May, 2007 archive

Now that’s what I call a bike rack.

Eugene Robinson:

Okay, I know that most of the president’s off-the-wall locutions are dangerous only to the English language. But to the extent that carelessness of speech reflects carelessness of mind, much more is at stake. The Commander Guy’s rationale for sending more U.S. troops to fight and die in Iraq is as elusive as his reason for starting the war in the first place. He says his goal is victory, but he can’t explain coherently what victory would look like, much less how to get there.

Worth reading.

I have to admit, from time to time, I have been a little jealous of Phillybits when he shows his access logs. Ploughing through Apache access logs is nothing like those neat little pictures he shows of what IP addresses have been accessing his blog.

But now I have FireStats.

I know where you come from.

Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been placed under the protection of the U.S. Secret Service, the Secret Service said Thursday.

A statement from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he authorized the protection detail for Obama.

I believe that, as with Transformers, there’s more than meets the eye.

I remember, when I was very young (I’m dating myself, but I have to get dates somehow), hearing stories of how President Truman would take early morning walks around Washington.

By himself.

It stinks that that is no longer possible.

I had my attention drawn to this discussion following a post by Alan Loudell on his WDEL-AM blog.

I attempted to post a comment, but his blog apparently doesn’t like me (and it doesn’t even know me yet!). Actually, I suspect my comment ran up against some edit–it’s kind of long.

So I’ll post it here. But it won’t make much sense unless you at least skim the conversation between Mr. Loudell and his reader.

My, what an interesting exchange.

It illustrates several characteristics of our current (lack of) political discourse that bother me.

One is the loss of understanding of the difference between fact and opinion. It is the job of reporters to report facts. Unfortunately, for political, this often results in reporting the opinions of influential persons, and opinions are not facts.

I think awareness of this–that in reporting opinions, they are not reporting facts–is one thing which led to the countervailing expert technique (one rightwinger + one leftwinger = objectivity.)

That, of course, does not equal objectivity if one of the experts is lying or is speaking from a point of view so morally and realistically absurd as to be no better than a lie.

I would are argue that political reporters have an obligation not just to report on the countervailing opinions,

If one expert says the sky blue and the other says it is magenta and if the reporter knows that the sky is, indeed, magenta, the reporter is obligated to point that out, because it is fact, even if reporting that fact undermines the credibility of one of the experts. (I am reminded of an old Perry Mason story in which Perry was questioning an “expert witness.” When asked his profession, the witness said, “Expert.” It turned out he had no qualifications; he was an expert only because he hung out a shingle saying so.)

Many of the press failed in their obligation to report facts in the hysteria following the September 11 attacks and the relentless Bushie drumbeat for War! War! War!

The Moyers report made that clear.

Two is that having an opinion does not make one an expert. I have a blog. I freely share my opinions with my two or three regular readers. I try to be a will-informed citizen, but my areas of expertise do not include political analysis. As an American, I have just as much right to be wrong as any one else.

Three is the practice of demanding that journalists must agree with our opinions. I see frequent blog posts deriding well-known columnists, for example, because they do not reach the same conclusions the bloggers have. (In the case of the Iraq war, it happens that, often, the bloggers were right six years ago and the columnists were wrong. See point one.)

We have no right to make such demands. And we must remember that political analysis and commentary (as opposed to reportage) is usually an effort to predict the future. That I was right about the Iraq war (as a private citizen long before I had a public, though little-noticed forum) does not mean that Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, who was wrong about it, is evil.

(There is plenty of evil to go around, certainly, but, despite the fantasies of the blogoshere, very little of it lies at the feet of the main stream media. We all, as a people, allowed ourselves to be duped. We were wrong to allow ourselves to be duped. But evil lies at the feet of the dupees.)

I know this has been a long comment. I’ve unloaded some thoughts that have troubled for sometime.

Oh, yeah. four, regarding the chain of comments following the post, I really see a big disconnect. Mr. Loudell is quite clearly attempting to report what he found an interesting and possibly enlightening way of interpreting the news. It clearly falls in the “opinion” category, and it’s not even his opinion, and to explain that a free market place of ideas involves, well, more than one idea.

I can’t figure out what Mr. Franklin is trying to do except attack Mr. Loudell’s integrity.

If the sale went through:

The Wall Street Journal, front page, May 1, 2012:
LEFT-WING, SURRENDER MONKEY SEX FIENDS
PLAGUE TOP BOND RATING AGENCIES

EXCLUSIVE!
A gang of thugs and perverts, perhaps in cahoots with terrorist cells emboldened by the weak policies of the Democratic administration in Washington, have infiltrated the New York City firms that try to police lending practices in the commercial real estate market, insider sources allege.

One blonde beauty at Moody’s Investors Service, in a gut-wrenching cry for help, captured on a 911 tape exclusively obtained from police, is rumored to have said that a fiend stormed her office while the comely brunette was attempting to crack down on lenders who have been offering 10-year, interest-only loans with back-end balloon payments. “Please help me!” she cried out. “This terrorist action is hurting decent flag-waving Americans who want to minimize their financial risks in commercial property deals! Please make him stop!”

It is not yet known whether the commercial real estate crisis is Bill Clinton’s fault. Nor is it yet known whether the Moody’s employe’s dramatic plight, at the hands of the rumored perverts, has any connection to the current Democratic administration’s recent decision to forestall military action in the Middle East in favor of stepped up diplomatic efforts. But rock icon Britney Spears declared yesterday, “Unlike my feelings about the last president, I do not support this current president.”

Watch for further reports on this outrage next week, exclusively, here in the Wall Street Journal, as well as in The New York Post, The Times of London, The Sun of London, The Weekly Standard magazine, on Fox News and 35 affiliates nationwide, on the British Sky satellite network, and on my space.com. (A book is in the works at HarperMorrow, and movie rights have been optioned at Twentieth-Century Fox.)

“Attack on the Bond Ratings Firms” will appear immediately following the conclusion of our current print/broadcast series, “The Dominance of the Liberal Media.”

Nothing new. Just his reminiscences about sitting in Don Imus’s Big Chair for a week.

When will he share his thoughts about Senator Thompson?

It’s a great post.

Even greater is this comment:

George W Bush Says:
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:46 am

The war is not lost.

Not as long as I have breath, and can sit here in this corner, rocking slowly back and forth repeating “Freedom is on the march. Freedom is on the march, freedom is on the march….” quietly to myself. As long as I can do that – we are winning.

Susie.

And Josh Marshall:

John Cole has a point:

For some reason watching Paul Wolfowitz go down for a nepotism scandal rather than for spearheading a galactic disaster of a war feels like seeing Al Capone go down for tax evasion. You get the punishment but somehow it lacks justice.

When I was much younger, I spent some time in Europe. The guidebooks all suggested being prepared. The same need of preparation has now spread to the United States:

Bring your own toilet paper if you’re visiting a park in Walkersville (Maryland–ed). Last week, vandals set some paper on fire in a men’s bathroom at the Walkersville Community Park.

On Monday, Town Manager Gloria Long Rollins announced that all paper products have been removed from bathrooms at the town’s four parks.

It’s been a long day in the world of cooling towers. Heavy thought is beyond me. So I’m reading stuff like this. I guess in this case revenge is a dish best served hot.

A reminder from Brendan.