October 29, 2009

You'll Have my Story as Soon as the White House Writes it for me, Chief!

I’ve been meaning to blog about this fantastic Glenn Greenwald piece (originally posted October 6 at Salon.com) for awhile now. It deals with the media’s use of unnamed sources and specifically skewers Washington Post stenographer-as-journalist Anne Kornblut.

First, here is The Post’s own ombudsman:
The Post has strict rules on the use of anonymous sources. ...News organizations can pay dearly if they're not vigilant about sourcing. At minimum, credibility can suffer. At worst, a damaging journalistic transgression can occur. ...

Post policies say that readers should be told as much as possible about the quality of a confidential source ("with first-hand knowledge of the case," for instance). They also say "we must strive to tell our readers as much as we can about why our unnamed sources deserve our confidence."
Now, here is Greenwald taking Kornblut to the woodshed:
The Post depicts Obama as heavily and heroically engaged in disrupting the alleged Najibullah Zazi domestic terrorist plot and -- repeatedly highlighting that success -- claims "the White House has been charting a delicate course as it attempts to turn the page on Bush-era anti-terrorism policies," whereby "the Obama administration is increasingly confident that it has struck a balance between protecting civil liberties, honoring international law and safeguarding the country." Here are all of Kornblut's cited sources for the article -- every last one of them -- in the order she cites them:
Obama aides pointed ... administration officials said ... a senior administration official said ... officials said ... a senior administration official said ... senior Obama officials stressed ... a senior administration official said ... aides said ... officials said ... one senior administration official said. ...one senior official said. ...The official said ... a senior administration official said ... a senior administration official said ... administration officials said .... a senior official said.
Not a single named person is cited, and there's not a syllable of quoted dissent in any of it. Virtually every sentence in the long article does nothing but praise Obama and depict him as stalwartly safeguarding America's civil liberties ... even as he protects us from the dangerous Terrorists, so why is anonymity needed for that? It's nothing more than what [White House Press Secretary] Robert Gibbs is eager to say every day. Nor is there a hint of who these officials are, what the basis is of their knowledge, or why The Post granted anonymity....

...The Post's article ... doesn't even claim that these anonymous officials have any knowledge at all -- first-hand or otherwise -- of what actually happened (are they national security officials, press people, political advisers?). The article doesn't even pretend to justify why anonymity was granted (there's not a word about that).

...[W]hat happened here is obvious: the administration wanted to issue a Press Release exploiting the fear surrounding the Zazi case to justify Obama's Bush-copying civil liberties policies ... while depicting Obama as our careful yet forceful protector. So they dispatched an official (or officials) to dictate the sanctioned administration line to Anne Kornblut. She then unquestioningly wrote it all down (after granting them anonymity) and The Post uncritically published it as a "news article."
The whole piece is worth a read. (It goes on to point out that in addition to being a lapdog, Kornblut is also dead wrong in her assertions.)

Kornblut's piece in question is not an editorial or opinion column, mind you. It appeared in the National News section of The Washington Post. Remember this lazy, irresponsible work the next time someone tells you that the death of newspapers will be the death of “real” journalism, or when you hear the White House declaring who is and is not a news organization.

October 28, 2009

Jeff Flake: The Fozzie Bear of Congress

In Australia this means 'screw you'!  Wokka wokka!
Don't get me wrong. I would rather Congress spend 100% of its time writing bills to congratulate Super Bowl-winning teams and whatnot, than slopping together more consequence-ignorant, corporate-welfare, nanny-state, liberty-reducing laws.

Still, to see Representative Jeff Flake's (R-AZ) response to HR 784 is just plain fun. The bill was introduced to "honor[] the 2560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognize[] his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought." Seriously.

Flake's response, which accompanied his vote against the bill:
He who spends time passing trivial legislation may find himself out of time to read healthcare bill.
At press time, it is unconfirmed if he followed his statement with a hearty "Wokka wokka!"

Check out Flake here.

October 21, 2009

Even Superheroes get the TSA Blues

In the past, Avian Silver handled all of The Guardian Force's air travel manually. Since his extradition for trafficking in illegal stomp porn, however, we have all been subject to the carnivals of ineptitude formerly known as commercial airports.

Recently, a stalwart minion of the TSA relieved me of my nail-clippers, despite the fact that the clippers were already missing the little under-nail gunk extraction blade. Very well. But my ultra-stabby, spring-loaded, aluminum-tipped umbrella of doom? No sweat; step right through, sir.

Que serĂ¡, serĂ¡. Really, I'm just excited for an excuse to post this:


Cartoon via XKCD; link via (surprise, surprise) Hit & Run.

October 15, 2009

We Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself the Ghost of John Henry

It runs on broken promises!
So there will be no cost of living increase for Social Security this year.

Except that there will be.

For those keeping score, this:
Obama said he would not allow the money to come out of the Social Security trust funds, which would further erode the finances of the retirement program.
counts as a lie, since the Social Security trust fund doesn’t exist.

Furthermore, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is this:
Thursday's announcement comes a day after President Barack Obama called for a second round of $250 stimulus payments for seniors, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities.
Retired railroad workers? Why not retired calligraphy tutors? Why not left-handed Civil War history enthusiasts? Why not grumpy super-powered bloggers?

Your humble correspondent decided to go straight to the source and find out what’s so damn special about retired and veteran railway employees.

Well, crap.

October 12, 2009

Scotticus's Netflix Reviews: Marley and Me

[SPOILER ALERT]

Screw you, Marley and Me. I’ve got dogs, and they do a perfectly good job of getting me to spoil them rotten without your help. I already feel guilty enough every time I make them jump down off the warm, cozy spot they’ve eked out on the couch. Now thanks to you, alongside my own anthropomorphizing issues, I will always add this thought: “One day these pups will die. Your children will cry; your wife will cry; you will cry; and you will feel like a complete asshat for every time you snapped at them instead of feeding them foie gras and rubbing their bellies.”

I didn’t need that. I’d already had a long day. I was tired. I had nine episodes of Big Love on my DVR. Instead, I chose to watch your heartfelt, adorable movie and then I spent forty-five minutes trying to swallow back the billiard ball in my gullet and blaming my blubbering on allergies. Do you know how many hours of Grand Theft Auto I’m going to have to play just to feel like a man again? Do you know that the last time a movie made me cry was when Gone in Sixty Seconds destroyed that beautiful 1967 Shelby GT 500, and the time before that probably involved being scared of oompa-loompas?

So go to hell.

And if you need me, chances are I will be in the backyard, installing a window unit on the new doghouse.

October 9, 2009

BREAKING NEWS! SCOTTICUSFINCH EXCLUSIVE!

ScotticusFinch has received reliable information indicating that later today Barack Obama will be announced as the winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or for his VHS film "Bears @ Browns Sasha's Swim Meet".

Developing...

UPDATE: According to exclusive ScotticusFinch information, this afternoon President Barack Obama will hold a press conference accepting this year's Fields Medal for his work in calculating an exact 15% tip on a $109 dinner bill split two ways.

Developing...

UPDATE: Insiders have confirmed to ScotticusFinch that yesterday Barack Obama was unanimously named "World's Best Grandma" by the Association for Research on Mothering. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs describes Obama as "glib".

Developing...

October 8, 2009

I'm from the Government, and I'm Here to Help: Update!

On Friday I posted a graph showing how actual unemployment numbers resembled the White House estimates on Cialis. Today, via Veronique de Rugy and The American, we see that as the stimulus has been spent, unemployment has actually accelerated.
Give us money, and we’ll give you jobs. That was the promise President Barack Obama made when he asked Congress for a $789 billion stimulus bill back in January. The cash, the administration said, would create millions of jobs over the next two years.

Here was the argument as presented in the January report by the Council of Economic Advisors' Christina Romer and chief economist to the vice president Jared Bernstein, called “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”:
The U.S. economy has already lost nearly 2.6 million jobs since the business cycle peak in December 2007. In the absence of stimulus, the economy could lose another 3 to 4 million more. Thus, we are working to counter a potential total job loss of at least 5 million … even with the large [stimulus] prototypical package, the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan.
Based in part on this argument, President Obama got his money. So what happened since then?

Using data from the president’s website Recovery.gov and data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this chart shows the monthly increase in the unemployment rate in tandem with the administration’s stimulus spending.


Note that these are not promised dollars and estimated unemployment numbers; this is stimulus money that has been already been spent, and actual unemployment.

October 7, 2009

"New Professionalism" Once Again on Display in Georgia

Having already asserted their authority to beat the handicapped and murder (then frame) the elderly, police officers right here in the USofA have now decided it’s time to start killing the clergy.

On September 1, Jonathan Ayers, a Georgia minister, had just withdrawn money from a convenience-store ATM and started his own car when an unmarked black SUV pulled in behind him. Plainclothes officers (which is exactly the same as saying “some guys”) jumped out of the SUV and pointed guns at him.

We cannot know if Ayers thought he was being attacked or robbed. We do know that Ayers was not the intended target of the stop. What we see in the surveillance video is that Ayers tried to drive away, and in doing so backed into one of the officers. At least one officer then shot into Ayers’s vehicle, fatally wounding him.

Ayers left behind a wife who was four months pregnant with the couple’s first child. He was pastor of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia, and he recently blogged: "I have three loves in my life: Jesus Christ, my wife Abby, and the Church."

For those questioning my growing animosity toward the police, please at least desist with the argument that this was just another isolated incident, etc., etc., etc.

October 6, 2009

Dom "Woogie" Woganowski Now Second-Best Athlete at TSAM Reunion Party

Evidently the terrible actor who played Mary’s old boyfriend Brett in There’s Something About Mary went on to become a professional football player. True story.

Even more impressive: last night that very same actor-turned-athlete, Brett Favre, became the first quarterback in history to defeat all 32 NFL teams by serving a lukewarm dish of revenge to Packers’ GM Ted Thompson.
This was a highly anticipated and heavily hyped game. Everybody in the stadium stood all the way through the Vikings’ first possession, instead of sitting after the first few snaps like usual. Cameras flashed constantly.

...

Favre was clearly uncomfortable this week with all the attention on this reunion, trying to downplay the significance and stumbling through denials that his main motivation to unretire last year was revenge on general manager Ted Thompson for not letting him come back and compete for his old job with [Packers QB Aaron] Rodgers.

”My statement has been what I’ve done over my career,” Favre said. “One game does not define my career good or bad. I know what I’ve done. I’m proud of what I’ve done. I know I can play. I wanted to do what it takes to win.”
And win you did, Brett. Just please don’t go back into acting.

Fun trivia for observationally-masochistic fans like me: the last team on the list Favre had to beat besides his own former Packers? You guessed it; the Kansas City Chiefs.

October 5, 2009

Bastiat Surrenders, Goes to Work for GM

I'll be Torvald!
In the long history of minor-league sports, no fan has ever planned to go to the ballpark because they heard it was Mini-Bat Night or Bobblehead Night. If the giveaways are limited, people may show up earlier than if there had been no handouts (say, fifteen minutes after the first pitch instead of sixty), but their decision about buying a ticket was un-phased. So rather than serving as a small cost by which overall revenue increases, the prizes amount to a fun bonus for people who were coming to the game regardless.

New numbers on the government’s Largesse for Lemons program proves it was one giant, $3 billion Bobblehead Night for car dealerships.

Consider the numbers via Bloomberg.com’s report:
GM’s September deliveries tumbled 45 percent, while Toyota dropped 13 percent, both worse than analysts had estimated. Ford slid 5.1 percent, and Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler Group LLC plunged 42 percent.

Honda Motor Co. posted a 20 percent decline, and Nissan Motor Co., which like Honda is based in Tokyo, said sales fell 7.1 percent.
The larger problem, though, is that the C4C program is being heralded as a success, and a model for future government interventionism. Never mind that the program’s biggest beneficiaries were Japanese and Korean carmakers, or that C4C served as a very effective poke in the eyes to the poor by increasing the median cost of used cars, or that the whole scheme was one tragi-comic lesson in Bastiat’s broken window fallacy.

Reason Online web editor Tim Cavanaugh sums it all up:
The evidence was there going in, and now the evidence is there going out: As soon as the government turned off the current, the corpse stopped twitching. But everybody in the lab saw the corpse twitch. So if GM survives, the history will read that while free market extremists objected to the Cash for Clunkers program, even they came around when they saw how successful it was at saving U.S. auto manufacturers.
In the interest of full disclosure, the Guardianmobile is an Aston Martin Lagonda. Red, white, and blue of course.

October 2, 2009

I'm from the Government, and I'm Here to Help

The day may come when Wyatt -- after watching Mary Poppins, perhaps -- will ask me for $9 to go buy an umbrella. Deep in his little heart, he will be convinced that for only $9, he can achieve his dream of flight (or perfect pitch, or whatever aspect of Poppins inspired him), and I have no doubt I will indulge him. The lesson and the adventure will be a bargain at $9.

Not so much, when the lesson costs $787 billion.



President Obama's words at the ARRA signing ceremony eight months ago:
...today does mark the beginning of the end — the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs.
Chart via Don Surber. Link via Hit & Run via Instapundit. Sheesh.