and actually puts out the McChrystal stuff in full and in context:
As with the leak of McChrystal’s report, observers would do well to exhibit a bit more skepticism and ask a few more questions, chief among them being “Who benefits from these leaks and ugly insinuations?” Clearly it’s not McChrystal: the media are calling for his head on a platter. He’s being treated every bit as badly as David Petraeus was during the Surge, but for the opposite reason: where Petraeus was called a coward and traitor for not speaking truthiness to the American people, McChrystal is being told he has no business speaking truth in public. The real irony here is that neither man did what he was accused of but the Left attacked these men anyway for failing to support their preferred narrative.
Any source who chooses to spread paranoid, unsubstantiated, third hand rumors about what McChrystal or Obama are rumored to have said when transcripts of the General’s speech and Q&A session are easily available should be dismissed out of hand.
The ratings seem to suggest that this is taking place. That would also explain the FCC’s move. Jeff Jarvis is worried:
And there is the greatest myth embedded within the FTC’s rules: that the government can and should sanitize the internet for our protection. The internet is the world and the world is messy and I don’t want anyone – not the government, not a newspaper editor – to clean it up for me, for I fear what will go out in the garbage: namely, my rights.
What I now truly dread is that the FTC is holding hearings about journalism on Dec. 1 and 2. As Star-Ledger editor Jim Willse (full disclosure: he hired me a few times) said in my Guardian podcast last month (full disclosure: I work for the Guardian): the words, “we’re from the government, we’re here to help,” should be met with trepidation.
Hey nothing to worry about, just because these guys admire Chavez it doesn’t mean we will see stuff like this.
Peg (whom I still owe a favor to, I’d better make sure I disclose it to the FTC since I can’t afford the fine these days) talks a bit about this piece on inequality:
Since Ronald Reagan was elected nearly 30 years ago, Democratic politicians have promised that their program could reverse the steady post-1970s growth of income inequality without sacrificing America’s economic dynamism.
But having promised win-win, they may deliver lose-lose.
I think it is ironic that the logical end result of all of this tinkering is what a cultural hero of our leftist friends once sang against:
Dash is denied the opportunity to play sports because his power of super-speed means that he might excel. When he fights with his mother, pointing out that he is special, she insists that “everyone is special.” Dejectedly, he looks down and mumbles, “then no one is.” Similarly, Mr. Incredible gets in a fight with his wife, trying to intercede on his son’s behalf, and bemoans the fact that the school stages a fourth-grade “graduation.” This, he insists, represents the constant modern-day effort to find new ways of rewarding mediocrity.
“The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – “parity of esteem.” An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.
In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I’m as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers – or should I say, nurses? – will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.”
Thus I am even more pleased that in her post she rebels against this abominable standard that would have kept us in the dark ages in the best way possible, by excelling!
With my favorite partner, Bill Kent, we won a four session event to get a subsidized trip to Reno next March, along with the right to compete in the North American Pairs event there. We won by an incredible margin of 7 boards (probably akin to winning a football game 63-3) and won each of the sessions with excellent games each time. Our percentage average was over 61%; generally, 55% or 56% will win the event. Am I bragging? You bet!
I don’t play enough Bridge and would love to have the chance to learn to play better from a master. Maybe if our liberal friends address bridge inequality I’d have a chance.
While I am not litigious by nature — my views being rather Jacksonian in that regard — perhaps Governor Palin, Mrs. Vincent and their publishers have different views. It is my understanding that British libel law is far more inclined toward the plaintiffs than is true here in the United States, especially for “public figures” as covered under the U.S. Sullivan precedent.
Should Mrs. Vincent retain the services of a British attorney, I suspect that your publisher would be advised to settle the suit at any sum asked, as it would be quite impossible to prove that Mrs. Vincent is “closely associated with a well-known white supremacist,” which I most assuredly am not, no matter what any particular idiot has published to that effect or how often it has been repeated.
Think of the cost to your publisher, Felix Dennis, of flying Charles Johnson, Michelangelo Signorile, Rachel Maddow, et al., to London for a libel trial, sir. Ask yourself how such witnesses might stand up under cross-examination,
How do I know this is good advice? As Chris Hitchens reminds us Polanski won such a case in England :
In July 2005, Polanski took advantage of the notorious British libel laws to sue my colleagues at Vanity Fair and collect damages for his hurt feelings. It doesn’t matter much what the supposed complaint was—he had allegedly propositioned a Scandinavian model while purring about making her the next Sharon Tate—so much as it mattered that Polanski would dare to sue on a question of his own moral standing and reputation. “I don’t think,” he was quoted as saying of the allegation, “you could find a man who could behave in such a way.” Say what? Anxious for his thin skin, the British courts did not even put Polanski to the trouble of appearing in a country where he has never lived. They allowed him to pout his outraged susceptibilities by video link before heaping him with fresh money.
That being the case a certain Little Green Flake should be happy Mr. McCain is Jacksonian by nature. I’d say the same about Maddow but she doesn’t have to worry as Robert Stacy somehow thinks she is a handsomer woman than Mika. I beg to differ.
Frankly I think he should be more worried about Todd Palin. He has a lot more free time to avenge his wife’s honor.
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