Nothing to exciting going on this evening… but I wanted to recommend a great blog I’ve started reading… the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
*If you get the Arrested Development joke in the title… good for you. You are one of the smartest and most psophisticated people on the planet. For those of you who DIDN’T get the joke… why don’t you just go buy the first season on DVD already! (it’s only $12 for a used copy… you can afford it… no excuses.)
OMG. this poor kid. I hope HE is ready for sacrifice.
James Taranto has another great column in todays WSJ. Finding examples of media bias is sort of like shooting fish in a barrel.
“A double blast from al Qaeda against Barack Obama shows the group is as worried as ever by the persuasive skills of the U.S. president, who makes a speech to Muslims on Thursday,” Reuters “reports” from London:
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in an audio recording aired on Wednesday by Al Jazeera television, said Obama had planted the seeds of “revenge and hatred” towards the United States in the Muslim world and he warned Americans to prepare for the consequences.
A day earlier, the militant network’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri urged Egyptians not to be seduced by Obama’s ‘polished words’ when he makes a major address in Cairo seeking to repair ties with the Muslim world.
When we read this, we suspected bias. After all, al Qaeda often attacked George W. Bush, but did Reuters portray this as a sign of the American president’s strength and bin Laden’s fear of his “persuasive skills”?
Then again, would it really be worth our time to comb through the archives in order to prove something so obvious–to answer what is essentially a rhetorical question?
Fortunately, we didn’t have to! Reuters confirmed our suspicion in the next paragraph of this very dispatch:
For some, al Qaeda’s concerted attempt to upstage Obama is a propaganda own goal that shows its normally media-savvy operatives in disarray following the departure of Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush. They found Bush easy to stereotype as a belligerent, Muslim-hating cowboy.
This is a good opportunity to remind readers of one of Taranto’s Laws of Journalism: When it appears in a news story, the word some is a first-person pronoun.
And then there’s always the useful “news you can use” link
“Men ‘Live Longer’ if They Marry a Younger Woman”–headline, Daily Telegraph
via Best of the Web Today: Does Obama Scare Osama? – WSJ.com.
Jim Heraghty puts the loans the U.S. Government has made to GM in a bit of perspective… and it’s not a perspective you want to hear:
According to today’s Washington Post, the company currently employs 88,000 workers in the United States. (That seems low, but that’s what the paper says.) GM has gotten $19.4 billion in loans from the U.S. government and Obama promised another $30 billion yesterday.
$49.4 billion divided by 88,000 workers comes out to $561,363.63 per worker.
Can that possibly be right? That in an effort to avoid layoffs, Uncle Sam has pursued a course more expensive than handing each worker a check for a half a million dollars?
I happen to be a big fan of Andrew Klavan, both as a playwright and, more recently, as a political thinker and philosopher of sorts. My first introduction to Klavan was in the form of an article he write for the Wall Street Journal discussing the war on terror. He is a brilliant communicator and possesses a sense of perspective I attribute solely to those who have experienced a true conversion or transformation — which, in his case, happened to be both religious and political. (His interview with Peter Robinson seems to evidence this perspective quite convincingly, in my opinion)
In short, I have a great deal of respect for this man and usually walk away from his work feeling somewhat enlightened. I say “usually” because I was initially somewhat disappointed with his recent video series he is doing at pajamastv.com titled “Klavan on the Culture”.
Here is a makeshift (but reasonably accurate) transcript of the relevant portion I wish to discuss… wherein Klavan says:
“I’d like to explain the Liberal argument. SHUT UP. ‘Shut up’ is the central rationale behind the leftist program… but even if the left can’t turn ‘shut up’ into law… they’ve worked hard over the years to make it the custom of the country. Its the essence of politically correct phraseology and university speech codes. Say it our way or ‘shut up’. Its inherent in the media’s demonization of conservative commentators… the way they try to turn names like Limbaugh and Coulter into bywords for intolerance so they’ll just ‘shut up’…
His basic point was that the left has a habit of using personal attacks and political correctness to tarnish the reputations of their political opponents than engage them in real debate. The left tries to turn conservatism into a pariah of sorts… implying that any opposition to liberal policies is because of some underlying racist, bigoted, or sexist motive… in an attempt to shame them into silence. In fact, we are seeing this right now with the nomination of Judge Sotomayor… you can’t turn on the TV without hearing a lecture about how improper it would be for Republicans to oppose the first female, Latina court nominee.
Now, it is not that I disagree with Klavan, but I was really disappointed in the way he made the point. I was very skeptical and unimpressed with the simplistic explanation he offered… Liberals just say “SHUT UP” — as if most of them are mentally incapable of having a civilized discussion. Not only does this not match my own personal experience but I find it to be unnecessarily contentious and, well, rude. “This is simply an inaccurate description of the left,” I thought to myself.
But then something caught my eye on Facebook, of all places. I discovered that a liberal aquaintance of mine… a quite pleasant and reasonable woman from all appearances, had joined a group that wants “Dick Cheney to shut the hell up” (it is currently 185,000 members strong… and growning… a quick search for similar anti-Pelosi groups turned up at most 100 people). “This can’t really be what I think it is”, I thought to myself. “Is this really a group on facebook?” I was temporarily speechless. And then it dawned on me… Maybe Klavan was on to something… Maybe he was telling the truth after all…
What do you all think? Can you provide any current examples of this ‘SHUT UP’ mentality? Feel free to support or criticize this post in the comments section… I’d be happy to argue!
Look at how much flexibility you have… it’s amazing. Additionally, although I always tell people that megapixels are not everything… they do come in handy in THIS instance, especially if you want to take the tighter crops to some form of print output.
This was for whatever reason… my favorite shot of the wedding. My apologies if this isn’t the MOST FLATTERING picture… I still just love the expressions captured in that moment.
If this is true… then it is the worst sort of partisanship. But not to worry, I’m sure Obama had NOTHING to do with this. He’s clean.
A tipster alerted me to an interesting assertion. A cursory review by that person showed that many of the Chrysler dealers on the closing list were heavy Republican donors.
To quickly review the situation, I took all dealer owners whose names appeared more than once in the list. And, of those who contributed to political campaigns, every single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates. While this isn’t an exhaustive review, it does have some ominous implications if it can be verified.
However, I also found additional research online at Scribd (author unknown), which also appears to point to a highly partisan decision-making process.
Consider the partial list of Chrysler dealership owners, listed below. You’ll notice that all were opponents of Barack Obama, most through sponsorship of GOP candidates and organizations, but a handful through Barack’s Democrat rivals (Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in 2008, for example).
• Vernon G. Buchanan: $147,450 to GOP candidates and organizations
• Wallace D. Alley and Family: $4,500 to GOP.
• Robert Archer: $4,600 to GOP and conservative causes.
• Homer S. Higginbotham and Family: $2950 to GOP.
• James Auffenberg and Family: $28,000 to GOP; $6,000 to one Democrat candidate.
• Michael Maroone and Family: $60,000 to GOP; $8,500 to two Democrat candidates.
• Jerome Fader: $6,500 to Democrats; $2,500 to Independent Joe Lieberman.
• Stephen Fay and Family: $13,500 to GOP.
• William Numrich: $20,000 to GOP.
• Robert Carver: $10,000 to Democrats including $1,950 to Hillary Clinton, nothing to Barack Obama.
via Did anti-Obama campaign contributions dictate which Chrysler dealers were shuttered?.
Turns out all the mantra about Bush being some sort of twisted authoritarian for creating Gitmo was just a bunch of rhetoric.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – As part of its plans to close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration is considering holding some of the detainees indefinitely and without trial on US soil, US media reported Thursday.
President Barack Obama’s “administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on US soil — indefinitely and without trial — as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay,” The Wall Street Journal said.
The proposal, which is part of the administration’s internal deliberations on how to deal with the prisoners ahead of a planned closure of the controversial US military prison next year, is being shared with some lawmakers, it added.
White House officials contacted by AFP had no immediate comment on the detainee deliberations.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who met with White House Counsel Greg Craig this week about the Guantanamo plans, told the Journal that the administration was namely seeking authority for indefinite detentions granted by a national security court.
