Public Prefers Obama's Policies, But Not by 'Large Majorities'

If you check the new poll out from National Journal, Americans by a 46 percent plurality support the continuation of Barack Obama's economic policies. Yet, despite the misinformation at Daily Kos, the public is deeply divided over the extension of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003:

Regarding the tax cuts, 30 percent of Americans believe all of Bush's 2001 and 2003 cuts should stay in place. That compared to 31 percent who believed that all of them should be repealed. Twenty-seven percent take the route Obama campaigned on: Tax cuts for the wealthy should be repealed, while the others should stay in place.

That sentiment was consistent across income lines. Among those making more than $75,000, 26 percent said only the tax cuts for the wealthy should be repealed. For those making $30,000 to $74,999, 31 percent concurred. And among those making less than $30,000, 28 percent said the tax cuts for the wealthy should be overturned.

Independents hewed closest to the overall sample. Twenty-seven percent said all the tax cuts should be kept in place. Thirty-two percent said they all should be repealed. Twenty-seven percent said the tax cuts for the wealthy should be repealed, but the middle class cuts should be kept in place.

This debate has intensified recently as the legislative calendar winds down and an agreement on how to proceed on the issue, particularly in the Senate, has remained elusive.

Unfortunately for Joan McCarter, one can't combine all the subgroupings into "large majorities" supposedly opposed to extending the cuts. This table might help her out:

Democrats and independents remain wary of a return to more market-oriented approaches to economic recovery. But time is running out. The 46 percent plurality is not a huge bulwark against anti-incumbent sentiment on the economy this year (Congress is down to 11 percent approval rating, and the majority party always bears the brunt of such throw-the-bums-out sentiment). And the 2012 primaries will commence a little more than 15 months from now. Basically, it's on.

November Starts Now — Obama's 3:00 AM Fail

The new ad from the RNC:

Barack Obama's presidency has been a disaster. He is either unwilling to or incapable of doing his job. The economy is in shambles, the government is failing, and Americans are losing hope. Barack Obama was not ready to be President. He's not the solution. You are.

You have the opportunity to turn our economy, our government, and our country around by electing Republicans and restoring your voice in Washington. But to win this fall, we must start today. It's up to you to save your country. Are you ready? Because November starts now.

As much as I like it, I'm not sending these folks any money. It's going to take a lot more of Michael Steele sucking up to the base before that happens (or, memories of Dede Scozzafava are still quite strong):

Obama Could Be 'Primaried' by Antiwar Democrat in 2012

At PuffHo, "Rendell: Obama Could Face Primary Challenge Over Afghanistan (VIDEO)" (via Memeorandum).

Lyndon Baines Johnson was not "The One" Democratic Party presidential candidate in the 1960s. John F. Kennedy was ("Camelot" and all that...). Nowadays we have "The Lightworker" Obama-Wan Kenobi in office, and I can't image any credible intra-party challenge to his (re)nomination in 2012. And Afghanistan is no Vietnam, in terms of lives lost and treasure expended, so I don't know if the analogy's going to work all that well going forward in any case. Interesting too that arch-paleocon Pat Buchanan's the one posing the question, more so as there's a left-(quasi)right alliance for cut-and-run from the deployment. That said, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell makes the possibility sound realistic, depending on how the ground situation looks in 2011. Fun the play armchair presidential strategist, in any case:

PAT BUCHANAN: [Anti-Vietnam sentiment] drew an anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy, first into the New Hampshire primary, and after he did fairly well with 42%, it drew Robert Kennedy in against their own president, tore the Democratic Party apart, and led, of course, to a Republican era. If the president is still hanging in to Afghanistan in 2011, 2012, do you see an anti-war candidate coming out of the Democratic Party?

ED RENDELL: It's possible, Pat. It really depends on how far it deteriorates [emphasis mine]. But on the other hand, if troop withdrawal begins in 2011, if there's some signs that we're trying to get out of there, and I heard, I think you were talking about, if there are only 3,000 American troops, we still have a presence. But if we start to begin to reduce our presence, I think that's probably enough to keep an anti-war candidate out of the race."

Also Blogging: Dan Riehl.

Al Franken's Keynote Speech at Netroots Nation

Here's more key evidence of how deeply top Democratic officials are tied to the neo-communist anti-Semitic hate-blog Daily Kos (and the rest of the progressive blogosphere, CAP, Media Mutters, etc.). Take your time and really listen to chief election thief Al Franken. This is today's progressive movement, looking to crush "evil" corporations and "restore" free speech. It's kinda chilling listening to Al Franken, but also funny in a macabre kinda way. If you check Google you can see all the left-wing blogs posting this video: "Sen. Franken to the Netroots: Only You Can Stop the Corporate Takeover of Free Speech." But notice that it's Fox News that broadcast Franken's speech, in its entirety! So the "evil" right-wing corporate media made it possible for the deranged leftist hacks to spread this message of censorship all across the web. Al Franken's probably not the brightest bulb, in any case. I can see a comedien like him emerging in a similar fashion historically in post-Wiemar Germany. A jolly sort, more than ready to exterminate political enemies in order to "make the world a better place." Unreal. (More background here: "Al Franken: Without Net Neutrality Fox News Will Load Faster Than Daily Kos"):

Michelle Rhee and Teacher Accountability

At Betsy's Page:

Kudos to Michelle Rhee who just used the power granted her by the new contract negotiated with the Washington Teachers Union to fire 241 low-performing teachers and put 737 other teachers and school staff on notice that they had been rated "minimally effective." If I were a teacher who can't find a job in a state like mine, North Carolina, which has slowed down hiring teachers, I'd send an application to Washington, D.C. It sounds like they're going to have some openings for dedicated teachers.

Betsy teaches AP American History and has a phenomenal record of success. Yet I'm sometimes leery of straight performance evaluations, at least to the extent that much of student success is completely out of the hands of teachers themselves. That said, I like Rhee and I know she's fighting an entrenched bureaucracy that hasn't put kids' interests ahead of unions. Still, readers may remember Joel Parkes' essay from a while back (previously posted here). It bears recalling. Gotta include this side of the debate in discussions of teacher accountability, "Something Wrong in Our Schools? Let's Blame Teachers":

Much has been written lately about merit pay for teachers, an idea with which I agree in principle. But merit pay would be unfair to teachers for many reasons.

I teach upper-elementary grades at a school that is at the absolute bottom of the Academic Performance Index, ranking one out of 10 in both statewide and "similar schools" APIs. The majority of my school's students are classified as "English language learners"; almost all are Latino. Virtually every student at my school lives in poverty and gets a free breakfast and lunch from the school.

Next year I'll teach fourth grade, and this is what my past experience at this school leads me to expect:

At least two-thirds of my students will have been socially promoted through every grade and, by definition, won't have the skills necessary for the work that the state and district standards requires them to do. Some of them, probably five or 10, won't even know the alphabet, through no fault of mine, but they won't be held accountable. I will be.

Out of frustration over not being able to do the work, a number of my students will chronically disrupt my class, so my learning environment will be adversely affected daily. There is no meaningful consequence for chronic disruptive behavior at my school, so none of those students will be held accountable in any meaningful way. I will be.

Other students will be so discouraged at not being able to do the work that they will make no effort. They will seldom complete homework assignments and will produce virtually no work in class. Our senior assistant vice principal has stated that "we don't retain [hold back] students for not trying," so the students who do no work won't be held accountable. I will be.

I'll give you two historical examples of accountability and leave you with a question.

First, when the Roman legions marched, they built roads and bridges, some of which survive to this day. When the legions had to cross a river, the engineers were called on to design and build a bridge. After the bridge was built, the engineers stood under the bridge while the army crossed. That's accountability, but at least they had what was necessary to build the bridge.

On the other hand, when the Khmer Rouge seized Cambodia, they took the teachers and other educated people to the rice paddies and said, "You're so smart and educated. Make the rice grow faster or we will kill you." So there were a lot of dead teachers in Cambodia. Accountability? The Khmer Rouge certainly thought so.

Consider, please: As a teacher, I have no control over a school system that does not require students to meet standards in order to move on to the next grade. But I am to be held accountable.

As a teacher, I have no control over the system's lack of disciplinary support and inability to make certain students produce work. But I am to be held accountable.

As a teacher, I have no control over uneducated parents, overcrowded and noisy homes or the other very real consequences of poverty. But I am held accountable.

With regard to merit pay, my question is this: Am I being told to build a bridge and given the tools I need for the job, or am I just being taken to the country and told to make the rice grow faster? I know what answer I would give.

With No Direction Home...

Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone." Heard it last week on "Triple Play Thursday," and again yesterday. Enjoy:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you ?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ? ...

Jewel Sings Karaoke Under Cover

Via TigerHawk, "It'll make you grin":

Undercover Karaoke with Jewel from Jewel

NewsBusted — Confidence of Congress at 11% ...

James Surowiecki on JournoList

I'm not sure I'd be willing confer "hero" status on Ezra Klein, but I'd certainly say James Surowiecki was acting heroically when bucking the left's jihad-abetting memes at the list-serve. From The Daily Caller, " Heroes of Journolist: Dan Froomkin, James Surowiecki, Jeffrey Toobin, Michael Tomasky — and founder Ezra Klein" (via Memeorandum):

When Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people at Ft. Hood, Texas, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire, members of Journolist debated whether the media should report on Hasan’s apparent ties to Islamic extremism.

Luke Mitchell, then of Harper’s magazine, said doing so “points the way to things that are actually alarmingly dangerous, such as the idea that there is a large conspiracy of Islamists at work in the United States, that we need to ‘do something’ about this conspiracy.”

Surowiecki replied to Mitchell and others that the truth was worth pursuing.

“I find it bizarre that anyone would argue that an accurate description of what happened is somehow pointless,” Surowiecki said. “That is, that it’s not useful to offer up an accurate picture of Hasan’s actions because nothing obvious follows from it. We want, as much as possible, to have a clear picture of what’s actually going on in the world. Describing Hasan as a violent Islamist terrorist is much closer to the truth than describing him as a disturbed individual.”

RELATED: A great piece from Mickey Kaus, "'Journolist' Was Not a Progressive Idea."

Photo Credit: Wikipedia, "James Surowiecki."

Frank Rich Whines for Nobama

At New York Review, " ‘Why Has He Fallen Short?’":

Of course Barack Obama was too hot not to cool down. He was the one so many were waiting for—not only the first African-American president but also the nation’s long-awaited liberator after eight years of Bush-Cheney, the golden-tongued evangelist who could at long last revive and sell the old liberal faith, the first American president in memory to speak to voters as if they might be thinking adults, the first national politician in years to electrify the young. He was even, of all implausible oddities, a contemporary politician- author who actually wrote his own books.

The Obama of Hope and Change was too tough an act for Obama, a mere chief executive, to follow. Only Hollywood might have the power to create a superhero who could fulfill the messianic dreams kindled by his presence and rhetoric, maintain the riveting drama of his unlikely ascent, and sustain the national mood of deliverance that greeted his victory. As soon as Inauguration Day turned to night, the real Obama was destined to depreciate like the shiny new luxury car that starts to lose its book value the moment it’s driven off the lot.

But still: How did we get to the nadir so fast? The BP oil spill, for weeks a constant fixture on the country’s television and computer screens, became a presidential quagmire even before Afghanistan could fulfill its manifest destiny to play that role. The 24/7 gushing crude was ready-made to serve as the Beltway’s bipartisan metaphorical indicator for a presidency that was verging on disaster to some of Obama’s natural supporters, let alone his many enemies. “I don’t see how the president’s position and popularity can survive the oil spill,” wrote Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal on Memorial Day weekend without apparent fear of contradiction.

Pressed by critics to push back against BP with visible anger and kick-ass authority, Obama chose to devote the first Oval Office address of his presidency to the crisis in the gulf—on June 15, nearly sixty days after the Deep- water Horizon rig had exploded. His tardy prescriptions were panned even by the liberal Matthews-Olbermann-Maddow bloc at MSNBC. To many progressives, Obama’s too-cool handling of the disaster was a confirmation of a fatal character flaw—a professorial passivity that induced him to prematurely surrender the sacred “public option” in the health care debate and to keep too many of his predecessor’s constitutional abridgements in place at home and at Gitmo. When, a day after his prime-time address, he jawboned BP into setting up a $20 billion escrow fund for the spill’s victims, the Obama-hating tag team of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its Tea Party auxiliaries attacked him for not being passive enough. To them, the President’s aggressive show of action was merely further confirmation that a rank incompetent and closet socialist (or is it National Socialist?) had illegitimately seized the White House to subvert America and the free-enterprise system.

That's a pretty good sample, eh?

"The Obama-hating tag-team"?

RTWT. Interestingly, Rich places most of the blame on Obama-Wan Kenobi's own team of incompetent, unaccomplished advisors. And that sounds about right:

The administration is still young, and so is the President. If he has any immutable ideological tenet, it’s that he is “a big believer in persistence.” He doesn’t like to lose. Health care had not been an Obama priority in the campaign, but he embraced it during the transition. Though Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod were all skeptical of pursuing it as a Year One goal, he wouldn’t be deterred.

CARTOON CREDIT: No Sheeples Here!

WikiLeaks and U.S.-Pakistani Relations

I'm mostly just fascinated by the left's struggles with honesty regarding the goals of WikiLeaks. Julian Assange spouted that he wasn't about bringing the war to an end. Of course, that was during the same press conference in which he alleged war crimes. So, it bears monitoring how all of this plays out. From a partisan perspective, it's kinda funny, but a precipitous Afghan withdrawal would be reminiscent to the troubles of the Johnson administration. It's Obama's war, and if the radical left has its way, he'll lose it. MSNBC's on the case, that's for sure. And interesting, I don't disagree so much with the analysis here, and British correspondent Declan Walsh is correct to indicate that the pressure's on Pakistan now to fix its ISI corruption and terror-abetting (although we already knew that). Mostly I hope that we don't cut-and-run while we're still needed, and we are. Pakistan is ground zero of global jihad, and leaving Afghanistan now before we're comfortable that country's stable will only make AfPak that much more attractive to the globe's killers. More on this throughout the day...

Julian Assange Press Conference, London, July 26, 2010

At Washington Post, "Wikileaks' release of classified field reports on Afghan war reveals not much." Plus, raw video from Monday's press conference:

The 10 Most Controversial Playboy Covers of All Time

A pretty interesting piece, at BroBible:

Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman obviously took offense.

Have times changed? Maybe we should ask Ms. Olga? She attends college where women are judged by brains over bods. As a college professor, I must say: I'm impressed!

RELATED: "Hottest Student Bodies: The 50 Best Colleges Ranked By Looks: 1-10."

The AfPak Non-Pentagon Papers

As I reported earlier, the WikiLeaks document dump hasn't generated spectacular revelations. Certainly, from an intelligence and government secrecy standpoint, it's a really big deal. By now, though, most analysts have actually kinda yawned at the whole thing. But for leftists, WikiLeaks is pure gold. Recall that Julian Assange denied that his goal was to bring an end to the war. That's pure bull. I've paid too much attention to this creep since the bogus Apache Reuters video ploy a few months back. These people are out to damage the U.S. big time, and all the hardline leftist organizations go into overdrive when a new doc-dump/video exposé goes live. Case in point is the hyperventilating coverage at Democracy Now!, "The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War." Amy Goodman's a commie, and communists have two big attacks on the West: "Wars of imperial aggression" and "hegemonic racism" (Israel demonization falls somewhere in between both of those, as the Jewish state is the racist outpost of American-led neo-colonialism in the Middle East). And of course, MSNBC's more of a "commie" network than CNN, and these folks are creaming over WikiLeaks, for example, Cenk Uygur at this clip featuring Matt Lewis of Politics Daily:

On an interesting related note, the Wall Street Journal sees a silver lining in the release of the documents, and the editors debunk the "Pentagon Papers" analogy at the same time. See, "The AfPak Papers":

We've long believed the U.S. government classifies too many documents as secret, and now we know for sure. How else to explain why Sunday's release of some 92,000 previously confidential documents reveals so little that we didn't already know about the war in Afghanistan? This document dump will only matter if it becomes an excuse for more of America's political class to turn against a war they once supported ....

Far from being the Pentagon Papers redux, the larger truth is how closely the ground-eye view in these documents reinforces what U.S. officials were long saying: that the war wasn't going well, the Taliban were making gains, and a new and invigorated strategy was needed to combat them. Both the Bush and Obama Administrations made the same diagnosis in recent years, neither one kept it secret, and this year Mr. Obama followed through with an increase in troops levels and a renewed counterinsurgency.

The most politically explosive documents concern the conflicting loyalties of Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Nearly 200 reports allege that the Pakistani military intelligence arm is in cahoots with the Taliban, despite claiming to side with America. This is undoubtedly true but also no surprise.

The ISI helped the U.S. arm and organize the mujahideen against the Soviets, and it kept doing so to fill the Afghan power vacuum after America abandoned the region in the early 1990s. The reports released this week allege—often citing a single source or uncertain information—that the ISI helped train Afghan suicide bombers, plotted to poison beer slated for GIs, and schemed to assassinate President Hamid Karzai. It isn't clear how many of these plots were ever attempted, but there's no doubt that many Pakistanis doubt U.S. staying power, fear Indian influence in Afghanistan, and want to use the Taliban to shape events on their Western border.

Then again, we also know that Pakistan has shifted its behavior in a more pro-American direction in the last 14 months as the Taliban began to threaten Pakistan's own stability. Responding to a surge of terrorism against Pakistani targets, the Pakistani army has pushed Islamist insurgents from the Swat Valley and even South Waziristan. It has taken heavy casualties in the process. Islamabad now actively aids U.S. drone strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in the mountains along its Afghan border.

Pakistan can and should do more to pursue the terrorist enclaves along the border, as well as in Quetta and Karachi. The question is what's the best way to persuade their leaders to act. U.S.-Pakistan cooperation has been one of the Obama Administration's foreign policy successes, and it would be a tragedy if the leak of selective documents, often out of context, would now poison that cooperation.

That's the most sober thing I've read on foreign policy in weeks (be sure to RTWT). WSJ points out that the documents indicate that Iran is cooperating with al Qaeda and related Sunni extremist groups, another fact that puts the lie to the promise of diplomatic engagement with Tehran.

RELATED: "Why WikiLeaks' ‘War Logs’ Are No Pentagon Papers." (At Memeorandum.)

HBO's 'Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County'

Getting ready to watch this documentary with my family, at 9:00pm PST, Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County:

The director/producer is Alexandra Pelosi, who is the daughter of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Light My Fire

At Saberpoint, from last week, featuring this clip of The Doors: "Jim Morrison: Dionysian Shaman or Acid-Addled Freak?" Stogie watched the Oliver Stone flick and did a write-up.

Newlyweds Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr

Some news-related midweek Rule 5.

At People Magazine, "Newlyweds Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr Show Off Wedding Bling."

And ‎"PIRATE BOOTY: Orlando with Miranda (VIDEO: Miranda Kerr's new Victoria's Secret ad)":

Sexual Interactions of the Orgasmic Kind

At Feministe, "My Sluthood, Myself":

Last summer, I suffered the breakup of a relationship that I had thought would be permanent. Now, I’ve been through my share of break-ups, even of quite serious relationships, but nothing ever broke me like this one.

Since then, I’ve had sexual interactions of the orgasmic kind with 9 different people, none of which I was at any time in a committed relationship with.

I’m not telling you this to shock (though I am specifying the number because we all need to get over the whole “OMG! Be ashamed of your NUMBER! It’s either too big or too small!” thing). I’m telling you this because of something else that’s also true about me: I’d really like to be in a long-term, probably monogamous relationship. That’s right, folks, I’m a slut who craves a stable, loving, committed relationship. File me under “Lookin’ fer luv: ur doin it wrong.”

That’s the story we get sold, right? That women who sleep around are destroying their chances at True Love. Something to do with bonding hormones getting all used up? Or is it that we have so little self-esteem that no one could love us? Or maybe it’s that we’re all used candy wrappers or dirty masking tape. I can never remember.

Thing is: I’ve done it the other way. Until my mid-30s, I was largely a serial monogamist. Not for any grand ethical or philosophical reasons – it was just what felt comfortable to me. That’s not to say that I didn’t have some wild adventures in college, or never went to bed with someone on a first date – I did on occasion. It’s just that when I did, I’d often wake up the next day in a relationship. Let me tell you: not the best recipe for partnership bliss.

I’m thinking of one particular instance in which I had what was for me a very painful dry spell: a year and a half in which I barely got to kiss anyone, and didn’t get to do anything other than that at all, sexually speaking, with anyone. It… yeah. Didn’t feel too good. Made me feel like I would never be touched or loved again. Made me feel, in a word, desperate. You know what’s not a great emotional state for making important life decisions? Desperation.

To wit: after this year and a half of nothing, I went to bed with a woman I barely knew on our first date. Nothing wrong with that, we had a great time, and seriously, did I mention a year and a half? The problem came the next morning, when it became obvious that she was much more into me emotionally than I was at that point. Did I tell her that? And potentially get exiled back to my affectionless desert? I bet you know the answer. What followed was a two-year relationship in which we were unhappy for about the last year and a half ...

Lots, lots more at the link (amazingly).

I guess this is why feminists decry "slut shaming." They wanna be out and proud about their slutishness (and their sexual orientation?) and don't think they should hafta catch any flak for it.

And on a related note, I've never even heard of "Craigslist Casual Encounters" (the miracle that saved our orgasmic friend here, but RTWT).

No shame there, I guess.

Lindsay Beyerstein on JournoList

The Daily Caller's trickle of JournoList e-mails is providing a treasure-trove of insight into the twisted minds of radical leftists.

See, "Raw Journolist emails on ‘Palin’s Downs child’." (Via Memeorandum.)

Breathtaking is Lindsay Beyerstein's comments, for example:

"In the post-Rathergate era, journalists should be on their guard for Republican dirty tricks."

Dana Loesch picked up on this in a one-word titled post, "Irony."

But Ms. Beyerstein's extended discussion of Sarah Palin is almost unreal:

The story is far-fetched and as yet unsupported by evidence. Kathy’s right: So far, there’s not enough evidence for any responsible commentator to discuss this. Public speculation without proof is cruel and counterproductive.

However, if some reporter thinks this rumor is worth investigating further, and he or she absolutely nails this story, that would be great.

If I had the smoking gun, I’d proudly publish the evidence. (I don’t think the story is plausible enough to bother looking, but that’s a separate question.)

Anyone who decided to raise her granddaughter as her daughter is a liar and a hypocrite, not to mention an abuser of two generations of children. What kind of parent would force her family to live that kind of lie?

What warped values would give rise to such a decision? Lots of grandparents raise their grandkids. That’s admirable and commonplace. Barack Obama spoke movingly before a crowd of 84,000 about how his own grandmother helped raise him.

Why lie about the baby’s origins, except to spare Palin political embarrassment? She’s a self-professed Bible believing Christian whose mommy cred might be diminished by the revelation that she raised an unwed teen mom. That said, I imagine that she would have scored a lot of points for openly raising her daughter’s disabled child–and rightly so. A hoax would suggest extreme selfishness and blind ambition, not to mention vanity and a distinctly irrational preoccupation with keeping up appearances.

The fact that baby Trig has Down Syndrome isn’t the weakest link in the story. Yes, older mothers are at increased risk of bearing children with Down Syndrome. The majority of children with DS are born to younger mothers–because most babies are born to younger women, period.

My cousin, a pediatric nurse, mentioned a couple months ago that moms in their early teens are also at increased risk of bearing children with DS compared to women in their late teens and twenties. Does anyone know of a study to support that? The papers I’ve seen tend to put everyone under 25 in one category, instead of breaking the data down further.

Cheers,

Lindsay

Warped values?

Right.

The left is warped. Lindsay Beyerstein is the personification.

**********

Wait!

There's more! Turns out Andrew Sullivan, M.D., specialist in forensic gynecology, sees the JournoList as vindication!

Plus, William Jacobson's got a post up as well, "Journolist Trig Emails - All About The Story Line."

Crazy On You

I little music to brighten the afternoon?

Recall that Heart played Harrah's Rincon in May, which must have been awesome. This clip's from the 1970s. Enjoy "Crazy on You":

With Governor Jan Brewer...

...is my good friend Chris at Panhandle's Perspective, "Texas Business and Arizona Politics":

Haiti: Living in Limbo

An exremely moving photo-essay on Haiti earthquake survivor Alescandra Simin, from Carolyn Cole at the Los Angeles Times:

"Simin bathes Midjalannda in a large metal bowl, the same one the family uses as a latrine at night. She worries about her daughter's weight loss."

See the whole thing, at the link.

Arthur C. Brooks on Reason.TV

Via Theo Spark:

Julian Assange Alleges U.S. War Crimes in Afghanistan

At WSJ, "WikiLeaks Founder: Documents Suggest Evidence of War Crimes":

The Afghan war documents published by WikiLeaks appear to contain evidence of war crimes, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told a news conference in London Monday.

"There does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material," he said, adding that it would be "up to a court" to make judgements on any crimes.

He cited in particular Task Force 373, which he described as a U.S. military "assassination unit" that he said killed seven children in a "botched raid."

He strongly suggested a coverup of civilian deaths during the war, pointing to U.S. military reports on the number of people wounded or killed during specific incidents. In some of these, a high number of those killed or wounded are classified as "enemy" while very few are classified as "civilians," which Mr. Assange called "suspicious."

Asked how many incidents could potentially be investigated for possible war crimes or other reasons, he said "thousands," adding that the U.S. military would probably be forced to investigate some. "You need enough investigated to create deterrents" against similar behaviour in the future, he said.

Mr. Assange added that the information in the documents "really doesn't paint a flattering picture of the Taliban, either," noting that there are many reports of Taliban-planted explosive devices resulting in "significant loss of human life."

He said the documents don't just "reveal abuses" but paint a detailed picture of "the last six years of war," including the kinds of weapons used and the progress or setbacks experienced.

There's more at the link.

Noteworthy is Assange's claim that "he doesn't 'really have an opinion about whether the war should stop'."

Actually, he does care if the war stops, because his whole agenda is to stop the United States, and he's backed by the global transnational network of neo-communist activists who're gunning for America.

That said, lots of folks are unimpressed (and hence it's a media hayride mostly).

See Jawa Report, "Noted Liar and Conspiracy Theorist Leaks Documents Which Shock and Awe No One." And at Abu Muqawama, "Scoop!":

Here are the things I have learned thus far from the documents released via Wikileaks:

1. Elements within Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) support the Taliban.
2. The United States integrates direct action special operations into its counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan, targeting insurgent leaders through capture/kill missions.
3. Civilians have died in Afghanistan, often as the result of coalition combat operations.

I'm going to bed, but if I were to stay up late reading more, here is what I suspect I would discover:

1. "Afghanistan" has four syllables.
2. LeBron is going to the Heat.
3. D'Angelo Barksdale didn't actually commit suicide in prison. Stringer Bell had him killed.
4. Although a document dated 17 October 2004 claims the Red Sox were down 3-0 in a seven-game series with the Yankees, they actually went on to win 4-3.
5. Liberace was gay.
6. The Pathan remains wily.
7. Julian Assange is a clown.

But more seriously, see this piece at Mother Jones (of all places):

The other interesting data are notes from what the military calls KLEs—key leader engagements. Military officers, as well as officials from State, USAID, and other agencies regularly meet with important players in a war zone to get their take on the situation. Often they're dull and tell the interviewers little they didn't already know; sometimes, though, they give insight to "atmospherics"—how Afghan locals feel about US forces or the Taliban. Many of these key leaders take their lives into their hands; from my experience in Iraq, I know that numerous Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds with high standing among their tribes—and among our enemies—took time to brief US officials, often to dish dirt on crooked or violent elements in their vicinity. If they were ever outed as collaborators with American forces, they'd be as good as dead. And Wikileaks has 16 pages of secret military KLEs with individuals and groups in Afghanistan, spanning six years. No names are redacted. In this case, what retired general James Jones, the White House national security adviser, said yesterday is correct: WL is putting some lives at serious risk with that particular data dump.

Wikileaks Defends Release of Afghanistan War Logs Documents

Julian Assange defends the release of secret military files on the war in Afghanistan. Plus, an update from the Russian news channel:

I'm still working through the information, but see my earlier entry, "WikiLeaks and the Afghanistan War Logs." Also, at Politico, "W.H. condemns 'irresponsible' leaks, dismisses stories." And especially, Blake Hounshell, "The logs of war: Do the Wikileaks documents really tell us anything new?":

Three news organizations -- the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel -- today published explosive reports on a treasure trove of more than 91,000 documents that were obtained by Wikileaks, the self-proclaimed whistleblower site.

I've now gone through the reporting and most of the selected documents (though not the larger data dump), and I think there's less here than meets the eye. The story that seems to be getting the most attention, repeating the longstanding allegation that Pakistani intelligence might be aiding the Afghan insurgents, offers a few new details but not much greater clarity. Both the Times and the Guardian are careful to point out that the raw reports in the Wikileaks archive often seem poorly sourced and present implausible information.

"[F]or all their eye-popping details," writes the Guardian's Declan Walsh, "the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity."

The Times' reporters seem somewhat more persuaded, noting that "many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable" and that their sources told them that "the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence."

Der Spiegel's reporting adds little, though the magazine's stories will probably have great political impact in Germany, as the Wikileaks folks no doubt intended. One story hones in on how an elite U.S. task force charged with hunting down Taliban and Al Qaeda targets operates from within a German base; another alleges that "The German army was clueless and naïve when it stumbled into the conflict," and that northern Afghanistan, where the bulk of German troops are based, is more violent than has been previously portrayed.

Otherwise, I'd say that so far the documents confirm what we already know about the war: It's going badly; Pakistan is not the world's greatest ally and is probably playing a double game; coalition forces have been responsible for far too many civilian casualties; and the United States doesn't have very reliable intelligence in Afghanistan.

'We Were Soldiers'

Watched it yesterday. Interesting to see a film with Mel Gibson amid his personal meltdown. I always admired Gibson in this one. I think it's when he tried to become American. Wikipedia's got a good page on the history, "Battle of la Drang." I also love Madeleine Stowe in this film, and I miss her in more recent movies. A truly classy woman:

The Left’s Default Response is Fascism

From John Nolte:

As a former Leftist I do, however, understand the knee-jerk leap to fascism. Being a Leftist sucks when it comes to political debate. You really only have two choices to try and convince others that your progressive ideas and values aren’t toxic, and that’s emotionalism, lies, or both. I remember how frustrating that was and so it only makes sense that Leftists would find appealing everything from a literal “shut up” straight through to wishing that America wasn’t a democracy but instead the kind of country with a government willing and able to permanently silence those opinion and broadcast outlets a chosen few don’t agree with or don’t think “advances us in this country.”

WikiLeaks and the Afghanistan War Logs

It's strange, since I was just listening to a 20 minute interview with Julian Assange yesterday at TED. I had planned to write about that as soon as this latest breaking news cycle winds down (JournoList, Shirley Sherrod, etc.), and now we've got the release of the Afghanistan war logs, which had been expected. Yeah, since the Iraq Apache video smear (and the detailed coverage at Jawa Report, et al., and my own), I've been gaining a sharper understanding of Assange and his hard-left enablers worldwide. It's simply more clear by the day that America's enemies are not just on the battlefield, but also among the global transnational issue networks working to bring down the United States and its Western allies.

I need to research the war logs and find out more on this, so expect updates. Below is a clip featuring Julian Assange for The Guardian. There's also a big exposé at The Guardian as well, so it's clear that the newspaper's coordinating its coverage with WikiLeaks. See, "Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation." And of course, the New York Times is on the case, seemingly as deeply involved as is The Guardian. See, "Inside the Fog of War: Reports From the Ground in Afghanistan."Also at NYT (FWIW), "Piecing Together the Reports, and Deciding What to Publish":

The articles published today are based on thousands of United States military incident and intelligence reports — records of engagements, mishaps, intelligence on enemy activity and other events from the war in Afghanistan — that were made public on Sunday on the Internet. The New York Times, The Guardian newspaper in London, and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the material several weeks ago. These reports are used by desk officers in the Pentagon and troops in the field when they make operational plans and prepare briefings on the situation in the war zone. Most of the reports are routine, even mundane, but many add insights, texture and context to a war that has been waged for nearly nine years.

Over all these documents amount to a real-time history of the war reported from one important vantage point — that of the soldiers and officers actually doing the fighting and reconstruction.

The Source of the Material

The documents — some 92,000 individual reports in all — were made available to The Times and the European news organizations by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing secrets of all kinds, on the condition that the papers not report on the data until July 25, when WikiLeaks said it intended to post the material on the Internet. WikiLeaks did not reveal where it obtained the material. WikiLeaks was not involved in the news organizations’ research, reporting, analysis and writing. The Times spent about a month mining the data for disclosures and patterns, verifying and cross-checking with other information sources, and preparing the articles that are published today. The three news organizations agreed to publish their articles simultaneously, but each prepared its own articles.

Classified Information

Deciding whether to publish secret information is always difficult, and after weighing the risks and public interest, we sometimes chose not to publish. But there are times when the information is of significant public interest, and this is one of those times. The documents illuminate the extraordinary difficulty of what the United States and its allies have undertaken in a way that other accounts have not.

Most of the incident reports are marked “secret,” a relatively low level of classification. The Times has taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests ...

There's more at the link, but I stopped at this line. "The Times has taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests"?

Don't believe it for a second. The New York Times has been the radical left's institutional organ working to bring about an American defeat in Iraq and the War on Terror, and now in Afghanistan.

Recall Heather MacDonald's piece from 2006, on the Times' reporting that helped killed the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. See, "National Security Be Damned":

BY NOW IT'S UNDENIABLE: The New York Times is a national security threat. So drunk is it on its own power and so antagonistic to the Bush administration that it will expose every classified antiterror program it finds out about, no matter how legal the program, how carefully crafted to safeguard civil liberties, or how vital to protecting American lives.

The Times's latest revelation of a national security secret appeared on last Friday's front page--where no al Qaeda operative could possibly miss it. Under the deliberately sensational headline, "Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror," the Times blows the cover on a highly targeted program to locate terrorist financing networks. According to the report, since 9/11, the Bush administration has obtained information about terror suspects' international financial transactions from a Belgian clearinghouse of international money transfers.

RTWT.

See also, Michelle Malkin, "NY Times Blabbermouths Strike Again."

I'll have more later after I read and research a bit. Meanwhile, readers can check WikiLeaks directly: "Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010." And the Der Spiegel piece is here: "Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It" (via Memeorandum).

Correcting the New York Times

This post is a revised and update version of an entry that was scheduled to go live early Monday morning (see the original post below). Some readers might recall that last weekend I caught New York Times' political reporter Matt Bai publishing a 100 percent falsehood that claimed a "shower of hateful epithets" had allegedly met Rep. John Lewis outside Capitol Hill last March. Full details below, but it's a pleasure to revise and update with a correction from the editors published in today's newspaper:

Corrections

Published: July 25, 2010

NATIONAL

The Political Times column last Sunday, about a generational divide over racial attitudes, erroneously linked one example of a racially charged statement to the Tea Party movement. While Tea Party supporters have been connected to a number of such statements, there is no evidence that epithets reportedly directed in March at Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, outside the Capitol, came from Tea Party members. (Go to Article)

There's no perma-permalink, so here's the screencap for posterity. (The orginal article has been revised, however, and the correction is appended at bottom: "Beneath Divides Seemingly About Race Are Generational Fault Lines.")

And this correction is an extremely limited one at that. John at Power Line picked it up, and he notes:

Someday the Times may go all the way and admit that the epithets "reportedly" directed at Lewis (reported by Lewis himself, that is) never occurred. In the meantime, the paper is careful to assure its readers that Tea Party members have made "a number of" racially charged statements, all of which are unspecified.

Hat tip to Pirate's Cove, who links to Linkmaster Smith at The Other McCain. And thanks to Glenn Reynolds for originally linking and spreading the word. My original post is below:

**********

Interesting piece at NYT (FWIW), "In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger":

Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.

Tracking how many people view articles, and then rewarding — or shaming — writers based on those results has become increasingly common in old and new media newsrooms. The Christian Science Monitor now sends a daily e-mail message to its staff that lists the number of page views for each article on the paper’s Web site that day.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all display a “most viewed” list on their home pages. Some media outlets, including Bloomberg News and Gawker Media, now pay writers based in part on how many readers click on their articles.

Once only wire-service journalists had their output measured this way. And in a media environment crowded with virtual content farms where no detail is too small to report as long as it was reported there first, Politico stands out for its frenetic pace or, in the euphemism preferred by its editors, “high metabolism.”

The top editors, who rise as early as 4:30 a.m., expect such volume and speed from their reporters because they believe Politico’s very existence depends, in large part, on how quickly it can tell readers something, anything they did not know.

RTWT.

The golden nugget of today's high-octane online journalism is the breaking news report. And what's not mentioned so much at the piece is how newspapers are in fact threatened by all the alternative media. Notice how at the piece reporters aren't working a beat so much nowadays as trawling the web for interesting and exclusive tidbits of information. Also important is the premium of fresh content so as not to lose readers.

Sounds a lot like blogging, actually.

Speaking of which, I had a great time of it last week. I broke a story.

On Sunday night I published "Calling New York Times: Congressman John Lewis was NOT 'Showered With Hateful Epithets Outside the Capitol' Last March." I e-mailed it out to some on my bloggers' distribution list, and Glenn Reynolds picked it up (and I had an Instalanche rockin' the blog when I got back online at 3:00am Monday morning.) That was followed up by Andrew Bolt at Australia's Herald Sun, and then a little later by Power Line and NewsBusters. (I'm especially proud of the Power Line link --- that's a first for me, and Power Line was one of the very first blogs I discovered years ago before I picked up blogging for myself.) And it turns out a Power Line reader has written "An open letter to Matt Bai." (Via Glenn.)

So, head on over there and check it out. That's cool!

BONUS: It turns out Mark Levin linked to my post as part of his 7-19 program on "race based politics."

That's too cool!

Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea

I'm about half way through C. Bradley Thompson's new book, Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. Yeah, it's an attack on neoconservatism, by one who was sympathetic to the ideology at one time. It's an excellent read, although I disagree with its conclusions, and it'll take me some thinking to put those disagreements in more detailed writing here. I can say that Thompson's focus so far is primarily on Irving Kristol and how he was informed by Straussian political philosophy. Hence, Thomspon reads an allegedly extreme authoritarianism into the movement that --- it is argued --- is at odds with the vision of the American founders. I'd simply note that neocons are way more eclectic than is postulated at the book, and again, I'm not done yet. I have peeked ahead to the conclusion, and Thompson takes his thesis to its logical conclusion to find neoconservatism anti-democratic. More on this later. Meanwhile, this is the kind of response I'd offer outside of the Irving Kristol exegesis, from Max Boot:

"Neocons Are Liberals Who Have Been Mugged by Reality"

No longer true. Original neoconservatives such as Irving Kristol, who memorably defined neocons as liberals who'd been "mugged by reality," were (and still are) in favor of welfare benefits, racial equality, and many other liberal tenets. But they were driven rightward by the excesses of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when crime was increasing in the United States, the Soviet Union was gaining ground in the Cold War, and the dominant wing of the Democratic Party was unwilling to get tough on either problem.

A few neocons, like philosopher Sidney Hook or Kristol himself, had once been Marxists or Trotskyites. Most, like former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, simply had been hawkish Democrats who became disenchanted with their party as it drifted further left in the 1970s. Many neocons, such as Richard Perle, originally rallied around Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democratic senator who led the opposition to the Nixon-Ford policy of détente with the Soviet Union. Following the 1980 election, U.S. President Ronald Reagan became the new standard bearer of the neoconservative cause.

A few neocons, like Perle, still identify themselves as Democrats, and a number of "neoliberals" in the Democratic Party (such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman and former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke) hold fairly neoconservative views on foreign policy. But most neocons have switched to the Republican Party. On many issues, they are virtually indistinguishable from other conservatives; their main differences are with libertarians, who demonize "big government" and preach an anything-goes morality.

Most younger members of the neoconservative movement, including some descendants of the first generation, such as William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, have never gone through a leftist phase, which makes the "neo" prefix no longer technically accurate. Like "liberal," "conservative," and other ideological labels, "neocon" has morphed away from its original definition. It has now become an all-purpose term of abuse for anyone deemed to be hawkish, which is why many of those so described shun the label. Wolfowitz prefers to call himself a "Scoop Jackson Republican."

BONUS: At Dr. Sanity, "WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW...":

...is not love or global orgasms, but more neoconservatism.

'Mama Grizzlies'

I love this clip. All three of these women, wives and mothers with busy lives at home and in the workplace, are running for elective office. It takes a lot, especially fundraising. Some day I may throw my hat in the ring, although this blog probably wouldn't help my campaign, LOL!

RELATED SCORCHER: At Fox News, "100 Days to Decide: Republicans Bank on Anti-Dem Strategy, Platform Unclear."

PLUS: At The Hill, "Franken warns that GOP Congress would bring ‘truly dangerous agenda’" (via Memeorandum). And at Sweetness & Light, "Franken: GOP Brings ‘Dangerous Agenda’."

Sunday Cartoon Roundup

More at Flopping Aces and Theo Spark.

The Secular Inquisition

From Chapter 4 in Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power:

What have the issues of anthropogenic global warming, the war in Iraq, Israel and scientism got in common? Not a lot, you might think. But in fact a number of threads link them all. Most fundamentally, they involve the promotion of beliefs that purport to be unchallengeable truths but are in fact ideologies in which evidence is manipulated, twisted and distorted to support or "prove" their governing idea. All are therefore based on false or unsupported beliefs that are presented as axiomatically true. Moreover, because each assumes itself to be proclaiming the sole and exclusive truth, it cannot permit any challenge to itself. It has to maintain at all costs the integrity of the falsehood. So all challenges have to be resisted through coercive means. Knowledge is thus forced to give way to power. Reason is replaced by bullying, intimidation and the suppression of debate.

This makes them all deeply regressive movements of thought, which corrode the most fundamental concept of the Western world. The principle characteristic of Western modernity is freedom of thought and expression and the ability to express dissent. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment ushered in the modern age by breaking the power of the church to control the terms of debate and punish heresy. Church and state were separated, and a space was created for individual freedom and the toleration of differences --- the essence of liberal society.