Bash the Messenger

Shipping lettuce by rabbit

May 142010

Useful phrase of the day: “This all sounds about as reliable as shipping lettuce by rabbit.”

It’s in an article by Ezra Levant titled, “The CBC’s left-wing bias.” He says the CBC is going to investigate itself to see if it has any left-wing bias, but it isn’t going to reveal the methodology for its study.

We could hire these guys to investigate climategate.

(I’ve never doubted that the CBC was left-wing, but back in the late 80s and early 90s there was a program I used to like that did things differently than I ever heard on NPR. It would investigate topics by conducting intensive interviews on both sides of an issue. I heard a thorough investigation of gun control issues that one would never get on NPR, for example. Alas, I don’t remember the name of that program, and it has been quite a few years since I’ve listened to any CBC at all. Maybe it’s time for us to do some vacation travel in Canada again.)

Lack of unified rules

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May 122010

Amazing lead paragraph by Kara Scannell and Fawn Johnson at the WSJ. It’s in an article titled, “Schapiro: Web of Rules Aided Fall.”

Regulators haven’t found evidence of a single cause for the May 6 stock-market plunge, but the lack of unified rules among stock exchanges played a role, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro said Tuesday.

There is not a single sentence in the entire article to explain how a “lack of unified rules among stock exchanges” could have played a role. I suppose mere reporters don’t get to ask questions at a congressional hearing, but surely they should have reported on how the congressional committee members let that comment go by without a word of explanation. Or perhaps there was an explanation, in which case Scannel and Johnson should have told us about it.

Why make a big deal out of this? Well, I am skeptical that a lack of unified rules could have caused a lack of stability. It’s just not the way large, complex systems usually work. Usually there is stability in diversity, not in uniformity.

I tend to think of the parallels between economic systems and biological ecosystems. Note how the headline used the word “web.” Webs are usually good for stability. If this is a rare exception, it would be worth knowing about it.

Today’s special: red herring

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May 112010

Washington Post headline: Abortion could be sleeper issue in Supreme Court confirmation process.

Wow. I’ve been away on a bicycle outing and haven’t had time to learn anything about Elena Kagan yet. But she must be really bad if the Obama administration is trying to use the abortion issue to distract attention.

An anti-government AP reporter

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May 072010

From an AP article at the Battle Creek Enquirer titled, “Court official: Militia members can be traced 24/7″:

The militia members are charged with conspiring to overthrow the government. They remain in custody, although a judge wants to release them.

A comment I posted in response:

A judge wants to release them??? Do we know that? We know that a judge ruled that they should be released, but that doesn’t mean that the judge wants to release them.

Your AP writer demeans our judicial system when s/he ascribes judicial rulings to the personal preferences of judges.

But?

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Apr 202010

But??? Why not and?

WSJ article: “Wind Farms Catch a Gust on Great Lakes : Proponents Point to Reduced Fossil-Fuel Use and New Jobs, But Some Worry About the Environment—and the View“

And why can’t the “proponents” and the “some” be the same people?

Internet incivility

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Apr 192010

L Gordon Crovitz wrote an article in the WSJ headlined: “Is Internet Civility an Oxymoron? Unmoderated, anonymous comments on Web sites create more noise than wisdom.”

My response:

A few days ago Bill Clinton waged a neo-McCarthyite smear campaign against dissidents and protesters, trying to link their activity to the Oklahoma City bombing. I don’t think you can blame the Internet or anonymity for that kind of uncivil rhetoric.

Civil discourse from Bill Clinton

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Apr 172010

Bill Clinton says words matter. From an AP article:

“By all means keep fighting, by all means, keep arguing,” he said. “But remember, words have consequences as much as actions do, and what we advocate, commensurate with our position and responsibility, we have to take responsibility for. We owe that to Oklahoma City.”

This, of course, is the president who exuded the aura of a B-movie gangster every time he spoke, and never more so than when he said this in 1995:

“The most important thing we can do to make your father [a member of the national police force] safer is to have everybody in this room, whatever their political party or their views, stand up and say it is wrong to condemn people who are out there doing their job and wrong to threaten them. When you hear somebody doing it, you ought to stand up and double up your fist and stick it in the sky and shout them down.”

Of course, if Clinton had read the Bill of Rights, he would have learned that it is NOT wrong to criticize federal employees who are doing their jobs. And if he was a man who was careful with his words, he would not have said that the response to people who threaten actual harm (as opposed to criticism) of national police officers is not to have a mob outshout them.

And if he was really, really careful of what he was saying, he would not try to do something so sleazy as to link dissent with the Oklahoma City bombing.

The AP article mentioned none of this, btw. I’m guessing it put out the article without bothering to get the response of other politicians to Clinton’s words.

Hail the news

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Apr 022010

My comment to the Battle Creek Enquirer article, “Obama hails job news“

So one day President Obama is telling critics that it has only been a week, that we need to give his health care takeover time to work. Then one jobs report comes out with some good news. It’s far too early to tell if a trend has been established, but the President jumps up and says it shows the economy is turning around.

So how are we supposed to know when patience is a good thing and when it’s better to jump to conclusions?

Reconcile policy and words

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Mar 252010

From a NYT headline: “…Forced to Reconcile Policy and Words”

No, the NYT is not re-examining or reversing its ideology. Those words do not refer to President Obama.

If so, 1+1=2. If not, 1+1=3.

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Mar 062010

Peter Grier, math wizard and Christian Science Monitor reporter, says the following in an article headlined, “John Patrick Bedell: Did right-wing extremism lead to shooting?“

John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings.

If so, that would make the Pentagon shooting the second violent extremist attack on a federal building within the past month. On Feb. 18, Joseph Stack flew a small aircraft into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. Mr. Stack left behind a disjointed screed in which, among other things, he expressed his hatred of the government. (For more on this incident, click here.)

If so??

So what about if Bedell was not a right-wing extremist? What if he was a left-wing extremist? Would that change the count? Would that mean this would have been the 3rd violent extremist attack attack on a federal building this month? Or the first? What are the rules of addition and subtraction that we’re supposed to use here?

And what about that phrase, “among other things”? If you accept Grier’s invitation and click on the link, you find out that one of the “other things” Stack hated was corporations. If you go looking for his exact words, you find that he used language even more virulent than President Obama’s. Does this mean that President Obama is almost a rightwing extremist, too? Does Janet Napalitano know about this?

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