Other possible titles for this entry include “Now THIS Is Confirmation Bias!” and “How Ideological Passion Can Make You an Idiot.”
Here is a screen shot of a Herman Cain PAC website that surfaced this week:
Did you think it was real? Do you think it was intended to fool anyone above the age of 12? Did you not see the horse gag coming a mile away? I guess the real question is, did it take you three seconds, or only one to figure out that it was a gag? Continue reading
"Hey, Herald! Get with the program!"
In response to a complaint by the Boston Herald about the limited access its staff would have to President Obama during his visit to Boston, Matt Lehrich, an Obama aide, attributed the treatment to the White House’s objections to a front page opinion article by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in which he attacked the administration’s job-creation record. “I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the president’s visits,” Lehrich told the Herald in an email.
And maybe it does. Then again, there is a mountain of evidence that hundreds of media outlets, including four of the five major TV news organizations, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and many others, are also biased in their coverage of everything this president does–favorably. Apparently the White House, which has already disgraced itself by repeatedly attacking the one critical network by name for the state offense of not falling into line, can’t abide the fact that some print journalists are as prone to be critical of him as Chris Matthews is likely to get tingles up his leg every time Obama opens his mouth. Their response? Make it harder for the unfavorably biased journalists to cover the news. Continue reading
You can find the original post here, and under it, my response to this comment by reader Trafford Gazsik. I’d say that Christopher Hitchens’ rebuttal to Chomsky, linked in the post, and my post about the ethics of bin Laden’s execution address the issues raised, make up your own mind.
“I like Chomsky and as a non-American, I can assure you that rather than filling my head with anti-American sentiments, his writings have reassured me that America remains a country populated with mostly decent people and that the world at large should not give up on the place just yet.
“I’m interested to know which part of Chomsky’s analysis you do not agree with:
– Do you disagree with the assertion that the Bin Laden ‘takedown’ was an assassination?
– Do you reject the assertion that the assassination took place within the territory of another sovereign state without the knowledge or permission of the government of that state, in clear contravention of international law and customs?
– Do you deny that Bin Laden had not been tried in any court, and was for legal purposes, an innocent civilian of Non-US nationality residing in Non-US territory? Continue reading
I’ve been enduring, teeth gritted, the America-hating propaganda of Noam Chomsky since my college days. He is a brilliant linguistics professor who has credibility as a social critic only because his world view—briefly put, that the United States is evil, and anything that indicates otherwise is the result of a conspiracy–has been so supportive of and nurturing to the extreme Left. It is hard to quantify how much harm he has done to this nation or how many potentially productive minds, foreign and domestic, that he has warped with his bile, but I am sure it is substantial on both counts.
We are fortunate, I guess, to have his assessment of Osama Bin Laden’s death, recently published and available for reading here. The piece is res ipsa loquitur that the man is so consumed with unreasoning hatred for his country that he cannot process the truth or think straight, but I know that plenty of Chomsky followers will be cheering. Thus I am grateful that Christopher Hitchens has authored an admirable take-down of the professor, here.
Did Past Paul Ryan make Future Paul Ryan a hypocrite, or vice-versa? Is that even possible?
I sometimes comfort myself with the fantasy that the extreme left websites like The Daily Kos are written and read solely by 15-year-olds. While this adds to my anxieties about the public schools’ incompetence at teaching basic skills like logic, analysis and argument, it soothes my fears that our nation’s policies and political discourse are being dangerously warped by millions of addled adults whose passion is untempered by even a modicum of fairness and common sense. In this spirit, I am hoping that bal is a teenager, which would explain, though not justify, his absurd post on Kos. I fear he is not.
He writes, “I guess it’s only when social programs help other people that they’re bad, because I haven’t seen Paul Ryan acknowledging how Social Security benefits helped him and his family in trying times. Continue reading
No.
But NBC’s David Gregory thinks so. Here was his exchange with Republican Speaker John Boehner on “Meet the Press” yesterday: Continue reading
“(CLARIFICATION: Palin did not, in fact, say this. It was a tongue-in-cheek link to an article that was intended as a joke.)”
—Time Magazine, dishonestly claiming one act of unethical journalistic conduct to cover for a worse one.
Maybe I owe blogger TBogg an apology. I thought only left-wing Palin-haters could be so disoriented by ideological fervor that they could believe the satirical story claiming that the former Alaska governor had told Sean Hannity that Christina Aguilera should be banished for botching the lyrics of the National Anthem. But no: Us Weekly, the celebrity gossip magazine, and Time Magazine (!!!) both fell for the same spoof. Us, at least, had the integrity to admit that it had made a mistake and to apologize. Time, disgracefully, issued the above dodge, claiming that a fabled news magazine suddenly decided to start printing “tongue-in-cheek” fake stories that portray national political figures as fools. Continue reading
The headline reads:
Palin Says She’d Deport Christina Aguilera for Botching the National Anthem
Although nothing Sarah Palin has ever said or done suggests that she would ever advocate such a ridiculous thing, and despite the fact the headline appeared on a clearly labeled comedy site, with the story including such over-the-top statements as…
“Palin also levied criticism on the Obama administration for allowing “spicy Latin princesses” to do the jobs of American pop divas. “Unemployment is at nine percent, yet we have to suffer through a performance by a foreigner with a poor grasp of the English language? If I were president, I’d deport Ms. Aguilera back to wherever it is she’s from and give Amy Smart a call.”
..despite all this, prominent Angry Left blogger TBogg took the story completely seriously, and so did many of his followers, who piled on in a “boy-is-that-woman-ever-stupid-like-all-the-other -Tea-Baggers” orgy of contempt. Continue reading
To listen to the conservative talk radio circuit and read the Right’s wing of the blogosphere, one would think that the United States is in the midst of a coup right out of “Seven Days in May,” or a foreign take-over like the one portrayed in “Red Dawn,” or even an alien infestation by disguised lizards, as in the sci-fi mini-series “V.” Hysteria is everywhere. Dark threats of revolution are not being whispered, but shouted. “I really think civil war is inevitable,” one blogger wrote yesterday.
Holy Gamoly! Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 