BIZZYBLOG SAYS THE NEW YORK TIMES gets it wrong on personal income data.

UPDATE: From John Wixted, an I told you so: “In an earlier post, I confidently predicted that misleading income statistics would soon be coming your way. The New York Times delivers the goods.” Lots of useful charts. Read the whole thing, especially if you’re David Cay Johnston. Or his editor. Or a New York Times shareholder . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Times has changed the headline, and Johnston has responded in the comments at bizzyblog.

MORE: Tom Maguire comes to Johnston’s defense on the question of agenda-driven journalism, though he has other complaints.

MORE STILL: Johnston responds in Tom Maguire’s comments, too. Bravo to him for engaging his critics.

STILL MORE: He’s also in Wixted’s comments. Bravo again!

NOT MUCH LOVE FOR CONGRESS: “A new Gallup Poll finds Congress’ approval rating the lowest it has been since Gallup first tracked public opinion of Congress with this measure in 1974. Just 18% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, while 76% disapprove, according to the August 13-16, 2007, Gallup Poll.”

UPDATE: A spin prediction.

THE FRANKLIN FOER/RICHARD GERE connection. Plus this: “The bigger story is that The New Republic is hardly an outlier in the world of modern ‘journalism.’ Many other media outlets also care a lot more about ‘influencing the influentials’ and ‘pissing people off’ than getting a story right.”

TOP SECRET WAR NEWS: Leaked by Gateway Pundit.

THE TOP TEN transhumanist technologies.

JAMES LILEKS ON GETTING OLD: “I don’t know if I’d want to be 114 years old, frankly. People say they’re interested in what you have to relate, but they’re not. They lack context. You’d say things like ‘Why, I remember when Netscape had a total lock on the browser market,’ and they’d smile and roll their eyes – oh, he’s off on the browser wars again, whatever that was – and offer you a little more cake. But not too much.” I want to be 114 someday — but 114 as it will be, not 114 as it is now.

POLICE SPY CAMERAS IN CALIFORNIA: And yet they get snooty when you take pictures of them.

A LOOK AT THE MEDIA MOB.

UPDATE: Danny Glover takes exception to the piece. “Were a journalist to write something like that about blogs, the blogosphere would be up in rhetorical arms, and rightfully so.”

A LOOK AT THE POLITICS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM, from John Fund.

JAMES JOYNER NOTES MORE HISTORICAL REVISIONISM ABOUT THE WAR:

Media Matters economist Duncan Black set off a mini-firestorm among lefty bloggers three weeks ago when he asked, after a few choice expletives “Why is there a foreign policy community?” The premise of that question is that, since so many of the experts, even on the left, argued passionately for intervening in Iraq and for continuing a failed strategy long after amateur pundits in the blogosphere had soured on the war, why should we take their expertise seriously? . . .

While there are several substantive issues within the debate that interest me, what is most striking is that the basic premise – that most foreign policy public intellectuals supported the Iraq War – didn’t comport at all with my recollection of the contemporaneous debate. During that period, I was working as the foreign affairs acquisitions editor for a D.C. area publishing house and reading the literature and attending conferences and think tank presentations on a constant basis.

I recalled a security policy community dominated by Realists were almost universally opposed to the war. . . . What’s striking, though, is how “business as usual” the article selection remained throughout the entire period. Entire issues went by without an article on Iraq or even the Middle East and most issues continued to have the standard mix of articles on Africa, the global economy, environmental issues, human rights, and so forth. Indeed, it might have escaped the attention of a casual observer glancing at the covers (which list the prominent articles in each issue) that the country was at war.

That’s okay. In a decade or two we’ll get a new revisionist history in which America was united against the threat, much like we’re hearing today about the Cold War.

HOW SOCIETIES COMMIT SUICIDE. Related thoughts here. “Until we regain the fortitude it takes to criticize the Other as vigorously as we criticize those like us who argue for such a necessity, we are, as Dalrymple rightly suggests, well on our way to cultural ruination, and a return to totalitarianism.”

UPDATE: The Dalrymple post appears to be based on incorrect media reports.

RED-LIGHT CAMERAS AND IMAGINARY STOP LINES: “Throw out the driver’s handbook. There’s a new rule in town. When it comes to red light cameras there’s a special line that drivers can’t cross. Where is it? Here’s a hint: it’s imaginary.” And it’s not where you think.

JULES CRITTENDEN WONDERS WHAT’S GOTTEN INTO some members of Congress.

UPDATE: Quote of the day: It’s easy to see why he’s so anti-gun. He thinks we all have as little self-control as he does.

“WE HAVE TO BE PREPARING TO FIGHT THE NEW WAR:” Here’s video of Hillary sounding martial. Would she really make an uncompromising wartime President? Maybe it’s not so fictional after all? . . .

I think what it really means is that she thinks she’s got Obama on the ropes and she can start positioning for the general election.

WE’RE NUMBER FIFTEEN!

SPAIN’S Afghan infantry battalion.

SOME ADVICE TO THE G.O.P., ON DON YOUNG: “When your own partisans (such as myself) are actively rooting for Republican Congressmen to be arrested, you’ve got a problem.”

GIMME BACK MY BULLETS: IS THE WAR CAUSING A SHORTAGE OF LAW-ENFORCEMENT AMMUNITION? Not so much, according to Bob Owens, despite misleading press reports to the contrary. “According to two spokesmen for the world’s largest ammunition manufacturer, which runs the military’s ammunition manufacturing plant and separately, is a major supplier of law enforcement ammunition, it is a massive and unexpected increase in law enforcement ammunition demand that is causing delays in law enforcement ammunition delays, not the war.“

THE POLITICAL ASSAULT ON SCIENCE:

To many of Dr. Bailey’s peers, his story is a morality play about the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom. Some scientists say that it has become increasingly treacherous to discuss politically sensitive issues. They point to several recent cases, like that of Helmuth Nyborg, a Danish researcher who was fired in 2006 after he caused a furor in the press by reporting a slight difference in average I.Q. test scores between the sexes.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

MARTIN PERETZ DOESN’T LIKE Thabo Mbeki: “The fact is that Mbeki is a nut-case and a cruel nut-case besides. To him you may credit his likely successor Jacob Zuma, a demagogue on the old Communist model, and corrupt besides. . . . As for Mbeki’s responsibility for Mugabe’s survival, he is culpable because he has led other African leaders in deferring to the Zimbabwean tyrant and mad economist. But the UK and the US are also not entirely innocent.”

SWEATSHOP COPIES of great art.

THE TEN BEST BANDS THAT NEVER EXISTED: But they left out The Blueswailers and The Smoke Packet, two great nonexistent British bands from the Sixties and early Seventies. Actually, the Blueswailers’ nonexistent career continues to the present.

THE G.O.P. SHOULD ENCOURAGE HIM TO RETIRE: “A Justice Department corruption task force is investigating whether Alaska Congressman Don Young took campaign cash in return for securing $10 million for construction of a proposed Florida highway ramp that would give a windfall to a local real estate developer, a source familiar with the inquiry said Friday. The controversial funding, which was to pay for a study of the potential highway interchange abutting environmentally sensitive land, was slipped into a massive 2005 Transportation Department bill, congressional aides say.” But there’s something missing from this story, and Don Surber will be surprised.

UPDATE: Reader Phil Johnts emails:

I’m assuming, when you’re talking about Surber being surprised, that you’re talking about Young’s affiliation missing. Actually, it’s there. It just doesn’t come out and say “Republican”.

“At least $2.5 billion of that money went toward projects in the districts of four top GOP lawmakers at the time, including Young.”

It mentions that Young is, indeed, a GOP lawmaker.

I guess I missed that, unless it was added afterward. It’s inconspicuous enough, though, that I might have.

MORE PEOPLE ARE PLAYING name that party!

DAN FROOMKIN says that experts are against invading Iran. Well, so am I, and if you’ve listened to our podcast interviews with Austin Bay and Jim Dunnigan, you’ll hear that so are they. On the other hand, there’s plenty we could do that doesn’t involve an invasion.

UPDATE: Hmm.