Writer At HuffPo Befuddled By Concept Of Synonym

The nearly breathless headline screams: Palin Misquotes Albright. Ohmigod! It must be another “scandal” that marks (yet again) the end of McCain’s racist notion that anyone should vote for him.

At a rally on Saturday in California, Sarah Palin offered up a rather jarring argument for supporting the Republican ticket. “There’s a place in Hell reserved for women who don’t support other women,” the Alaska Governor said, claiming she was quoting former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

…

Actually, Albright didn’t say that. The accurate quote is, “There’s a place in Hell reserved for women who don’t help other women.” [ed. ludicrous emphasis in original.]

And they still allow Palin to walk around with the rest of us? Why hasn’t she been interned yet? Obviously her re-education will take longer then it will for the rest of us.

Hmmm…could it have anything to do with the definition of the word support?

2 a (1): to promote the interests or cause of (2): to uphold or defend as valid or right : advocate (3): to argue or vote for b (1): assist , help

Hmmm…I wonder how the word “help” is defined:

1: to give assistance or support to

*sigh* Arguing with Obama supporters is like having a “debate” with a five-year old. They are too dumb to know how dumb they are.

Joe Biden: Out Of His Depth

Sen. Biden said something during the debate last night that was so wrong and, frankly, stupid it took my breath away. Needless to say the MSM never noticed. However, Michael Totten did notice:

In Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” [Emphasis added.]

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.

It’s too bad debate moderator Gwen Ifill didn’t catch him and ask a follow up question: When did the United States and France kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon?

The answer? Never. And did Biden and Senator Barack Obama really say NATO troops should be sent into Lebanon? When did they say that? Why would they say that? They certainly didn’t say it because NATO needed to prevent Hezbollah from returning–since Hezbollah never went anywhere.

Maybe Biden is working under the assumption that the average American is so ill informed when it comes to foreign affairs they will believe any damn fool thing he says, but remember, Joe Biden is on the Democratic ticket because he supposedly improves their knowledge base on foreign affairs.

Just imagine how bad that makes Obama on the subject.

My mind reels with sarcastic replies.

Now, just imagine the media response had Palin made such a remark.

“Move Along Sonny…Nothing To See Here.”

Good Questions
(h/t The Anchoress)

Crazy Talk

It seems there is a petition going around asking Congress to not do anything rash to our economic system:

As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:

1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.

2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.

3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, Americas dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.

For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.

We ask Congress not to rush…carefully consider…wisely determine…???

Don’t these people know there is a crisis?? As such the American people require, nay! the American people demand that Congress run around like a chicken with its head cut off.

To do otherwise is clearly the mark of insanity.

(h/t to Volokh)

“It’s A Miracle!”

So the Dow Jones jumps up 2.5% this morning. Could it be that folks are realizing that the defeat of the sellout bailout doesn’t mark the end of Western Civilization?  Even the credit markets are easing a bit. Of course, that is impossible. People on television told me so.

I’m gonna sprain my eyes by rolling them so much.

Noblesse Oblige Declined

Over at The Glittering Eye this piece by David Brooks get quoted approvingly:

House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party. Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support. Then, too, they listened to the loudest and angriest voices in their party, oblivious to the complicated anxieties that lurk in most American minds.

TGE adds:

I believe that what he characterizes as destroying the Republican Party is, in fact, the triumph of ideology over pragmatism and the consequence of the attempts to transform our catch-all parties into programmatic ones that are going on in both parties. Ideologues can’t agree; they are peculiarly unsuited to democratic republican government in which compromise is mandatory.

That’s what James Madison warned against in Federalist #10

Well, not really. I think what we are witnessing is just how much we have forgotten what the House of Representatives is supposed to be like. As I said over in the comments at TGE:

“Uh, what if they simply thought it was a crappy bill? Maybe they didn’t want to be stampeded into doing ’something!’ at the expense of doing ‘the right thing.’

“That is what makes Brooks’ statements so silly. Sure, average people feel anxious about the economy, but that doesn’t mean they want Congress to do something stupid just so they can say they did ’something.’

“And hell, if the Democrats actually believed this was the right thing to do they might have tried fighting for it. Obviously, they didn’t…so what does that say about the legislation?

“Besides, does Brooks really think that the calls, letter and emails that were flooding into elected officals offices (running 100-1 or more AGAINST this bailout) were really just the ideological wing of the Republican party? Thats just stupid.

“As for Madison, he didn’t have ideologies in mind because ideologies, as we think of them, were not an intellectual category back then. The idea of ‘faction’ is much more closely related to ruling political coalitions, in the Roman Republican sense. Indeed, Madison was a better (small ‘d’) democrat than you give him credit for. I really don’t think he would have had a problem if members of the House listened more closely to their constituents than other branches of government. Hell, if we are going to base this on the Federalist Papers, shouldnt we expect the Senate to go forward in a more august and thoughtful manner? (The answer is ‘yes’ they are supposed to do just that.) But did they? NO! They refuse to even begin the process by voting up or down on this measure. And why is that? Basically they are cowards who don’t want to get exposed during an election year.

“It is the ruling elite, as a whole, of this country that is failing us so badly and not this or that party or ideological wing. Brooks will never recognize that because he is so emeshed within the elites’ pattern of thinking. For him the elites ARE the country, so what they say should go, and the rest of the American people should feel themselves lucky that the elite lower themselves to do our thinking for us.”

I could have gone on. There were spontaeous demonstrations against the bailout all over the country. Did you hear or see one break out in favor of it? The notion that it is illegitimate for the most representative body in our national government to pay attention to the people writ large is deeply anti-democratic. Indeed, we are being asked, yet again, to suspend the normal process of making legislation because the elite want the money quickly. When people starting asking why, the response amounted to, “You wouldn’t understand ‘why.’ But trust us, its for your own good.”

Brooks still isn’t sure why that wasn’t good enough for us.

I Am Shocked!

Well…maybe I’m not shocked:

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: “Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working.” I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

How much you wanna bet editors all across the country are asking their I/T guys if its possible to see if this “traitor” is in their office?

I’m sure they would just want to take them to lunch.

Amen

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt has responded in the only appropriate manner to the Gestapo tactics of the Obama campaign in attempting to use the state to stifle dissent:

St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.

This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.

Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.

The Obama campaign is a national disgrace.

Obama: A Liar, Pure And Simple

Remember hearing this from Camp Obama, which was dutifully parroted by MSM today from Bangor to San Diego:

Congressman Blunt just confirmed what’s been clear since John McCain rode into Washington at the eleventh hour -– Sen. McCain’s political theatrics succeeded only in stopping a bipartisan deal. During the most serious economic crisis of our time, we don’t need erratic posturing, we need steady leadership to protect American taxpayers and put our economy back on track.

Well, it turns out this is an out and out lie. Here is what Roy Blunt actually said:

I do think that John McCain was very helpful in what he did. I saw him this morning, we’ve been talking with his staff. Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing that no House Republican in my view would have been for, which means it wouldn’t have probably passed the House. Now, Democrats are in the majority. They can pass anything they want to without a single Republican vote, but they don’t seem to be willing to do that. I’m pleased we can have negotiations now that get us back towards things that we think can protect the taxpayers better, create more options, and frankly be better understood in the country than the plan—the path we were on a couple of days ago.

Lying comes as easy to this group as attempting to stifle free speech.

Can you feel the hope?

I’m Not Being Quiet On Purpose

In fact, if you ever head over to The Iconic Midwest you would see that I’ve not been “quiet” at all. The trouble is I’ve set myself a certain standard for my postings over here. Gaius has set the tone of this blog, and a good one it is. When I feel I have things to say in that mode there is no better place on the web to reach a classy readership than right here at the Crabitat.

The thing is, I’ve not been in that mode very often of late. The rigors of the campaign season and, especially, the tenor of the Obama campaign have not been conducive to calm reasoned discourse. I know, I know…I shouldn’t let them get to me, but when you add an “in the tank” media to the mix, a little vicious invective doesn’t seem so bad.

The upshot is I’m gonna try to add more of my two cents over here a little more often…at least the less screed like portions of it. Aren’t you lucky?

Global Colding Update

Heard the hysteria about ice melt in the arctic? Well, it turns out that with the “melting season” officially over there is actually 9% more ice than last year. Hmmm…what do you call it when there is more of something than there was before??? Oh yeah, that’s right, its called an increase.

Of course, this shouldn’t be surprising as we are witnessing a dramatic cooling of the Earth’s climate:

Since just January 2007, the world has cooled so much that ALL the global warming over the past three decades has disappeared! This is confirmed by a plot of actual global average temperatures from the best available source, weather satellite data that shows there has been NO net global warming since the satellites were first launched in 1979.

If you’re a member of the Church of Gorology never fear! Just keep repeating the mantra “All cooling is consistent with AGW…All cooling is consistent with AGW…ohmmmmm.” And don’t forget to tithe!

(Gleaned from QandO)

Hate

Here is Obama supporter Cintra Wilson writing about Sarah Palin on Salon:

Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She’s such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it’s easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.

She is dangerous. She is not just pro-life, she’s anti-life. She is the suppression of human feeling and instinct. She is a slave to the compromises dictated by her own desire for power and control. Sarah Palin is untethered from her own needs and those of her family, which is in crisis, with a pregnant daughter, a son on the way to Iraq and a special-needs infant.

That’s right, the nomination of Sarah Palin is now the moral equivalent of the start of the Holocaust.

Please notice, this “piece” was not pulled off of an obscure diary at the Daily Kos; It came off of a supposedly mainstream media organ. This is what the MSM is becoming.

The Left keep saying they want to “change” America, and, oh, they mean it. They just have no intention of making it a better place.

Missed It By *That* Much

Ouch! Slovakia’s women’s ice hockey pummels Bulgaria 82-0

With more goals than minutes in the game, Slovakia’s women’s ice hockey team claimed an amazing 82-0 victory over Bulgaria in Olympic qualifying.

Slovakia outshot the Bulgarians 139-0 during the 60-minute game, played in Latvia. The margin of victory is a record for a women’s International Ice Hockey Federation-sanctioned event.

“We took it as training,” Slovakia coach Miroslav Karafiat said after Saturday’s game.

Janka Culikova led Slovakia with 10 goals, while Martina Velickova scored nine. Fourteen different players scored at least one goal.

That’s a shot every 25 seconds, and just about a goal every 45 seconds. Bulgarian goalies (I’m praying there was more than one) had a save percentage of just 0.41.

Humiliation, however, reached a perfect 1.0.

When Pinot Noir Democrats Attack!

Anyone with even a moderately long lived memory when it comes to American politics has to be mesmerized by the class role reversal going on today. It wasn’t all that long ago when the print media was the domain of the working and middle class in this country. Oh, sure there were a few papers that catered to the “country club” set, and others that wrote for the East Coast financial elite. Typical was the stance announced by Joseph Pulitzer and still adorning the Editorial section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.”

Noble words, and words echoed on newspaper mast heads across the country.

Too bad the people working at newspapers today never take the time to read them.

While it is true that newspapers of Pulitzer’s day violated the letter of his pledge, many lived up to its spirit. Today does anybody, left or right, really believe that is true? Today, maybe because of dimly understood “post-modern” ideas concerning the nature of truth, most newspapers seem to be operating under the assumption that it is impossible to be objective therefore there is no need to try to be. If anyone complains about the treatment they receive, well, they must be hypocrites because “objectiveness” is a fraud. “They,” so the argument goes, “must be on the side doing the sinning just as often as they are on the side being sinned against.” This would make sense if print or electronic media catered to different ideological groups in a roughly proportional manner. However, they certainly do not. A disproportionate number of papers, for example, serve a left of center ideological group, even if they do so imperfectly. For example, in a 2006 Pew Center survey on the media, self identified Democrats found the following news sources more reliable than did Republicans:

NewsHour
NPR
AP
their daily newspaper
60 Minutes
CBS News
Local TV News
CNN
ABC News
MSNBC
C-Span
NBC News
New York Times
USA Today
Newsweek
Time

The following were found more trustworthy by Republicans than Democrats:

Wall Street Journal
Fox News

So, if it is fair to say media sources have done a better job catering to those on the left of the ideological spectrum, it is also fair to say they also do the same for the better educated and wealthier. (Go read the entire Pew Survey for confirmation of that.) Indeed, as time goes on, the focus of most of the media has moved further and further away from that laid out by Pulitzer for his newspapers. In one sense this does seem logical; if more highly educated and wealthy consumers use your product than you will customize it to best suit that audience. However, it would be wrong to assume that this is merely a question of market forces playing out. Let’s face it, it helps the bottom line of these media sources if their paying customers have more cash. So, in some sense at least, media in this country have the audiences they recruited. As a result, the ideological makeup of that audience is not a result of happenstance but it is deliberately cultivated. Publishers know how to read market research. They know that poor people are not buying and reading their products, so why should they write for them?

So who are they writing for? I think it would be fair to call them the Pinot Noir Democrats; they are college educated, largely urban, relatively wealthy, non or lightly religious (in a mainline Protestant or Catholic sense,) liberal ideologically, and either ignorant or disdainful of lower middle class lifestyles or values. For themselves they see their personal worldview as “normal” and anything else as decidedly “reactionary” or “deviant.” This explain, I believe, the reaction of the MSM to the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican VP candidate. William Kristol summed it up:

A special thank you to our friends in the liberal media establishment. Who knew they would come through so spectacularly? The ludicrous media feeding frenzy about the Palin family hyped interest in her speech, enabling her to win a huge audience for her smashing success Wednesday night at the convention. Indeed, it even renewed interest in McCain, who seems to have gotten still more viewers for his less smashing–but well-received–presentation the following evening.

The astounding (even to me, after all these years!) smugness and mean-spiritedness of so many in the media engendered not just interest in but sympathy for Palin. It allowed Palin to speak not just to conservatives but to the many Americans who are repulsed by the media’s prurient interest in and adolescent snickering about her family. It allowed the McCain-Palin ticket to become the populist standard-bearer against an Obama-Media ticket that has disdain for Middle America.

By the end of the week, after Palin’s tour de force in St. Paul, the liberal media were so befuddled that they were reduced to complaining that conservatives aren’t being narrow-minded enough. Thus, Hanna Rosin–who has covered religion and politics for the Washington Post, and has also written for the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the New York Times–lamented in a piece for Slate: “So cavalier are conservatives about Sarah Palin’s wreck of a home life that they make the rest of us look stuffy and slow-witted by comparison.” I suppose it was ungenerous of conservatives, in our broad-mindedness and tolerance of human frailty, to have let Ms. Rosin down, just when she was counting on us to bring out the tar and feathers. But she gives us too much credit when she suggests we make the liberal media look stuffy and slow-witted. They do that all by themselves.

What is amazing about Kristol’s complaint about the media is how true it rings, even coming from the old bastion of what used to be called “country club Republicans.” The fact the media has reacted with such incredulity to the criticism directed towards it (for example), simply underscores how alien they have become to huge segments of the American population.

Their response has been, in effect, to sneer at middle America. “You ignorant hayseeds! Don’t you understand we know what’s best for you? Sure, we don’t respect you, understand you, or even like you, but you must believe we have your economic well being as our number one priority. Therefore, if you ever feel the need to get involved in politics, don’t bother. Leave it to us. Besides, you will be too busy with all of your deformed babies.”

It’s the new style of noblese oblige and it’s every bit as distasteful as the old style.

However, the sad fact is this is all they have to offer. This is the approach to news they have crafted to appeal to the Pinot Noir Democratic audience and they don’t know how to do much else. So, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a different approach to emerge this election cycle.

(Cross posted at The Iconic Midwest)

It’s A Good Thing The Sun Can’t Affect Us Here…

…at least thats what Al Gore told us. From Daily Tech: Sun Makes History. First Spotless Month in a Century

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots — is an influencing factor for climate on earth.

According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.

When the sun is active, it’s not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.

But this year — which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 — has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.

In 2005, a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson attempted to publish a paper in the journal Science. The pair looked at minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. By extrapolating forward, they reached the startling result that, within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely. At the time, the sun was very active. Most of their peers laughed at what they considered an unsubstantiated conclusion.

The journal ultimately rejected the paper as being too controversial.

I love how the theory that SUV’s drive our climate was not too controversial, but a paper about sunspots was considered “out there.”

There have been plenty of signs lately that decreased solar activity is having an impact on our climate. Last winter was the harshest in awhile. The UK and Western Europe have had very mild summers with lots of Brits complaining about the lack of warm weather. Here in the Twin Cities we had an entire month of August without topping 90 degrees.

What does any of that prove? Well, not too much really, but it is certainly more consistent with the theory of solar influence on climate than it is with Anthropogenic Global Warming. Remember, AGW works (so we are told) without any input from the sun. (Yep, all of the computers models they used for the U.N. reports neglected to have a solar input variable.) Now, this is fine as long as you make it clear that your work is in the “all things being equal” vein. However, the pronouncements of the Goracle and his cohort of scientific henchmen were treated like they were scripture.

Like it or not, the universe is still a big place and we are still small and relatively insignificant. If an inactive sun make this a cooler world than it does. We will have to learn to adapt as best we can.

H/T To QandO, where a commenter had this beautiful line:

What matters is we meet Ted Turner’s prediction of cannibalism. How we get there isn’t important!