public accurately & in proper context. Sadly, the "newz" from the MSM is almost indistinguishable from typical DNC Talking Points. Unfortunately, the DNC today is unethical, immoral & embraces it's extreme base.

No matter how you slice it, most Americans still get all of their "newz" from the MSM. And the general public does not pay close attention to politics, etc. So they might know & even agree that there is media bias, but they have no clue how outrageous it really is. What they "know" is that Bush & the Republicans f¤¢ked up (insert liberal meme here), because those memes have been beaten into their heads 24/7.

History is rife with examples where the masses were misled into making some very bad choices yet they were convinced they were doing the right thing.

Knowing this, no one can convince me that if the MSM was not the media arm of the DNC, but simply an objective, non-partisan source of accurate news, the 2006 election would have been one of the final nails in the coffin for the DNC as we know it today.

Thus the title of this blog, "Perception is reality.... Regardless of the facts".

I'm still waiting...

... to hear the MSM get reactions from the military to John Kerry's latest slander.

Enact the President’s Code for Military Commissions

Another dishonest debate is rearing it's ugly head that will seriously hamper our ability to win the GWOT. Right now it's a few misguided Republican Senators. They want to hamstring our ability to bring illegal, enemy combatants to justice & take away legal & successful means of tough interrogation from these same folks who may have info vital to saving lives of innocents.

Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review Online has an excellent article on the subject today. Here's a snippet.

The universal, reciprocal chivalry that guided warriors, and nation-states, when young John McCain’s unflinching valor blazed its legend on the honor-roll of American heroes no longer obtains.

Now, the enemy is barbaric, and the only weapon is intelligence.

We confront a transnational terror network that projects force like a nation but slithers in the shadows — that gleefully dares a superpower’s shock-and-awe to create civilian charnel houses for a rabid global media. Bombing, after all, can get you only so far — especially if the enemies who most threaten you have embedded in London … or Manhattan. In this war, there is one overriding question: Where are they? Where are they so we can capture or kill them before they mass-murder us? Where are they so we can disrupt the next attack — the one with hi-tech weapons that could make 9/11 look like a training exercise?

Senator McCain and his entourage, Senators Lindsey Graham and John Warner, are making it ever more difficult to answer that question.....


Military commissions are Act II of this drama, a reprise of last year’s appearance by the GOP’s overwrought trio in the theater over “torture.” It was then that they saddled us with the ballyhooed “McCain Amendment.” This grandstanding legislation enabled them to rail about something that was already illegal, namely, torture, while paralyzing U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts by arming alien terrorists with Fifth Amendment rights … which, according to the Supreme Court’s 2000 Dickerson case, also include Miranda rights.

Back then, linear thinking not necessarily being a co-efficient of courage, McCain offered the dizzying rationale that forcible interrogation methods — including those which are “degrading” but fall well short of torture — must be barred because they never work … unless, of course, we were ever to capture a terrorist who had information about an imminent threat, in which case McCain figured his amendment would just be ignored and these methods that never work would be used to coerce information and thwart the attack. (I wrote about it here at the time.)

It should go without saying that no sentient official would put himself to the risks of McCain World. So down here on planet Earth, intelligence officers are now buying litigation insurance in anticipation of the war-crimes lawsuits to which these right-thinking senators have exposed them. And to steer clear of personal jeopardy, you can rest assured our agents will no longer be employing any tactic that might seem even arguably “degrading” (whatever that means). That is, they won’t be using methods that the president last week implied had wrung valuable information and saved lives. Who can blame them?....


On September 7, the New York Times reported that President Bush would “deny suspects and their lawyers the right to see classified evidence used against them.” That is about as disingenuous as it gets. In fact, under section 949(e) of the administration’s proposal, each accused terrorist will be assigned a military lawyer with sufficiently high security clearance to be given access to all of the trial evidence, no matter how sensitive and highly classified it may be. (“Military defense counsel shall be present and able to participate in all trial proceedings, and shall be given access to all evidence admitted[.]”)

Yes, a jihadist such as accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may not get to see every piece of the government’s case. And yes, if, in addition to his assigned military lawyer, Mohammed decided to retain the services of one of the countless American barristers tripping over himself to volunteer his services to al Qaeda (assuming said barrister is not too busy suing his own government for intercepting the enemy’s wartime phone calls), that private attorney might also be denied access if his security clearance was not sufficiently high. But that would not mean Mohammed was shut out.

A military lawyer, whose sworn duty is to represent the accused faithfully, would still get to review the evidence. That lawyer, who would have had the opportunity to discuss the case thoroughly with Mohammed, would be in a fine position to interpose any arguments in Mohammed’s favor, and to strike or minimize the effect of any sensitive information from which Mohammed himself was precluded.

Is there any realistic chance that this arrangement would undermine fairness? How likely is it that Mohammed — if he had seen the actual evidence — would come up with a winning argument that somehow eluded the highly trained military lawyer fervently representing him.....


It is a venerable axiom that a defendant is entitled to a fair trial, not a perfect one, for there are no perfect trials. How much imperfection we should abide depends on our level of confidence in the outcome. If, for example, the defendant were to get personal access to 95 percent of the prosecution’s case but be denied a few details — maybe the name of a witness who is still undercover and providing life-saving intelligence, or maybe a technical explanation of a secret method that was used to intercept relevant conversations — it is virtually certain that such a trial would be judged fair and reliable.....


We are not talking here about denying information simply to deny information — to spite jihadists, however much doing so might seem poetic justice. We are talking instead about protecting vital information that saves lives. We are talking about constructing a system that encourages foreign intelligence services to continue cooperating with us without fear that the secrets they divulge will be surrendered to the enemy in legal proceedings. We are talking about fighting and winning a war in which intelligence trumps all other assets.

Please, by all means, read it all.

Simply Amazing!

This photo was taken by a soldier in Afghanistan of a helo rescue mission. The pilot is a PA Guard guy who flies EMS choppers in civilian life. Now how many people on the planet you reckon could set the (back) end of a chopper down on the roof top of a shack on a steep mountain cliff and hold it there while soldiers load wounded men in the rear???

Hat tip to Neptunus Lex

The Plamegate Hall of Shame

Fred Barnes has an excellent article at The Weekly Standard today titled, "The Plamegate Hall of Shame". Next to Katrina, the MSM's handling of this story is as close as you can get to absolute proof of left wing media bias & journalistic malpractice as you can get.

The rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly no smear campaign against Joseph Wilson for criticizing President Bush's Iraq policy. It's as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country--by the media, by partisan opponents of the Bush administration, even by several Bush subordinates who betrayed the president and their White House colleagues. The hoax lingered for three years and is only now being fully exposed for what it was.

Fred covers all the culprits; Richard Armitage, Colin Powell, Patrick Fitzgerald, the Ashcroft Justice Department, Joseph Wilson & of course, the elite MSM. Fred succinctly lays out why each of them contributed to the problem, including the massive contributions by Joseph Wilson which Barnes ultimately concludes:

Wilson was a fraud. "It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously," the Washington Post editorialized sorrowfully last week.

But Fred Barnes lays the most serious blame right where it should be; with the left wing MSM:

* The media--especially the Washington Post and New York Times--relied heavily on Wilson's reckless and unfounded charges to wage journalistic jihad against the White House and Bush political adviser Karl Rove. Reporters and columnists, based on little more than Joe Wilson's harrumphing, bought the line that the White House "leaked" Plame's name to discredit her husband. In an editorial last January, the New York Times said the issue in the case "was whether the White House was using this information in an attempt to silence Mrs. Wilson's husband, a critic of the Iraq invasion, and in doing so violated a federal law against unmasking a covert operative." The paper's answer was yes.

So instead of Cheney or Rove or Libby, the perennial targets of media wrath, the Plamegate Hall of Shame consists of favorites of the Washington elite and the mainstream press. The reaction, therefore, has been zero outrage and minimal coverage. The appropriate step for the press would be to investigate and then report in detail how it got the story so wrong, just as the New York Times and other media did when they reported incorrectly that WMD were in Saddam's arsenal in Iraq. Don't hold your breath for this....

A few diehards in the media have tried to keep the conspiracy notion alive. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek asserts that what Armitage did and what Rove did were separate, and thus a White House smear campaign could still have gone on. Yes, but it didn't. Jeff Greenfield of CNN recalled a Post story in September 2003 that said "two top White House officials" had contacted six reporters "and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." But the Post itself has in effect repudiated this dubious story.

What's left to do? Fitzgerald, in decency, should terminate his probe immediately. And he should abandon the perjury prosecution of Libby, the former Cheney aide. Libby's foggy memory was no worse than that of Armitage, who forgot for two years to tell Fitzgerald he'd talked to the Post's Woodward but isn't being prosecuted. Last but not least, a few apologies are called for, notably by Powell and Armitage, but also by the press. A correction--perhaps the longest and most overdue in the history of journalism--is in order.

Please go read it all here.

NCLB

Below are some thoughts on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) from the Captain's Quarters blog. I'm not sure I completely agree with Ed. I certainly do not buy into anything the leftist, Bush hating NEA has to say about NCLB. I've read some very good things about NCLB that Bush accomplished while he was Governor of Texas. The results were outstanding, so much so that Bush brought the people who made NCLB work to Washington to impliment it. If I can find the articles, I'll link them later.

Another thing I clearly do not buy into the "unfunded mandate" meme. As Ed noted, the Bush Admin has increased Federal education funding over 130% in less than 6 years. I worked for ED/OIG until 2001. I can tell you with certainty that back then schools were receiving plenty of Federal funding before this 130% increase.

Funding from the Federal Gov't for most programs has always been supplemental (in addition to) & not a means to supplant (instead of) state or local funding. And believe me folks, I've seen every trick in the book to supplant every Fed education dollar for some program the school voluntarily chose to participate in. They want the cash, but they want to spend it elsewhere - and that frequently does not mean it went into the programs the school accepted the funds for or even physical improvements in the schools, textbooks, computers or any quantafiable improvement in educating the children. However, almost every Administrative Office I have visited was extremely well appointed (compared to the schools they administered). And based on how the Admin staff dresssed & the cars they drove, I have no doubt whatsoever that they were very well paid too.

The bottom line here is if you don't want to adhere to Federal regulations, you can always opt out & take no Federal funds. Then you can educate the children any way you please. But don't then throw out how important those Federal Education funds are when your original argument was that Federal funding was a joke.

Spellings: No Child Left Behind Just Needs Tweaking

By Captain Ed on Education
Captain's Quarters

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings spoke with reporters over coffee to mark the start of the new school year and to provide her perspective on the federal efforts to manage education. The hallmark policy of the Bush administration, No Child Left Behind, has accomplished what it set out to do, Spellings said, and just needs minor course corrections:

"I like to talk about No Child Left Behind as Ivory soap. It's 99.9 percent pure," Spellings told reporters over coffee. "There's not much needed in the way of changes. . . . As much grist as there was for the mill five years ago on various fronts . . . we've come a long way in a short time in a big system affecting 50 million kids."

In a casual meeting at the agency, and with no particular agenda, Spellings said she believes NCLB -- a law that requires annual student assessments -- simply needs tweaking, and she emphasized that it is time to take it to the next level of development. Critics have long complained that the compliance requirements for NCLB puts too much stress on state resources and educators, many of whom say they must teach to the test at the expense of other learning.

"We need to take a look at our data across the whole spectrum and we ought to say -- for people who say, 'Wah, wah, we can't have spelling bees because we have to focus on math and reading' -- let's measure the spelling," she said. "Let's ask ourselves not how many are barely getting over the bar, but how many are acing the test. . . . Now that we have the infrastructure in place, we can ask ourselves a fuller range of questions about kids and how they are doing."

My perspective on education is that it should be left to local school districts and the states as a last resort. Part of the reason that we have so much trouble with literacy in our schools today is because of national movements that changed schools five decades or so ago, using untried teaching methods in math and reading that replaced proven strategies that had created a fine system of public schools over a century. Increasing federalization only means that the same kinds of impulses that transformed public schools from places of learning to self-esteem workshops will continue to impact our children and grandchildren.

However, at least NCLB has the right idea, even though it represents another poorly-funded federal mandate that drives conservatives batty. Objective testing of skills should continue, but even that would not be necessary if our schools did not rely on social promotion. Teachers flunked students who weren't ready for the next grade level before schools started worring about socialization ahead of education. The plethora of high-school students who cannot read or write above a grade-school level demonstrates the damage that these policies have created, especially considering the amount of teacher involvement it takes to handle the low-performing students. That takes away from the students who are ready to improve themselves to their grade level and beyond. Most high schools now have to offer at least three tracks of coursework: remedial, normal, and advanced placement. Remedial education tracks exist at the high-school level because of a failure to address the problems in grade school.

We have increased education spending by over 130% in the Bush administration. For that kind of money, Spellings and Bush had better hope that Johnny can read, write, and earn some of that money back.

Ya! That's the Ticket!

A Primer on Polling

The article below on polling is interesting. They cover several of the basics that can lead to disastrously bad poll results that turn perceptions into reality all too often. It is particularly interesting if you understand how the MSM knows most of the items discussed in the article & uses this knowledge to their advantage (even though the article implies otherwise). What's interesting here is that even though this article points out four key ways polling data can be highly inaccurate & unreliable (False Precision, Sampling Error, Questions & Answers), the conservative blogosphere has documented the MSM engaging in numerous examples of each of these polling faux pas.

Since this article is from the MSM, it unfortunately doesn't tell some of the dirtiest tricks they use to get the desired results. Among them would be over sampling libs & all demographics favorable to them, with the corresponding under sampling of conservatives. Another is keeping pollsters on a shoestring budget with all the inherent problems this article describes. Since the polls are done cheaply, the MSM controls the limited questions that are asked.

Another item not discussed; Since several different media outlets are all polling the same types of polling data on a regular basis, they can cherry pick results they like from the various polls & ignore results they don't like - Hey! You'll never know what they aren't telling you, right?

And of course the MSM brow beats their audience 24/7 with all the "newz" they deem fit to mislead you with until they are ready to poll the results.

Since the MSM adamantly refuses to accept the fact they are deeply biased, most of them are blind to how this all plays out. Think of it as you would with any person you know who tends to lie a lot. You know they lie since you have caught them doing it. Every time they are caught red handed & confronted they adamantly deny it. That's how powerful denial can be. In reality, both you & this person knows full well they lie, but for some reason the liar almost always is able to remain in denial of the full nature of their problem.

This article also includes lefty bias on several of the subjects they discuss as well (opinion stated as fact of course). Stuff like that tends to happen when you live & work in a cocoon that's in denial of reality - your bias is right there for us to see.

Precisely False vs. Approximately Right: A Reader’s Guide to Polls

By JACK ROSENTHAL
The Public Editor

LAST March, the American Medical Association reported an alarming rate of binge drinking and unprotected sex among college women during spring break. The report was based on a survey of “a random sample” of 644 women and supplied a scientific-sounding “margin of error of +/– 4.00 percent.” Television, columnists and comedians embraced the racy report. The New York Times did not publish the story, but did include some of the data in a chart.

The sample, it turned out, was not random. It included only women who volunteered to answer questions — and only a quarter of them had actually ever taken a spring break trip. They hardly constituted a reliable cross section, and there is no way to calculate a margin of sampling error for such a “sample.”

The Times published a correction explaining the misrepresentation, and the news media that used the story would probably agree with what Cliff Zukin, a Rutgers authority on polls, told Mystery Pollster, a polling blog: how unfair it is to publish a story “suggesting that college students on spring break are largely drunken sluts.”

The story also threatened larger harm. Its general point was indisputable; vacationing collegians often behave recklessly. But there was a larger recklessness in the misrepresentation of the survey. Now that everyone has a phone and calls are cheap, polling organizations have blossomed, and each such example of bad polls risks undermining public confidence in good ones.

Another example surfaced last week in The Wall Street Journal. It examined a “landmark survey,” conducted for liquor retailers, claiming to show that “millions of kids” buy alcohol online. A random sample? The pollster paid the teenage respondents and included only Internet users.

Such misrepresentations help explain why The Times recently issued a seven-page paper on polling standards for editors and reporters. “Keeping poorly done survey research out of the paper is just as important as getting good survey research into the paper,” the document said.

These standards, coming just as the fall campaign heats up, provide a timely reminder of responsible journalism. But the best of intentions are not always met in practice, at The Times or in other media. The standards do not, for instance, discuss how even a punctilious poll story can be given inflated prominence. There is no reason, in any case, to limit such cautions to journalists. Readers, too, need to know something about polls — at least enough to sniff out good polls from bad. Here’s a brief guide.


False Precision

Beware of decimal places. When a polling story presents data down to tenths of a percentage point, what the pollster almost always demonstrates is not precision but pretension. A recent Zogby Interactive poll, for instance, showed that the candidates for the Senate in Missouri were separated by 3.8 percentage points. Yet the stated margin of sampling error meant the difference between the candidates could be seven points. The survey would have to interview unimaginably many thousands for that zero point eight to be useful.

Experienced researchers offer a rule of thumb: rather than trust improbably precise numbers, round them off. Even better, look for whole fractions.


Sampling Error

The Times and other media accompany poll reports with a box explaining how the random sample was selected and stating the sampling error. Error is actually a misnomer. What this figure actually describes is a range of approximation.

There’s also a formula for calculating the error in comparing one survey with another. For instance, last May, a Times/CBS News survey found that 31 percent of the public approved of President Bush’s performance; in the survey published last Wednesday, the number was 36 percent. Is that a real change? Yes. After adjustment for comparative error, the approval rating has gained by at least one point.

For a typical election sample of 1,000, the error rate is plus or minus three percentage points for each candidate, meaning that a 50-50 race could actually differ by 53 to 47. But the three-point figure applies only to the entire sample. How many of those are likely voters? In the recent Connecticut primary, 40 percent of eligible Democrats voted. Even if a poll identified the likely voters perfectly, there still would be just 400 of them, and the error rate for that number would be plus or minus five points. So to win confidence, a finding would have to exceed 55 to 45.

This caution applies forcefully to conclusions about other subgroups. What could a typical survey tell about, say, college-age women? Out of a random sample of 1,000, a little more than half would be women and only about 70 would be of college age. That’s too small a subsample to support any but the most general findings.


Questions

How questions are phrased can mean wide shifts, even with wholly neutral words. Men respond poorly, for instance, to questions asking if they are “worried” about something, so careful pollsters will ask if they are “concerned.”

The classic “double negative” example came in July 1992, when a Roper poll asked, “Does it seem possible or does it seem impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?” The finding: one of every five Americans seemed to doubt that there was a Holocaust. How much did that startling finding result from the confusing question? In a follow-up survey, Roper asked a clearer question, and the number of doubters plunged from the original 22 percent to 1 percent.

Extreme questions are fine if the poll asks questions at both extremes, says Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll and author of “Polling Matters,” an authoritative 2004 book on this subject. The difference between the answers “can give us good insights into evolving social norms,” he says. “All data are interesting.”

In any case, Warren Mitofsky, head of a leading international polling company, observes that “for political surveys, most of the questions have been asked for many years, have been tested and are not the source of error.”

The order of questions is another source of potential error. That’s illustrated by questions asked by the Pew Research Center. Andrew Kohut, its president, says: “If you first ask people what they think about gay marriage, they are opposed. They vent. And if you then ask what they think about civil unions, a majority support that.”


Answers

People never wish to look uninformed and will often answer questions despite ignorance of the subject. Some 40 years into the cold war, many respondents were still saying yes, Russia is a member of NATO. That’s why, says Rob Daves, head of the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers, skillful pollsters will first ask, for new or sophisticated subjects, a scaling question like, How much do you know about this issue: a great deal, some, not at all?

Respondents also want to appear to be good citizens. When the Times/CBS News Poll asks voters if they voted in the 2004 presidential election, 73 percent say yes. Shortly after the election, however, the Census Bureau reported that only 64 percent of the eligible voters actually voted.

Jon Krosnick, an authority on polling and politics at Stanford, uses the term “satisficing” to describe behavior when a pollster calls. If people find the subject compelling, they become engaged. If not, they answer impatiently. Either way, says Kathy Frankovich, director of surveys for CBS News, “people grab the first thing that comes to mind.”


Intensity

How strongly people feel about an issue may be the most important source of poll misunderstanding. In survey after survey, half the respondents favor stronger gun controls — but don’t care nearly as much as the 10 percent who want them relaxed.

Intensity can be measured by asking a scaled question: Is the issue of abortion so important that you will cast your vote because of a candidate’s position? One of several important issues? Not important? Each added question increases the interview length, testing the respondent’s patience and the pollster’s budget. Nevertheless, on divisive issues, responsible pollsters will ask four, five, even a dozen questions, probing for true feelings.

Public opinion is not precise, and in any case it is constantly churning. Measuring it cannot hope to be precise. What readers can hope for, whether in an individual poll, a consensus from several polls or from the polling profession generally, is the truth — approximately right.

Jack Rosenthal, president of The New York Times Company Foundation, was a senior editor of The Times for 26 years. Byron Calame, the public editor, is on vacation.

Rumsfeld tells it like it is

THE WILL TO WIN

DOES THE WEST STILL HAVE IT?

By DONALD RUMSFELD
NEW YORK POST
Opinion
August 30, 2006

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is adapted from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's speech yesterday at the American Legion National Convention.

THE American Legion has achieved a great deal for our country since its founding in the months following World War I.

That year, 1919 turned out to be one of those pivotal junctures in modern history - the beginning of a period where, over time, a very different set of views would come to dominate discourse and thinking in the West. A sentiment took root that contended that, if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be appeased, then the carnage and destruction of World War I might be avoided.

It was, as Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

There was a strange innocence. Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator's reaction in September 1939, upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II: "Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided." Think of that.

Once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism.

Today, another enemy - a different kind of enemy - has also made clear its intentions - in places like New York, Bali, London and Madrid. But many have still not learned history's lessons.

We need to face the following questions:

* With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased?

* Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?

* Can we truly afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply "law enforcement" problems, rather than fundamentally different threats, requiring fundamentally different approaches?

* And can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America - not the enemy - is the real source of the world's trouble?

We hear every day of new plans, new efforts, to murder Americans and other free people. Indeed, the plot recently discovered that would have killed hundreds - possibly thousands - of innocents on planes from Britain to the United States should have demonstrated to all that the enemy is serious, lethal and relentless.

But we find ourselves in a strange time:

* When a database search of America's leading newspapers turns up 10 times as many mentions of one soldier at Abu Ghraib who was punished for misconduct than mentions of Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the War on Terror.

* When a Newsweek senior editor disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our Armed Forces as a "mercenary army."

* When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein's crimes when he was in power so CNN could stay in Iraq.

* And when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay - which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans, and is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare - as "the gulag of our times."

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and lies and distortions being told about our troops and our country. This watchdog role is even more important today in a war that is to a great extent fought in the global media - to not allow the lies and the myths be repeated without question or challenge, so that at least the second and third draft of history will be more accurate than the quick first allegations.

In this "long war," any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.

Our enemy knows this well. They frequently invoke the names of Beirut and Somalia - places they see as examples of American retreat and weakness. And as we have seen most recently in Lebanon, they design attacks and manipulate the media to try to demoralize public opinion. They doctor photographs of casualties, use civilians as human shields and then provoke an outcry when civilians are accidentally killed in their midst.

The good news is that most of the American people, though understandably influenced by what they read and see in the media, have inner gyroscopes and good centers of gravity.

And I am confident that over time they will evaluate what is happening and come to wise conclusions.

One soldier, who recently volunteered for a second tour in Iraq, likely captured the feelings of many of his peers. In an e-mail to friends, he wrote:

"I ask that you never take advantage of the liberties guaranteed by the shedding of free blood, never take for granted the freedoms granted by our Constitution. For those liberties would be merely ink on paper were it not for the sacrifice of generations of Americans who heard the call of duty and responded heart, mind and soul with 'Yes, I will.'"

I believe the question is not whether we can win. It is whether we have the will to persevere. I believe that Americans do have that steel. And that we have learned the lessons of history, the folly of turning a blind eye to danger, and of ignoring our responsibilities.

Oh ya, it's this bad

Why we don't believe you

By Mary Katharine Ham
Townhall.com Columnist
Monday, August 28, 2006

Does the mainstream press ever wonder why conservatives distrust them so much?

If so, they need look no further than the “fauxtography” scandals of the last couple of weeks. Conservative bloggers have been hard at work sniffing out suspected fakery and staging in the photos sent back on the newswires from the Israel/Hezbollah conflict, and the investigation got pretty smelly.

First, there was Reutersgate, in which the international news organization had to pull a photo and fire a freelance photographer because he clumsily Photoshopped thicker smoke into the skyline of Beirut.

This incident got bloggers wondering what other photographic evidence of Israeli aggression had been Photoshopped or staged into existence, and just how complicit the news media was in the fakery. They came up with a photo by the same Reuters photographer, in which he had added flares to a photograph of an Israeli plane, and called them missiles.

But that was just the beginning. There was Green Helmet Guy, who seemed to be ever-present at the sites of Israeli “atrocities,” always making the most of the evidence of civilian casualties. He even played director to international news crews and photographers, showing them how to get the best shots of Lebanese casualties.

Then there was the “Passion of the Toys,” in which brand-new toys—poignant symbols of childhood innocence—seemed to keep popping up, perfectly framed by the destruction of war, yet strangely unscathed by it.

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. Later came the “unluckiest multiple home owner in Lebanon,” photographed on several occasions, weeping in front of her several homes, bombed by several Israeli airstrikes. Then, we have the New York Times’ pieta, in which a rescue worker was carelessly identified as a victim of an airstrike when, in fact, he had been injured while working in the area. And, the flaming tire atrocity. And, the time Hezbollah bombed an Israeli ship in Australia.

Finally, this week, there was the ambulance attack that maybe wasn’t. There’s strong evidence to suggest that the two ambulances allegedly hit by Israeli airstrikes on July 23 were not exactly pulverized by missiles, as we were led to believe.

Reuters fired its fake photographer, which was the correct response to such deception. But, beyond that, there has not been much comeuppance for photographers and reporters involved in airbrushed, faked, and staged news.

The mainstream media’s response to the allegations from blogs has been more along the lines of Greg Mitchell’s, editor of Editor & Publisher, a trade magazine whose mission it is to cover “all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.”

Mitchell’s response to accusations from bloggers—instead of answering the charges and refuting evidence—was to get very defensive, claim that “rightwing bloggers” were only attempting to smear photojournalists as a group, and then proceed to smear rightwing bloggers as a group for daring to point out the dishonesty of some photojournalists, and raise questions about how business is conducted in the Middle East.

You can see Mitchell’s response to the accusations, here and here. You can see the deconstruction thereof, here and here. All are worth a read to really understand how the mainstream media deals with accusations of fraud, and how cavalierly it tosses aside some of its most avid consumers’ concerns. Here’s a typical paragraph from one of Mitchell’s pieces:

Time does not permit a point by point documentation of the dozens of ludicrous, or at least completely unproven, examples of doctored or staged or otherwise manipulated photos on the Web. Have no fear, I will soon return to this subject, but in the meantime, feel free to plunge into the blogosphere. If you go deeply enough, you may feel you are back on the Grassy Knoll. One of the most-linked sites in this controversy, EU Referendum, goes so far as to suggest that a kind of Hollywood "film-set" was improvised at the site of the Qana killings "for the benefit of both Hezbollah and the media."

I would highly recommend you go through the links I’ve listed above and decide for yourself whether the accusations are “ludicrous,” particularly the video of a Hollywood film-set improvised at the site of the Qana killing, “for the benefit of both Hezbollah and the media.”

Instead of addressing concerns and refuting evidence, Mitchell calls bloggers a bunch of Grassy Knoll-ers intent on discrediting “the media as a whole.” This is not the way to win trust with your audience.

Mitchell then went on to discredit himself within the space of just a couple hours.

On Friday, the Confederate Yankee blog brought attention to a column Mitchell had written in 2003, in which he confessed to making up news as a young reporter. He had been sent out to do a story on Niagara Falls, and found himself unable to talk to tourists to get quotes. So, he sat on a bench and made the quotes up. He confessed his journalistic sin in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.

Many other blogs picked up on the 2003 column, suggesting that Mitchell might be sympathetic to faked news because he himself had been a faker.

Several hours after Confederate Yankee’s post went up, that blogger noticed the text of the 2003 article had been changed. The lede had gone from this:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

To this (additions in bold):

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

The column had been edited, without notation, within a couple of hours of bloggers calling attention to it, to emphasize Mitchell’s youth and inexperience at the time of his ethical faux pas. Luckily, several bloggers and the Internet preserved the original piece.

So, it seems someone went back and altered a three-year-old column to reflect more positively on Mitchell, once it got a bit of attention from the “Grassy Knoll,” “rightwing bloggers.” Makes all those “ludicrous” accusations of dishonesty of the mainstream press seem not so ludicrous, doesn’t it?

Mitchell now has not just his industry’s malfeasance to answer for, but his own malfeasance, which he admitted to in a 2003 column, and which was then compounded when someone altered his three-year-old copy to protect him.

Changing copy three years after it has been published, without providing a “correction” or “clarification” note, is entirely unethical by the very standards of the newspaper industry Mitchell is charged with covering. Dan Riehl, another blogger, has evidence that Mitchell may have been altering copy in his latest E&P column, as well.

Rightwing bloggers are predisposed to distrust the media, as are most conservatives. The fauxtographers and defenders like Mitchell are giving us no reason to be encouraged. The mainstream press’ stock is in credibility. The right course is to answer, quickly and thoroughly, any credible charges against them, so as to preserve that stock.

Instead, with the notable exceptions of David Perlmutter and Jim Pinkerton, the mainstream media seems content to blame it all on the Grassy Knoll while half of its readers find news coverage is greener on the other side.

This is why we don’t believe you.

Editor's note: In the third paragraph of this story, I goofed and wrote the word "complacent," instead of "complicit." It has been corrected.

Why we should stay

And why we should win. William J. Stuntz has an article in the Weekly Standard today titled, "Will We Choose to Win in Iraq?". William's article is one of the most articulate, well reasoned articles about the situation in Iraq I have read in a long time. Please read it all.

While he makes many excellent points, one of the largest things that have caused more harm than just about anything else is the following:

In this war, the Western press is a willing accomplice of the West's enemies. The effect on local opinion may not matter, but the effect on European and American voters may be huge.

Some of the most influential & respected media outlets in the country, relentlessly & intentionally mislead Americans just so they can further their agenda. And that agenda is not what is in the best interest of this country. Sadly most of our MSM has a serious case of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS). Their zeal to harm the Bush Admin by any means necessary has clouded their judgement to the point that they are unable to see the real damage they have caused.

And don't think that their litany of slanders, smears & perfidy have not had a negative effect on the GWOT (which does include Iraq). Just consider the single issue of how they have given aid & comfort to the enemy (this is but one of many ways they have undermined the GWOT). The terrorists know that thanks to the MSM, they are winning the media war decisively. And that is a critical aspect of this war that absolutely must be won if we are to succeed.

The fact that the Bush Admin has been able to prosecute the GWOT (yes it DOES include Iraq) as successfully as they have in spite of the MSM's treachery, is a tribute to his leadership & the dedication of our military.

Hypocrisy at the NEA

I'm sure you're shocked! Shocked! Now with the many serious issues that need to be addressed in order to improve our nations schools what issue do you think the NEA would make their #1 priority? Well, Alan Sears at Townhall.com alerts us to the following:

Well, they figured it out. And, really, faced with so many incredible challenges, their priority makes sense. This is, after all, the NEA. They know the classroom. They know the teachers. They know the real challenges of education.

Which is why their elected leaders decided that, before anything else, the first thing our teachers have to do is win popular support for homosexual “marriage.”

That’s right. The all-knowing members of the NEA decided that what our kids need to know – more than math, geography, grammar, science, or computer skills – is what men and men see in each other, why women and women fall in love, and what our government and society “owes” those who practice homosexual behavior.

Now I doubt that even a small minority of Americans would pick homosexuality & sam-sex-marriage to even be on the agenda of what is taught to our nations youth. Most likely the NEA knew this too.

That’s why they’re taking the matter out of your hands. Listen, when the world’s largest teacher’s union elects to endorse same-sex “marriage,” they’re not talking tacit support. They’re talking posters and projects, classroom lectures and guest speakers, testimonials and textbooks – at every grade level, and in every public school, in every school district in America.

It makes you wonder if the NEA bothered to think any further than ramming their liberal agenda down our throats.

What if a teacher or principal objects to same-sex unions, for reasons of personal faith or experience? What if said educator doesn’t want his (often mandatory) NEA dues going to support those who promote homosexual behavior? What if parents don’t want their children learning about sex (or sexual politics) at school? What if children are ill-equipped, mentally or emotionally, to handle the information presented by a zealous instructor?

Either the NEA has considered, and dismissed, these questions – in which case the group that wants to exert the most significant impact on America’s teachers, parents, and children turns out to have no real concern or compassion for our teachers, parents, or children... or else the union has not considered these crucial questions, in which case... ditto.

Either way, the academic needs of children are no longer as much a priority for this organization as the political agenda of those who engage in homosexual behavior.

It looks like the NEA has opened up a can of worms with little or no concern about the consequences. Alan notes that NEA leadership is just taking this to the next level whether we like it or not:

Actually, that’s not anything new for the teachers’ union. The NEA has been working hand-in-glove for years with aggressive promoters of homosexual behavior. Indeed, former NEA president Bob Chase is a member of the board of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educational Network), and once defended NEA’s force-feeding of the homosexual agenda to children by warning that:

“Some critics want the public schools to be an agent of moral doctrine, condemning children and adults when they are not in accord with Biblical precepts.”


Say what? And how does that justify the NEA ramming their morality down the throats of children who are in school to get an education, not an indoctrination into liberalism?


But if the NEA objects to teaching moral doctrines … how do they justify teaching immoral doctrines? If they’re against teaching creationism, for example, for its spiritual implications, how can they favor sex education classes that indoctrinate even very young children with homosexual advocacy?

How can they bar prayers, ministers and Christian clubs from campus, while organizing school assemblies, demonstrations, and classroom visits featuring homosexual and transgender “role models?”

Clearly, the NEA has rejected its prima facie identity as the representative of America’s teachers, in favor of a new raison d’etre: brainwashing schoolchildren into acceptance of, and even indulgence in, homosexual behavior. For the union’s leaders, there will be no rest until families all over the country not only acknowledge, but embrace and endorse the homosexual agenda.

It’s as simple as A-B-C. What those pressing that agenda cannot win at the ballot box, they will win in the minds of the next generation... one vulnerable child at a time.

Gee, I wonder why this is the first I'm hearing about this. You'd think the MSM would want the world to know about any major change in NEA policy, particularly one as controversial as this? Could it be that the MSM agrees with the NEA & knows that most Americans would be none too happy to learn about these shennanigans?

What other reason for the vast media blackout could there be?

Polls, what are they good for?

Absolutely nothing! At least when they are the ones bought & paid for by the MSM. This time the New York Times does their best to affect the November elections by misleading the public with another bogus poll.

The poll found that 51 percent of those surveyed saw no link between the war in Iraq and the broader antiterror effort, a jump of 10 percentage points since June. That increase comes despite the regular insistence of Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans that the two are intertwined and should be seen as complementary elements of a strategy to prevent domestic terrorism.

Should the trend hold, the rising skepticism could present a political obstacle for Mr. Bush and his allies on Capitol Hill, who are making their record on terrorism a central element of the midterm election campaign. The Republicans hope that by expressing a desire for forceful action against terrorists, they can offset unease with the Iraq war and blunt the political appeal of Democratic calls to establish a timeline to withdraw American troops.

Of course the NYT already knows that the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee & the Iraq Survey Group, ET AL, have irrefutably proven time & time again that Saddam's Iraq harbored, financed, trained & conspired with terrorists, including al qaeda.

Of course the NYT, like the rest of the MSM got a sudden case of amnesia right around the first Tuesday in November, 2000. You see prior to the election of George Bush, the MSM had no problems educating the public about Saddam & his terrorist ties. And now that they have spent the last six years misinforming the public about those ties, they now have a bogus poll that want to mislead you with in the hopes it will affect voting in the upcoming election.

Of course it's easy to get a 10 point jump from the June poll. Just rig it more than you did the last time. Do a better job leading the respondents to the answer you want with leading questions. Make sure the poll is of adults and not likely voters. In typical fashion over sample libs & under sample conservatives. Just to male sure you get the desired results, over sample every single demographic favoring libs & under sample those favoring conservatives. And in the interim, don't forget to mislead the public as often as possible by telling then there were no terrorist connections in Saddam's Iraq until after the Eeeeevil Bush Admin invaded.


Then write your triumphant article knowing you have done your best to lead the voting public by the nose.

Who the Hell are They?

Who are Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig & why the hell should I care?

Good question.

Any time a journalist is kidnapped, goes missing, is injured or killed the elite MSM fall all over themselves with 24/7 reporting about the fate of their fellow journalist. We continue to hear about them ad nauseam until the story has drawn to its conclusion.

Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig are journalists. They were kidnapped in Gaza City more than a week ago. What?! You didn't know that?

Bottom line, if they were from CNN, AP, Reuters or one of the networks by now we'd know their names intimately, how long they've been held hostage along with every other possible factoid. There's a reason why these journalists are being treated differently - they are from FoxNews.

... Fox has deliberately set itself apart from other news media. Starting at the top with Roger Ailes, the Fox sales pitch has been to deride other media, to declare itself the one source of the real truth, the sole source of 'fair and accurate' news reporting. As a result, there's not a reservoir of kinship or good will with Fox on the part of the rest of the news media. You can't keep insulting people and then expect friendship when you need it.

Uh huh. Leftists in the MSM are that unhinged. The above was a portion of a letter from Bob Laurence, TV critic for the San Diego Union-Tribune discussing why there is almost no MSM coverage of the two Fox journalists. What's so amazing from that response is that they actually believe the very lies they themselves propagated.

Michelle Malkin responded to that leftist screed thusly;

First, it's "fair and balanced." Second, what news organization doesn't posit itself the best source of news in an aggressive media world? Third, Laurence and his ilk's inability to set aside contempt for, or envy of, a successful competitor during a crisis is a damning indictment that speaks for itself.

Left wing bias? They report. I deride.

What won't they do?

The guys at Power Line expose another unbelievable angle the BDS inflicted left employs in their zeal to damage the Bush Admin by any means necessary. In a post titled, "What Else Are They Keeping Silent About?", John Hinderaker notes that:

The Swedish Foreign Ministry was delegated to investigate who knew what about corruption in the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq. The report has now been made public by a Swedish radio station. It says that Ole Kolby, Norway's U.N. ambassador at the time and head of the sanctions committee, knew about the program's corruption but "remained quiet for fear of angering Iraq and big companies involved in the program."

Then John cites the justification used to cover up the horrific corruption at the UN, perhaps the largest fraud ever perpetrated in history:

Henrik Thune of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs told Aftenposten that Kolby was caught between competing interests, including fear of fueling the push for war in the Bush administration if he revealed corruption in the Oil for Food program.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Here we had head of the sanctions committee, Ole Kolby (Norway's U.N. ambassador) intentionally covering up massive corruption at the UN while simultaneously covering up Saddam's massive fraud. Saddam used the illegal kickbacks from the Oil-for-Food Program to bribe UN bureaucrats & foreign governments to weaken/end UN Sanctions & keep the US from taking action against Iraq. He used it to bribe politicians & the media to get favorable coverage in the media & to counter the US attempts to bring Iraq back into full unconditional compliance with UN Resolutions. And Saddam used some of those proceeds to buy illegal arms, materials & equipment to upgrade his WMD Programs. We're talking many, many tens of billions of dollars in fraud here folks.

This sanctimonious leftist was more concerned about thwarting the Bush Admin than in performing his sworn duties as head of the sanctions committee & UN ambassador. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this information alone would be sufficient justification for Saddam's removal & to bring about a thorough house cleaning at the UN.

This is an excellent example of the depraved depths the 'by any means necessary' crowd will go to further their agenda. If their position is so superior & the Bush Admin really is as Eeeevil as they "feel" it is; why do they need to repeatedly commit so many acts of perfidy to make their case? Keep this in mind whenever your favorite leftist tells you how Eeeevil & corrupt the Bush Admin purportedly is & how the UN is some shining utopian example of global consensus that solves the worlds problems. But I digress....

John continues:

It seems that the Bush bogeyman can be trotted out to justify just about any sort of malfeasance.

This is reminiscent of the recent admission by Kevin Drum, a rather prominent liberal, especially on the web, that he refrains from writing about the threat posed by Iran because doing so would help the Bush administration. One wonders how much of the "reality" reported in the news is influenced by the determination of both politicians and journalists not to mention the facts that tend to support the reasonableness of, and necessity for, the Bush administration's policies.

It seems revelations like this never end. This is from the very same people who repeatedly & intentionally misinformed the public by asserting we couldn't trust the Bush Admin because they "cherry picked" intel & "manipulated" data in order to "mislead" us into war. Yet here we are again exposing them as the corrupt liars who intentionally withheld critical information in order to mislead the public. They've done it in the past they continue to do it today.

Ouch!

From the blog, Blonde Sagacity comes the post, "President Hillary --Is She Picking up Steam?". And she includes this pic:



Read what ALa has to say here.

WMD's for Dummies

Whenever one of your leftist peers brings up the tired old lie that there were no WMD's in Iraq, or that removing Saddam was unjustified because there were no "stockpiles" of WMD's in Iraq, have them go here & follow the links - ALL of them.

NOTE: I have shamelessly plagiarized blog entries & articles from all over to compile this massive collection of evidence that thoroughly refutes every single lie the unhinged left has concocted regarding WMD's.

If there's one thing you can count on these days is that hard core leftists can be stereotyped. They all have a rigorous aversion to all facts that utterly destroy the lies they have meticulously & unscrupulously manufactured to bring down the Bush Admin with. I'm just doing my part to help disabuse them of their many, many alternate realities.

Update: More here, here, here & here.

Judicial Activism Runs Amok - Terrorists Win

It appears that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor controversial ruling in the NSA warrantless wiretap case has more to do with Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) that sound legal principles. The Washington Post notes:

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ordered a halt to the wiretap program, secretly authorized by President Bush in 2001, but both sides in the lawsuit agreed to delay that action until a Sept. 7 hearing. Legal scholars said Taylor's decision is likely to receive heavy scrutiny from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit when the Justice Department appeals, and some criticized her ruling as poorly reasoned.....

Several dozen lawsuits have been filed around the country challenging the program's legality, but yesterday's ruling marked the first time that a judge had ruled it unconstitutional. Experts in national security law argued, however, that Taylor offered meager support for her findings on separation of powers and other key issues.

"Regardless of what your position is on the merits of the issue, there's no question that it's a poorly reasoned decision," said Bobby Chesney, a national security law specialist at Wake Forest University who takes a moderate stance on the legal debate over the NSA program. "The opinion kind of reads like an outline of possible grounds to strike down the program, without analysis to fill it in."

To give you an idea how bad this ruling was, even the left leaning Washington Post's editors, who believe Bush has overstepped his authority with the NSA Surveillance Program, chimed in with an article titled, "A Judicial Misfire":

Unfortunately, the decision yesterday by a federal district court in Detroit, striking down the NSA's program, is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting. The angry rhetoric of U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor will no doubt grab headlines. But as a piece of judicial work -- that is, as a guide to what the law requires and how it either restrains or permits the NSA's program -- her opinion will not be helpful.

Judge Taylor's opinion is certainly long on throat-clearing sound bites. "There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," she thunders. She declares that "the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution." And she insists that Mr. Bush has "undisputedly" violated the First and Fourth Amendments, the constitutional separation of powers, and federal surveillance law.

But the administration does, in fact, vigorously dispute these conclusions. Nor is its dispute frivolous.... [T]hese are complicated, difficult issues. Judge Taylor devotes a scant few pages to dismissing them, without even discussing key precedents.

Of course leftist politicians & activists were ecstatic:

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and other leading Democrats hailed the ruling as a welcome check on the Bush administration. The decision shows that "no one is above the law," Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero called the decision "another nail in the coffin" of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism strategies. "The judge very clearly points out that this, at its core, is about presidential powers," he said.

Judge Taylor was appointed to the bench in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. people far smarter than me have read her decision & concluded that this leftist Judge's ruling is not only flawed & goes against previous rulings on the use of warrantless wiretaps by the Executive Branch, but it is dripping with emotions & anger typical of the BDS afflicted left.

Scott at Power Line notes:

In a sense, however, there isn't much to dissect. The opinion is almost devoid of analysis on the key constitutional provisions it relies upon (the court more or less ducks the issue of whether the intercept program is consistent with FISA and completely dodges the issue of whether the president has the inherent power to authorize the intercepts; it reasons that the Constitution trumps the statute (page 39) and that the president lacks the inherent power to violate specific constitutional provisions (pages 40-41)). It is part of my job as a litigator (and has been for more than 30 years) to read and understand judicial opinions. Off hand, I cannot recall reading an opinion as conclusory and content free as the key portions of this opinion.

Consider the court's treatment of the First Amendment. ... without any discussion of whether the government has shown... [the required] interest, she finds a First Amendment violation. Her only rationale is that the president "has undisputedly violated the Fourth [Amendment] in failing to procure judicial orders as required by FISA, and accordingly, has violated the First Amendment rights of these Plaintiffs as well." (page 33)

What, then, is the court's basis for finding that the president "undisputedly" has violated the Fourth Amendment? Here again, the court doesn't tell us.... the judge simply concludes that "the wiretapping program here. . .has indisputably been implemented without regard to FISA and of course the more stringent standards of Title II, and obviously in violation of the Fourth Amendment."

One begins to note some circularity here. The intercept program violates the Fourth Amendment because (I guess) it was implemented without regard to FISA. It violates the First Amendment (I guess) because it violates the Fourth Amendment. And we don't need a full analysis of whether the program can be reconciled with FISA because it violates the First and Fourth Amendments.

Readers may recall that, unlike my partners, I think it's probably a close question whether the NSA program is lawful. Thus, I would have been eager to read and engage a well-reasoned decision that struck down (or affirmed) the program. Unfortunately, this court provided virtually no reasoning at all.

JOHN adds: I recall being taught as a preschooler that "just because" isn't a good argument.

Scott at Power Line cuts right to the chase:

Anyone who knows what legal analysis and legal argument look like -- anyone who knows the requisites of legal reasoning -- must look on the handiwork of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in the NSA case in amazement. It is a pathetic piece of work. If it had been submitted by a student in my second year legal writing class at the University of St. Thomas Law School, it would have earned a failing grade.

Captain Ed says:

Taylor's opinion .... is filled with scolding rhetoric but not much else. She comes across as so anxious to be the first to strike down the program that she marches right past the standing of the plaintiffs, which seems questionable, to agreement with every point raised by their attorneys....

Unless Taylor heard evidence that these men knowingly communicated with terrorists, it seems a stretch to accept their standing to sue over the program. (Congress would have had standing in any case, but Congress did not sue after polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly supported the program.)....

[T]he inclusion of the First Amendment, as well as the condescending tone Taylor takes while invoking it, can't be supported in the context of the program as presented to the court. No one has the right to unfettered communications with suspected terrorists; otherwise, terrorists could never be surveilled....

The Sixth District Appellate Court slapped a stay on this decision almost immediately, and one suspects that the justices will take a long and skeptical look at Taylor's scattershot opinion. Whether or not one agrees with the end result, the decision itself is insupportable because Taylor never bothered to provide the support necessary.

Dan McLaughlin has a blog entry titled, "The NSA Decision: Judging Without Facts or Law". He concludes:

Judge Taylor’s opinion reads like a parody of bad judicial reasoning. The self-appointed legal solons of the Left will have to work long and hard to compose the straight face to dress up this opinion as anything but a travesty of the judicial process.

Patterico Pontifications puts a cap on things:

It is one of the most embarrassing pieces of garbage I have ever read. The idea that a sitting federal judge wrote such a shoddy piece of junk in a high-profile case should make even the most rabid Bush-hater squirm.

The word “undisputedly” is repeated again and again as a substitute for any effort at analysis or argument.

The judge leaps to decide the constitutional issue ahead of the statutory one, in contravention of well-accepted principles mandating the opposite approach.

She fails to perform balancing tests, or to address solid arguments for a warrant exception — like the border search exception to the warrant requirement.

And tomorrow, the media will shun expert analysis that would reveal these glaring deficiencies in her “reasoning.” Count on it.

And so it goes. We are lucky we haven't been hit more than once with attacks as bad or worse than 9/11. The looney left has actively obstructed the Bush Administration at every turn & I mean EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of the Bush Admin, not just the war on terror. Lies, smears & calumny at every turn just isn't enough. Not even acts of sedition that aid & abet the enemy. No, now we have leftist Judges doing their part to harm President Bush with ZERO regard for the harm that it may cause to this country.

Unfrickingbelievable!

Why the UN is utterly useless Part 987,654,321

The UN provides the evidence right up front in Resolution 1701. As usual, Charles Krauthammer gets right to the heart of the problem:

The charm of any U.N. Security Council resolution lies in the preamble, which invariably begins by "recalling" all previous resolutions on the same subject that have been entirely ignored, therefore necessitating the current resolution. Hence newly minted Resolution 1701: Before mandating the return of south Lebanon to Lebanese government control, it lists the seven Security Council resolutions going back 28 years that have demanded the same thing.

We are to believe, however, that this time the United Nations means it. Yet, the fact that responsibility for implementation is given to Kofi Annan's office -- not known for integrity, competence or neutrality -- betrays a certain unseriousness about the enterprise from the very beginning.

Charles notes that despite assurances from Condoleezza Rice that Resolution 1701 had "enough Chapter 7 (i.e., legally enforceable) language to give it teeth", facts on the ground quickly called their effectiveness into question:

Hezbollah has declared that it will not disarm. The Siniora government in Beirut has acquiesced in a "don't ask, don't tell" deal in which Hezbollah retains its entire infrastructure south of the Litani -- bunkers, weapons, fighters -- with the cosmetic proviso that none will be displayed very openly. No strutting, but everything remains in place awaiting the order to restart the war when the time is right.

That arrangement is essentially a return to the status quo ante -- precisely what the United States had said it would not permit because that would represent a strategic disaster for the forces of democracy and moderation in the region.

Krauthammer points out that this puts Lebanon's nascent democracy in peril which was had "marked the high point (together with the first Iraqi election, which inspired the events in Lebanon) of the Bush doctrine". He notes that events on the ground since the Cedar Revolution (Syria, Iran and Hezbollah "working assiduously to reverse that great advance", emboldened them to instigate the war with Israel.

And now, with the psychological success of the war with Israel, Hezbollah may soon become the dominant force in all of Lebanon. In the south, the Lebanese army will be taking orders from Hezbollah. Hezbollah is not just returning to being a "state within a state." It is becoming the state, with the Siniora government reduced to acting as its front.

That is why ensuring that Hezbollah is cut down to size by a robust international force with very strict enforcement of its disarmament is so critical. For all its boasts, Hezbollah has suffered grievously militarily, with enormous losses of fighters, materiel and infrastructure. Now is its moment of maximum weakness. That moment will not last long. Resupply and rebuilding have already begun.

This is no time for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to be saying, when asked about the creation of an international force, that "this really is a responsibility of the Secretariat." Maybe officially, but if we are not working frantically behind the scenes to make sure that this preposterously inappropriate body gets real troops in quickly, armed with the right equipment and the right mandate, the moment will be lost. And with it Lebanon.

Given the UN's history, the penchant for appeasement from most Western Democracies & widespread anti-semitic views from leftists & most Arabic nations who wield power at the UN, the odds are clearly stacked against success.

Who cares what celebrities think?

That's the title of a blog entry at the excellent blog Betsy's Page. Betsy points out that Boston Herald City Editor Jules Crittenden's Op/Ed says exactly how she has feet for a long time:

I’ve been wondering if it is possible for me to describe exactly how much I don’t give a damn what actors think. Or rock stars.

I should state at the outset that when actors lend their celebrity to raise money for cancer research and similar causes, I think it’s wonderful.

On foreign policy, I just don’t give a damn. George Clooney has been almost as incensed about Iraq and the evils perpetrated by the Bush military junta, I mean administration, in the last few years as he was pre-911 about paparazzi paying attention to him. I don’t care.

Well, Betsy & I agree whole heartedly with that POV. The problem though is that the MSM & DNC make it a big deal because most Hollywood elitists are generally in complete agreement with the groupthink of the DNC & MSM.

Since most Americans are awed by celebrities, their political rants present the MSM & DNC excellent opportunities to spread leftist propaganda to the masses. It's just another tool in their vast arsenal. Seriously, next time a leftist celebrity speaks publicly watch how many microphones are jammed into their faces & how many cameras are present. Then a day or two later do a Google search on that celebrity's name. There will be hundreds, if not thousands of hits.

When conservative celebrities speak out the MSM & DNC ignore, dismiss or downplay what they have to say. Do a similar Google search on the conservative celebrity & you can cue the crickets chirping. When they do cover a conservative celebrity watch how often they go find a gaggle of leftist celebrities to counter what the conservative had to say. And no, you won't find conservatives being asked what they think of the rants from their leftist Hollywood peers. That just doesn't fit in the agenda of our leftist media.

Betsy then cites a clip from the ad ran by a bunch of Hollywood celebrities speaking out against terrorism:

A lot of bloggers are excited about the ad that 85 Hollywood stars and other celebrities took out yesterday coming out against terrorists.

"We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hizbollah and Hamas," the ad reads.

"If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die.

"We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs."

Betsy nails it when she says:

That's wonderful, but haven't we reached a sorry state that we should be impressed that actors and actresses are actually against terrorists killing innocent civilians? When did it become remarkable for someone to speak in favor of democracy? I'm more depressed that this is considered taking a stand to oppose killing civilians.

However, I think she somewhat misses the point I made above when she continues:

Bloggers such as Powerline and Diana West at Michelle Malkin have noted how little attention their ad has received in the rest of the press. Well, that's the way it should be. No one should care what they think. Of course, if they were taking out a full page ad criticizing Israel or Bush, their ad would probably get national attention. It's a man bites dog story to have celebrities actually say something that makes so much sense. Who'd thunk it?

Don't get me wrong, Betsy's POV is quite correct. We really shouldn't care what most celebrities have to say on foreign policy or other issues where these people have no legitimate expertise. Many of the most outspoken celebrities that the MSM covers have little advanced education or practical experience that would warrant the fawning media coverage they regularly get.

That's why the ad Betsy mentioned got almost no media coverage. Even though this was a genuinely newsworthy item, the MSM has chosen to ignore it. It didn't comport to their leftist agenda. And that's why we see so many fawning media reports when know nothing celebrities spout all manner of leftist opinions. It's just another excuse to indoctrinate the masses.

The MSM knows Betsy's POV is quite valid, but they just don't care. And they won't ever admit it either. They'll keep on doing it as long as they believe it works.

A sad similarity

I watched Michelle Malkin's always entertaining & informative daily video newscast, "Vent" from yesterday. It was titled, "Cartoon Jihad: Six months later". It occurred to me that the MSM & radical Islamofascists are inclined to similar attributes - they willfully deceive to further their agenda.

Ya, it's that sick.

Why aren't there any "Bush haters" mentioned in the "Newz"?

Good question. Brent Bozell points out the MSM's hypocritical double standard, ET AL in his Townhall .com piece today;

The other real driver of the Lamont-Lieberman race is simply described as "Bush hatred." The liberal media elite loved denouncing conservatives as "Clinton haters" in the 1990s, but now can't identify any hate in Lamont or any other liberal today. But just listen to how Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne described Lieberman's problem on National Public Radio: "I think he misread that for a lot of Democrats, the moral issue of this time is where you stand on George Bush." Offering support for Bush is immoral?

CBS even offered that view, as reporter Trish Regan referred several times to "this now infamous kiss" from Bush to Lieberman at a State of the Union speech. Bush is "infamous"? Isn't that quite a leap for an "objective" network? Not that CBS is trying to be an objective network, mind you. After Lieberman lost, CBS called the picture the "Kiss of Death."

Brent makes several other great points as well. Read it all here.

Katrina for Dummies

Feel free to point any of your leftist friends who still insist on Blaming Bush & FEMA for the horrific response to Katrina here. Tell them to follow the links. ALL. OF. THEM.

Hunt Hacks at Fox

Today, Roger L. Simon blogs about that Hezbollah propagandist Johnathan Hunt. Roger picks up on several of the obvious things I have already covered previously on this blog.

First, Roger notes that CNN continues it's history of bias, linking to their latest example;

CNN Int'l snubs Israeli civilians

Then Roger rips into Johnathan (my emphasis);

But Fox News too has appeared to join, at least in part, the Whores of Hezbollah. Their Beirut correspondent Jonathan Hunt fairly bragged tonight that his network was the only one admitted by Hezbollah into Beirut's southern suburbs to repeat the same shots we have seen ad nauseam, adding the weird disclaimer they were not allowed to show the faces of the terrorists (he didn't call them that, of course) themselves. Hunt has been particularly egregious throughout the conflict, a perfect example of the British yellow journalism tradition, swallowing whole every propagandistic tidbit, parroting back without question the Lebanese government "civilian" death figures, which turn out to be about 1000 in any case, a rather astonishingly low number for a month of conflict. (Compare that to thirty minutes of 9/11.) One wonders what Brit Hume was thinking when forced to cut to this character during his nightly reports. Fox, in general, has a pretty low level of in the field reporting, but so do all of them.

That's no excuse Roger. They'd be better off not reporting live from Lebanon than aiding the enemy by spewing terrorist propaganda disguised as hard "newz".

Roger also has an update citing Associated Pravda bias (my emphasis);

MORE MEDIA BIAS: This time from the AP. Their headline at this hour (22:14 PDT) reads -

Rockets hit Lebanon despite cease-fire.

There's no indication in the headline, of course, that these are Hezbollah katyushas hitting their own country (which is the case if you read the article). Would the reader naturally assume these rockets were coming from Israel or fired by Israeli forces? Bias or bad writing? You decide.

Blaming it on bad writing would be plausible only if you could find some examples where similar mistakes pointed in the other direction. But they all point in one direction, don't they Roger?

Video fraud from the BBC

[BBC's Orla] Guerin has knowingly given a false impression of the destruction of Bent Jbeil for the purpose of further demonising Israel in the eyes of the "international community.

The Drinking From Home blog provides all the damning evidence.

Murtha's blood runs cold

The libel suit that was recently filed against John Murtha is starting to look pretty strong. Two weeks ago, the Marines left Murtha looking elsewhere for support;

The head of the U.S. Marine Corps briefed Rep. John Murtha on the Haditha case after the vocal war critic publicly said Marines had killed innocent civilians in that Iraqi city, the Corps said on Thursday.....

... a spokesman for the Marine Corps said Hagee briefed Murtha on May 24 about Haditha. Murtha had made comments on the case as early as May 17.

On May 17, for example, he said at a news conference, "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Another lawmaker also threatened with libel quickly apologized;

A Republican congressman apologized yesterday to the Marines under investigation in the killings of two dozen civilians in Haditha, Iraq, last November, saying that statements he made about the case were taken out of context and that he did not mean to imply the Marines were guilty of wrongdoing.

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) issued the apology as part of an agreement with lawyers for Marine Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who alleged that Kline had damaged Wuterich's reputation.....

Zaid said yesterday that Kline responded to a settlement request within an hour of its arrival Aug. 4. Kline wrote that news outlets used incomplete statements that gave the false impression that he had concluded the Marines broke the law.

"I am, of course, very concerned regarding any allegations surrounding misconduct by U.S. troops in Iraq," Kline wrote in his statement. "Such allegations must be taken seriously, but we should never rush to judgment before all the facts are known and the military criminal justice process is completed."

However, revelations from Kline's apology appear to make the slander case against Murtha stronger. Kline dropped what appears to be another bomb on Murtha's "in cold blood" allegation, ET AL.;

Kline, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was briefed on Haditha by Marine Brig. Gen. John F. Kelly, the legislative assistant to the Marine commandant. At the time of the briefings, the official investigations were not complete, and Kline emphasized that "conclusions have not been reached."

Kline is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He most likely was given a more detailed briefing by General Kelly than any briefing Murtha received. And he probably got it before Murtha got his. Since no official charges have been filed yet, Murtha's "in cold blood" & other Haditha allegations certainly seem to be lacking any substantiation from a credible source.
It's starting to look pretty bad for Murtha. Excuse me while I shed a few crocadile tears.

Sadly, the damage done by Murtha's smears can't ever be undone. The MSM gleefully ran his allegations as though they were fact & used them as license to pile on. If Murtha is found guilty or he avoids a trial by apologizing, you can bet the MSM won't be making any retractions or covering that side of the story very closely at all.