THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE looks at media coverage of Haditha and pronounces it dishonest. “So please do look carefully at future news stories that include that mysterious phrase from nowhere – along with all others from similar sources.”
Archive for 2006
June 2, 2006
THIS SEEMS DUMB:
The head of the FBI says Internet companies should retain customer records for two years to help the federal government investigate not only porn but also terrorism. . . .
Top U.S. law enforcement officials have told Internet companies they must retain customer records longer to help in child pornography and terrorism investigations, and they are considering asking Congress to require preservation of records.
If I recall correctly, this started out as a porn measure, and I suspect the terrorism bit of being tacked on. Of course, it’s no dumber than this:
Get ready to give up a little bit of your privacy in exchange for certain allergy or cold medicines.
Starting in late September, just in time for cold season, consumers will be required to fork over photo IDs and list their home addresses in logbooks before buying Sudafed, Contac or other remedies containing the nasal-decongestant pseudoephedrine or similar substances.
We already have to do this in Tennessee. It’s asinine and — not surprisingly — turns out to be ineffective. But at least those Mexicans busy cooking up meth won’t add to the illegal-immigration problem!
America’s two political parties may not realise it yet, but in their current form they are nearing obsolescence. As technological advancements continue to bring more and better tools for communication, citizens are increasingly empowered to come together in common purpose and reject the current political system that seems designed by the two parties to keep us apart.
There was a time when to have any hope of winning office a candidate needed to run within either the Republican or Democratic party. To come from one of the major parties meant that a candidate inherited a dedicated donor base and an organisational base as well.
The 2004 presidential campaign proved that those days are nearing an end – and it is the ability of hundreds of thousands using the internet to connect with each other that makes it so.
I think that’s right — see here and here — but I also think that the ability of the Internet to mobilize the kinds of “boots on the ground” that it takes to win elections is yet to be shown. I’ve visited the Hamilton Jordan / Gerald Rafshoon Unity ’08 site and while I like the idea, I found the execution somewhat unappealing. I’m not sure why, exactly, and it may just be that the website itself has a prepackaged, off-the-shelf feel to it.
But if you examine the two big political parties as businesses, their key advantages are informational and social: Informational, in terms of their ability to coordinate people and money, and social, in terms of being able to cultivate and make use of people’s loyalties to the group on constructive ways. The former seem to me to have been undermined by technology, and the latter seem to me to have been undermined by the parties themselves.
BILL ROGGIO LIVE FROM KABUL: In a podcast interview by Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club. Who says bloggers don’t do original reporting?
BRIAN ANDERSON says that video games are good for kids. As he notes, I agree.
MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT in Canada.
A ROBOTIC FLOOR SCRUBBER. The reviews aren’t bad, but I’m skeptical. I really want Rosie from The Jetsons.
UPDATE: Possumblog is dissing Rosie. That’s wrong — but his point about Ashley Scott is well-taken.
DAVE PRICE WONDERS if people are getting ahead of the news cycle on Haditha. It wouldn’t be the first time that the media and antiwar folks were suckered — somewhat willingly — by the insurgents. But I think it’s best just to wait and see what the investigation shows. Not that that’s stopping the usual suspects, of course.
UPDATE: Related thoughts from Ed Morrissey and Daniel Henninger. More here, too.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Mark Steyn talked about this and related topics. Transcript and audio here.
Read this post on Ishaqi, too.
THE PAJAMAS MEDIA WEEK IN REVIEW PODCAST IS UP, featuring me, Austin Bay, “Advice Goddess” Amy Alkon, and Eric Umansky. Topics include Iran, overinflated career expectations, Haditha, and more.
GEORGE BUSH, COLD-WAR LIBERAL: It seems to me that this is the kind of diplomacy that Peter Beinart is calling for from liberals:
The United States and five other major world powers agreed Thursday to offer Iran a broad new collection of rewards if it halts its drive to master nuclear technology, but they threatened “further steps in the Security Council” if Iran refuses.
The agreement, announced here by British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett following extended talks, brings general unity to the countries’ approach to Iran after months of discord, diplomats said. It is intended to sharpen the choice facing Iran, giving it a clear reason to opt for cooperation over confrontation on its nuclear program.
The question is, will it work? And if so, would it work as well if it weren’t for the presence of U.S. troops on both sides of Iran?
And though the Iraq war is held out as a case of aggressive unilateral warmongering, the fact is that it was the slowest “rush to war” in history, as the Bush Administration made (to my mind excessive) efforts to keep the U.N. relevant. And it’s interesting that Beinart holds up Kosovo as an example of war done right when it had far less U.N. sanction than the Iraq invasion — Wesley Clark, remember, said that the Kosovo bombing was “technically illegal.”
At any rate, it seems clear that the Bush Administration’s approach is far more nuanced than his critics credit. Whether it will be effective is another story.
UPDATE: Bush is certainly more diplomatic than this! If only they’d talk this tough about, you know, terrorists.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Freeman Hunt wants less carrot, more stick.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Turns out that the latest nano-toxicity scare was bogus:
Last week, German regulators released tests that showed Magic Nano contained no nanoparticles. The product was designed to deposit an oil- and-water-repellent nano-thin film composed of silicon dioxide, but lab tests have yet to verify that property.
Experts still don’t know what caused the illnesses in a case that highlights the murky definitions and poorly understood risks in one of the fastest-growing segments of science and technology.
“So the speculation begins,” said Andrew Maynard, chief scientist of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. “This is the great danger — you’re going to have a response against nanotech as a whole.”
More background here. My skeptical take on this story when it appeared, here.
I’m genuinely afraid that the ruling cohort, and those who enable it by participating in the political process, have so much lost touch with the realities that we face that they are incapable of looking at an issue like Iraq, or 9/11, or the economic straits we have spent and borrowed ourselves into as a nation except as a foothold in climbing over the person in front of them. I imagine a small table of gentlemen and -women, playing whist on a train as it heads out over a broken bridge. The game, of course maters more than anything, and the external events – they’re just an effort to distract the players from their hands.
Alas, you go to war with the political class you have.
EVAN COYNE MALONEY: Microsoft Vista No Es Buena.
June 1, 2006
SOME THOUGHTS ON WHY SOME PEOPLE hate Jeff Goldstein. Personally, I’ve always blamed the armadillo. Nasty creatures, armadillos. They carry leprosy, you know.
TIM BLAIR: Is that all you’ve got? “Eight men. Coming up on five years since 9/11, only eight men are pursuing legal action over travel issues. . . . That’s how the NYT decides when something qualifies as a problem: comedians build a routine around it. Prepare for a 15-part NYT series on airline food.”
RFK, JR. GETS A BAD REVIEW FROM DAN RIEHL: “NPR debunked it a week ago before it was even published.”
Meanwhile, Don Surber comments: “Real journalism would have at least also looked at Wisconsin, where multiple-state voting likely cost Bush a state.”
UPDATE: Armed Liberal notes that even Mother Jones is ahead of RFK, jr. When you’re peddling conspiracy theories that have already been busted by NPR and Mother Jones, well . . . .
HADITHA UPDATE: “Military prosecutors plan to file murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges against seven Marines and a Navy corpsman in the shooting death of an Iraqi man in April, a defense lawyer said Thursday.”
Interestingly, this isn’t about Haditha, but another case from earlier this Spring; the Haditha investigation continues. As Peter Beinart noted in our podcast earlier, the difference between the United States and most other countries isn’t that we’re perfect, but that we follow up stuff like this. That tends to get missed in the coverage.
The Mudville Gazette has much more on this story. And read this post over at Michael Yon’s site.
Ace, meanwhile, is unimpressed with the “higher standard” argument.
A CARTOON FOR MUBARAK: Background is here. There’s more background here, too.
Does Mubarak want to be known as the new “Sodom” Hussein?
UPDATE: I’ve got more thoughts over at GlennReynolds.com.
NPR REPORTS ON RE-ENLISTMENTS: A really nice story from All Things Considered featuring soldiers explaining why they re-upped.
“MR. HASTERT, SIT DOWN.”
We talked with Peter Beinart, New Republic editor and author of The Good Fight : Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.
You can listen directly by clicking right here, or you can get it via iTunes here (we like it when you subscribe on iTunes, as it boosts our rank on their charts). There’s an archive of past podcasts here, and lo-fi versions, suitable for dialup, are here.
Music is by Mobius Dick. And, as always, my lovely and talented cohost is taking comments and suggestions.
MORE IRANIAN PROTESTERS KILLED: And ethnic groups are lining up against the Mullahs. Gateway Pundit has a roundup. It seems to me that events like these would get a lot more attention if they were happening in Iraq. So why are they being ignored, now?
A POLL AT REDSTATE: Would you vote for Bush again, if he were eligible in 2008?
I CAN’T SAY I’M SURPRISED BY THIS REPORT:
In the rift between Congress and the Justice Department, Americans side overwhelmingly with law enforcement: Regardless of precedent and the separation of powers, 86 percent say the FBI should be allowed to search a Congress member’s office if it has a warrant.
That view is broadly bipartisan, this ABC News poll finds, ranging from 78 percent among Democrats to 94 percent of Republicans.
Which merely serves to further illustrate the idiocy of the Congressional Republicans in standing with Pelosi, Jefferson, et al.
A GREENPEACE PUBLIC-RELATIONS GAFFE that’s pretty funny.