cut on the bias

The Dem party faithful

The Democrats - never ones to fight dirty or stack the deck.

Here is the first part of an email sent to the Dem faithful today from Terry McAuliffe, via Powerline blog:

Tonight, don't let George Bush's henchmen steal another victory. We need your online help immediately after the debate, so save this email, print it out, and have it ready with you as you watch the first Presidential debate tonight.

We all know what happened in 2000. Al Gore won the first debate on the issues, but Republicans stole the post-debate spin. We are not going to let that happen again, and you will play a big role.

Immediately after the debate, we need you to do three things: vote in online polls, write a letter to the editor, and call in to talk radio programs. Your 10 minutes of activism following the debate can make the difference.

And here are two of the polls - screen shots taken between 11:50 p.m. and 12:10 a.m. following the debate:

Keep that in mind when the spin machine reaches full speed tomorrow.

How do you spell "twit"?

C-A-M-E-R-O-N

Twit.

Liars and the lying liars who tell them

My latest post is up on DetNews - "Bringing back the draft - Part I - a Democrat lie".

Not that I'm, you know, testy about it.

UPDATE: The second post is up, which includes the link to the Selective Service. And, I'm sorry to say, the third (and last, for the DetNews blog) post is up, because, well, I couldn't help myself. Go here to see them all.

Don't we have fun!

On a hot tip from Scott Ott, I found out about the Detroit News political weblog, which is allowing bloggers from anywhere in the country to apply to post on their blog. I applied last week (remember? I posted what I sent, thinking it had been rejected), and found out yesterday I'd been accepted. And tonight I'm up and running!

I've only put up two posts so far. But how cool is it that I get to blog in a state where it might actually do some good? Win some votes? Or at the very least really really really annoy the liberals on the DetNews blog.

Heh.

Put down that coffee cup!!

Make sure you aren't drinking or eating before you go read this latest screed from that keenly intelligent and widely respected political commentator Barbra Streisand:

If you cross this administration you get your head handed to you... [I]f you choose to air a story about George Bush's military service, or lack thereof, like CBS did last week, you and your award winning news anchor, get investigated by the FCC.

...Never mind that CBS's story included substantive and uncontested evidence that Bush didn't show up for duty when he was supposed to, that he skipped a required physical that grounded him from flying, and that he mysteriously received an honorable discharge. Yes...the documents CBS presented could not be confirmed for their authenticity, but these details of Bush's military record have been out for public consumption for years... The media's attention is diverted from the real story because we now live in a time where the fear of revenge by this administration sends a chill through the corporations that control our media and overwhelms the press' responsibility to investigate, educate and hold our leaders accountable.

Hmm. No one appears to have tried to remove her head, although it clearly is doing her no good at all. It might be scientifically useful to have an MRI done on it, though, just to see how she manages to continue walking upright and speaking when her brain has atrophied.

However, it is useful to read her material as it gives you insight into the alternate universe she and her outlandishly wealthy liberal circle live in. It is possible to refute her point for point, but it seems an exercise in futility. She wouldn't be able to hear it. She's decided what she believes, and that's that. Lest you think I'm being partisan in ignoring her argument instead of engaging it, I'll just point out that she's claiming Bush is threatening the press with retaliation even though she can't come up with any solid evidence that it's happening, and her own ability to spout vicious nonsense has continued unhindered. And she also is tossing about the "fake, but accurate!" meme on the Bush Nat'l Guard duty, although plenty of evidence exists that he met his obligation. She's showing that she isn't digging to facts, but instead has a reflexive belief in her politician and political agenda. And I object to that from anyone, liberal or conservative.

She's just much funnier when she does it, because she is so completely disconnected from any type of reality that doesn't require millions to sustain. I loved these bits from previous posts:

I am flabbergasted by the American public's continued support for Bush... I am perplexed by the American public's continued support and willingness to give Bush high marks on the question of national security... President Bush is not embarrassed by his lack of intellect... The Republican Party and the Bush administration like to keep the public uninformed and in the dark as to what they are doing...

And just to cap off your morning, here are a few lines from A Special Song sung by Ms. Streisand for Her Man Kerry back in June:

THE SPECIAL LYRICS TO "PEOPLE" AS PERFORMED BY BARBRA STREISAND AT THE LOS ANGELES FUNDRAISING CONCERT FOR THE KERRY CAMPAIGN

PEOPLE
I MEAN G - O - P - EOPLE -
WHO'D BELIEVE THERE'S SUCH PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD?

...I SEEA
ANTONIN SCALIA.
HOW I DREAD EV'RY TIME HE SITS -
SCARED OUT OF MY WOLFOWITZ.
TIME THOSE NEO-CON GUYS
WERE GONE GUYS.

...WHEN THE WHITE HOUSE STATIONERY,
READS PRESIDENT JOHN KERRY -
WE'LL BE THE LUCKIEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!

Babs, baby, I think you're out of luck this go-around. But then, you work so hard to keep away from the little people that you even sue someone trying to do a job that has nothing to do with you except for a few long distance photos of your estate, so it's no wonder that you're still shocked, shocked! by what the average American thinks. You wouldn't know one if you saw one - and if you did, you'd probably send a bodyguard to remove them from your sight.

Where's my tattoo needle?

Someone needs to tattoo the URL "www.snopes.com" on the dominant hand of Richard Schlesinger, reporter for CBS News. Then they need to suggest that he learn to read. The inability to read or recognize hoaxes are the only two excuses he could have for this piece of asinine reporting.

Idiot. You'd think CBS would learn. You'd be wrong.

Carter "unconscionable"

He's at it again. The lamest president of the 20th century is setting up Florida to be a battleground again, laying accusations but not giving clear caveats about his claims. I like this one particularly:

He also said: "A fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons."

All felons should be prevented from voting, because that's the law, whether or not you agree with it. What I want to know is, what did this "fumbling attempt" entail, why is it "fumbling", and how many total black felons live in Florida vs the number of Hispanic felons? I'm not saying that there isn't a disparity in trying to disqualify one over the other, I'm just saying his statement is absolutely not evidence enough that there is disparity, much less collusion.

Carter: A man desperately seeking a brain.

Now here's my caveat: It's an article by the BBC, which is biased and skewed to a degree that makes Dan Rather and the AP look like pikers. I haven't read the WaPo article it ostensibly lifts from. And I'm late for a meeting. So I will check it later, or you can check it for me and tell me in the comments if the WaPo version makes Carter seem less like some Kerry/UN puppet.

Good news, marginal news

As usually happens, when my site stats climb I find that life suddenly bursts with activity, and my posting time plummets. Difficult to keep you all coming back in that instance, but I hope you won't give up on me. I invite you to look through my archives where there are lots of interesting posts and photographs (and if you're here for my most common search string hit, the Scandanavian airport urinal with the bug painted in it is here).

That's essentially my marginal news (not good, not bad, depends on your perspective) - you won't see much of me today and tomorrow. I'm racing to finish a grant proposal that is due tomorrow night at 9 p.m. I'm feeling the pressure. But it's a great project and I have some hopes of funding - it's the first time I've submitted a grant proposal to fund a research project of my very own, so it's very exciting.

The good news is - I passed my core area! For those of you not following the story, I'm in a criminal justice doctoral program at Rutgers University Newark. There are two exams you have to pass to move into the dissertation (last) stage of the degree. I took the second one in December 2003, just barely didn't pass it, had to expand on it during an exam-taking session in early April, and have been waiting since then to learn if I passed. I got an email last week from my major professor telling me that he had spoken to the other professors on my committee and they both agreed I should pass. He said he would do the paperwork this week! So I'm very happy about that, I feel released to move on to the dissertation prospectus. I've been working on it, but this lights up my motivational fires. I hope to defend the proposal by the end of this semester and do the research in the spring.

I'll celebrate... after this grant proposal is in!!

AP channels DNC

Powerline Blog has excerpts from an unabashedly partisan hack job done on Bush by an AP reporter under the guise of news. It's noxious. Go read, then read on to see the background of the reporter. Then imagine all her bosses saying, "Of course she's impartial! Why, she's one of our best. You're just a partisan rightwing operative". And then write to the AP and let them know coverage like that is just not acceptable.

Be firm. Be calm. Be reasonable. Don't give them justification to ignore you.

Essential reading

John Podhoretz puts Rathergate into its historical context in this fascinating and powerful article in Weekly Standard. If you read nothing else today, read this.

God and crime in Romania

Sounds like a good idea to me, but the ACLU would go into spastic fits at the mere mention of such a program in the US. Of course, for it to work people have to actually believe in God. I fear not many do in the US, at least to the extent that they think He gets touchy when you do wrong. Sometimes, scary as it may be, I think there's too much love in the world. At least squishy lefty love that encompasses all evil and frequently castigates the good.

Mexinese? Chinican?

Today my mom and I went to Collinsville, in northeastern Alabama, for the annual Quilt Walk. It's a lovely tour of 10 homes in downtown Collinsville, a small burg, with the inside of each home literally draped in quilts of all design and size and age - some as old as the mid 1800s, up through today. I have photos, which I will post in a bit. My mom went with me, and after a two hour drive and more than three hours of walking and touring, we were ready for dinner. We asked the bus driver what was good, and she recommended The China House just north of town.

The front was somewhat rundown, looking forlorn as only a flat-roofed nondescript building from the 1970s could look. The parking lot was rough, with broken asphalt and gravel strewn about. It wasn't a place we would have stopped if it hadn't been recommended. But we ventured inside where we were greeted by... a Mexican woman speaking heavily accented English.

Mexican? In a Chinese restaurant? Was it a time machine, or had it bent space and dumped us in Childersburg or some other Mexican restaurant? No, there were Chinese paper lanterns in a pass through and little paper Chinese symbols about, so we were in the right place. The Mexican woman seated us, brought us water and took our orders. While we waited, she came back to chat, then continued chatting after bringing our food. She wanted to know if we'd come from the Quilt Walk, and what we thought of it. Then she wanted to know where we were from, and she knew of Columbiana and Wilsonville. Returning the favor, we asked her about her home, how long she'd been in the US, and, finally, the question that had been burning on my tongue since I'd seen her:

How did a nice Mexican lady like her wind up hostessing in a Chinese restaurant?

The answer was simple: Her husband is Chinese.

Her husband is Chinese.

And not just of Chinese ancestry. Both of them grew up in their native countries, both came to the US as adults, and both somehow wound up in North Carolina, where they met and married. They now have two young children, half Chinese and half Hispanic. They speak English at home, she said; she can't speak Chinese, although she's trying to learn while her husband teaches the children. Their son is 6, and fluent in Spanish; the girl is 18 months and not fluent in anything but babble. The Mexican lady is not an American citizen, but plans to be as soon as she can. So what does that make her kids? Mexinese? Chinican? Just American, I think.

And what does she think of America?

A wonderful place to live, she said. She couldn't think of any place she'd rather be. Everyone in North Carolina was so nice, so respectable, she said. So friendly. And the people in Collinsville were just the same. She loves it. It is the best country, she said, and shrugged, obviously a little frustrated that she couldn't speak the English for her feelings. But it was obviously all good, so good that she wanted to keep on saying it, in as many different ways as she could.

So we said we were very happy that she and her husband are now in the US. We wished her well in getting citizenship, and truthfully told her the food her husband made for us was excellent. Suddenly the room about us didn't seem so worn, the Chinese lanterns in the 1970s era room so incongrous. We realized that we were sitting right in the middle of her American dream.

If you're ever traveling down I-59 in northeast Alabama, take exit #205 at Collinsville. Turn south and drive about a mile into the edge of downtown, then turn left at the traffic light where the big red brick church sits on a hill to your left. Just a third of a mile up the road, you'll see a bright yellow sign proclaiming China House, in front of an old 70s style building. Take the time to visit, and sit for a while in an American dream made of Chinese and Mexican hope and sweat. It may make you even more appreciative of this great country.

UPDATE: Here's Mom at the first stop of the Quilt Walk - it's actually an outbuilding, not precisely a barn but not precisely a house. As you can see, it set the tone with many quilts. These are just a few of the more than a dozen that were in that first place. She's posing here because the quilt behind her is her very favorite pattern - an English Flower Garden.

Mom with the English Flower Garden

The rest of the photos are in the extended entry, so as not to bog down the computers of those still using mice and a treadmill to power their Internet.

The first house was the second stop - the outbuilding was on its property. It was lovely from the outside, but breathtaking inside - large rooms, huge windows, and wide expanses of oak. In fact, most of the houses we visited had oak trim everywhere, many times coupled with oak pocket doors. Have I mentioned I love oak? Here is a photo from inside the first house, so you can see what I mean:

Living room of the first house

We must have seen at least a hundred quilts, likely more. There were 10 stops, and I know each house had more than 10 quilts. Many I loved, some I liked, some I could give or take, some I didn't like at all. But I admired the love and artistry in each one - yes, even the 100% double-knit polyester circa 1970 quilt. Here was one of my very favorites, reflecting my love of mini-quilts.

Mini Christmas Tree Quilt

The houses were worth the price of admission, without question. Sometimes I nearly forgot to look at the quilts for excitement over an oak mantel or a Craftsman style original chandelier in a dining room. In this dining room, a floor to ceiling mural sat between two wooden half-pillars and behind a wrought iron gate. Spectacular, but not quite my taste. At the same time... well, the jury's still out. What do you think?

Dining Room Mural

Below is one of the larger houses, with a porch wrapping around on two sides. We were greeted by two women dressed in southern belle hooped skirts, then allowed to roam both the porch and the interior of the house, quilts everywhere. (In a number of the homes, they were even draped over shower rods.) While other homes were not as large, every one of them was just as beautiful.

Southern Belle House

The last house was by no means the least. We were greeted at the door by the owners; the husband of the couple told us that the house was built in 1881, and sold to his grandparents in 1920. It's been in the family ever since, so this home of 123 years has only been owned by two families. The detailing was exquisite, even in the furnishings - one bed ruffle - a bed ruffle! had a piped hem. I got many decorating ideas from it, some of them actually within my budget. As we headed off to the bus, tired but well-sated with beauty, I snapped a photo of Mom in front of the last house, quilts hanging over the railings of its generous wooden porch.

Mom at the last house

Then we headed to The China House for dinner, already described above. Could there be a better day?

Tragedy in Iraq

Ancient Sumerian cities are being destroyed by looters who have threatened to kill legitimate archaeologists.

Kidnapped, released Turkish journalist tells story

A young Turkish journalist was kidnapped along with a Canadian journalist she was traveling with; both were released four days later. In this NYT story, she tells what it was like.

Here is what she told her captors about her reasons for being where she was when she was taken:

They took a taxi to the city. When they stopped to ask a policeman in Tal Afar to direct them, he waved over a car with three masked men inside who ordered them to get in. They were taken to a nondescript house, unaware of what lay ahead.

She was busy memorizing details - how many men, what they wore, the color of the walls - for the exciting story she expected to write about a night with the insurgents in Tal Afar. Then the armed men stood Mr. Taylor against a wall with his hands above his head and pointed a Kalashnikov assault rifle at his chest.

"A night with the insurgents in Tal Afar". Sounds a little like "a night at the county fair" or "a night with the hookers on East Street". I'm very sorry they were kidnapped - it's unlikely they'll be the people they were before, any more - and I'm very glad they were released. But they walked into the lion's mouth, and the jaws closed. A lion doesn't become a kitten just because you refuse to call it by it's real name. "Insurgents" are "terrorists", and everyone would do well to remember that, including journalists.

Here's a point a lot of people have made that she confirms:

"These are people who think they are living in the time of the Crusades," Ms. Tugrul recalled in a four-hour conversation at an Ankara cafe this week. "They say they are fighting for Islam first and Iraq second. They think their religion is being attacked."

It's a religious war, it's not about an "occupied country" to a lot of the terrorists, or at least only secondarily and that because it is a Muslim country so must be defended against "kafir" invasion. I've heard many times over the course of the months since war there began, although less in recent months, that Iraq is the open front on the war on terror. It's not just about Iraq. The fight is sucking in terrorists from all over and giving the US a chance to kill them now. It's like a powerful magnet that draws out all the people who have been magnetized by the evil desire to rule the world their own fanatical Muslim way.

And Tugrul makes the nature of the terrorists clear:

"Please understand why we have to make sure who you are," said the man who had seemed so friendly, the one everyone called the emir, or leader. "There have been lots of spies here, and we had to cut their heads off."

..."I saw that around Mosul, everybody is the resistance - not terrorists, but not civilians really either," she said. "They used the small kids to bring them water, and nobody treated them like children. They'd be with the men who were talking about cutting heads, and the kids would be standing guard, like little men, so you become afraid of the children too."

"...You become afraid of the children too". Think about that. Sound like, oh, maybe, Palestine?

All those who held them, she said, were equally hostile to anyone they called kafir, or infidel. Again and again, they lashed out at Mr. Taylor, calling him a "Jewish pig" or an American spy.

"For them, there's no difference between a Christian and a Jew, a Canadian and an American," Ms. Tugrul said...

"The last group," she said, shuddering as she recalled how they kicked her and whipped her with a spiked belt, "they just wanted to torture for nothing."

...Ms. Tugrul's language skills no longer counted. "I couldn't make eye contact," she said. "Everybody kept looking at us and making that cutting sign across their throat."

The Arab men wrapped a red and white scarf around her face, so tightly that she thought she would go blind. They led her to a hallway and started beating her. It was only then, she said, that she realized how numb she had become.

"I know it sounds strange," she said, "but I was happy at that moment because at least I could feel my body. I felt like I was coming back to myself."

I hope she truly does come back to herself. And I hope others who read her story who have doubted the truth about who we're fighting will come back to their senses. But someone I doubt it. Somehow the nature of these terrorists will be blamed on the United States. I have no doubt.

Here are accounts from Steve Taylor, who was kidnapped with Tugrul: here, here and a first person account here. He has this to say:

Taylor said he has been to Iraq 20 times, but wouldn't go back. "It's not safe for anybody, not safe at all."

And this:

He said he was handed from group to group that shared hostages and weapons, including one he called the Taliban, the militants who controlled Afghanistan until the U.S. drove them out.

No connection between Iraq and Afghanistan. None at all. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Apparently no one had reported Taylor missing, and the Canadian government is essentially saying that since they didn't know he was gone and couldn't confirm it themselves, they're just going to let the episode pass. Again, nothing to see here.

Spot on

Sometimes immediate and bold action is the best way to handle a situation, but it's easy to underthink it and fail. However, at the same time, if you begin to analyze every little piece you may wind up overthinking it and never actually acting.

I understand that war is ultimately about strategy, a thinking game with spikes of bold action. But we at home don't see much of the strategizing because the media doesn't report it - and shouldn't, lest it endanger our people. It's a good thing, though, to explain strategies after the fact, to help us understand that the action is the tip of the iceberg for the military.

And that's why this post at The Belmont Club is so excellent - it lets us know not only what the strategy was (so we can admire it and feel more secure), but also that strategery is being done - something the MSM seem loathe to admit.

A bit bitter, Tina?

Tina Brown, no slouch in the failure department herself, castigates the mainstream media for being chased into bad journalism by the "new-media mujahadin". Yes, she actually blames bloggers for CBS's bad judgment:

Fear of missing the bandwagon is behind all the hype about the brilliance of bloggers who blew the whistle. You'd think "Buckhead," who first spotted the flaws in the documents, is the cyberworld's Woodward and Bernstein. Now the conventional wisdom is that the media will be kept honest and decent by an army of incorruptible amateur gumshoes. In fact, cyberspace is populated by a coalition of political obsessives and pundits on speed who get it wrong as much as they get it right. It's just that they type so much they are bound to nail a story from time to time.

The rapturing about the bloggers is the journalistic equivalent of the stock market's Internet bubble...

The equivalent today is when news outfits that built their reputations on check-and-double-check pick up almost any kind of assertion and call it a "source." Or feel so chased by the new-media mujaheddin they start trusting tips garnered from God-knows-where by a partisan wack job in Texas.

Obviously Brown doesn't read the blogs. Maybe she herself would be more accurate if she did.

Apparently Mapes can do anything she wants

FoxNews has a letter sent from the US Department of Prisons to CBS Producer Mary Mapes in late 2001 revoking her confidential mail privileges, as well as visiting and phone privileges, because she agreed to help a high-security inmate contact another inmate without going through the prison's security procedures. From the letter:

Recently, an investigation determined that the above named inmate requested your assistance in circumventing Federal Bureau of Prisons mail procedures. Specifically, inmate Langan requested your cooperation in mailing information intended for another inmate... Phone monitoring reveals that you agreed to this request...

If inmates are permitted to send unmonitored messages between prisons, they could pass information that poses a threat to the security and good order of the various facilities and could have facilitated possible criminal activity...

Therefore, your telephone call and visiting privileges are revoked. In addition your special mail privileges are revoked... If you continue to attempt to circumvent our security procedures in any manner, I will be forced to take additional steps to ensure the security of this facility, which may include referring your actions to the appropriate law enforcement authorities...

This is very serious business. Nobody is in a high-security federal prison for snatching Girl Scout cookies or jaywalking. A Google search for "Peter Langan prison" nets several interesting links, including this one that identifies Langan as a witness in the trial of Terry Nichols, later convicted of helping Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing. There's the description of Langan:

Peter Langan, former member of a white-supremacist bank robbery gang. Serving life in prison, Langan has said at least three fellow gang members were in Oklahoma around the time of the bombing and one later confided to him that they had become involved. Nichols' attorneys claim McVeigh had help in planning the bombing.

A member of a white-supremacist bank robbery gang who may have a connection to the Oklahoma City bombing. Innocent enough, yes? Why not circumvent the security procedures of a federal prison? It couldn't really put anyone at risk, would it?

This is a "highly regarded" producer at CBS, who is starting to look more and more like attorney Lynne Stewart, a civil rights attorney accused of helping a terrorist communicate with his followers from prison:

In May of 2000, Lynne Stewart signed an affirmation in which she agreed to adhere to SAMs. These SAMs allowed her to be accompanied by translators when speaking to Abdel Rahman, but only to communicate with her client about legal matters. The SAMs also prohibited the dissemination of Rahman's communications to third parties.

A few days after agreeing to these conditions, Stewart allegedly visited with her client and pretended to consult with him on legal matters. In actuality, however, the government claims that she was permitting Abdel Rahman to discuss with his interpreter whether "the Islamic Group" should continue its ceasefire with Egypt...

Stewart is accused as well of having played a role in facilitating (by pretending to be consulting with her client) the release of other instructions given by Rahman. Among them was the issuance of a fatwah under Rahman's name, calling on "brother scholars everywhere in the Muslim world to do their part and issue a unanimous fatwah that urges the Muslim nation to fight the Jews and to kill them wherever they are."

Mapes, like Stewart, is apparently someone who thinks that what she does should be beyond scrutiny because, well, she's who she is - Mapes a journalist, Stewart an attorney, both seeing "privilege" in their communications beyond what the law allows. Both are learning that there are limits after all. In this analysis of what Stewart did, Sherry Colb at Findlaw is also explaining why what Mapes did may have had serious consequences had it played out:

What Stewart is accused of having communicated, instead, is an instruction to kill people, an instruction that is and ought to be illegal regardless of whether or not SAMs are in place. And it may indeed be precisely the concern that such violent orders could be camouflaged for a well-meaning attorney that led to the broad gag orders contained in existing SAMs. In other words, Stewart may be a poster child for the sorts of government crackdowns that impede legitimate and protected attorney/client interactions.

Lynne Stewart is alleged to have gone public with a violent instruction that Rahman did not even bother camouflaging. This is deplorable conduct, no matter how objectionable one might consider the SAMs. It further brings shame to a profession that depends on lawyers' ability to remember that no matter what anyone says of us, we are not and must never become hired guns.

We don't know what information Langan meant to pass along to his fellow inmate below the radar of the federal prison system. It could have been an innocuous, "Hey, dude, how's it going?" But if that's true, why go beneath the radar of the prison system? Mapes had to know the risk of what she was agreeing to do, but (if I had to guess) probably thought she was bright and knowledgeable enough to be able to discern whether the communication she was passing along would in fact cause close the circle in a deadly conspiracy. The problem there is that she could not know even as much as prison officials do about any kind of codes the inmates might use between themselves that may appear innocent to Mapes. And prison officials probably don't know everything, which is why I'm sure any communication between Langan and any other inmate would receive sharpest scrutiny.

And this is establishing Mapes as someone who has a pattern of assuming herself above the ethics and even laws that the rest of us must go by - all in the name of journalism. She clearly is as arrogant as Dan Rather. It puts her actions in calling Joe Lockhart in much greater relief, and as part of a pattern, not an aberration. She's willing to make deals with a dangerous prison inmate as well as a discredited (yet somehow "unimpeachable") partisan hack, even calling a presidential campaign to put them in touch with someone who has potentially explosive information about their opposition, in clear violation of journalism ethics, all in the name of getting a story.

"Highly regarded" indeed.

Mapes must absolutely go. And I'm disturbed that she wasn't axed after agreeing to serve as a message maid for a dangerous prison inmate.

Not getting it - Part 2,498,381

Apparently John Edwards came on the Kerry ticket at least in part to appeal to rural voters:

Edwards is supposed to appeal to the rural voters that Al Gore lost overwhelmingly four years ago. Kerry's selection of Edwards as his vice presidential nominee will not be judged by whether the ticket carries Edwards' home state of North Carolina. Instead, the verdict will be determined by whether Edwards can bring at least some of the voters from the place that Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., calls " 'Merica."

This is so wrong in such a resounding way that it's breathtaking.

Contrary to what is apparently the prevailing opinion in the Kerry campaign, your average rural voter is not stupid. Many of them actually can read, and some even have access to rudimentary forms of modern media. Some few local opinion makers have even left the vast emptiness of rural life to taste the feasts of urban living, only to return with stories hard to believe about the intelligence, erudition and sheer political perspicacity of city folk.

snort

As the descendent of generations of rural-dwellers, raised in the foothills of Appalachia, someone who lived for eight years in the shadow of New York City yet found small town Alabama more to her liking, I think I can speak to this sense on the Kerry camp's part that John Edwards is going to appeal to the average rural person:

Hogwash.

The first problem is the condescension. I'm sure you caught that my earlier paragraph about rural dwellers was mocking the elitist attitude many city dwellers, especially northeastern and left coast urbanites, have toward anyone living elsewhere. The thought that a homespun slow-talker is going to win their vote just by some kind of rural-referent behavior is insulting, but not surprising considering the source. And the extent to which Edwards tries that condescension on the rural folk, as opposed to just talking straight about the issues, is the extent to which he will fail. I suspect he will fail badly. As for Kerry, well, the only thing Kerry knows about the country is that his wife has a few houses there, bought with her ex-husband's money. It's a playground for him.

The second problem is Edwards himself. Yes, he's from a southern state, but not all southerners are created equal. A snakeoil salesman is a snakeoil salesman, whether he speaks with a clipped Yankee accent that makes "car" into "cah", or with a Southern drawl dripping with the speed and sweetness of molasses. He's a trial lawyer, and that won't be lost on the people he's talking to. It also won't be lost on them that no matter what his upbringing, he's a city slicker now with all the airs and condescensions (see above) of the most noxious of that breed. Any efforts to be homespun will fall very flat, because they will be very fake and obviously so to anyone who actually does live in rural areas.

The third problem is that rural people have much the same education and world knowledge as city people in this time of information technology. Yes, there are pea-brained yahoos in the country, but they're matched one-to-one with pea-brained yahoos in the city. There are also many professional people in the rural areas, people with degrees from community colleges right on through to ivy league schools. The vast majority of them have cable television and Internet access, and use it just as much (if not more, there being fewer other things to do) than city folks. So the knowledge of issues in the country are similar to the knowledge of them in all other population density categories.

The fourth problem is centered on a genuine difference between city and rural people. In the country, you're more likely to know your neighbors; the families in an area are likely to have known each other for generations. In that environment you don't have as much occasion to take someone on face value and move on. The person matters as much as the message because you aren't going to be dealing with them for a short time - it could be decades. So you assess someone based on their potential to be trustworthy in the long run, not just this week or through November or into 2005. I don't think the Kerry/Edwards ticket looks strong in that way, and I don't think Edwards can make it stick even when the haughty flip-flopping Kerry is not at his side.

There is one other genuine difference between rural and city, and it's highlighted (without irony, I suspect) in the same Salon article linked above:

Kerry and Edwards don't need the support of the majority of the people in this Second America. They just need to close the gap, to not lose in Gore-like fashion. Before settling on Edwards, Kerry already had enough of the Democratic base, the city dwellers who will likely turn out in even greater numbers this year than they did in 2000. Picking Edwards was, in part, an attempt to offset the huge get-out-the-vote effort that Karl Rove and the Republicans plan in rural America.

The city people don't care about the rural people, politically speaking, except to the extent that the rural people can help the city people reach their goals. We are "fly-over" country to the majority of the Kerry campaign (if not all), and we know that very well. If Kerry could win without coming into the middle of the country, he wouldn't show his face here or send Edwards. And there may come a time when that's a possibility (something I think needs to be addressed and soon - I don't want to become completely irrelevant to the president of the country). The city issues are different from the rural issues, and rural people are keenly aware of that too. The city is where those people who wouldn't recognize a real cow rail about people killing animals for food. The city is where people care more about a displaced spotted owl than a farmer being able to feed his children. The city is where people try to implement policies that create all manner of difficulties for rural dwellers without having any negative impact on their own lives. So when Trial Lawyer and Slick Talker John Edwards shows up in town trying to sell the Kerry ticket, the rural people aren't going to want to hear his ruralized version of what a Kerry/Edwards administration will do, knowing as they do that Kerry and Edwards are city people. The smart, savvy and hard-working country folk want to hear about issues, about solutions. They want acknowledgment that their concerns won't get washed out by the hammering voices of special interest groups whose views are antithetical in so many ways to the rural way of life. They're not stupid.

And that's why Edwards will fail.

I won't even get into the fact that their opposing Republican ticket includes two men who have lived their lives straddling the rural/city divide, and have proven themselves successful in both.

UPDATE: A caveat, and you knew it was coming. The point about John Edwards being southern is because, well, he is, and will likely use that frame when presenting himself to the rural public. I know there are a lot of rural dwellers (or non-urban, depending on how you want to approach it) who are not in the South at all. However, I think this discussion applies to them as well. The northerners and westerners may tend more liberal than the South generally, but the things that matter to them as rural dwellers won't be much different.

War games

[I wrote this as an "application post" for a blogging berth at the Detroit News political blog, which includes writers from all over the nation, even our fine Scott "Scrappleface" Ott. I wrote and sent it in on Friday, and haven't heard back from them, so I'm posting it here. One hates to waste a good post.]

I'm getting whiplash watching John Kerry change his rhetoric from Vietnam to Iraq and back. His name has, for all practical purposes, become "John I-fought-in-Vietnam Kerry". He opened his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention saying he was "reporting for duty", and he's been refighting the Vietnam War ever since. Except... except when people start asking questions about his service, like, just where was he in Christmas 1968? It wasn't in Cambodia, although he said in 1986 that the memory of Christmas in Cambodia in 1968 was "seared - seared in me". And then there's the question of the medals - or was that ribbons? When the questions go there, Kerry suddenly becomes intensely concerned about President George W. Bush's service in the Air National Guard or about what's happening in Iraq.

Yet he runs into difficulties there too. He and his minions keep trying to prove Bush behaved badly during his Guard service, but nothing really sticks. And when Dan Rather started carrying water for the Kerry bench on that issue, he got in trouble too. Time for another diversionary tactic - what about Bush taking the US into war illegitimately? Kerry is horrified - horrified! - by Bush's actions. But Kerry joined his fellow Senators in giving Bush a "blank check" in how he approached the war, so it seems he abrogated his accountability early, when he didn't think Iraq was "a real issue". When did that change? Apparently when it seemed the people of America thought it was a "real issue".

But Kerry can't stay there long either, because while he gave Bush a blank check on how the administration prosecuted the war, he then voted to essentially lock the bank. When asked how he would prosecute the war, he has little of value to say, except that he'll bring the US military home and hand Iraq over to NATO. Yet NATO is only now agreeing to strengthen its forces by less than 20,000 soldiers. It's a promising sign, but is that enough to "win the peace"?

That's when the talk turns to domestic policies, but... can't stay there long either. Unemployment is down. Crime is down. What's a self-respecting Dem candidate to do?

Why, talk about Vietnam. Did you know that John Kerry served in Vietnam...?

Originals of Rathergate docs supposedly burned

USA Today has a truly excellent and important article today about the Rathergate documents, consisting mainly of reporting on interviews with Bill Burkett, who has admitted he was the one who gave the documents to CBS producer Mary Mapes. He says he's had them since March, and his description of the way he got them is worthy of a movie. You really must read it if you're interested at all in this story. This is the most important part to me:

After he received the documents in Houston, Burkett said, he drove home, stopping on the way at a Kinko's shop in Waco to copy the six memos. In the parking lot outside, he said, he burned the ones he had been given and the envelope they were in. Ramirez was worried about leaving forensic evidence on them that might lead back to her, Burkett said, acknowledging that the story sounded fantastic. "This is going to sound like some damn sci-fi movie," he said.

So, if Burkett is to be believed, all traces of the originals he says were given to him have been destroyed by this fire. Just how convenient is that? This makes me think that we won't be learning who actually forged them, unless someone comes forward with knowledge of them. That may still happen, but given that they had to have been forged by someone who hates GW, that seems unlikely.

However, an investigation could still expose the full extent of connection between the Kerry campaign and the CBS work on this story, as well as CBS's general partisan complicity in rushing it to the screen.

It's a bizarro world

CBS producer Mary Mapes pimped Bill Burkett to Joe Lockhart of the Kerry campaign in return for forged documents.

Meanwhile, John Kerry breaks his weeks-long moratorium about interviews with the media... to talk to that hard-hitting journalist, Dave Letterman, who is softballing questions and letting Kerry essentially give a monologue about how wonderful he is and how awful the current administration is. I'd like a consultation about the equal time rule.

Now I'm waiting to find out that Barbra Streisand wrote the memoes and got them to Bill Burkett via a CBS courier, perhaps driving this van. Dan Rather will come clean on Dave Letterman, crying into his coffee, and then he will leave CBS to become the Kerry campaign spokesman in a last fevered rush to get the candidate through the White House door.

Must I scour the world for unChristian Christians?

Apparently Jimmy Swaggert is at it again, and according to Eugene Volokh I have a responsibility as a Christian to denounce him.

Specifically, Swaggert said:

"I'm trying to find the correct name for it ... this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. ... I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died."

Let me fulfill my obligation: I think Jimmy Swaggert is absolutely, completely wrong to threaten to kill any gay man who looks at him "like that", and his audience was wrong to laugh and clap. I've never cared for Jimmy Swaggert, or any of his ilk, whom I think to be money-grubbers using Christianity as a means to financial gain. I won't impugn the motives of all televangelists in the same way, although generally I find little to recommend any of them, up to and including Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and, yes, the venerable Billy Graham, although I find him the least objectionable. At the same time, I find it hypocritical for anyone to call out Christians to denounce Swaggert without in the same sentence demanding denunciations of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson as likewise a blot on Christianity.

I've said before on my blog that anyone who wants to or does harm someone who lives a homosexual lifestyle, either male or female, on the basis of their lifestyle, is wrong. Sinful. Behaving against God's will. But then it's sinful to want to murder anyone (and I say "murder" specifically to exclude legitimate killing such as self-defense, capital punishment or times of war). I see this in much the same way I see the anti-abortion activists who harm people to "advance" their cause: Abortion is sinful, but it's just as sinful to murder people who do it or support it. Practicing homosexuality is sinful, but so is both the desire to and action of hurting someone just because they are homosexual. It's the classic "two wrongs don't make a right".

I'm annoyed with Volokh, however, for this:

When someone who is a Christian minister, and still something of a Christian leader, makes a claim about what Christian scriptures mean, it seems to me that those Christians who condemn his views -- and condemn them as deeply evil, rather than just subtly or slightly wrong -- do have a responsibility to speak out.

How much speaking out do I need to do? Must I follow Swaggert around the country and protest him, in much the way that Madelyn Murray O'Hair's oldest son did, after he grew up and became a Christian? What about all the others who blaspheme God by their unholy and wicked actions in His name? There are a lot of them, and I include in that group anyone who professes Christianity yet lives a life of debauchery. And yes, I am saying that Swaggert is unholy and wicked when he says things like what is quoted above.

None of us are perfect - God knows, intimately, just how imperfect I am, how many times I've cried for forgiveness and then gone and done whatever I asked forgiveness for yet again. David was a man after God's own heart, but it wasn't because he was sinless - it was because he throughout his life was capable of being touched with shame and remorse when he failed, and each time he begged for God's forgiveness sincerely. He tried to do better, and he loved God. The apostle Peter loved God, knew Christ personally, and yet he denied Him three times in the cruelest of ways, when Christ was completely abandoned and betrayed. Afterward, the Bible tells us, he "wept bitterly". I can't imagine the pain of that. So I'm not claiming perfection for followers of God, then or now. But I do become angry about being tarred with the same brush as Swaggert just because I don't post a weekly update that I still think he's a charletan with more in common with Simon the Sorcerer than Paul the apostle.

So, for the record, In Re Swaggert: He's a blasphemer for the life he leads, speaking in a way that is directly counter to God's teaching while claiming to do God's will. I denounce his behavior and his comments about murder. I will pray for his soul.

And for the record, In Re Homosexuality: The Bible says practicing it is a sin. I believe the Bible is God's Word, and means what it says.

Excuse me while I go make signs for my journeys around the world to protect the good name of Christianity in the eyes of those who can't separate the wheat from the chaff on their own.

He'd Rather not

Dan Rather apologized, for himself and for CBS News, for using the forged documents. He still says it was "in good faith". I don't see how they can support that conclusion other than "we say so". Although he interviewed Bill Burkett, he never pressed him (at least on the shown clip) about who DID forge the documents. Where did Burkett get them? And why did they believe him? Who was the go-between? Until CBS explains all that, they're not done.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Do you know if you're a conservative or a liberal progressive? How do you know? Do you base your judgment on where you stand versus others you know, or on established philosophical principles?

Russell Kirk knew.

One of the most important and prominent thinkers of the conservative movement beginning in mid-century, Kirk spent decades defining and explaining conservatism in challenging yet accessible ways. Now, 10 years after his death, one of his disciples, professor W. Wesley McDonald, explores Kirk's political philosophies in a new book, Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology. Alan Cornett, who worked as Kirk's assistant for a year shortly before Kirk's death, has written a review of the book posted here. I recommend you read it.

[Full disclosure! Alan is my brother (but you knew that), and the proprietor of Theosebes (and you knew that too).]

CBS: Documents are fake

CBS News is giving its mea culpa.

Dan Rather:

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where-if I knew then what I know now-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

Official statement:

Bill Burkett, in a weekend interview with CBS News Anchor and Correspondent Dan Rather, has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents used in the Sept. 8 "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard.

Burkett, a retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, also admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source...

CBS News and CBS management are commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken. The names of the people conducting the review will be announced shortly, and their findings will be made public.

That last is a good start, almost two weeks late. At least they didn't say "but the story is true". Not yet, anyway. But there's still a lot on the table, including the ultimate source of the documents. Was it Burkett? Or someone else?

Interesting to see where this goes, especially given Burkett's long history of hatred for the Bushes, and his widely reported comments online that were available to any CBS staffer with access to Google (e.g. all of them). The "good faith" bit is something of a stretch in that light.

I'll link responses to it as I see them.

UPDATE: Powerline Blog's view: Still behind the curve.

UPDATE II: Bill at INDC Journal says, who gave the docs to CBS? Who vouched for them? He's also checked out the legal liabilities for such a forgery in Texas.

Hugh Hewitt calls Rather's apology "pathetic".

Jim Geraghty at Kerry Spot hammers Rather for the source of the documents, including a quote from Burkett's lawyer that he would "stake his reputation" that Burkett did not create them and that he believed they were real. This from a man (lawyer Van Os) who is running for office now in Texas. Interesting.

Charles Johnson also says CBS has to name their source, and meanwhile has a photo of a CBS News van that indicates political statements aren't allowed at work only if it's, say, flags after an attack on your country. No liberal media, none at all, move along.

Dead Parrot Society blogger Ryan, a journalist in Spokane, WA, calls foul on CBS's claim of good faith. It's a shame that good journalists like Ryan have to deal with the cynicism of the public resulting from behavior like CBS's. Internet watchdogs watching the media watchdogs is a great thing, but it doesn't have to be assumed that the media is all bad. They're not. Difficult point to make sometimes, though, in a world of Rathers and Mapeses and Blairs.

Higher and lower

Kerry served in Vietnam, and by all accounts served bravely while he was there. He swaggered, and apparently loved to wallow in his own glory, but that doesn't mean he wasn't brave. And President Bush did not go to Vietnam, staying stateside as a member of the Texas Air National Guard where he flew fighter planes for three years. Doing so also required some level of bravery, but not the same level as flying under fire. As the war wound down, Bush's opportunities to fly lessened, as did the need for his services, and his thoughts turned to other things. Although he may not have crossed all his Ts and dotted all his Is, he did receive an honorable discharge, evidence that he fulfilled his duty.

All that is nothing new to the average blogreader - we've had details about Kerry and Bush in the 1968-1973 years all but tattooed on the inside of our eyelids for the past several months. But in the wake of Rathergate, which some say will result today in an official "fake, but accurate!" admission from CBS News, it's reasonable to ask this broader question of the media: Where's the fairness in the coverage of Kerry's downside and Bush's upside?

It's not that the media has been MIA on either. They've reported about Kerry's anti-war activities, and about Bush's fighter plane history. But the degree is vastly different. In many articles about Kerry, his service in Vietnam comes up: "Kerry, a Vietnam veteran"... and it goes on from there. You don't see, "Kerry, a Vietnam veteran who returned from war to tell Congress that American soldiers were gleefully killing babies...". Likewise, with Bush, you see the equivalent of, "Bush, who avoided Vietnam by entering the Air National Guard where he screwed around the last year..." and not "Bush, who served as a fighter pilot stateside with the Texas Air National Guard..." or even "Bush, who served stateside during Vietnam"...

I'm not complaining about articles admiring Kerry for what he did right, because he, like all military personnel, deserve admiration and honor for brave service. But while he unquestionably had much higher highs during the Vietnam War than did Bush, in terms of service, he also had much lower lows in terms of harm to the country and the war effort. Yes, Bush stayed stateside, and eased out of the TANG at the end with a sigh rather than a bang. A little high, a little low. But look at this:

On April 22, 1971, Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Most controversial is his allegation that American soldiers were committing war crimes, "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." He spoke of "the 200,000 [Vietnamese] a year who are murdered by the United States of America."

...On the basis of Winter Solider, young Kerry told the senators that American soldiers had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam . . . "

Former POW Air Force pilot Jim Warner and others have told of how the North Vietnamese forced American prisoners of war to listen to these words and other speeches by Kerry as part of their effort to make prisoners confess to war crimes.

If you need perspective about this, think how it would be covered if Bush had done those things. It would be an endless litany of how horrible it is to have a man in office during wartime who materially contributed to American soldiers' horrible ordeal as prisoners of war. We would be seeing interviews all over the place from Jim Warner and those others. They'd be on the platform with Kerry. We would see reports from soldiers now serving in Iraq about how they'd feel having a Commander in Chief who talked about the soldiers of his day in the way that Kerry did in 1971. It would be nearly impossible to get away from. And if the Bush campaign were truly interested in smearing Kerry, there would be that very litany like a drumbeat from distant sacrificial fires.

But that isn't what you see. Instead, you see Rathergate, as a major network news organization self-immolates in an effort to provide a "gotcha" on a sitting president. What is the gotcha? That he deliberately disobeyed an order to have a physical. The documents have been proven false, yet CBS tries to claim the story is still true. Based on what evidence? None that seems better than their last try.

And then there's this:

...[H]oneymooning was not John Kerry's only purpose in traveling to Paris. Kerry's presidential campaign has now acknowledged that he "talked privately with a leading communist representative" there.

On April 22, 1971, as he testified before Senator Fulbright's Committee on Foreign Relations, John Kerry mentioned that in Paris he had meetings with "both sides" of the Paris Peace Talks.

Kerry had no official role there, and his only "in" with the Communist representative would have been his anti-war activities in the US. So, while his fellow soldiers and Marines and airmen and others were still fighting and dying in Vietnam, he meets with a Communist representative (and how fitting it should be in Paris). The linked article gives a lot more information about the whole episode, and here's more.

Kerry's anti-war activities represent a clear "low" in his Vietnam-era record - at least to most Americans. So why does a search for "Kerry Madame Binh" bring up only non-MSM links while a search for "Bush National Guard" shows eight links to MSM in the first two pages? You can say that is because of the CBS debacle, and you'd be partially correct, but that is part of the point itself: the reason why there is a CBS debacle is because Mary Mapes spent five years trying to deep six the President on his National Guard service and finally got so eager she allowed herself to be duped. Has anyone in the MSM spent even the past five weeks researching and reporting on the downside of Kerry's Vietnam years? Only on the military service itself, not the anti-war activities, and then only to debunk the SwiftVet ads.

Part of the reason is, I think, that many in the MSM media think that Kerry was exactly right in his anti-war activities - they see nothing wrong here, move along, nothing to see. Part of it is that they see "Bush=bad, Kerry=good" or, perhaps more accurately, "Bush=bad, Democrat candidate=good", although Kerry's losing some of his shine as he shows up on the wrong side of the polls with increasing frequency. And some of it is that it's much more fun and journalistically important to find dirt on a sitting president than on his opponent.

Continually I hear media complaints that there's not enough coverage of "the issues" in this race. I'm 100% fine with that. For all that I think Kerry has more to lose than Bush if the MSM fairly approached coverage of their respective activities during 1968-1973, I'd be fine with their just seriously covering Kerry's record as a public official. It's damning enough, and sufficient compared to Bush's record to haul him even lower in the polls. But even that doesn't happen. Why not? Why is the media complaining about how coverage is being done when they're the ones doing the coverage? What's to stop them from sending out reporters to cover the last 20 years? Nothing that I can see, other than this frenetic digging in the dirt like pigs after truffles.

I don't see how coverage of Bush in the TANG is going to hurt him, especially now. I do see how coverage of Kerry 1968-1973 would hurt him badly, if it were done with the same ferocity and focus on the low end that's been characteristic of the Bush TANG coverage. I also think that Bush's record in office will stand the test of comparison to Kerry's during his public years. It certainly seems that the media are focusing on the things that they perceive will most hurt Bush - his TANG service and the "quagmire" in Iraq - and not seriously looking at Kerry's record vs Bush's. Or perhaps they are looking at it as seriously as they're going to - focusing on Kerry's higher and Bush's lower, as if neither has the opposite end.

Promising signs

Howard Kurtz of WaPo, who has been on the forefront of the mainstream media reportage of Rathergate, talked about it today on his CNN show, Reliable Sources, with journalism professors Geneva Overholser and Frank Sesno, both retired from positions in the mainstream media, and TNR editor and blogger Andrew Sullivan. The whole discussion is very encouraging, showing that all of them believe that CBS and Rather are in serious trouble and are responsible for their irresponsibility in using forged documents. The best part is that they "get it" about blogs, and are enthusiastic about the role blogs can play in the swirl of media:

SESNO: We've democratized the world -- the news business, and let every news organization beware, because anybody who has access to any information can be their own investigative reporter, and they're going to hold you the news organization to account in at least the same sort of way, with the same pressure as the news organization is trying to hold others to account.

KURTZ: But are they always going to do it in a fair way?

SESNO: They're not always going to do it in a fair way, they're not always going to be right, it's not always going to be orderly, but the pressure is always going to be there.

OVERHOLSER: And it will sort itself out. And it's great. The democratization is exactly what we needed.

KURTZ: This is a healthy development to you.

OVERHOLSER: It is. And a lot of it is messy. I don't mean we should always say, oh, the blog, I mean, with all due respect. Heaven knows, they're doing plenty of things.

SULLIVAN: The point is not an individual blog, because an individual blog can get stuff wrong. The point is the system, which is self-correcting. The collective mind is a corrective one. And this is another example of CBS' arrogance. Jonathan Klein, the former producer of "60 Minutes," says bloggers don't have any checks and balances, they're just a bunch of guys in pajamas. Well, it doesn't matter what you're wearing if you get it right.

SESNO: News organizations aren't used to having the whole wide world peering over their shoulders. They're not used to having their methods and their sources questioned, challenged and pushed. And they're going to have to get used to that. They're going to be -- going to have to be much more transparency and accountability to the public.

There's lots more, in the full transcript posted on CNN's site.

And for those looking for slogans more appealing than "Fake, but accurate!", the show participants came up with several (although not, you understand, presented as slogans):

"It's a real journalistic problem and not a partisan issue, and their failure to acknowledge it feeds this notion that it's a partisan issue." Overholser.

"Dan Rather is a hothead." Overholser.

"... if you mess up, fess up." Sesno.

"The golden rule is get it out there, be honest, confess, disclose, not stonewall." Sullivan.

"We've democratized the world...". Sesno.

"...it doesn't matter what you're wearing if you get it right." Sullivan.

"...the standards for the blogosphere are higher than CBS. You have to correct immediately, or you're toast." Sullivan.

This little exchange was interesting too:

SULLIVAN: But Dan Rather is a liberal Democrat, Frank. I mean, he's fund-raisers for liberal Democrats.

KURTZ: No, hold on, hold on.

SULLIVAN: He's on the record.

KURTZ: He showed up at one -- because I reported the story -- he showed up at one Texas Democratic fund-raiser. His daughter had been involved in it, and he later apologized for that.

SESNO: And I think he's caused plenty of headaches for plenty of liberals, too.

SULLIVAN: You think he's a Republican?

SESNO: That's not the issue. The issue is how he does his job.

(CROSSTALK)

OVERHOLSER: Sloppy journalism makes it looks like he is, yeah.

Hmmm... would they say "it doesn't matter" about a Republican journalist caught trying to bring down Kerry?

[Link via INDC Journal, with whom I agree on the role of blogs.]

Ivan in Alabama: Day 3

It's over! The sun is shining, I've no rogue branches littering up my yard, and my electricity is going strong. Life is good. Not so good for my brother's family - their electricity is still out. But! Hopefully not for long.

I took a couple of photos during the storm and several this morning on my way home. Here's what Ivan looked like from my part of Central Alabama.

And that's the visual. I've got lots to do, so that's it for now. Thanks for the good wishes, and thanks to Cousin Dave for keeping the Ivanblogging going in my absence! I'll comment on other things later.

Unless you'd Rather I not.

Ivan in Alabama: Day 2

4:26 p.m. CST: - I'm safe.

I was up until 3 a.m., then woke up again at 8 a.m., but lay in bed listening to the sounds of my house and the sounds of the wind outside my windows, wondering if my electricity was off. The light of my clock radio is bright, so I put something in front of it before I go to bed - I couldn't see it. Finally I turned on the light beside the bed. It came on.

So far, so good.

The phone rang; it was my mom. I had to run into the other room to get it, and I got online while talking to her. I was planning a nice breakfast while there was still electricity, looking around the blogosphere, watching the news and planning my morning post, and...

zzzzzzzzt.

The electricity went off. Just after 9 a.m. Great.

The wind had started to bluster, the tops of the trees tossing and soughing. Rain came down steady and hard, although not torrentially. I felt edgy, more than I realized before. I called my mom to tell her I was okay - the cordless phone went out with the electricity, but I have a corded one as well - then called my sister in law. The weather was similar there, and I told her I might come over. She said come on. I called the police (non-emergency number!) and asked if it was safe to drive to Wilsonville. They didn't encourage or discourage, just said they'd not received any messages of problems.

I knelt down and prayed about it, and in the back of my mind I kept hearing go go go! I jumped up, raced around packing boxes with candles, a change of clothes, food, needlework, my computer. Within 20 minutes I was packing my car in the increasing rain, nearly drenched, then drove off into the storm after fumbling my keys like a B horror movie heroine trying to get the car going as the monster closes in.

The streets in downtown Columbiana were nearly deserted, the asphalt littered with little branches, the traffic lights out. Soon I was out of town and eating up the 10 miles between our towns at 60 mph. Rain gusted across the road, and my car skittered once, but others were out and no major debris or wind impeded me. Larger branches were down here and there, and on the radio the newsmen were saying, wind gusts are strong enough to blow your car off the road, stay home if you can! It never got worse than a bad thunderstorm, not as bad as some, on the whole drive over, but the knowledge of the possible kept my heart beating fast.

The wind whipped frantically and the rain was nearly horizontal when I got to my brother's house. The blasts of wind pushed me inside, with all my boxes. They still had electricity. The children were eating breakfast and Alan and Traci were finishing preparations. I called my mom to tell her I was okay, and the lights flickered. In less than 15 minutes, they went out for good. But the phone still works.

Since about 10:30, it's just been a waiting game, with scary but not terrifying winds bringing down limbs and rains creating ever deeper puddles in the field beside the house. Inside we've played games, read, crocheted, just hung out. And now, just short of 5 p.m., they're saying the worst of it is likely over, although it still looks very brisk outside to me. I can't see serious damage from here. I have taken a couple of photos, which I will post later - one of the things I forgot in my rush was the cord to download my camera files into my computer.

I'm safe. We're all safe. And Lord willing, we'll stay that way. Prayers go out to the people more seriously affected, most especially in the Mobile area. I don't know if I'll post again tonight, maybe. Not much to say - how interesting is "I'm crocheting again"? - and my computer only has a 3-hour battery. But thank you very much for your concern. I appreciate it. Stay safe yourselves, wherever you are.

1:59 a.m. CST: - It's late, and I'm finding it difficult to go to bed. Ivan hit Mobile at 1:19 a.m., and it's pounding the town. The morning crew just took over on NBC 13 news, which has been All Ivan, All the Time, since yesterday morning. That's been a good thing, mostly, I just hope they play the Law & Order season opener sometime when I actually have functioning cable - that's assuming the storm will take it out.

My car is behind my house. I have three gallons of purchased drinking water, two half-gallon pitchers filled, one one-gallon pitcher, a one-gallon cooler and my huge stew pot, all filled with water. I put three ziploc bags full of water into the freezer to use if the electricity goes off. You know that not everyone will lose their electricity. I'm hoping I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm planning not to be.

I've put the flashlight beside my bed, and broke out the red IKEA candles, a 20-pack. Should last a while, and then I'll start on the 150 tealights. Some of them smell very nice; I'll space those out. Two candles with matches will be beside my bed tonight, with the flashlight. The 9-volt battery is in my clock radio.

I'm feeling apprehensive, not terrified or scared, not "I can't sleep" edgy. But it does seem odd that I'm worried about serious harm in my house when this area is where thousands from Mobile and other points south have come for safety. It also seems odd that I'm being told to stay close to my "place of safety" because of the "tornadic activity" expected tomorrow, yet the Wal-Marts in the area are planning to remain open 24/7.

Tonight at church one of the ladies told me that a friend of hers is a police chief in one of the towns along the Gulf Shore. She told this about the town: They tried to evacuate the whole town because they thought the town had an Ivan bull's eye on it. Several families, fewer than a dozen, decided to wait it out. The police went to each family and collected the names of everyone in each, along with their social security numbers, next of kin and telephone numbers for the kin. The message was clear. You won't leave, so we're preparing in case you die.

The meteorologist just showed the map where the eye of Ivan is passing right now. Prominent in the middle of it was the name of this town.

I wonder if the police there will need any of the next of kin phone numbers.

I'm sticking too, but not in such dangerous circumstances. And I'm ready. I have 6 AA batteries for my cassette player so I can listen to audio books if the cable goes. I have 8 D batteries for my flashlight if the electricity goes out. I have 4 C batteries for my little boom box, in case I feel an overwhelming need to hear Celine Dion shout down the wind. I have an image in my mind of a wild wind outside, a dark warmth inside, soft candle glow, a plate of homemade bread spread with homemade pear butter, a glass of water, straining my eyes over some needlework project. Or taking notes about a policing survey. Or maybe talking to my family on the cell phone.

Or maybe curled up on pillows in the bathtub, trying to nap so the time will go faster as a tornado siren sounds shrilly from the firehouse down the street.

It's a new day. I hope I'm still writing to you this time in the next day.

Good night.

Ivan in Alabama: Mini-blog on the hurricane

This thread is continued on the next post up.

10 p.m. CT: Back from church. We had a brief period of prayer and singing directed toward asking for God's mercy in the storm and affirming our reliance on Him. It made me feel better, more peaceful; although I am increasingly edgy about the storm as it gets closer, I'm not panicking.

I heard that there are fewer than 500 Alabama Power linemen, and that in a storm of the magnitude of an Ivan they need about 5,000 to take care of the problems. Florida still has about 40,000 people without power after their one-two punch, so they've taken up the available help from other parts of the country (the same situation as the generators mentioned earlier). They're saying that if your electricity goes out, expect at least three days and up to three weeks before you get it back.

No one at church, many of whom grew up here, remember a storm like this coming through. They're apprehensive too, but no one seems panicked and no one is leaving their home. And the only place I saw with plywood over it was someone's fancy glass front door. They didn't even have their other windows covered, just that front door panel. Of course, I wasn't downtown after about 1 p.m. today, so I don't know if more has gone up.

The wind has picked up, tossing leaves lightly across the road but no branches. On the drive home from church, I turned off the radio and listened to the sounds around me. The crickets were chirping busily, and the leaves rustling, but there was no wind whistle or that puff it makes as it tries to push around a car. We're still far from the real storm, no rain yet. I saw very few cars, less than half of what I usually see, and the streets in Columbiana are very quiet. On my street I passed only one car, and it was a police patrol car.

My house faces east, slightly southeast, and since we're east of the center winds will be coming at my house heading northwest - blowing into the face. I parked my car behind the house, tucked lengthwise under the eaves. A shed that bumps out from the back wall of the duplex forms an L there, which I hope will break up any major gusts and will also deflect any big branches careening about.

Thirty-six hours. We're going to be dealing with significant winds for 36 hours, and probably at least 6 to 8 hours of sustained winds at 70 mph.

What does 70 mph look like from the front window of a house?

I guess I'll find out.

6 p.m. CT: Instapundit links to several bloggers who are Ivanblogging.

5:54 p.m. CT: I just put my outside garbage can and outside chair into my shed. I'm going to park my car up against the back of the house when I get home from church tonight. Parallel parked, passenger side against the house. I'll enjoy that. Here's hoping I don't make a new back door to the house.

5:15 p.m. CT: Wow! NBC 13 just showed video taken within the past hour of a tornado on the ground in West Panama City, FL. Very clearly a funnel cloud, initially some distance away and you could see what they first identified as transformers blowing and then as probably lightning. Suddenly the picture changed and it was a narrow view of a tornado passing directly by their station.

Is there still time to drive to Kentucky?

UPDATE: 5:57 p.m. - Robin at beyond salvage reports that two people died in a tornado in Panama City. Could it have been the one we saw in the video? [Link via Instapundit]

5 p.m. CT: Gov. Riley is holding a press conference now, and just said, "This is the strongest hurricane we've ever seen hit the panhandle."

The director of FEMA Michael Brown is speaking now. He's reiterating that everyone needs to collect what they'll need for "3-5 days" without electricity.

"It's going to be rough. I'm telling you I know from experience, it's going to be rough," he said.

He's saying Riley and his team prepared "just right", and that they'll "be in Alabama a while".

Laura Howe, spokesperson for the American Red Cross, says there are already 11,000 people in shelter now. She's encouraging people in mobile homes to get to shelters.

Riley again. "Looking at landfall between 1 and 3 o'clock [a.m., Thursday]." The damage will begin to occur in the dark, he said.

They're taking questions now. There's a "critical shortage of generators". Brown is talking about urban search and rescue teams - bringing in two of 80 people each, so sounds like they're expecting substantial damage.

4 p.m. CT: Latest report from NBC 13 - the storm may be strengthening. In this area, we'll be hit in the wee hours of tomorrow and then last throughout the day.

There's a list of Alabama weblogs on al.com, if you'd like to see what anyone else is saying. I'll run through some and report back if anyone else is Ivanblogging.

UPDATE: Found some blogs who talked about Ivan. Doesn't look like all (or most) of them will be posting continuously about it, though.

Our most favorite Alabama blogger - except, of course, for my brother , who is not Ivanblogging- is nattering on about Ivan, just as you'd expect. Not the kind of vacation you'd choose, is it, Terry??

Southern Blog has links to a bunch of storm-focused webcams.

Looks l