Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, however I am cross-posting from my newspaper blog at The Marshall Independent and the print-only TV Guide.

Michael Moore recently tried to deny the blindingly obvious on Piers Morgan’s TV talk show.

Moore said he is not one of the “1 percent” of “fat cats” the Occupy (blank) crowd are protesting in various venues across the country.

“I’m not,” Moore denied. “I am devoting my life to those who have less and who have been (bleeped) upon by the system.”

To begin with, that wasn’t the question. A rich person can spend his or her life helping the less fortunate, and many have. But I believe the question was about whether Moore was in the top 1 percent of individual net worth, and Moore’s $2 million home on Michigan’s toney Torch Lake and estimated net worth of around $50 million put him, if not in the top percentile then certainly within spitting distance of it.

I find Moore’s attitude irritating.

Moore is coming off like the kind of people we used to call “parlor pinks” or “limousine liberals,” i.e. well-off people who wear their concern for the poor on their sleeves. Who’d do anything for the working class – except join it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against wealthy philanthropists, and in fact have a great deal of admiration for many of them and their not inconsiderable contributions to society.

What irritates me is “poor mouthing.” That “I’m really one of you” posturing.

With $50 million in the bank, Moore is manifestly not one of me. Furthermore, all indications show that he came by his fortune honestly, by creating a product people were willing to pay for. Not one to my taste, but enough folks liked what he sells to make him rich, so more power to him. So obviously, “The System” has worked pretty well for him.

(OK, so he got the seed money to make “Roger and Me” by suing his former employer Mother Jones, which is not technically illegal but…)

Quite frankly, from seeing interviews with Moore, I don’t think he’s any smarter than I am. He certainly isn’t more handsome than me, and I’m obviously in lots better shape. I generally dress better for work too.

There is the question of talent of course. Whatever one thinks of the content of Moore’s documentaries, they are visually brilliant. I don’t know if that’s innate talent for camera work or something I could learn. I suspect I could, I take pretty good pictures and digital photography makes it easy and cheap.

Where the really irritating subtext of Moore’s message comes in, is the whole assumption behind his railing against The System that Poops on Us is that he could get rich through hard work and brains, but I couldn’t possibly. That calm assumption of superiority that just chaps my (bleep.)

Mr. Moore, I don’t mind that you’re rich, I’m not the least bit envious of your good fortune. Just hold the patronizing attitude if you please.

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I’m kicking myself right not for not knowing how to do a screen capture, ’cause I just missed a doozy.

I saved the link http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream4&hpt=T2
but unfortunately all I get now is a black screen and a voice commercial.

Somebody at CNN caught it I guess, because a search of the archives gets a correct story to go with the picture.

What was originally there was a short article on CNN’s website saying President Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.

Well as it happens, my apartment is about five blocks from the Grob Nieznany Zolnierz in Plac Pilsudskiego. That’s to one side of Saski Park, which bordered the Warsaw ghetto and the great Tlomatski Synagogue before the ghetto uprising. My father-in-law was at one time the commander of the honor guard at the tomb. We used to go there to watch the changing of the guard sometimes.

The picture accompanying the article showed Obama at the ghetto memorial, not the Tomb. Not just a mis-identified picture, a whole ‘nuther event entirely. I don’t know if Obama did anything at the Tomb.

Long-time readers may remember my story of how CNN did this some years back when I was still living in Poland. They had a report on TV about some action taken by the Sejm (parliament) in Warsaw. They reported as a voiceover with video clip.

The clip showed a building with mountains in the background.

There are no mountains anywhere near Warsaw.

The sign on the building said, “Urjad Miasto Zakopanego,” or “City Hall of Zakopane.”

Zakopane is a ski resort town and artists colony in the mountains near the Slovakian border, known as the “winter capitol” of Poland. It is as far away from Warsaw as it’s possible to be and still be within the country.

Nice going CNN. I wonder how much of this goes on that I don’t catch?

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Good news on the free speech front from Europe. Lars Hedegaard was acquited in Denmark of charges of saying true, but not nice things about Muslims resident in his country.

The hate-speech trial of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria is still ongoing though. Frau Sabaditsch-Wolff is facing similar charges stemming from… well it appears that in support of her xenophobic, racist, etc etc rants she (this is shocking but I have to say it) actually quoted the Koran

And in America a big-time Washington D.C. lawyer Paul Mirengoff, who happens to be a conservative blogger was made to grovel in public, take down a blog post, and shut up.

Mirengoff is a partner in the employment law group at the firm of Akin Gump, and one of the founders of Power Line blog.

The offending post was about the Tuscon tragedy. The specific offensive part concerned a prayer offered by a Yaqui Indian shaman. Luckily the post was preserved elsewhere – and now here. Take a half-minute and read the offending thing in its entirety..

In the post immediately below, I praised President Obama’s speech in Tucson this evening in honor of the victims of that horrific shooting spree. His speech was part of a larger ceremony which, on the whole, was rather a mixed bag.

The best thing about the evening, even better than Obama’s speech, was the news he delivered that Rep. Giffords today opened her eyes on her own for the first time since she was shot.

Other good spots: Daniel Hernandez, the intern who helped save Rep. Giffords life, gave a brief and impressive talk in which he insisted that he was not a hero. And Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano used their time at the podium not to deliever speeches but instead to simply reading from scripture. This may have been designed to keep things fresh for Obama’s speech, but it was appreciated nonetheless.

On the negative side of the ledger, I didn’t appreciate the president of the University of Arizona (and master of ceremonies) telling us how lucky we are to have Barack Obama as our president and Janet Napolitano as our homeland security chief. Nor did the frequent raucous cheering by the huge crowd seem appropriate at what was, at least in part, a memorial service.

As for the “ugly,” I’m afraid I must cite the opening “prayer” by Native American Carlos Gonzales. It was apparently was some sort of Yaqui Indian tribal thing, with lots of references to “the creator” but no mention of God. Several of the victims were, as I understand it, quite religious in that quaint Christian kind of way (none, to my knowledge, was a Yaqui). They (and their families) likely would have appreciated a prayer more closely aligned with their religious beliefs.

But it wasn’t just Gonzales’s prayer that was “ugly” under the circumstances. Before he ever got to the prayer, Gonzales provided us with a mini-auto biography and made several references to Mexico, the country from which (he informed us) his family came to Arizona in the mid 19th century. I’m not sure why Gonzales felt that Mexico needed to intrude into this service, but I have an idea.

In any event, the invocation could have used more God, less Mexico, and less Carlos Gonzales.

That’s it. The unforgivable offense was to suggest that prayers for Christian victims might appropriately be… Christian.

I myself cheerfully accept anybody’s prayers for my safety, salvation, or good luck with the lottery. The good wishes of a good person may or may not help, but they certainly can’t hurt.

Of course, that’s not the whole story as you find out when you follow the money.

But that was not good enough for one of Mirengoff’s law partners, James Meggesto, who issued a sanctimonious statement saying he was “shocked, appalled and embarrassed” by Mirengoff’s “insensitive” “web posting” (emphasis mine):

“As an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation; as an attorney who has dedicated his life and law practice to the representation of Indian tribes, tribal organizations and tribal interests; and as a partner in the American Indian law and policy practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, I was shocked, appalled and embarrassed by a recent Web posting by another Akin Gump partner, Paul Mirengoff, who posted on his personal blog an insensitive and wholly inappropriate criticism of the use of a Yaqui prayer as the invocation to the recent memorial service held in Tucson, Arizona. As soon as I and the firm became aware of this posting, the firm took immediate action to deal firmly with this unfortunate situation. Accordingly, Bruce McLean, chairman of the firm, issued the following statement: “We sincerely apologize for the blog entry posted by Akin Gump partner Paul Mirengoff on his personal blog, powerlineblog.com. Akin Gump is neither affiliated with, nor a supporter of, the blog. We found his remarks to be insensitive and wholly inconsistent with Akin Gump’s values. Mr. Mirengoff regrets his poor choice of words and agreed to remove his post.” ”
Meggesto doesn’t say who dropped the dime on Mirengoff. How this even came to the firm’s attention is surprising. After all, the paragraph in question was pretty mild, part of a larger post and not really much different than a lot of others were saying. Perhaps some innocent concerned citizen just happened to read Power Line that night and call Akin Gump, but it’s equally likely the watchers were behind it, directly or indirectly.

The criticism by Meggesto and Akin Gump was disingenuous at best. There was nothing in Mirengoff’s post which was a “criticism of the use of the Yacqui prayer”; Mirengoff was making a point about the absence of a Christian prayer at a memorial service for religious Christian victims.

And just what are Akin Gump’s “values”? The primary value at stake here seems to be money to be generated from representing Indian tribes and financial interests. Nothing wrong with that, but Akin Gump should have just said what it really meant: “We are afraid that left-wing bloggers and others who hate Power Line will make a big deal about this and try to use it against the firm to disrupt our relationship with clients who pay us millions of dollars in legal fees each year.”

If Akin Gump had justified its actions based on its own financial interests, rather than hiding behind words like “insensitive,” I would have respected its decision (although still disagreed with it). A law firm has a legitimate interest in maintaining client relationships. Instead, Meggesto and Akin Gump chose to portray Mirengoff at best as insensitive and at worst as a bigot, which conclusions were not supported by the blog post in question.

Mirengoff obviously feared for his position at the firm, because he issued a confession/apology worthy of a political prisoner in (insert name of tyranny here):

OK, I have to say I support Mirengoff 100 percent – but I can’t help but think he’s kind of a wuss.

Dammit shyster, couldn’t you have taken the hit and sued the bastards? That’s what lawyers do!

Maybe I should be more charitable, and maybe I’m not in the mood because I’ve just come back from Belarus where a friend and comrade was forced to make public statements by threats on the lives of his partners.

Mr. Mirengoff I’m sure you have a family to support, but that redskin lawyer (yes I’m being deliberately offensive, sue me) isn’t going to scalp your wife and children. “Attorney” is a portable skill you can take damn near anywhere. And if you have sons, wouldn’t you rather they saw their father as a man who stands up for himself, than a provider of new BMWs for graduation?

I’m living a lot closer to the margin of poverty than you are – and I’ll say whatever I damn well please on my blog PRECISELY BECAUSE THERE ARE PEOPLE TELLING ME I CAN’T.

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The following is a column by Amy Goodman, published March 12, 2010, about the death of a 23-year-old American student named Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer On March 16, 2003. Corrie’s parents are suing the government of Israel.

Rachel Corrie’s (posthumous) day in court

An unusual trial begins in Israel this week that people around the world will be watching closely. It involves the tragic death of a 23-year-old American student named Rachel Corrie. On March 16, 2003, she was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer.

Corrie was volunteering with the group International Solidarity Movement, which formed after Israel and the United States rejected a proposal by then-United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson to place international human-rights monitors in the occupied territories. The ISM defines itself as “a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.” Israel was building a large steel wall to separate Rafah from Egypt, and was bulldozing homes and gardens to create a “buffer zone.” Corrie and seven other ISM activists responded to a call on that March day to protect the home of the Nasrallah family, which was being threatened with demolition by two of the armored Israeli military bulldozers made by the U.S. company Caterpillar.

Note word choice.

Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, related what happened: “The bulldozer proceeded toward Rachel. … She was in her orange jacket. When it kept coming, she rose on the mound, and the eyewitnesses testified that her head rose above the top of the blade of the bulldozer, so she could clearly be seen, but the bulldozer continued and proceeded over her, and so that it was covering her body. It stopped and then reversed, according to the eyewitness testimonies, without lifting its blade, so backed over her once again.

Now notice this, the source cited is Rachel Corrie’s mother – who was in the U.S. not Israel. Cindy Corrie is quoted telling the story in the first person. The ultimate source are “the eyewitnesses” – who are not named.

And check the description of the International Solidarity Movement at David Horowitz’s site Discover the Network.

Led by Palestinians working closely with American recruiters, ISM invites American volunteers to travel to the Palestinian territories and disrupt the actions of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), which is engaged in anti-terror operations in the region. ISM maintains a continual, low-level presence in the territories year-round, punctuated by occasional large, episodic campaigns. At various times, ISM members have temporarily taken over Israeli military checkpoints, interfered with the arrests of Palestinians charged with terrorism, and attempted to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes containing subterranean tunnels for weapons smuggling.

And about that mention of Caterpillar tractors:

The Chicago chapter of ISM has endorsed the “Declaration Regarding Caterpillar Violations of Human Rights,” a document that impugns the U.S.-based Caterpillar Corporation for selling its machinery to the Israeli army, which in turn uses that equipment to demolish Palestinian terrorists’ homes and bases of operation. This Declaration characterizes the Israeli actions as malicious and unprovoked acts of indiscriminate destruction that constitute “grave abuses of human rights and humanitarian law.”

Their account is a little different:

Among ISM’s most well known members was the late Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old volunteer who, in March 2003, was crushed beneath a bulldozer in Rafah when its operator failed to see her trying to block the destruction of a tunnel through which Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were receiving smuggled weapons.

I have a lot of respect for Amy Goodman. Unlike a lot of “activists” she walks the talk. She got the living daylights beaten out of her by Indonesian troops after witnessing a massacre in Timor back in 1991 and has put her own personal ass on the line in a lot of other places as well.

This is an Appeal to Pity. Of course, it’s a column not a news item, so she’s got the latitude to put her opinions in. But…

The Wikipedia article quotes Michael Delli Carpini, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, said, “She’s not an editorialist. She sticks to the facts… She provides points of view that make you think, and she comes at it by saying: ‘Who are we not hearing from in the traditional media?’”

I think it’s great to find “who are we not hearing from in the traditional media?” and I wish more journalists would do that.

But look again – she did not cite the “eyewitness” source, she did not cite other eyewitnesses who apparently have a different story. And rather than quoting those eyewitnesses, she quoted Corrie’s mother.

That’s a twofer, an appeal to pity and a thirdhand account of the incident phrased in such a way she doesn’t have to identify the source.

She most certainly is an editorialist, and is shilling for the ISM.

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By now everyone has heard that James O’Keefe, one of the dynamic duo who revealed ACORN as the criminal enterprise it is, was arrested in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans for allegedly trying to bug her phones, a pretty major bust.

He said he was trying to check out Landrieu’s claim that her phones were not receiving all the calls from constituents mad about her having whored for the “Louisiana purchase” that bought her support for Obama’s plans to socialize medicine.

There, that’s one way you slant a news report. Pretty blatantly.

Now look at a more subtle way MSNBC does it.

O’Keefe was the brains behind a series of undercover videos that have caused major problems for ACORN – the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now.

He managed to do what Republicans have been trying to for years – hurt the political affiliates of ACORN, which have registered hundreds of thousands of voters in urban and other poor areas of the country.

By producing undercover videos shot in ACORN offices, O’Keefe brought a firestorm of criticism that the group was helping its low-income clients break the law.

Using a hidden camera, O’Keefe, posing as a pimp and accompanied by a young woman posing as a prostitute, shot videos in ACORN offices where staffers appeared to offer illegal tax advice and to support the misuse of public funds and illegal trafficking in children.

Edited videos of those visits to ACORN offices were first posted on biggovernment.com, a site run by conservative Andrew Breitbart. In the past, Breitbart has said O’Keefe – now a paid contributor to biggovernment.com – is an independent filmmaker, not an employee

First bold: anybody doubt who they think are the good guys?

Second bold: ditto. They’re not just “clients,” they’re “low-income clients.” Not “poor and oppressed,” that would be a bit over the top don’t you think?

Third bold: “appeared to” Heavy sigh. This might be the journalistic equivalent of the “allegedly” we use to avoid being sued for saying somebody did something he/she is accused of doing. On the other hand, there was nothing “appeared to” about it. They did offer advice on how to break laws, and no amount of editing could explain away what was on those videos.

Fourth bold: “Edited videos…” See above. A rather neat way of saying the videos are doctored, without actually having to committ to the claim.

What’s the difference between the example I offered and the MSNBC version?

I made it plain which side I’m on. MSNBC is trying to maintain the appearance of impartiality (badly in my opinion) while telling you what you should think.

Another example from CBS NEWS Political Hotsheet.

James O’Keefe was riding high last year when he released a series of videos showing employees of community-organizing group ACORN offering advice to O’Keefe and a friend that seemed to endorse trafficking in children, among other illegal activities.

The undercover videos made O’Keefe a star in conservative circles and presumably helped him muster the courage for another high profile stunt – though this time, it seems, things went badly for the 25-year-old.

O’Keefe and three others – including the son of an acting U.S. Attorney, are accused of trying to manipulate the phones in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans. According to an release from the United States Attorney’s Office, witnesses say O’Keefe was in Landrieu’s office when two co-conspirators came in “dressed in blue denim pants, a blue work shirt, a light green fluorescent vest, a tool belt and a construction-style hard hat” and pretended to be there to repair the phones. (Here’s the affidavit.)

Better in some ways. They link to the affidavit for example. In the Internet age, when someone makes an allegation and doesn’t supply links to supporting documents – or the links lead to other news reports (i.e. secondary sources) one has to wonder if they are lazy, or want to edit the facts to suit themselves.

Noentheless, notice the “seemed to” and the right up front sneers.

And also, notice the other trick – and I’ve seen this done on the Right and the Left, it’s just too irresistable. James O’Keefe is not Adonis, but he’s not ugly either. Look at the picture. You take enough closeup snaps of anybody’s face and you’re going to find some extremely unflattering ones. Particularly among people who have habits of pursing their lips, squinting, etc.

True, some are better subjects than others. Photographers and videographers always seem to catch Hillary Clinton and Cherie Blair with that wide-open-eyed speed freak stare.

IMHO, not as bad as the MSNBC article. But again, does anyone doubt where the reporter leans?

But, I did learn something that kind of tickled me.

O’Keefe, a former Rutgers University student, has a history of stunts that predates his ACORN hidden-camera work: According to the Star-Ledger, he “mounted a satirical campaign to ban Lucky Charms cereal from campus dining halls on the premise the breakfast fare was offensive to Irish-Americans” as a student.

Which reminds me, I must tell you sometime about my campaign against the offensive stereotypical “Fighting Irish” mascot of Notre Dame…

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Note: This is my weekend op-ed for VCTR.

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
T.S. Eliot

As we ring in the New Year, the news is full of accounts of the High and the Mighty and their great plans to do us good in an awful hurry. The question of whether we want good done to us is regarded as of no consequence.

The more of life I see, the more I appreciate the truth of Eliot’s observation.

In national politics, importance means accomplishing Great Reforms, or eliminating Great Evils. Nobody promises just to be a capable executive, frugally administer public funds, and cautiously tweak the system to see if some improvements can be made. Indeed it’s doubtful if anyone could get elected running on such a platform.

In journalism, importance means breaking The Story of the Century. (How many have we read in the first decade of this century so far?) Nowadays big time journalism regards itself as the fourth branch of government and a mighty Force for Good, rather than the watchdog of a free people.

Case in point. Last week I watched journalism goddess Lesley Stahl on former Republican Governor Mike Huckbee’s show on FOX. They were commemorating the life of legendary journalist/producer Don Hewitt, who founded the “television news magazine” 60 Minutes in 1968.

Stahl described how she started at 60 Minutes in 1991. A few years ago she had to take a $500,000 pay cut so CBS could afford Katie Couric ($15 million per year,) but still makes a reported $1.8 million per year.

Stahl’s first journalistic coup was an expose of the baby selling market in Romania. She posed as an American woman trying to buy two handsome boys, ages six and eight years, from their mother for $2,000. Huckabee ran clips of the piece, showing Stahl and a middleman haggling with the mother, right in front of the kids.

Baby selling! The very words invoke horror. As opposed to a civilized American adoption where the agency gets exorbitant fees and the mother nothing.

“We shut them down,” Stahl crowed, as Huckabee nodded appreciatively.

I had a different reaction. You see, I’ve been to Romania too.

Five years after that broadcast I relocated from Poland to Bulgaria by train. The trip included a four-hour stopover in Bucharest. By the time I got on the train to Sofia, I didn’t know whether to get out of the country and never come back, or stay and join a religious order.

Because communist dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu mandated high birth rates while impoverishing the country, the capitol was full of abandoned children. For blocks around the train station, no manhole had a cover, because the children where living in the tunnels under the streets.

I saw legions of filthy children begging. Some showing off hideous orthopedic deformities, some sniffing glue in corners. many reportedly HIV positive.

Though I lean lukewarm against the death penalty, I’m glad they killed that monster and his wife. (Yes I know, the trial was a farce and the verdict a forgone conclusion. Guess what? I don’t care.)

When I went back a few years later, the children were gone. I like to think they’re being cared for. But I didn’t ask.

Any mother in those circumstances who loved her children would joyfully send them to America with a loving family, even at the cost of never seeing them again. I’ve known two lovely, healthy, and intelligent young women raised by American families who found them abandoned on their doorsteps, in India and Korea respectively. They bless the mothers they never knew.

But you shut them down Lesley, you and 60 Minutes.

Congratulations.

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Like sharks in a feeding frenzy, they’re at Sarah Palin again. But that red you see in the water is Maureen Dowd’s hair.

Palin resigned the governorship of Alaska, and everyone is aghast, right and left.

Maureen has yet another column devoted to the woman she loves to hate, the second in as many weeks.

After this one, dated July 4: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/opinion/05dowd.html?_r=1

“Sarah Palin showed on Friday that in one respect at least, she is qualified to be president.

“Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.”

She gives us this one, dated July 7: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/opinion/08dowd.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

“Sarah Palin’s secret diary.”

Less hysterical, but in their own way equally as vicious, were Sally Quinn’s two consequtive columns questioning Palin’s qualifications as a mother.

The logic on the left side of the fence seems to be: we savage your children, joke about your 14-year-old daughter being raped (Oh, Letterman meant the 18-year-old? Well that’s quite all right then), publish unspeakable comments about your Down’s Syndrome baby – and then call you a bad mother for exposing your kids to all this.

Yeah, sounds about right to me.

Palin’s family has a half-million dollars in legal fees to pay down from ethics complaints pretty obviously frivoulous – except that there’s nothing frivolous about corrupting the justice system to destroy political opponents.

The state of Alaska is on the hook for a few million investigating same.

Palin’s resignation puts into office the Lt. Governor who is philosophically compatible, and will have the advantage of incumbancy when the next election rolls around.

Is there a problem with this? I think it’s fraking brilliant from the viewpoint of Alaska politics! The attack dog machine doesn’t know this guy and will have to switch directions in mid-leap.

Ohhh I bet they’re pissed.

The motive for attacks on Sarah from elite women, some of them on the right, are obvious enough and have been commented on by more than one pundit.

Sarah has it all: a business of her own, kids, a life outside politics, and a loving and supportive husband who’s such a mensch Bill Clinton has a man crush on him.

In short, Sarah would be the posterchild for feminist utopia if it weren’t for the facts that she’s a believer, she didn’t abort her Down’s baby, and she doesn’t have the required opinions.

And most unforgivably, that mensch she married quite obviously had nothing to do with her success in politics.

Sarah is despised by powerful leftie women like MoDo and Sally who, though intelligent and talented enough, didn’t exactly not sleep their way to the top. Her success is a reproach to them which they will never forgive.

I urge you to go over Maureen and Sally’s articles, and see if you can find anything substantive. Sally’s approach is sweet-reason-and-I’m-really-doing-it-out-of-concern-for-your-kids.

Maureen is just her usual whinny unpleasant self, “I can’t get married and all my boyfriends dump me because I’m successful and intelligent.”

No Maureen, you boyfriends dumped you because you’re an unpleasant, self-obsessed person. They wanted to prong you because you’re a looker, but now that you’re on the cusp of losing that advantage, all that’s left is the unpleasant, albeit snarkily witty self-obsession.

And BTW, Catherine Zeta-Jones is a better looker, intelligent, funny, and by all evidence a great mother – an accomplishment invariably beyond that of the self-obsessed. You think Michael Douglas dumped you because he was turned off by highly accomplished women? I’m not buying it.

And by the way, though you’ve got a way of turning a phrase, you actually don’t seem all that bright, nor can you fashion a coherent argument. (Vis-a-vis your description of Sarah’s speech as “rambling and incoherent.”)

“She refuses to succumb to the “politics of personal destruction.” It’s no fun unless she’s the one aiming those poison darts, as she did when she accused Barack Obama of associating ‘with terrorists who targeted their own country.’”

Hint Mo: the reason she “she accused Barack Obama of associating ‘with terrorists who targeted their own country.’” is that he did. That is not the “politics of personal destruction” it’s an established fact.

Of course, on the Left bringing up established facts is considered a foul.

If I ever ran for public office (not possible, but let’s speculate) I’d have to face questions about the fact that I too have associated with and had friends among, real criminals, sexual deviants, and people at least marginally associated with the Ayers-Dohrn wing of the Weathermen.

What can I say? I’ve had interesting friends, not all of them the kind you’d bring home to meet mother. The legitimate question is, “Have you ever worked at common purposes with them?”

And that was a close call…

What I haven’t seen comment on is what a close call the Palin famiy has had.

They almost had that swine Levi Johnson for a son-in-law.

Folks, being a single mother sucks, and I have that from a lot of single mothers I know who are doing a truly heroic job.

But it’s better to have a bastard in the family, than a bastard like that in the family.

Did anyone else notice that Levi posing in his shirtless hunkiness for magazines, his possible book deal, and whatever else he may reap from his closeness to the Palin family is only made possible from a devil’s bargain to savage that family for the amusement of his new masters on the celebrity Left?

Enjoy your 15 minutes Levi. You’re still a wuss who knocked up a nice girl and bailed on her and the kid.

Well! I don’t know about y’all, but I feel better. I didn’t call this blog Rants and Raves for nothing.

Note: Any Latin scholars out there? Did I get the inversion of the classic quote right?

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This is the Doonesbury strip from July 1.

Mother Boopsie says, “See how many female protestors there are? That’d be impossible in most Arab societies. Images like that are incredibly empowering to gals all over the Middle East.”

Daughter remarks, “Arab girls need empowering.”

First of all, let me say that I agree whole heartedly.

It almost makes me regret what I’m about to do to Gary Trudeau.

I’ve been following Doonesbury on and off since near the beginning. More off than on these days I’m afraid. Since Gary Trudeau became more a social commentator than a cartoonist he’s been preachy, snide, and to put it baldly – either a liar or woefully ignorant of history.

He recently identified waterboarding as the same torture practices used by the Spanish Inquisition and the Japanese in WWII – a lie. Whether you excuse the practice of waterboarding by American interrogators or not, the fact is the torture techniques used by the Inquisition and the Japanese are similar only insofar as they use water.

But the worst sin of all is – he’s not funny anymore. At least not as much or as often as he used to be.

As an Okie, I still treasure his hilarious take on the Oklahoma county commissioners scandal, lo these many years ago.

“Say, you’re Emma Doonesbury’s boy ain’t you? Well, we just want you to know your Uncle Henry is a good ‘ol boy who always took care of his people.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” Uncle Henry replies.

“Say Henry, do you think you could do my driveway afore you goes to jail?”

So it’s with a certain “gotcha” feeling that I have to point out to Mr. Trudeau, IRANIANS ARE NOT ARABS YOU TWIT.

And furthermore, I am gobsmacked that anyone who has been so loud about his opinions on the war on terror (silly term though it is) and the Iraq strategy thereof, wouldn’t know that.

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Here’s another example of the kind of thing I study in media bias. Not the open, conscious type of gatekeeping (a la the New York Times, which decides what you ought to know) but the unconscious, off-the-cuff turn of phrase that reveals the mindset of the speaker.

Last Sunday (Sunday before Easter) I caught Geraldo at Large on FOX. The subject was, men who go off their heads and kill or rob after losing jobs etc.

Now note one thing. FOX is widely known, and widely despised in some circles, as a “conservative” network. And in fact, you can see the opinions of some of the newsreaders on FOX displayed quite openly.

To my mind, that’s the good thing about FOX. The positions of their talking heads is out in the open. On the other networks, they’re “objective” you know.

Of course, they’re nothing of the kind, and it shows to anyone paying attention.

And in point of fact, FOX employs more self-identified liberals than the other networks combined have open conservatives.*

One of them is of course, Geraldo Rivera.

At any rate, on the program, Geraldo asked two guests, “After all things were worse during the Reagan administration, unemployment was higher, my God… And in the 70s with those gas lines…” (Quoted from memory, I don’t have recording devices ready at all times for this kind of thing. I have to get it on the fly.)

Notice what is missing, “in the 70s” NOT “during the Carter administration.” He specifically mentioned the Reagan administration, then identified the Carter years only by decade.

That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for – and I’d appreciate help. Examples from any point of view.

Happy Easter to all.

* There remains the question of whether FOX deliberately, or unconsciously chooses liberals to represent that point of view, who are kind of creepy, or macho-flash a$$es – or whether they just have to scrape the bottom of the barrel because liberals who are articulate and attractive are all welcome at the other broadcast outlets.

It is also worth noting that an analysis of campaign contributions by FOX employees a few years back, tilted slightly to the Democrats.

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Following a lead from Mark Steyn here: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjkwNjVlNmE5MWUyOTVhMWIyODkzNWNlZGM1YjU2Zjc=

“The Oldest Hatred,” I found in the online site of the Indian daily newspaper The Hindu here: http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-year-new-administration.html

the scanned 69 pages of the dossier of evidence from the ongoing investigation by the Indian authorities of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

There’s a lot here, the names, ages and nationalities of the victims, the names of the terrorists from the interrogation of the lone survivor, pictures of the equipment (cell phones, GPS, guns, etc), excerpts from translated transcripts of the terrorists communications, and a fair amount of technical data.

The documents all together constitute a blueprint for such attacks, including mistakes to be avoided in the future. (The group failed to sink the hijacked ship after arriving at the point from which they launced their rubber assault craft and murdering the captain.)

There are some interesting things I wouldn’t have thought of: the group split up after landing ashore, and took taxis to the area of their targets. They left bombs in two of the taxis that exploded later, killing the drivers.

There are puzzlers too. The lone survivor seems to be a font of information. What gives?

They did some fairly extensive training beforehand, that evidently didn’t include interrogation resistance.

Did they count on all the group getting killed? Or didn’t they care what the world knew after the fact?

The investigation also reveals what is becomming a serious problem in this kind of warfare. The handlers monitored on-the-spot news coverage and tipped the terrorists off to special forces rappeling onto the building roofs from helicopters.

And, the transcripts give a picture of their motivation:

From The Hindu: http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2009010760571200.htm&date=2009/01/07/&prd=th&

The transcripts in the dossier make it apparent that the six handlers were closely monitoring events in Mumbai through the live TV coverage which went on non-stop for 60 hours. “There are three ministers and one secretary of the cabinet in your hotel. We don’t know in which room,” a Pakistan-based caller tells a terrorist at the Taj at 0310 hrs on November 27. “Oh! That is good news” It is the icing on the cake!,” he replies. “Find those 3-4 persons and then get whatever you want from India,” he is instructed. “Pray that we find them,” he answers.

At the Oberoi at 0353 hrs on November 27, a handler phones and says:

“Brother Abdul. The media is comparing your action to 9/11. One senior police official has been killed.”

Abdul Rehman: “We are on the 10th/11th floor. We have five hostages.”

Caller 2 (Kafa): Everything is being recorded by the media. Inflict the maximum damage. Keep fighting. Don’t be taken alive.

Caller: Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.

Fahadullah: We have three foreigners, including women. From Singapore and China.

Caller: Kill them. The dossier then notes that the telephone intercept records the “voices of Fahadullah and Abdul Rehman directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Cheering voices in background. Kafa hands telephone to Zarar,” who says, “Fahad, find the way to go downstairs.”

In another call, to the Taj this time, a handler says, “The ATS chief has been killed. Your work is very important. Allah is helping you. The Vazir (minister) should not escape. Try and set the place on fire.”

At Nariman House at 1945 hrs on November 27, the handler ‘Wassi’ tells a terrorist: “Keep in mind that hostages are of use only as long as you do not come under fire because of their safety. If you are still threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them.” He then adds, “The Army claims to have done the work without any hostage being harmed. Another thing: Israel has made a request through diplomatic channels to save the hostages. If the hostages are killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel.”

“So be it, God willing,” the terrorist replies.

I’m going to download these documents to my computer for more detailed study.

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