Washington Post's Milbank plays race card. Again...

The Daily Caller: WaPo's Milbank suggests GOP toned down Sebelius attacks due to race:

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank suggested Thursday night that the GOP didn’t go after outgoing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius with the same zeal as Attorney General Eric Holder because — unlike Holder — Sebelius is white.

Milbank made the insinuation during an interview on MSNBC’s “Politics Nation with Al Sharpton,” after the Reverend ran a segment alleging that Republican opposition to Holder, including his contempt citation, is race-based.

“Well, here’s an interesting thought experiment,” Milbank said. “So let’s compare Holder to Kathleen Sebelius, who has presided over Obamacare – which is the thing that has most antagonized the right and Republicans over all these years. You’re not seeing calls for her impeachment. You’re not seeing the same level of personal vitriol.”

“So I think that why, again, it’s fair to ask the question and let every individual say why it is they have that particular antipathy towards this attorney general, towards this president,” Milbank said, “and why not, say, towards Kathleen Sebelius, who they’re obviously much more at odds with.”

Old TRUTH:  The Republicans were unreasonably tough on Sibelius because they are sexists and she's a woman.
New TRUTH:  The Republicans went easy on Sibelius because they are racists and she's white.

The left has two suits in its deck.  Apparently, for this hand, the Race Card is now trumps, as opposed to the WarOnWomen card.

So when the Republicans were lambasting Sibelius all fall during the disastrous Affordable Care Act roll-out, trumps were WarOnWomen, and they were beating up on her because she was a woman (and you can't hit the girl, because that makes you a sexist [as does saying that you can't hit the girl, which makes for a really interesting and difficult to follow set of moral standards]) but now, in retrospect, they were going easy on her because she's white.

Yeah, that's all perfectly sensible and coherent...

Oh, and Dana, if you're capable of understanding it, here's a significant difference between Holder and Sibelius, totally unrelated to either race or gender:  Holder has presided over a corrupt, politicized Department of Justice, while Sibelius presided over a grossly mismanaged government program rollout.  Malfeasance and corruption, which have led to cries for Holder's impeachment, are different from gross incompetence, which led to cries for Sibelius' resignation. 

Questions for Senate Dems who voted for Obamacare

Washington Post blogger Jen Rubin has a series of (good) questions that the media should be asking Democratic Senators¹:

• Did President Obama mislead you about whether people could keep their insurance?

• Did you foresee that many people would be shifted from full-time work to part-time work as a result of Obamacare?

• Did you ever demand an oversight hearing on the progress of the Obamacare rollout?

• Did you expect millions of Americans to have their insurance canceled?

• Did you ever demand assurances that HealthCare.gov would be fully tested and secure from cyber-attacks?

• Did you understand some people would be dropped from coverage and find their only option to be more expensive insurance with poorer coverage?

• Did you expect millions more to have their insurance canceled than to have purchased insurance?

My comment is this: Never mind four years ago - two MONTHS ago every Democrat in the Senate was willing to shut down the government to prevent a one-year delay in implementation. Two months ago, they lacked the foresight to see what was obvious from the start, and they were willing to be, if I recall the phrasing correctly, "economic terrorists" and shut down the government, all just to avoid the one-year delay that they're begging for now.



¹ - They won't, of course, but they should. If Republicans had created something that was this much of a mess, they would be...

What was obviously a lie turns out to have been ... a lie

As even the mainstream press seems to be coming to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, the President oversold the "Affordable Care Act," I look back to what I wrote about it four years ago.

So they can put together a bill that's going to a) add 15 (or 30 or 47, depending on the President's mood, apparently) million people to the insurance rolls b) while providing improved care c) at lower cost for everyone d) and allowing everyone to keep the coverage they've already got if they want to e) and not increasing the budget deficit f) or increasing taxes¹, but they can't post that freakin' bill on the internet?...

It boggles my mind that anyone can watch any part of this process and think, "yes, this is how we're going to make the health care system better for everyone! What could possibly go wrong?"


¹ - Every time I write that out, I vacillate between giggling and rage. I giggle that the preposterousness of the suggestion, that there's somehow, some way that increased government intervention is going to lead to any one of those things happening, never mind all six simultaneously, and rage that the President of the United States actually thinks that the US citizens are stupid enough to buy it. He doesn't even have enough respect for the people of this country to try a plausible argument.

Fundamental misunderstandings

Something jumped out of this Washington Post story (Many Americans accumulating debt faster than they’re saving for retirement) at me.

Currently, workers with retirement savings accounts put aside more than 11 percent of their pay for retirement — 5 percent in their own accounts, and 6.2 percent in Social Security.

Note to Michael A. Fletcher, who wrote the story - that 6.2 percent for Social Security is a TAX, which goes into the treasury, and is then used for whatever the Federal Government is currently spending money on. It is NOT savings. There is no Social Security "trust fund," there is no account with your name on it, there is just a transfer from current workers to current retirees, in the hopes that currents workers, when retired, will be supported by future workers. But that 5% that workers with retirement savings accounts are saving doesn't magically become 11% just because the Federal Government is taking 6.2% of their money and giving it to others.

Math is hard, I guess...

Something is not right with Tom Verducci's math...

When opponents threw no more than 140 pitches in a game against Boston, they went 27-16. But when they needed more, they were just 50-49 against the relentless Red Sox.

So Red Sox opponents were 27-16 + 50-40, or 79-56 against Boston this year. That's quite a trick for the opponents of a 97-65 team to pull off. So the Red Sox were only 16-27 when seeing 140 or fewer pitches, and only 49-50 when seeing more?

This might have benefited from a little tighter editing...

Reid: 'Why Would We Want To' Help One Kid With Cancer?

I understand that it's tiresome to listen to conservatives whine about the media. It is. Even for those of us doing it, it is. But that doesn't make out complaints invalid or unimportant.

Take a minute and try to imagine what the media response to Harry Reid's comment would be if uttered by a Republican.

It would be very different than it's going to be...

Media dictionary - 2012 edition

gaffe

Pronunciation: /ɡæf/
Forms: Also gaff.
Etymology: French (see gaff n.2).

Old usage:

A blunder, an instance of clumsy stupidity, a ‘faux pas’. [OED]

Current usage:

A statement by Mitt Romney, esp. one that would be damaging to the political prospects of Barack Obama if allowed to stand unchallenged.

Times Ombusdman: "Yeah, we're pretty much shills for the left..."

Like we didn't already know it.

Arthur Brisbane, in his last column as "public editor" (ombudsman) of the New York Times:

I also noted two years ago that I had taken up the public editor duties believing “there is no conspiracy” and that The Times’s output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or cabal. I still believe that, but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds — a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.

When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.

No conspiracy, though. Whew, that's a relief!


OK, this is not a revelation. I've said it before.

But there's another way that bias manifests itself, and we don't always notice it as clearly. That is selection bias, covering as news issues or events that really aren't, just because it can make one party (say, the Democrats) look good or one party (for example, the Republicans) look bad.

That's just the way it is. But it's nice of Mr. Brisbane to acknowledge it...

"Anger & Division"

This one is very well done.



Of course, there's no shortage of material with which to work...

Cognitive dissonance...

The mainstream press, maintaining the storyline, regardless of the facts...

The Atlantic, 7/27/2012:

Syria's admission Monday that it has chemical weapons has revived a controversial theory about one of the biggest intelligence failures in American history: The non-existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The theory holds that Saddam Hussein did in fact have huge stockpiles of chemical weapons all along, but they were never uncovered by U.S. forces because he secretly smuggled them out to Syria days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. If true, it's the type of revelation that would recaste the Iraq War in the history books...

Associated Press, 7/31/2012:

Britain will help the Iraqi government dispose of what's left of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons, still stored in two bunkers in north of Baghdad, the British embassy in Baghdad announced Monday...Saddam stored the chemical weapons near population centers so that he could access them quickly, despite the danger to his civilian population.

If Bush said it - episode # 2975...

Poles Demand Obama Apology For "Polish Death Camps" Comment

Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, a longtime pro-American voice, tweeted: "The White House will apologize for this outrageous error. [Prime Minister Donald] Tusk will make a statement in the morning. It's a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence."

In ceremonies honoring a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance, President Obama made reference to "Polish death camps." Well, yeah, there were death camps in Poland - set up by Germans, run by Germans, and used to exterminate Poles. "Polish death camps" is not an appropriate way to refer to them, and the Poles are justifiably outraged.

Another brilliant foreign relations coup from President Competent...

Facts not in evidence

There has been, over the past several years, a lot of praise for the 2008 Obama campaign, for being effective and efficient and well-managed. Well, in his always excellent "Best of the Web" article today, James Taranto makes a point that I've made before. Or at least comes close to it - we concur in part and disagree in part.

When Stephanie Cutter accuses the Times of bias because its poll delivers some hard truths, one assumes it is because the campaign is accustomed to media flattery of the sort that Brooks and National Journal are dishing out. It seems to us that flattery is actually running counter to Obama's goal of being re-elected, because it masks his weaknesses. True, he had fawning media coverage in 2008 and won the election. But to think the former caused the latter is a classic example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Similarly, John Podhoretz of the New York Post is astonished that re-election effort has stumbled so badly, "given how astonishingly competent the Obama 2008 campaign was." But was the '08 campaign really all that competent? Or was it successful because he was lucky enough to have incompetent opponents?

We are in complete agreement that his election victory is not proof of "astonishing competen[ce]" from his 2008 campaign. Where we disagree is in whether or not the media coverage was responsible. He thinks not. I think so. I'm not certain that the McCain campaign was incompetent. Less than perfect, of course, because we all are, but incompetent? I don't think so. I think that they were up against a set of facts that were, politically, insurmountable at that time, and every one of which was spun by the ostensibly objective media in a way which benefited Obama.

I noted several years ago that

The premise that's wrong is that the Obama campaign was "so good at campaigning." The fact is that he gaffed and blundered all over the campaign trail, all over God's creation, and was dragged across the finish line by the most biased mainstream press operation in history. A press corps that was enamored of every move he made.

There was no background checking, no pushback on the things he said that were clearly false, no attempt whatsoever to "vet" him as a potential chief executive. It was obvious from day one that he had done absolutely nothing in his life to qualify him for the position that he now holds, but the people who present the campaign story to the country weren't interested in that, either. The inability to speak off the cuff - ignored. The vacuousness of the rhetoric - ignored. The hard left voting record - ignored. The radical friends - ignored. The lack of any kind of managerial experience - ignored. The corrupt bargains for his housing and Michelle's job - ignored. The press had room in their dispatches for one Hero - Barack, the ONE - and one villain - Sarah Palin. And that was the storyline. He won the election not because he ran a great campaign, but because his campaign was, and was going to be, called great no matter what he did. He was the "Great Black Hope," and once he became a viable candidate, he was going to win regardless of what happened.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy, because many things do not have dispositive influence, or even influence at all, on events which follow them. But that doesn't mean that all cases in which one attributes the outcome of an election to the effects of an earlier event, or events, is fallacious. Yes, the media was in the bag for Obama. Yes, Obama won the election. No, that does not prove that the favorable coverage caused him to win the election. But it doesn't disprove it, either. Since we cannot examine it in lab conditions, this is a case where people need to make their own judgements.

I don't disagree with anything I wrote earlier. Was the media coverage solely responsible for Obama's election? Probably not - the situation was a difficult one for any Republican candidate. But did the coverage make his campaign look a lot more impressive, a lot more competent than it actually was? Oh, yeah. Is there any evidence, other than the fact that he won (and you want to talk about post hoc fallacies, there's a good one) that he ran a great campaign? I didn't see it then and I don't see it now.

News, And Not News

Tom Maguire has been all over the coverage of the Trayvon Martin story, and has an excellent piece this morning on News, And Not News

Let me help with the puzzle of what makes news. J-school grads don't dream of covering the local weather; every journalism school graduate longs to participate in any or all of three of the great stories of our nation's past. These earnest scriveners all hope to:

(a) be Woodward and/or Bernstein, breaking the web of deceit and unraveling the cover-up protecting the powerful. (In the current environment they don't want to end up working for Murdoch, so only Republicans get the full treatment; contrast Edwards and McCain in 2008).

(b) report from the bridge at Selma, standing with Martin Luther King against Bull Connor. Oh, to be young and a Freedom Rider, inveighing against White Oppression and Black Injustice!

or, (c) aid Daniel Ellsberg and publish the Truth that ends the Unjust War.

It really is that simple - any story that has the potential to be mashed into one of those templates will have the actual facts trimmed to size. The Duke Lacrosse debacle was such a great parable of White Oppression and Black Helplessness that actual facts didn't intrude on Times reporting for months.

...

And as a caveat, obviously certain political triggers can boost a story's importance - if the Times can find a gun control angle, boost the gay agenda, or promote abortion rights then a story is "news".

Yup. Which is why so much of the country holds them in contempt.

Media response to Obama gaffe?

"Wow, that Bush sure was stupid..."

Barack Obama made an uncharacteristic error, more akin to those of his predecessor George W Bush, by referring to the Falkland Islands as the Maldives.

Ok, it's the UK Telegraph, not the US media. But still. This is a gaffe-squared, an idiotic misstatement that obscures the fundamentally incorrect position being expressed. Even if he'd gotten the name (Malvinas, not Maldives) right, he'd have been wrong. The United States, as a British ally, should not be referring to those islands as anything other than the Falklands.

And it's not at all uncharacteristic of this President, who has said as many stupid things in public as anyone who frequently speaks in public.

Democrats AP sees minefield in Dems' links to Occupy protests

Ah, the Associated Press, like the rest of the leftist US media, is nothing if not predictable. When something looks helpful to Democrats, it's promoted or praises - when something looks helpful to Republicans, it's forgotten or vilified. Remember how vitally important Cindy Sheehan was until she started criticizing Democrats? And then, "whoosh," right down the memory hole. Cindy Who?

You can clearly see the media's dawning comprehension of the typical American's feelings about the "Occupy" mobs in this Associated Press piece.

Democrats see minefield in Occupy protests

The Republican Party and the tea party seemed to be a natural political pairing. But what may have seemed like another politically beneficial alliance — Democrats and Occupy Wall Street — hasn't happened.

Although both Democrats and the Occupy protesters have similar views on economic inequality and corporate responsibility, each holds the other at arm's length. There's little benefit to Democrats in opening their arms wide to a scruffy group that has erupted in violence, defied police and shown evidence of drug use while camping in public parks across the country — much as the prospect of such a pairing delights Republicans.

Many protesters, in turn, are contemptuous of Democrats, arguing that both political parties are equally beholden to corporate interests and responsible for enacting policies that have hurt the middle class.

Here's Democratic Senatorial Candidate, and current pin-up girl for leftists worldwide, Elizabeth Warren, in October, keeping the Occupiers "at arm's length."

"Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren claims much of the credit for the Occupy Wall Street protests sweeping the nation.

“I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” the Harvard Law School professor and former Obama administration consumer advocate told Samuel P. Jacobs of The Daily Beast. “I support what they do.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee certainly kept the Occupy movement "at arm's length."

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) — the campaign arm of the House Democrats — sent out an email Monday morning urging readers to sign a petition supporting the growing “Occupy Wall Street” protests.

And then there's the leader of the Democrats in the House, Nancy Pelosi, resisting the urge to form a "politically beneficial alliance..."

House Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she supports the growing nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement, which began on the streets of downtown New York City in mid-September.

"I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen," said Pelosi in an exclusive interview with ABC News "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpour. "We cannot continue in a way this is not relevant to their lives."

Back in October, the New York Times noted that

Leading Democratic figures, including party fund-raisers and a top ally of President Obama, are embracing the spread of the anti-Wall Street protests in a clear sign that members of the Democratic establishment see the movement as a way to align disenchanted Americans with their party.

For two months, the media was enchanted by the possibility that the Occupiers would prove a political windfall for the Democrats. Now that it's clear that owning the movement would be a major political liability, the Emily Litella ("never mind") media re-appears...



H/T - John Nolte, at Brietbart's Big Journalism site, pointed out this story, and also did some more extensive deconstruction...

Go Newt...

Newt nails Scott Pelley on killing al-Awlaki



I'm not sure which part I liked better - the clarity and correctness of the answer, or the humiliation of Scott Pelley...

A little media quiz this morning

If you've been paying attention, the following quiz should be easy. It deals with this story from Reuters:

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits rose ____________ last week in a sign concerns about a weak economy were sapping an already beleaguered labor market, data showed on Thursday.

Applications for unemployment benefits climbed to 428,000 in the week ending September 10 from an upwardly revised 417,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.

Which of the following words was removed from the story?

• a) sharply
• b) slightly
• c) unexpectedly
• d) predictably

And the answer is ... c) unexpectedly!

To re-quote Jim Geraghty,

If I find myself in a fistfight, I hope it's with one of these economists who are always getting quoted by Reuters or Bloomberg, because then I'll rest assured that I'll always have the element of surprise. These guys never expect everything.

Semi-serious question: does the Reuters style book require that its journalists refer to all increases in jobless claims as "unexpected"?

This is just a little thing...

... but it's so typical of the prevailing bias in the press. This example is from the Hill, a purportedly non-partisan site that covers Washington Politics.

Obama does not appear open to meeting with Cantor, Boehner before speech

The president's speech to Congress — originally planned for Wednesday night, before Boehner rebuffed Obama for trying to upstage a scheduled GOP primary debate — will be aggressive in trying to pressure Republicans to sign on to Obama's jobs plan, Carney said.

If it was "originally planned" for Wednesday, that plan was only on the part of the White House. They never asked for, nor received, permission from the House, half of one of the three co-equal branches of the government, for their plan. They solicited an invitation, and pouted and whined when it wasn't at exactly the time that they wanted it.

Threads...

A snippet of a facebook conversation that took place yesterday...

FBF: I often wonder, from my own perspective, if the ideal of the "arch conservative" that I think exists out there and that I fear is really just a construction of my own making.

Me: You had a lot - a LOT - of help in that construction. I suspect that the bad guy in real life is much less likely to be the conservative-white-male-christian-business-executive-motivated-by-a-desire-to-rob-from-the-poor-and-subjugate-them than in movies and TV...

FBF: business-executive-motivated-by-a-desire-to-rob-from-the-poor-and-subjugate-them IS a great storyline though.

Me: May have been once, but isn't any more - ubiquity has ruined it. That's frequently the default villain, and more often than not it's obvious from the start.

Last night, I watched an episode of the television show "Leverage." In it, the victim was a poor farmer/crop-scientist who had developed a "super tuber," a super-nutritious potato that she was going to share with the world for free. The villain was the massive agri-business, personified by the rich, white CEO and the rich, white female attorney, that beat up her dad and stole the potato. You know, just as so often happens in the real world.

And then this morning, I clicked on a link that led me to this - Politics Really is Downstream from Culture

Regardless of one’s ideological, moral, ethical, or religious leanings, every person should be aware of the messaging of every piece of popular culture. The thesis here at BH is that the vast majority of those with the power of content creation are Liberals. If you accept that thesis, then realize that Liberals control story. Given the breadth and depth of popular culture in our daily lives, it follows that Liberal messaging is what is primarily being imparted on the masses.

I have no solutions. But awareness of what's being done is probably step one...

"You shouldn’t be out vacationing..."

Sigh.

This is tedious. It was tedious in extremis when the Democrats did it to Bush, and it's tedious now that the Republicans are doing it to Obama. It's a non-story, a fundamentally unserious criticism.

As a guest on Chicago’s WLS-AM radio Wednesday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that Obama should stay in D.C. and call Congress back to work.

“If you’re the president of the United States, and the nation is in crisis — and we’re in a jobs crisis right now — then you shouldn’t be out vacationing,” the former Massachusetts governor told WLS hosts Don Wade and Roma. “Instead you should be focusing on getting the economy going again. And, yeah, go back to the office yourself, pull back members of Congress and focus on getting the job done.”

Donald Trump, appearing on Fox News earlier this week, complained, “the fact is, [Obama] takes more vacations than any human being I’ve ever seen.”

I said this when George W. Bush was President, and the left, with the Washington Post leading the charge, made sport of how frequent and how long his vacations were:

The Presidency is a 24-hour a day job, 365 days a year - there's not been a minute since his first inaugural when George W. Bush was not the President, with all of the powers and responsibilities that entails.

And this:

The fact is that the President never goes on vacation. He's always the President, every minute of every day. The responsibilities are always there. Whether he's in Washington or Brussels or Scotland or Crawford, he's the President. He has the nuclear launch codes with him, he has daily briefings, he has control of the apparatus of government. For the press to make an issue of his spending August, when neither of the other two branches of the Federal government are in Washington, in Texas would be akin to making an issue about Johnny Damon taking half the year off because he only played 81 games at Fenway Park...

Replace "George W. Bush" with "Barack Obama," "Crawford" with Martha's Vineyard and "Texas" with "Massachusetts" (and "Johnny Damon" with "Dustin Pedroia") and you get my reaction to "Bad Hand" Obama's vacation. It's drivel, the kind of nonsense that makes normal people loathe politicians and politics and the people who cover and comment on them. The fact that this is a big-time mainstream media story during Republican administrations doesn't mean that it's right for the Republicans to be playing this way during Obama's vacation. Not helpful, not productive.

As I write this, it occurs to that I do, in fact, have one more comment to make on the topic of Obama and vacation. If I might address the President directly for a second...

Dear Mr. President,

We all know that being the President is hard work - you deserve a break! Take some real time off. You deserve it. Don't bother giving us any more of your economic wisdom - you've done enough already. Frankly, sir, more than enough. You've gone above and beyond the call of duty, given us more policy than we had any right to ask for, far more government than you were contracted to provide. Take some real time off, not just on-the-road-Presidentin' time. Play some golf, watch a movie, read a book. Lie on the beach somewhere. Really, we don't mind. If the phone rings, let someone else answer it for the next, oh, 15 months or so.

Sincerely,