Today’s Visionary: An Illustrated Guide to Dr. King’s 21st Century Insights from Crooks & Liars.
You know that financed-by-Newt-Gingrich-buddies Ultimate Mitt Romney Hit Video I wrote about the other day? Seems it has a few problems, much in keeping with the character of the candidate it is designed to help.
Like, accuracy. The people in Gaffney, SC say say the plant closing featured in the video wasn’t a big deal. Similarly, Marianna, Fla workers cry foul over anti-Romney film.
I kid you not.
Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?.
Apparently, the Times does not believe, as a matter of its DNA, that if a person in a suit says something, it has any duty to check it out and report on whether that statement is factual.
Writes the Public Editor:
I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.
….on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.
As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?
If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:
“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”
Actually, a better form of that paragraph would be
“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. When asked, the Romney Campaign was unable to substantiate Romney’s claim with any examples.”
Brisbane’s column is a head-scratcher. I have never seen such a succinct example of the Stenography Theory of journalism. I do not know how on earth any news organization intends to get money from me on an on-going basis if all it does is an aggregation that my RSS reader can do plus some ordering of importance — which some content-recognition AI will do for me within a decade.
Fact-checking or ruin, people.
When Mitt Romney Came To Town — Full, complete version
The amazing thing about this 28-minute-long Occupy Wall Street-style hit piece is who made it: Newt Gingrich’s Super PAC.
Barney Frank was widely quoted when he said, “I never thought I’d live such a good life that I would see Newt Gingrich be the nominee of the Republican party.” Turns out even if you lived only a sort of good life, Newt is just great as a spoiler.
The Heritage Foundation Then and Now — Counterpunch.
Choice bits:
On December 26, 2012 the Director of Heritage’s Center for Foreign Policy Studies, Dr. James J. Carafano, published a commentary in the Washington Examiner, “What To Do about Obama’s Pound-Foolish Air Force.” Without saying so explicitly, he implied that the legendary Col. John R. Boyd, “a fighter pilot’s fighter pilot” in Dr. Carafano’s words, would favor what the good doctor wants: to reopen production of the $411 million F-22 and to buy more $154 million F-35s.
…
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ decision to terminate F-22 production should be appreciated as his single most positive contribution to American air power—and certainly one of the very few issues he would have seen eye to eye with John Boyd.
…
It gets worse regarding the F-35. When Boyd died 15 years ago, the inevitable failure of the F-35 as a viable combat aircraft was already clear, though not as crushingly obvious as it is to today. In 2012, with the airplane just 20 per cent through its entirely inadequate flight test plan (over 80 per cent of the airplane’s performance characteristics will remain untested in any planned flight test), we already know we are facing across-the-board failures to meet original specifications. Moreover, if the F-35 lived up to 100 percent of its depressingly modest design specifications, it would still be a complete failure in combat utility: a bomber of shorter range, lower payload and far higher vulnerability than the Vietnam War’s appallingly flammable, underperforming F-105 Lead Sled; an air-to-air fighter so unmaneuverable and sluggish in acceleration that any ancient MiG-21 will tear it to shreds; and a close support fighter that is a menace to our troops on any battlefield, unable to hit camouflaged tactical targets and incapable of distinguishing friendly soldiers from enemies. Individually and collectively, we often fretted with Boyd on the irresponsibility of equipping our people with such foolishly complex weapons designs, so bereft of practical combat effectiveness—and on the deep corruption of acquisition programs, such as the F-35’s, that deliberately plan to buy a thousand or more units long before user testing has fully probed combat utility.
Dr. Carafano is free to pump out baloney that pleases his funders, but to invoke Boyd’s legacy to promote F-22 and F-35 spending goes beyond simple, and perhaps willful, misrepresentation. Here is a paradigm of the moral decay so visible among contemporary Washington defense “intellectuals.”
Like they say, read the whole thing.
A man accused of drug trafficking showed up for court Friday in Fort Lauderdale sporting a jacket that bore a cartoon-style recipe for cooking crack cocaine.…
The man’s white jacket looked like a how-to guide for making crack cocaine, with a series of little pictures of a white substance with a spoon, a carton of baking soda and a little pot over a fire. The end product was a "rock," slang for the drug.
via MiamiHerald.com, Man wears ‘crack jacket’ to court.
My question is whether this sort of thing is common only in Broweird, as we so fondly call it, or is this more common? I sort of fear it might be national.
This was my strangest polling experience yet. First, the call was to my office rather than to my home. I don’t think I’ve ever been called with a poll at work before.
Then there was how it went (this is a very close paraphrase, probably not verbatim):
- Hello, says the nice voice, I am calling from Harris Interactive and was wondering if you could answer some questions about China and its relation to the US.
- How long will this take? I ask nervously, looking at the pile of exams.
- It could take as long as 15-20 minutes depending on your answers, says the voice.
- Oh, OK, I say, thinking the exams will have to wait. China is important. Too much giving in to scary mercantilism out there.
- To begin, what is your job title?
- Professor
- Let me look that one up … wait a minute… well, that’s all the questions we have for you today, thank you very much.
How about that?
Jotwell
