Copyright © 2006 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2006 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings. Email: |
The "MSM" is everywhere, I tell you.
Over at LGF, there's now a post identifying Slate
as part of the mainstream
media. Oh, it's true that Slate is now owned by the
Washington Post, but is it ownership which makes it the
mainstream media? Or does "mainstream media" really only mean
"voices we disagree with us, promoting ideas we can't take a
cotton to"? If it's ownership, then Fox News is part of the MSM
too, and must therefore be hated. How far does this go: does
every small newspaper owned by the New York Times belong to the
MainStream Media? Who is exempt, then, besides the free
neighborhood weeklies?
Dazed and confused... Over at LGF, a commenter posts...
Astonishing, really. Not only does the PBS Newshour regularly
end its broadcast with the names of the fallen, but when Ted
Koppel wanted to devote his entire show to reading the names of
the fallen troops, the right roundly criticized it as some kind
of "ratings ploy."
Asterix and Obelix. I have site
maintenance to do tonight (catching up on chores) and the
dishes, and I doubt I'll write anything new tonight, but if
you're really bored, can I suggest this Wikipedia entry on Asterix? He's
long been popular in this house (as you might have guessed from
his occasional appearances in the pictures), yet I learned new
bits about the many levels of punnery. (Such as the three levels
of wit going on in Asterix's and Obelix's names.) Even if you
have no idea what I'm talking about, check it out.
About the unintended consequences thing... Not too long ago, some conservative blogger (I think it was John Hinderaker) was waxing sanguine about the good things which were happening in the world thanks to Bush invading Iraq; unforeseen positive consequences which no one might have imagined, but nonetheless surely accrue to Bush's credit. His examples were Libya being more open about its arms (even though Khaddafi started the process with the UK, and prior to the invasion), and the reduced role of Syria in Lebanon. True, these are good things, and no one would deny it. Other positive events were happening, too, like the power change in Ukraine, but I don't think anyone was foolish enough to tie that to our invasion of Iraq. Were there people that foolish? It was always interesting to observe the one-eyed perspective. They would see the positives, and try to credit to Bush. If they saw the negatives at all (like Iraq having suddenly turned into a hot bed of terrorism) there was no connection made between the outcome and anything Bush might have done to provoke further anger in the Middle East. I haven't read anybody saying that Hamas winning this week's elections in Palestine is a good thing... Maybe there are some who like it for what it may portend as the coming of the last days, but I haven't run across that. No, no question about it, the Palestinians turning to Hamas to lead them doesn't bode well. This is a party bent on the annihilation of Israel, and Hamas is simply not welcome on the block. So did Bush have anything to do with this, conservatives? Might he not have worked harder to see that Abbas and Fatah were straighter shooters and better maintained the goodwill of their constituents? I'd certainly agree that Bush was not at the polls and did not cast any ballots, but I don't see that he did much to make Fatah a productive party. And then there's Haiti. I know it's not a large country, it has no oil, and doesn't provide Major League Baseball with as many players as its island co-habitant, the Dominican Republic. But seeing as how we basically supported a coup against Aristede and forced him out of the country, why on earth is Haiti still struggling towards democracy? Is it possible that Bush doesn't know, really, how to push for something he praises so frequently? Take the trial of Saddam Hussein, which has yet to see a normal day. You just know that Bush would love to talk about the trial at Tuesday's State of the Union address, but so far there's nothing to talk about except a reading of the charges. Progress in Hussein's trial isn't just going at a snail's pace, it's an embarrassment, seeing as how the original judge walked away in disgust. Can't Bush do anything right? Oh, yeah, cut taxes for
his friends, gut the environment, and refuse to fire Karl Rove. I
forgot.
Four. As in, "uh oh." Mike Everett- Lane of Ishbadiddle (whom you sometimes see in the comments as "M E-L") just tagged me with the "Four Meme," one of those show-your-hand challenges. Some of these are going to be tough, so if I can't come up with four in all the categories, I'll say why...
This is work; you may need to wait for their posts... UPDATE 1: Terry Teachout promptly emailed back a link to his fours... UPDATE 2: Joe
Holmes has responded with his four... (No permalink, you may
need to scroll if you don't go early.)
Why we need to continue Bush's tax cuts. Look, the logic is simple: how else can Bush gut the government budget so quickly, prompting spending cuts? Look, there's only so far you can go with war spending: eventually you run out of satraps to target and recruits to target them with. But tax cuts! You can take tax cuts for your friends much further. And of course, Bush has got this idea that we need the tax cuts to keep the economy growing:
Of course, that was him talking in yesterday's surprise, scheduled on the quick press conference. Do you think the White House had some sort of advanced word on today's economic news?
You don't suppose our President would have been too afraid to face the press on the heels
of news like this, do you?
Being a law-abiding President — rather than an abuser of the office — would have been so easy. Today at his press conference, Bush said:
Now, I'm certainly not in a position to judge whether or not attacks have been prevented as a result of the program. Some say yes, some say plans would have been uncovered through other methods anyway. I also have to disagree with the carping that if information overload was a problem prior to 9/11, it's still a problem and we'd never connect the dots today any more than we failed to prior to 9/11. As incompetent as the Administration may be, I do think that there's been some behavior changes. So just for argument, let's presume the program is effective. If you're Bush, and you believe it effective, would you want to run the risk of having it be shut down? Of course not: you'd make sure the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed, and you'd do it for the American people. Maybe you couldn't get the warrants as quickly as you wanted them, because the leads had such a short shelf life. What would you do? Well, you'd put the wiretaps in place and then go back for the warrants retroactively, and in doing so know that your program wasn't in danger. The proviso of retroactive warrants means you can tap anyone you want, any time you want, so long as you file for the warrants within 72 hours after initiating them. That's all it would have taken to be a law-abiding program, no danger of being shut down. Why wasn't this path chosen? Well, here's an alternative... Maybe the President isn't really so committed to our security. (I mean, if he was, he wouldn't have risked having his program being shut down, right?) What else do we know about his actions after 9/11? Well, one thing which has always stuck in my craw is that rather than fund greater security in our ports, which costs money, he chose another item in the balance sheet: reducing taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Remember this? Your security was sold down the river in order to fund those tax cuts. Let's be serious, Bush doesn't care about our security.
Otherwise we would have taken OBL in Tora Bora; we wouldn't have
been distracted by invading Iraq. No, there's something else
going on, and they refuse to admit it.
Try to contain your shock. Bush met
with a bunch of Alito's clerks, a mix of Democrats and
Republicans, and they all supported Alito for the Supreme
Court. If you paid any attention to the hearings before the
Senate Judiciary Committee, you might have been struck by how
many times Alito wrote off his statements as those of a poor
penniless attorney trying to get/keep a job in the Reagan
administration, and how his sycophancy bled over into later
years, causing him to say all sorts of nice things about Bork,
even though he no longer worked under the White House. Who'd be
surprised, then, that he'd have hired a bunch of like-minded
attorneys to clerk for him? This unanimous support doesn't amount
to much, if'n you ask me. Where are the clerks who quit?
That liberal media. New York Times headline (as of this post): "White House Declines to Provide Storm Papers." Declines — that's like some kind of parlor scene: Oh, no, I musn't, I'm really flattered, but I shan't. Or, "No, I've had quite enough already, I don't need to see the dessert menu, thank you." When it comes to a political challenge over how deeply the administration screwed up, shouldn't the verb be "refuses?" You know, the MSM is in the pockets of the liberals, plain and
clear...
"Okay, next question." That was how Scottie McClellan said he'd had enough of the questions he couldn't answer over the President's insistence on wiretaps without warrants. It came after reporters asked cognizant questions like "why couldn't he have gotten the warrants retroactively" and comments like "he doesn't have a blank check..." Scottie's gun, however, was filled with off-topic blanks like "And we do use the FISA tool, as well. That's an important tool, as well. But we have briefed members of Congress more than a dozen times on this" (a dozen times in four years...) And "FISA was created for a different time period" (without saying why no change in the legislation was sought). Truly pathetic. The guy must know it: how does he sleep? It's
here.
Who surrendered America? When The Onion came back after 9/11, one of its pieces was a fictional editorial where a curmudgeon said that if his waitress was too distracted by 9/11 and his steak arrived cold, then the terrorists had already won. No fools, The Onion was of course playing off the chest-thumping of the time. I don't believe the terrorists have won, but when it comes to Bush's program for unwarranted wiretaps, you have to acknowledge that the terrorists have certainly made headway in getting us to chip away at the freedoms we love. For instance, note this post over at Daily Kos, where the protections of the Constitution are compared against Bush policy: there's what appears to be a willful refusal to acknowledge basic tenets of the Bill of Rights. And Kevin Drum chimes in with a post about how claims that it's OK to ignore the Bill of Rights because the Founders couldn't have envisioned modern technologies is just hogwash: there's nothing so special about this program like data mining or neural networks, it's just plain wiretapping. So why did Bush turn and sell his country short so quickly? I
hope they don't really have red buttons in the White House.
Foreign meddling is okay when we're the meddlers? I believe it's against the law for U.S. politicians to accept campaign contributions from people who aren't U.S. citizens. I also recall the public outrage from Bush supporters who were insulted by a British newspaper's campaign to have British citizens try to persuade U.S. voters to vote for Kerry. Remember this? Well, I'm looking forward to the local outrage:
Basically, the missing word is "covert." When the CIA does
this sort of thing, we're not surprised at all. It's their line
of work! But USAID? Nope, not what they're supposed to doing with
our tax dollars, if you ask me — is this really part of
their mission statement? Isn't this a subversion of the intent of
Congressional funding?
Not over yet for Karl Rove? You may remember that when Patrick Fitzgerald announced his indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, he spoke of great care that the innocent not be smeared. Part of his refusal to comment on Karl Rove (or others) is that if their status changes and he stops commenting, then the press starts to read tea leaves:
The other points I quoted go into areas of diligence, yet with an interest in closure. Fitzgerald's efforts are continuing, and he has not disbanded his grand jury. In yesterday's Washington Post, Carol Loennig wrote about the Libby defense team's plans, and Karl Rove came up tangentially. One unnamed source seems to feel that if Fitzgerald could release Rove from scrutiny, he would:
Under this scenario — if correct — Fitzgerald is
aware of the coming 2006 political season, and wants to have as
little unnecessary impact as possible. Fitzgerald repeatedly
spoke of a presumption of innocence even for Libby, so we presume
he wants to limit his influence on the elections. Yet
Fitzgerald's work goes on...
It's probably related to how many Americans thought Iraq was behind 9/11. But, in a word, no: a haggis is not an animal, you don't hunt it, you order it from your butcher. And seeing as how Robert Burns' birthday is this Wednesday, you'd do well to brush up. It's not just "Auld Lang Syne," you know. I will also tell you this: as a cook who has stuffed sausage on many occasions, I was not deterred from trying haggis on our trips to Scotland. And the rest of the family knew it couldn't really be horrid — not only is it mentioned in a "Rugrats" episode, but would any nation really adopt a national dish completely unpalatable? We loved it, relished it, and had it at least three times on our last trip. So, look, if you can: get thee to a haggisry!
Umm, American Idol, maybe? John Hinderaker steps in it again. In his post "Sinking Like A Stone," Hinderaker quotes a bit on the falling ratings for ABC's "Commander In Chief," and reading that this past Tuesday night it received its lowest ratings ever, Hinderaker writes, I'm not about to pose as a TV critic; not only have I never seen Commander In Chief, I've never seen any show now appearing on television, other than news, sports, HGTV, What Not To Wear and American Idol. The last three reflect the influence of my teenage daughters, but, for what it's worth, I've never heard them mention Commander In Chief. Stacy London, yes; Geena Davis, no. So it looks as though, once again, the American public has sniffed out liberal propaganda and turned up its nose. Funny tastes in TV, but if you ask me, maybe the blogger
formerly known as Hindrocket would have done well to familiarize
himself with shifts in In fairness, Commander In Chief's ratings had already been
suffering, but the further decline had more to do with American
Idol, I'm sure.
It seems as if I'm not alone. Over at Crooked Timber, Ted Barlow uncovers the easy explanation regarding Christopher Hitchens' failure to march in perfect time with the Bush administration's drumbeat: Horsefeathers reveals Hitchens as an anti-semite. Of course, being labeled an antisemite by Horsefeathers' Stephen Rittenberg isn't exactly like the sun rising in the west. Back before we invaded Iraq, Rittenberg labeled all of us who protested against the war as implicitly antisemitic, writing "Anti-semitism, either straightforwardly spewed from mosques, or covertly expressed in the chanceries of Europe, is the force that unites the peace mobs of the left with totalitarians like Saddam." Did you have any idea? Of course, bravo for Crooked Timber in helping shed light on
this tar pit; it's provided a lot of traffic to Horsefeathers,
when so much of what it normally gets is people following search
results to their old pages, thanks to searching for pornography
and Horsefeathers' wonderful supply of porn spam in old pages'
comments.
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