Jan. 30 was crunch time for the people of Iraq. The War on Terror is crunch time for the 21st century. We are living in a moment that really matters, when blood, sweat, toil and tears fueled by hope and courage can lay the political foundation for a more just and prosperous century.
Read it all.
via Instapundit
Day-after media coverage of Chretien’s testimony before Gomery;
“…golfballs …. took out golfballs … golfballs … signed golfballs … Clinton’s golfballs … Bush’s golfballs … law firm golfballs … golfballs… “
Now, I ask you – if a commercial artist in the middle of rural Saskatchewan can spot a an intentional ploy to divert media attention from the denial, the obfuscation, the excuse making that passed for testimony from Chretien at the Adscam inquiry, why did every media outlet in the country fall for it?
Legitimate reporting would have ignored the made-for-tv stunt. Competent editorial review would have discarded that portion for more relevant testimony. Intelligent journalists would have recognized that Chretien wasn’t playing Gomery – he was playing the media as fools. And today, they look like fools, fawning over his cleverness, his craftiness, his successful attempt to one-up Justice Gomery.
Not one of them – not a single one – stopped chuckling long enough to ask whether it’s a wise tactic to attempt to embarrass and humiliate the judge who will be ruling on your involvement in a $100 million theft of public funds – and who may yet have the last laugh.
Via Outside The Beltway, a NYT article on a study into the existance of evil.
In an effort to standardize what makes a crime particularly heinous, a group at New York University has been developing what it calls a depravity scale, which rates the horror of an act by the sum of its grim details. And a prominent personality expert at Columbia University has published a 22-level hierarchy of evil behavior, derived from detailed biographies of more than 500 violent criminals. He is now working on a book urging the profession not to shrink from thinking in terms of evil when appraising certain offenders, even if the E-word cannot be used as part of an official examination or diagnosis. “We are talking about people who commit breathtaking acts, who do so repeatedly, who know what they’re doing, and are doing it in peacetime” under no threat to themselves, said Dr. Michael Stone, the Columbia psychiatrist, who has examined several hundred killers at Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center in New Hampton, N.Y., and others at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, where he consults and teaches. “We know from experience who these people are, and how they behave,” and it is time, he said, to give their behavior “the proper appellation.”
Next up: Scientists review 16 different criteria by which to establish whether or not fish swim.
I’m still knee deep in motorcycle bodywork, and don’t have much time for indepth blogging, especially on the very blogworthy Adscam inquiry. To add to the difficulty, the radio station of choice at the bodyshop I “borrow” plays classic rock and nothing else.
Did dig up news story on Chretien’s testimony (which I understand included bragging about his golfballs and pinning blame on the Treasury board and thus, the current prime minister).
According to the Little Godfather From Shawinigan, the Sponsorship Program was a noble [secret] attempt to save [after the fact] the country [and Liberal party coffers] using the proven methodology [theft of tax dollars] of giving away very expensive neckties [to foreigners].
Damian Penny has a summary and nicely reviews the basics of the scandal.
Greg Staples live blogged Chretien.
updated
Damian Brooks take.
I know there are others who have been following this, too – let me know if you have a post of interest … trackbacks welcome, of course.
Head Heeb has just the place for those looking for relief on school tax;
After Australia’s conservative government passed the Marriage Amendment Bill which prohibited Gay marriage, a group of Australian gays and lesbians set sail to the Coral Islands (on a ship called, inevitably, the Gayflower), planted the rainbow gay flag, and declared an independent state.
Let the puns begin!
As the blogosphere continues to hammer at MSM stonewalling over the the Eason Jordan – Davos story; Michelle Malkin has useful updates here and here. Most interesting tidbit – copy of an email to Mickey Kaus, from Howard Kurtz;
I have a story in tomorrow’s paper. Had you been kind enough to check earlier, I would have told you that I flagged it for The Post on the day that I was crashing on CBS naming Bob Schieffer as Rather’s temporary replacement and said we should pursue it. Two other Post reporters pursued it, spoke to Jordan and decided not to write anything based on the fact that what was actually said was in dispute. I had nothing to do with that decision. I’ve since picked it up, done additional reporting and filed my story.
That sort of calls out for a “harumph!” emoticon.
update – The “narrowly focused” Kurtz piece is now online. Captain Ed is profoundly unimpressed and wonders why Kurtz – who reads his blog – didn’t mention that Jordan’s words at Davos were part of a long-standing pattern of unsubstanciated accusations against the military.
It took Kurtz over a week to finally get around to publishing this article on Eason’s Fables. In that time, it appears that Kurtz did as little investigation as possible on Jordan. My readers and I found all of Jordan’s earlier commentary within 24 hours, and we only have very limited access to Nexis and full-time jobs doing other things than media analysis. Worse than that, all of this information has been repeatedly presented on my blog — in fact, it was all presented on my blog today, and we know Howard Kurtz read my blog sometime this afternoon. Why didn’t Kurtz ask about his remarks in Portugal from three months ago, or about his identical accusations against Israel two years ago? Why didn’t Kurtz press Jordan on the entire story? Only Kurtz can answer that, and I doubt he will have much more to say to anyone about Eason’s Fables from this point onward.
As Glenn Reynolds noted a few days ago,
A story in today’s Christian Science Monitor asks, “Are bloggers journalists?”
Perhaps we should start asking if journalists are journalists.
Indeed.
Michael Totten goes to dinner with Christopher Hitchens and friends. Other than the sound of dinner plates being broken over heads, a good time was had by all.
hat tip – Belmont Club
Taiwanese sculptors have carved an eight-metre-long wooden penis, hoping to set the world record for the longest sculpture of the male genitalia, Taiwan television reported on Friday.
Eight sculptors in Pingtung, in southern Taiwan, spent half a year carving the wooden penis. Now their artwork – weighing 12 tons – is on display at an amusement park in Pingtung, Taiwan Television Enterprise (TTV) reports.
The sculptors plan to apply to the Guinness Book Of World Records to have their creation declared the longest in the world, TTV says.
Guinness officials could not be reached for immediate verification of the record, as they are currently on assignment investigating a claim for “Worlds Biggest Asshole”.
A decent Toronto Star piece on the training of Iraq police cadets by Canadians, in Jordan. Not without the required reminders of how Canadians are specially gifted with cultural sensitivity, but when you can get anyone at the Star to contemplate both the design efficency and the inadequacy of a Glock, you have to give them a few points for effort.
The caution against linking correlation with causation has been around for a long time. Unfortunately, it isn’t invoked as often as it should be.
For decades we’ve been encouraged by health officials and professionals to exercise regularly, to maintain cardiovascular health. Now, a study released at the University of Michigan involving rats indicates that there may be more involved than just working up the motivation to get off the couch.
Rats that were “born to run” not only outpaced their less-talented cousins but also were naturally less prone to heart disease, a finding that may help explain why exercise prevents heart death, researchers said on Thursday. The study may be bad news for people who hate to exercise, suggesting that not only laziness but also their genes may put them at higher risk of heart disease. “The reality of having a genetic determinant of our existence is that there are some people who are born with less ability to take up oxygen and transfer energy than others,” said Steven Britton of the University of Michigan. Britton and colleagues bred rats for 11 generations to be good or poor runners. Their high-capacity runners can exercise on a little rodent treadmill for 42 minutes on average before becoming exhausted, while the low-capacity runners average only 14 minutes. Colleagues in Norway examined the rats for heart health factors. “We found that rats with low aerobic capacity scored higher on risk factors linked to cardiovascular disease — including high blood pressure and vascular dysfunction,” said Ulrik Wisloff, a professor of exercise physiology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. “Rats with low aerobic capacity also had higher levels of blood fat disorders (such as high cholesterol), insulin resistance (a pre-diabetic condition) and more abdominal fat than high-capacity rats,” added Sonia Najjar, of the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo. “Compared to high-capacity rats, the low-capacity rats had lower levels of oxidative enzymes and proteins used by mitochondria to generate energy in skeletal muscle,” Najjar said in a statement. Studies have shown that a poor ability to exercise aerobically — the kind that makes for heavy breathing — is a very strong predictor of heart disease, the researchers noted.
Another bit of “conventional wisdom” about health and wellness that may be due for reconsideration – especially in a day and age when governments are busy trying to effect behavior modification through legislation, under the guise of “reducing health care costs”.
Google News wants no part of Jeff Goldstein. Or Michelle Malkin*. Or Charles Johnson. Apparently, these citizen journalists do not display a strong enough commitment to hard sodomy reporting.
Debbye has a post worth your time. Here’s a taste;
The failure of the electorate to administer a sharp rebuke to the Liberal Party for corruption and mendacity is depressing. Some back home say the American press was too voracious in pursuing the Watergate story and the leads arising from the hearings, but up here I’m seeing the other side of the picture: too many in the media seem almost disinterested in learning the truth and complacently let the government investigate its own wrongdoing with the occasional plaintive bleat that the commission has uncovered little of substance.
It’s one of the reasons that blogging on politics is so much more an uphill battle in this country – the media is so uniformly supportive of the Liberal establishment that scandals that should generate front page headlines and news magazine specials, are likely to be quickly buried behind NHL contract talks and the latest Michael Jackson court footage. Canadian media outlets are not in the business of exposing the Liberal underbelly.
Even when the corruption is as staggering as that of Adscam, there is a line they will not cross – the line that might just get a conservative opposition party elected. Witness the performance of the CBC and CTV during the past election campaign. With the LIberal party badly damaged by the continuing revelations coming out about the sponsorship scandal, they quickly pulled the gloves back on to stroke the “social issues” pony, aggressively pushing their campaign coverage towards the burning question of whether Canadians found Stephen Harper “scary”.
This afternoon, “broadcaster and investigative journalist” and talk radio host Peter Warren featured journalist Charles Smith of Newsmax and his articles concerning the “blockbuster” revelation that there are Canadian ties – through Power Corporation – to the UN Oil-For-Food scandal.
GASP … who knew?
Of course, the knowledge of the intricate links between Power Corp. and officials at the highest levels of the UN and the Canadian government has been widely distributed on the blogosphere for months and available to any number of enterprising journalists. (The Newsmax piece cited on Warren’s program appeared here at lowly little SDA two weeks ago.) We know that members of the media read a variety of Canadian and US bloggers, so ignorance doesn’t explain the silence – the failure to cover the story can only be attributed to malpractice and corruption of basic journalistic principles at the highest editorial levels.
The surprise expressed by callers to Warren’s show was genuine and their reponse predictable – they were appalled. We all should be, but not at Power Corp., Chretien, Strong and their peons in the Liberal government – who like any member of the genus Mustela are guilty only of doing what comes naturally – but at a Canadian media establishment that has pledged a higher allegiance to the Liberal Party of Canada than they have to the truth.
There’s a new sacred cow backing out of the government truck. With pre-Medicare generations slowly passing into history, and Canadians fully indoctrinated with the belief that the words “commodity” and “right” are interchangable, it’s time to ramp up the process. And so, we welcome a new generation to the concept that “free babysitting” is a societal responsiblity.
I can see how this could work… by the time these babies of 2005 graduate into the work force, the cost of government will have rendered taxation obsolete – Canadians will just go directly from government birthing room to daycare to school into the service of the state, with their basic needs provided and ….
You know… that sounds kinda familiar.
Almost 42 per cent of Canadian voters say they would bounce their MP from office in the next election if they do not reflect their view on the hot-button issue of same-sex marriage, according to a SES poll. The survey of 1,000 voters shows the country evenly split with 46.2 per cent favouring the traditional definition of marriage and 45 per cent who support extending marriage to gay and lesbian couples.
More than 54 per cent of Canadians say they want their MP to vote based on the views expressed in his or her riding. Only 21.8 per cent would respect an MP voting his or her conscience and slightly more than 16 per cent would agree to their MP voting the way their party tells them to.
This quote via Norm Spector;
In reply to federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler’s statement that minority rights are never subjected to majority approval, Citizens Centre chairman Link Byfield commented, “That’s historically untrue and legally ridiculous. This issue, like all others, will be decided by a majority vote. The only question is whether it will be a majority vote of Supreme Court judges, Members of Parliament, or the citizens of Canada. This referendum campaign is just beginning.”
Nicely said.
I wonder how many other Canadians are as insulted as I am by the implication that ordinary citizens are too stupid and bigoted to be trusted with a question so fundamental to the fabric of society.
If this is the case, if the collective intelligence and wisdom of the Canadian people can be replaced by a handpicked panel of Liberal-appointed judges, if the majority of the electorate is so incompetent and ignorant that our views must be categorically rejected – then there really isn’t much argument remaining for preserving the Canadian democratic system.
Why not save ourselves a lot of trouble and money by just allowing the current Prime Minister to appoint future ones, and divest ourselves of the whole “representative government” charade.
They know better, my fellow Canadians. So just shut up and be told what’s good for you.
February 6th is the 94th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Trey Jackson has created a comprehensive tribute.
“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.” – Michael Moore*
Janeane Garofalo salutes Iraqi voters
Powerline is reporting that Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has finally broken media silence on the Eason Jordan story that has been the buzz of the blogosphere for several days*;
The scandalous remarks of Eason Jordan, CNN’s top news executive, last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the failure of the major media to report them suggest the distortions are deliberate.
Mr. Jordan told a panel that the U.S. military had killed a dozen journalists in Iraq, and that they had been deliberately targeted. When challenged, Mr. Jordan could provide no evidence to support the charge, and subsequently lied about having made it, though the record shows he had made a similar charge a few months before, and also earlier had falsely accused the Israeli military of targeting journalists.
Mr. Jordan’s slander has created a firestorm in the blogosphere, but has yet to be mentioned in the “mainstream” media.
Gee, I wonder why not.
Jeff Jarvis has been following it closely too – apparently a tape of Jordan’s statement is on its way from the event organizers, at the request of Sisyphus.
Updates: The Washington Times
is commenting, and Captains Quarters is catching other “cracks in the dam” of the mainstream media.
Breaking: Saudi leader refuses to acknowledge right of Osama Bin Laden to exist;
Speaking at a meeting of Saudi leaders in preparation for the kingdom’s international conference on counterterrorism, Defense Minister Prince Sultan referred to Osama bin Laden as being “sent by the Jews.”
The prince was quoting a poet who said, “Long live security – may its men hold their heads high on every corner. [Bin Laden], whose ideology is sick, who was sent by the Jews, who is the architect of theft, was treacherous and sent us the criminals. This traitor of the nation tried to harm us, but his efforts boomeranged back upon him.”
Pure genius.
Still on the other side.
Via Mystery Achievement
Disappointing news – the decidedly undiplomatic and highly entertaining Diplomad blog is shutting down.
It’s been fun; the postings from the readers have been great (except for the idiot trolls — the same ones who collapsed our hotmail account and made it useless.) But for a variety of personal and professional reasons it’s time to stop (we might blog again under a different name; might not.) Lest any of you think so, we have not been threatened or shut down; the State Department goons are not knocking at the door. It’s just time to do something else.
The archives will remain up.
Hat tip – Right Thinking People, where the grief and sense of loss is translated into a nice smackdown of National Post “columnist” Sheila Copps. There’s the spirit, guys – take it out on someone unsuspecting, I always say!
