Via Hot Air, we have this report about how the Washington Post didn’t initially cover the Obama / Wright controversy because there was “nothing new”. As if that ever stopped a “me too” story from Old Media on something they thought was important.
The Post — and some others in the news media — came late to reporting on the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Barack Obama’s former Chicago pastor. The story, long there for the picking, touched raw nerves — racial, political and religious — among readers.
The Post did next to nothing on Wright and his Trinity United Church of Christ before March 15, and editors turned down a reporter’s requests to do a story before the controversy broke…
Had anyone suggested doing that story at The Post? Religion reporter Michelle Boorstein pitched it twice and was turned down by editors on the Metro and National desks.
Joe Davidson, assistant city editor and Boorstein’s editor, wrote: “At the time Michelle suggested the story, before the latest revelations about Wright’s comments, there was little that was new. I didn’t see what it would add that was significantly different.� Tim Curran, deputy national editor for politics, wrote: “I am pleased that we were able to present Eli’s very thorough and thoughtful piece on Wright and his relationship with Obama, an article we had set in motion well before the situation came to a head, in such a timely fashion.�
A long look at the Frontline “documentary” Bush’s War. It turns out to be mainly a screed about the awfulness of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. In 4&frac;12; hours about the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation, such people as Gen. David Petraeus do not rate even a mention.
On Wednesday the BBC reported the speech under the headline ‘Bush speech hails Iraq “victory”’. The headline was supported by the following sentence in the story:
He said recent troop reinforcements had brought about “a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror”.However, this isn’t what Bush said. What he said was:
The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around – it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.
When pointed out, the BBC’s response was to delay, then make the change silently with no indication it was ever different. No apology, or punishment for what cannot possibly have been a honest mistake that distorted the meaning of a major speech by a world leader. But hey — if the facts are favorable to Bush, then the facts will just have to “adjusted”.
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The Jewish joke is that of a someone who kills his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he’s an orphan. The tragedy is two Israeli Arabs who killed their sister because she violated the family “honor”, and then pleaded for mercy from the court because their family was bereaved. (via Dhimmi Watch)
Via No Pasarán we find out that while the EU is hitting the Dark Empire with repeated fines for being sufficiently open, it itself refuses to be open in its interactions with its subjects by using proprietary software. Was the whole legal proceedings just a way of getting a vendor discount?
Chávez was furious that one of his collaborators, with whom he had spoken by telephone days just before, was killed so efficiently and so suddenly. Published reports that Colombian intelligence services located Reyes by triangulating the signal from a phone call with the verbose Venezuelan president must have left Chávez, well, speechless.
The schadenfruede is almost too much for me.
In yet another example of how the Department of Homeland Security is actively failing to generate any security, is this report on how, because the State Department and the Immigrant and Customs Enforcement can’t agree on what the visa requirements are for attending flight school, the DHS will just not check at all. The DHS, of course, was peddled to the citizenry as a mechanism for preventing precisely this sort of paralyzing turf war, and more over was specifically charged with resolving security with regard to flight schools after the 2001 attacks. Yet, years later, nothing is being done and nothing is planned to be done. One can argue with flight school restrictions make any sense, but if so then the DHS should just come out and say so, not silently do nothing and ignore the law and its own responsibilities.
According to LGF, the Huffington Post has turned off comments for a post about the attack on the seminary in Jerusalem. I agree that this is almost certainly because if they don’t, the virulent hatred of their readership will become too obvious. One is only left wondering how people can avoid wondering about their own stances if such stances attract that kind of fellow traveler. It’s also hard to envision how one builds a successful mass movement if you’re too embarassed to state your beliefs openly, unless you’re willing to lie blatantly and continuously to achieve your own political goals.
Yediot Ahronot correspondent Itamar Eichner reports in today’s edition that an officer in Israeli Military Intelligence revealed in a briefing by FM Livni to foreign ambassadors that “before the IDF attacks Qassam workshops or warehouses it distributes flyers asking the residents to evacuate the area. But Hamas exploits the flyers and places small children on the rooftops in order to foil the attacks. And thus because of this trick the IDF is forced to halt many such bombings at the last moment.”
“We are working with our hands tied because of all these laws and because we are part of the free world and because this is part of our values,” FM Livni said.
Perhaps it’s true, “evil always triumphs, because good is stupid”. Respect and restraint should of course be the default position, but when a society places itself outside the bounds of civilized behavior, then it’s outside the bounds and cannot bind others, just as a person who commits criminal acts loses his rights as a free citizen.
Rove should have some video game company release a new Halo, or X-box for Christmas, that conveniently gets released on election day.
— Stormy70
Depending on the youth vote is a weak strategy to start with, and this would complete negate it.