30 September 2005

At least their style is consistent

[source, source]

Facing heated protest, the United Nations on Wednesday defended Tunisia’s hosting of a U.N. summit about Internet access in the developing world, even though the north African nation has been repeatedly accused of rights abuses that include blocking Web sites it dislikes.

Of course! It’s the same organization that put Sudan and Cuba on the Human Rights Commission. The UN’s goal is control, not provision, of information services.

Posted by orbital at 3:11 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

So other than the government, the Constitution and the voters, we like America

[source]

Yale University Press just sent us, Off Center : The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. which is sure to be a hit with the Looney Left. It’s kind of the inevitable sequel to What’s the Matter with Kansas — starting from the assumption that the election of Republicans to run Washington is an obvious error it goes on to the logical next step and argues that the exercise of power by those “elected” officials is per se illegitimate and ways must be found to stop them. […]

In short, what they see as obstacles to the kind of America they want to live in are: the American political system; the American people; and the elected government of America.

That’s been clear for a while. In some sense it’s good that the Modern American Left is finally openly admitting it.

Posted by orbital at 11:52 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

29 September 2005

They don't need to know

A good photo essay on how a some good cropping of an image can change it’s entire context. The Old Media pictureis close cropped to slice off any inconvenient details, leading viewers to have a very different view of an event from what was actually going on.

Posted by orbital at 2:27 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

22 September 2005

Presence of Malice

[source]

Focus for Supreme Court Pick Is Said to Be on Diversity (ELISABETH BUMILLER, 9/22/05, NY Times)

Miguel A. Estrada, a partner at the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington who has also been mentioned by Republicans as a potential nominee, was said by the strategists not to be interested in the position. Mr. Estrada, an assistant solicitor general in the administration of the first President Bush and the beginning of the Clinton administration, was nominated by the current President Bush to the United States

What a quaint way of describing these events:

Estrada withdrew his name twenty-eight months after being nominated. During the confirmation struggle, Estrada’s wife miscarried; in November, 2004, she died, of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills. The death was ruled accidental by the medical examiner. Rove said that Mrs. Estrada had been traumatized by the nastiness of the process.

Wasn’t there a movie on this theme?

Posted by orbital at 9:47 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

21 September 2005

Red state, red planet – they're just getting what they deserve for voting the wrong way

[source]

But more important, Martian snow turns out to be rock hard. Worse, it is melting away at an alarming rate.

In fact, Mars may be in the midst of a period of profound climate change, according to a new study that shows dramatic year-to-year losses of snow at the south pole.

Global warming on Mars as well. Must be purely a coincidence, or the fault of Chimpy McBushitler.

Posted by orbital at 2:07 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

The quote everyone was waiting for

George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self from power.

Cindy Sheehan

Posted by orbital at 9:39 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Free to choose what I like

[source, source]

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Many women at the nation’s most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. . . .

For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many young women at the nation’s top schools are by the strictures of traditional roles.

“They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they’re accepting it,” said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women’s and gender studies at Yale. “Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

“I really believed 25 years ago,” Dr. Wexler added, “that this would be solved by now.”

“Solved”, eh? Quite revealing. Apparently Dr. Wexler uses the word “solved” to mean “women doing what I think they should, instead of what they want to do”. Clearly feminism isn’t about freeing women to make their own choices.

Posted by orbital at 9:37 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

16 September 2005

How can government leaders be expected to control state run media?

[source, source]

Radio and television sermons by senior PA religious officials in the past week have presented the US as foremost among the “heretical” countries, and as an enemy trying to dismantle the Islamic world.

In the presence of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, one religious leader called for Iraqis to intensify terrorist uprisings against American soldiers.

This is right after the USA has agreed to give the PA $50 million. Now there’s a real question to ask President Bush: why are we giving foreign aid to people promoting the terrorists in Iraq? On the scale of “with us or against us”, where does such an organization fall?

Posted by orbital at 7:19 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Maybe we just didn't ask nicely enough

[source, source]

Israel’s military does not envision major retaliation for Palestinian missile and rocket strikes from the Gaza Strip.

Israeli military sources said the General Staff has quietly assessed that the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would not approve any major combat operation in the Gaza Strip. The sources said the government would instead appeal to the United States and the Palestinian Authority to halt the attacks on the Jewish state.

Because that technique has worked so well in the past.

Posted by orbital at 7:15 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

15 September 2005

Defining superflous

[source, source]

The European Parliament has spent the past week arguing about a “sunshine directive” that would have made EU employers responsible for the health effects of sunlight on their staff.

This commentary intentionlly left blank.

Posted by orbital at 10:21 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Pork for Katrina

Here’s a plan I can support 100%:

Every Congressman should give up a local project to benefit the victims of hurricane Katrina.

Posted by orbital at 9:59 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

14 September 2005

Nothing significant, I just found it funny

Why the Welsh hate the English.

Posted by orbital at 8:58 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Or maybe he's most helpful in that location

[source, source]

NEW YORK — Emergency officials who prepared Louisiana’s plan for responding to a major hurricane never guessed that one of their duties would be to protect aid workers from gunmen, one of the state’s senior disaster officials said Monday.

Speaking at a symposium in New York, Arthur Jones, chief of disaster recovery for Louisiana’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said he was caught off guard by the violence in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. [emphasis added]

Could that be the strongest signal yet that the recovery from hurricane Katrina is going wonderfully, if the chief of disaster recovery for the Lousianna state FEMA is taking some time to fly to New York City for a conference?

Posted by orbital at 8:39 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

13 September 2005

The word from Iraq

[source, source]

“In the name of Iraqi people, I say to you, Mr. President, and to the glorious American people, thank you, thank you. Thank you, because you liberated us from the worst kind of dictatorship.”

“Mr. President, you are a visionary, great statesman. We salute you. We are grateful to you. We will never forget what you have done for our people.”

— Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, September 13, 2005

Posted by orbital at 8:20 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Preferring poverty

Western Action [source]

It was perhaps an odd request to make of a man noted for his commitment to Israeli causes and his fierce criticism of the Palestinian Authority.

Please raise $14 million to help buy the Jewish settlers’ lucrative greenhouses in the Gaza Strip so that the Palestinians can take them over when the settlers are gone. Oh, and can you get it done by the weekend, before the pullout starts? If not, the settlers will destroy the greenhouses on their way out of Gaza to keep them out of Arab hands.

Last Wednesday, though, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, real estate magnate and publisher of The Daily News, received just such a pitch from his friend James D. Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, current Middle East envoy for the White House and would-be broker of the deal.

[…]

So he in turn picked up the phone and called a few of his friends and fellow billionaires, who also happened to be prominent Jewish philanthropists.

[…]

Within 48 hours, Mr. Zuckerman said, he had his $14 million. And the Palestinians had a shot at inheriting relatively intact the greenhouses whose vegetables and flowers have been a major source of Israeli export income, and, not incidentally, about 3,500 desperately needed Palestinian jobs.

Palestinian Reaction [source]

Palestinian police on Tuesday blocked off abandoned settlements and chased after scavengers in a first attempt to impose law and order after chaotic celebrations of Israel’s pullout from Gaza, but the overwhelmed forces were unable to halt looting of the area’s prized greenhouses.

The greenhouses, left behind by Israel as part of a deal brokered by international mediators, are a centerpiece of Palestinian plans for rebuilding Gaza after 38 years of Israeli occupation. […]

Just minutes away, crowds of looters in the Gadid settlement overwhelmed hundreds of guards trying to protect the greenhouses. Guards acknowledged that in many cases, they were unable to stop the looting.

Posted by orbital at 3:18 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

12 September 2005

Upset over someone else getting the credit?

[source, source]

Advisers appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

Some ask why being offensive to Muslims is considered sufficient reason to cancel a public day of remembrance. I think a better question is why is such a day considered offensive to Muslims? And note — these advisers are themselves Muslim, selected as representative of the Muslim community.

Posted by orbital at 7:25 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Modern day PR

An old post but classic none the less — E. Nough explains how to improve Israel’s public image, with many real world examples.

A Modest Open Letter

Unsolicited advice for the State of Israel

Dear Israel,

It has become painfully clear over the past few days years decades that you, as a nation, have a severe image problem internationally. This problem is not just with openly hostile governments that have promised on many occasions to destroy you and murder your citizens wholesale; rather, it extends to inter-governmental assemblies such as the United Nations, progressive non-governmental organizations, the global press, and the academic intelligentsia, combining into what has commonly come to be called “world opinion.” I believe it would be of some benefit to consider the ways in which you can bring this world opinion to your side, and gain sympathy and respect, if not outright admiration, from nations the world over.

(Some may be tempted to ask why a sovereign nation should give any consideration to this “world opinion” to begin with. Some may even ask how this world opinion came to be considered a moral authority, especially given the rather shaky moral record of virtually all nations that presume to hold it. Such questions are beyond the scope of this letter. Suffice it to say that your UN ambassador probably does not enjoy being berated daily by virtually every country on the planet, including those that have more mass graves than your entire population.)

Let us consider the strategy you have employed for the past few decades: namely, to demonstrate your strength, but seek peaceful solutions instead, as with Egypt and Jordan; to strive to kill terrorists, but spare innocent civilians, as in Jenin; to occupy after being attacked, but not engage in genocide or ethnic cleansing, as in the West Bank; to give sworn enemies the benefit of the doubt and test their word, as with Arafat; to give all those within your borders citizenship and basic rights; to respect all your citizens’ freedom of speech; to discuss your flaws openly and honestly; and to admit imperfection, but expect the world to understand the difficulties you face; to protect reporters and their freedom of speech, expecting them to report honestly and contextually; to respect world opinion while expecting it to recognize your right and responsibility to your own citizens. In short, you have tried to do the right thing, and expected the world to reciprocate. This foolishness has to stop, and it has to stop right now. It has brought you neither love nor respect from your fellow nations, and it is unclear as to why you expected anything else. But we’ll get to that.

First, let us consider some suboptimal ways of getting on the good side of global opinion. These work, but the harm they do to your own nation tends to outweigh any benefit, so they aren’t particularly recommended:

  • You can surrender to the Arabs. Put down your weapons, drop to your knees, and allow them to overrun the place. This will reduce you from your current position of strength, to that of innocent victims. The world loves helpless, innocent victims! Consider all the sympathy and support you got just after the Holocaust, when Jews was synonymous with skeletal Auschwitz victims. Why, the Europeans couldn’t support you enough, just as long as you didn’t hang around in Europe! (After all, helpless innocent victims are fine and good, as long as they are not camped out on the front lawn. That just spoils the scenery!) This solution has been employed multiple times over the past 100 years or so, all with roughly the same results: sympathy galore. Just ask the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Rwandans, or the Sudanese in Darfur. The problem, of course, is that sympathy is all you get, and that’s worth about as much as one of Arafat’s commitments to peace — so you’ll end up exactly like the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Rwandans, or the Sudanese in Darfur. Or, more likely and more to the point, like the Auschwitz victims that never left the camp.
  • You can become an enemy of the United States. It’s wacky but true: if you are opposed to the United States, you can expect widespread global support, regardless of your own failings. You can set up a mass-murdering police state, invade two countries, and kill entire villages with poison gas, but if you oppose the United States, you’ll be the lesser evil. There are several problems with this approach, of course, not least of which is that there is no guarantee that it will work for you. There simply isn’t enough empirical data to determine whether, in opposition to the U.S., you’d actually be viewed as the lesser evil. It certainly worked for Iraq and North Korea, but then neither of them is run by Jews. Another problem is that being an enemy of the U.S., while popular, is exceedingly dangerous. Since 2001, at least two countries that engaged in this have had a radical change of government, preceded by some very loud urban renewal courtesy of the U.S. military. (By contrast, slaughtering Spanish citizens and Filipino expats has brought extremely promising results. You should keep this in mind.) At any rate, when picking one’s enemies, the United States is probably not the best choice. Of course, in your case this option is barred even more by your strategic dependence upon the U.S. That problem is addressable, and we’ll get to it shortly; nonetheless, it’s easy to see that gaining popularity by being anti-U.S. is not really a viable option.

Now that we have eliminated the false leads, we shall examine the actions you will have to take in order to receive positive press and start benefitting from friendly world opinion. As you consider these options, you will no doubt find that they violate your principles, and contradict your very strongly held morals. Well, frankly, you’ll just have to deal. When getting on the good side world opinion and the progressive intelligentsia, real morals are a nuisance you simply cannot afford. If you’re going to insist on something as silly as principles, and be bothered by something as trivial as rank hypocrisy, you’ll just have to hang out with the other pariahs, such as the U.S. and Australia. So forget it: just make like the French, and shrug it off. Principles are so simplisme.

The French actually have much to teach you about the benefits of moral flexibility: it has taken them successfully through World War II and the Cold War — to say nothing of the many crises in Africa and the Middle East since then — with virtually no damage to their economy, infrastructure, or reputation. The Americans, Brits, and Russians may have fought World War II to the bitter end, while the French surrendered after a few weeks and started working for the Germans, but guess who still ended up on the Security Council? That is skill, my friends!

Anyway, enough babble — on to the plan!

  1. The first thing to realize is that negative opinion is created by negative reporting. You have naively assumed that if you allow jouralists to report everything, they really will report everything — the good and the bad, the claims and the counterclaims, the bloodshed and the background. Such foolishness! How many reporters can you name that have won awards for reporting something positive, especially where a Western society is concerned? Reporters don’t merely report facts; reporters look for “the story,” and that story had better have some bloodshed, preferably involving defenseless and oppressed people. Well, there is certainly no shortage of that on the planet, but someone who is willing to kill thousands of rival tribesmen is unlikely to spare a BBC crew, so the number of opportunities to wear khaki and film misery is actually much more limited. Then, as if to answer the prayers of every Pulitzer chaser, you walk right in, with the ethnic conflict, the weak Arabs, the poweful Jews backed by the U.S. — and all perfectly safe to film! What kind of news stories do you expect, anyway, when even the lowest al-Jazeera staffer can stand in the middle of Tel-Aviv and safely curse the Zionist entity, while every TV crew in the West Bank knows that simply showing Palestinians doing what they do best gets your press credentials revoked.

    So let’s cut the crap. Close the West Bank and Gaza to journalists, and remove any who resist. Cut phone lines and satellite links; use missiles as needed on the rest. Isolate the West Bank and Gaza entirely; nothing, not even an SOS gets in or out of there without your say-so. Throw a couple of reporters in jail, just on general principle. Make it really clear that anyone who embarrasses the State of Israel can receive the same treatment; then make good on the threat. (I suggest using as examples reporters from respected but unimportant countries — New Zealand, say, or Belgium — you get the idea.) Make journalist visas nearly-impossible to obtain, and hold them as prizes. Demand to review all footage before it’s broadcast or taken out of the country. Hey, it works for Arafat and the Saudis; it’ll work for you.

    This will obviously cause you some difficulty with your own journalists, especially the more left-leaning ones. Give them the same treatment as the foreign journalists. Remember: you are trying to be a respected member of the global community. Niceties like freedom of the press are not something you can afford.
  2. A large portion of your population will object to this, on account of some silly notions like freedom of speech and the need for open discussion in a democracy. I won’t bother telling you how to get rid of them. All you really need is a couple examples. Just remember: you control the press, so it’s not like anyone will know. (Eventually, no one will care. More on that later.)
  3. There’s also the whole problem of various activists and outright terror sympathizers. All I have to say is that you don’t really see too many protestors in Pyongyang or Damascus. Sure, it’s partly due to the fact that their political leanings match those of North Korea and Syria to some degree, but mostly it’s because they doubt they’d come back from such an adventure. This seems easy enough to arrange. Let’s just say that ever since Rachel Corrie became one with the earth, not too many ISMers are eager to stand in front of a bulldozer. You don’t need to be too obvious: a few examples and some rumors that those who protest in Israel tend to disappear, and the activists will seek new protest venues elsewhere.
  4. This only leaves one type of negative publicity: the pundits and commentators outside your borders. Without live pictures, though, the world will quickly tire of hearing their cries of “occupation!” — that stuff is boring, and the world has a very short attention span. Still, if you’re worried, surely it’s not that hard to remove one or two of the more annoying ones. The rest will quickly get the message. It works for the Chinese in Hong Kong, or the Iranians with Rushdie, and it will work for you.

Simply following these guidelines should reduce to virtually nil the flow of negative publicity. That by itself is not enough, though: you need to get the world on your side. And as everyone from the USSR to the PLO to Saddam Hussein has demonstrated, you can’t do that without getting really nasty.

  • First off, you need to put yourself in a position where other nations need something from you. This is the only way most of them will ever support you, under any circumstances. There’s a reason why everyone pays so much deference to the Saudis, and it’s not because the world loves fat men in Maybachs. Like it or not, the world is not in dire need of more Sabra oranges or high-tech toys, and advanced cancer research just makes them feel inadequate. So what you need is control of a strategic resource. My suggestion would be to push the Egyptians out of the Sinai, and take over the Suez Canal. There’s not much they can do about it, especially if you quietly point out that, well, you might just have some tactical nukes that might just find their way into Cairo. It’s amazing how accommodating people can be when properly motivated. You can even let them save face through nominal control of some worthless port; no matter.

    The point is, once you have control of a waterway so crucial the the Euroid economy, expect to see a radical change of tune from the French and the rest of Europe, especially the Old side. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, though: it’s probably best not to tweak the Brits this way, and I strongly suggest you give Americans perpetual free passage. As to the rest, you can pretty much do as you wish — and I suggest making it really clear that you intend to play favorites. It’ll certainly alter the calculus a bit: the Arabs may have oil, sure, but it still has to get to Europe somehow. And that’s really hard, especially what with all those sabotaged pipelines. What sabotaged pipelines? You figure it out.

    Oh, please, don’t blanche at me now. This is global opinion we’re talking about. Just imagine how much the Europeans will love you once they realize their economies are now completely dependent on your whim. I predict a total love fest. Chirac will go nowhere without his yarmulke.
  • You should also throw a bone to those intellectuals and progressives who are not rotting in your jails, just to make them forget their comrades. This is not too hard to do. Some anti-U.S. rhetoric might be nice, but you can do well enough just by espousing some pet issues of theirs, and adopting their language. For example, instead of the boring moniker State of Israel, perhaps you can adopt the name The Jewish State of Social Justice. Progressives love the phrase “social justice,” and they’ll accept anyting that promises it, no matter how absurd. (Sort of like “free universal medical care.” Which I also suggest you implement, at least in the West Bank. It doesn’t have to be medically competent, or especially caring — the point is, it’s “free” and “universal.” A couple of Potemkin villages and some carefully orchestrated trips with properly instructed reporters will do wonders. It worked for the Russians and the Cubans; it will work for you. Progressives are much more willing to accept a boot in someone’s face, if the wearer of the boot explains that the face receives free universal medical care. Like quantum mechanics, it’s weird and counter-intuitive, but it works.) By the way, now that I think about it, you should probably remove the “Jewish” from the new name of the state — it polls negatively with global opinion. Perhaps the Hebraic State of Social Justice, or maybe something like the Multicultural State of Social Justice. Don’t worry about what that means; it’s the name that counts.

As you can see, you’ve been going about this world opinion thing all wrong. Silly Jews, you’ve tried to do the right thing under difficult circumstances, and — oh the hilarity! — expected fair treatment from the same people who brought you the Crusades, the Pale of Settlement, the pogroms, the Dreyfus Affair, the Holocaust, and exploding buses. Now you’ll probably just ignore me, stick to your silly morals and principles, and wonder how a Communist dictatorship manages to castigate your behavior without even a slight trace of irony.

You naive fools.

Posted by orbital at 11:19 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

It all ends up in the same place so why not mix it?

Just a quick reference to two posts about an internal review by the New York Times in which heavy bias of that organization is made clear in their own words:

even sophisticated readers of The New York Times sometimes find it hard to distinguish between news coverage and commentary in our pages

— Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times

Posted by orbital at 11:01 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Senator blasts shiftless government workers

[source, source]

[US Senator] Mary Landrieu (answer at 3:10 to 3:30): “I am not going to level criticism at local and state officials. Mayor Nagin, and most mayors in this country, have a hard time getting their people to work on a sunny day, let alone … in front of a hurricane.”

If Trent Lott had said that he’d be on the front page of every major daily in the nation as “Racist in Chief”. Landrieu, of course, will get a pass.

Posted by orbital at 9:27 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Satellite Maintenance

Big website upgrade from Movable Type 2.64 to 3.2. I think everything’s working OK, although the formatting for the initial source links is off because I forgot to load my modified version of Textile. That should get fixed in the next few days.

Posted by orbital at 9:21 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

11 September 2005

Because that's where the fun is

[source]

THE PRESS WANTS TO SHOW BODIES from Katrina. It didn’t want to show bodies, or jumpers, on 9/11, for fear that doing so would inflame the public.

I can only conclude that this time around, the press thinks it’s a good thing to inflame the public. What could the difference be?

I could understand amorality that just exploited the dead for its own purposes, but the active hostility of Old Media to the very social structures that permit it to exist is beyond me.

Posted by orbital at 8:18 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

09 September 2005

You can't make this stuff up

[source, source]

The House yesterday passed an anodyne resolution commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. It extended sympathy to the victims and survivors; honored the military, first responders, and others who helped; thanked foreign leaders for their support; declared that America is not waging war “on any people or any faith”; reaffirmed a commitment to the global war on terrorism; and vowed “never [to] forget the sacrifices made” on 9/11 or to “bow to terrorist demands.”

No one could disagree with that, right? Not quite. The House vote for the resolution was 402-6; here are the six far-left Democrats who voted “no”:

  • John Conyers (Mich.)
  • Barbara Lee (Calif.)
  • Jim McDermott (Wash.)
  • Cynthia McKinney (Ga.)
  • Pete Stark (Calif.)
  • Lynn Woolsey (Calif.)

One wonders, if these people can’t even agree with this kind thing, why do they persist in associating with the sponsoring organization?

Posted by orbital at 7:13 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

As the full horror of this sank in...

[source, source, source]

By Newton Emerson

As the full horror of Hurricane Katrina sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if this is the end of George Bush’s presidency. The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that every copy of the US Constitution was destroyed in the storm. Otherwise President Bush will remain in office until noon on January 20th, 2009, as required by the 20th Amendment, after which he is barred from seeking a third term anyway under the 22nd Amendment.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if the entire political agenda of George Bush’s second term will not still be damaged in some terribly satisfying way.

The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that the entire political agenda of George Bush’s second term consists of repealing the 22nd Amendment. Otherwise, with a clear Republican majority in both Houses of Congress, he can carry on doing pretty much whatever he likes.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if the Republican Party itself will now suffer a setback at the congressional mid-term elections next November.

The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that people outside the disaster zone punish their local representatives for events elsewhere a year previously, both beyond their control and outside their remit, while people inside the disaster zone reward their local representatives for an ongoing calamity they were supposed to prevent. Otherwise, the Democratic Party will suffer a setback at the next congressional election.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if an official inquiry will shift the blame for poor planning and inadequate flood defences on to the White House. The answer is almost certainly yes, provided nobody admits that emergency planning is largely the responsibility of city and state agencies, and nobody notices that the main levee which broke was the only levee recently modernised with federal funds. Otherwise, an official inquiry will pin most of the blame on the notoriously corrupt and incompetent local governments of New Orleans and Louisiana.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if George Bush contributed to the death toll by sending so many national guard units to Iraq.

The answer is almost certainly yes, provided nobody recalls that those same columnists have spent the past two years blaming George Bush for another death toll by not sending enough national guard units to Iraq. Otherwise, people might wonder why they have never previously read a single article advocating large-scale military redeployment during the Caribbean hurricane season.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnist are asking how a civilised city can descend into anarchy.

The answer is that only a civilised city can descend into anarchy.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if George Bush should be held responsible for the terrible poverty in the southern states revealed by the flooding.

The answer is almost certainly yes, provided nobody holds Bill Clinton responsible for making Mississippi the poorest state in the union throughout his entire term as president, or for making Arkansas the second-poorest state in the union throughout his entire term as governor. Otherwise, people might suspect that it is a bit more complicated than that.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if George Bush should not be concerned by accusations of racism against the federal government.

The answer is almost certainly yes, provided nobody remembers that Jesse Jackson once called New York “Hymietown” and everybody thinks Condoleezza Rice went shopping for shoes when the hurricane struck because she cannot stand black people.

Otherwise sensible Americans of all races will be more concerned by trite, cynical and dangerous political opportunism.

As the full horror of that sinks in, this columnist is simply glad that everybody cares.

Normally, an event gets reported in very similar ways among different Old Media outlets because someone, early on, sets the “story” and everyone follows that because it’s easy. Old Media seems to have now taken that one step further and settled on the story “It’s Bush’s Fault!” for every negative event. Modern efficiency in action, I guess.

Posted by orbital at 12:56 PM | View 2 Comments | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

08 September 2005

Striving for the 20%

[source, source]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Wednesday he will veto a bill that would have made California the first state to legalize same-sex marriage through its elected lawmakers.

Schwarzenegger said the legislation, given final approval Tuesday by lawmakers, would conflict with the intent of voters when they approved an initiative five years ago. Proposition 22 was placed on the ballot to prevent California from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states or countries.

[…]

“Clearly he’s pandering to an extreme right wing, which was not how he got elected,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, one of the bill’s sponsors.

Pandering to “an extreme right wing” by supporting an initiative that got over 61% of the vote?

Posted by orbital at 1:41 PM | View 1 Comments | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

More on Muhammad al-Dura

The latest in a series of debunkings of the putative killing of Muhammad al-Dura. This time, in turns out that the extra footage, over an hour, that backed up the original claims, doesn’t exist and never did. Moverover, archival footage from other cameramen in the area show numerous staged “battles” going, all obviously faked. Worth reading.

Posted by orbital at 1:14 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Close up hurrican pictures

[source]

Pictures from inside the eye of hurricane Katrina

Posted by orbital at 12:59 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL