The Mercenary’s Cookbook

Skepticism Examiner: Debunking the ‘Global Cooling’ myth

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PALIN: “It’s a toxic mess on Mainstreet that’s affecting Wallstreet.”

This was posted by bobcn in the comments of Swampland’s blog, and I thought it warranted its own post.

1983 - Obama graduates Columbia University with B.A in international relations

1983 - Obama works in NYC at the New York Public Interest Research Group

1984 - Palin wins Miss Wasilla beauty contest
1984 - Palin finishes second in the Miss Alaska pageant

1985 - Obama takes job as director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago

1987 - Palin graduates University of Idaho with B.A. in communications-journalism

1988 - Obama enters Harvard Law School
1988 - Palin works briefly as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage

1989 - Obama selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review

1990 - Obama elected president of the Harvard Law Review

1991 - Obama graduates magna cum laude at Harvard Law School

1991 - Palin elected president Wasilla PTA

1992–2004 - Obama teaches constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School

1992–1996 - Palin elected to Wasilla city council

1993-2004 - Obama works in 12-attorney law firm specializing in neighborhood economic development

1996–2002 - Palin elected Wasilla mayor (pop. ~5500)

1997–2004 - Obama elected to Illinois state Senate - 13th district (pop. 781,037)

2002 - Palin loses race for lieutenant governor

2003-2004 - Palin appointed Chairperson, Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission

2004-today - Obama elected to U.S. Senate (committees: Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works, Veterans’ Affairs, Homeland Security, etc)

12/2006-today - Palin elected Governor of Alaska (pop. 683,478) (San Jose, Ca pop. 989,496)

A Not-So-Swift Choice - Swampland - TIME

The thing about the DC bubble that encapsulates the talking heads and shields them from the public, is that every now and then, they have to walk among us, and at the convention, the distrust is palpable.

When a FOX News reporter tried to interview some passing protestors, they all immediately told him to fuck off. Then, they started to chant, "Fuck FOX News" until they had to cut away.

The panel discussion of MSNBC talking heads can’t get away with much without the crowd coming down on them. Buchanan is usually booed down for his GOP spin, and Maddow cheered. Chris Matthews mentioned talking with some die-hard Hillary Clinton supporters who were quite hard on him.

Usually these guys are insulated in their studios, interviewing Very Important People, and rarely coming in contact with the public, and they can convince themselves that they speak for average Joes. Every now and then, however, these guys have to venture out in public, and average Joes are giving a piece of their mind.

Here is a headline that ought to forever be retired from local reporting on the Democratic Convention: the “Survival Guide”. 5280, Denver Magazine, Denver Post, Fort Collins: Now and Yellow Scene have all gotten on board this train.

The Rocky Mountain News  publisher John Temple apologized for mistakenly saying Obama had Kenyan citizenship, which led to him being declared “Worst Person in the World” By Keith Olberman on Tuesday.

However, Denver PR Blog raises a good point:

The timeline of what happened is clear, but left unexplained is exactly what process exists that lets staffers rip “facts” from the Internet and package them as verified material.

One of the great questions of modern journalism is how, exactly, these rumors get picked up by what should be responsible news organizations and spread unquestioningly, until they become "fact". Like Hamlet, we are left to ask, "Duped, or playing dumb?"

This seems to point to duped. I often get the sense that reporters are often handed oppo research, and simply pass it on, especially if that contact is a good source — meaning, they give them a lot of good stories, that turn out to be crap. So they don’t much care if they’ve been had, so long as they make the front page, and the editors don’t care if a story is  BS, so long as it pleases the right people and gets links.

As evidence for the "playing dumb" explanation, look at "The Most Trusted Name in News", whom are happily pimping the latest fabrications from Corsi, the man behind the Swift Boat Vets. They know the abomination in Obama Nation is Corsi, yet, they give him air time. The justification is that Corsi is a bestselling author, but so are a lot of people who wrote books that aren’t conservative fabrications, and yet don’t get this kind of media backing.

Now, we see that CNN is also asking the tough questions about whether or not Obama is the anti-Christ. Fifty-one percent of CNN’s viewers are Democrats, which means it’s their fault for willingly tuning in to the network to be brow-beaten with crap.

This Sunday, we get a condescending piece in the New York Times about liberal Boulder, called “Twenty-Five Square Miles Surrounded by Reality.” The realists being, those who don’t recycle or ride their bikes to work because they know global warming is a myth.

I especially liked this, on the liberals favorite conservative, David Brooks:

The New York Times columnist David Brooks has made immense fun of it as a latte town of bourgeois bohemians with their in-your-jowls liberalism and an uncanny ability to accrue wealth while pretending to care only about following their creative visions. According to American City Business Journals, Boulder has a higher percentage of college and postcollege graduates than anywhere else in the country.

One doesn’t have to wonder how Brooks would react to a feature travel article portraying some rural small town in Colorado as Bible-thumping, prairie dog shooting, tobacco chewers, whom are impervious to the realities of, say, the Iraq War. Such a portrayal of stereotypes would be considered “elitist”, because the elites in DC think all it takes is a latte reference to endear them to the red necks they exploit to benefit the high rollers who invite them to their soirees.

Do we all remember the outrage over Obama’s insistence that if he had the location of Osama Bin Laden, he would take him out, even if Bin Laden was is on the Pakistan side of the border? Such an action was said to be irresponsible and demonstrate Obama’s naivite regarding foreign policy. Turns out, the Bush Administration has attacked our ally a time or two.

Now, we have word that Bush is setting up a diplomatic mission in Iran, and considering speeding up the drawdown of troops in Iraq. It seems like only yesterday we were hearing about how talking with Iran would be the equivelant of capitulation.

Then this week, we have McCain taking up Obama’s position on troop strength in Afghanistan:

Then just yesterday, we have the ultimate in oddness: McCain’s foreign policy advisor claims it’s not McCain but Obama who is the most like Bush regarding foreign policy.

So what’s going on here? Are Bush and McCain really going to adopt Obama’s foreign policy? And how does that jibe with making Obama out to be a lightweight?

What you are seeing is the result of an unavoidable political reality. The policy difference between the two could not be more clear regarding foreign policy: Obama believes in maintaining diplomatic contact with all countries, friend or foe, Bush and McCain do not. Obama thinks we’ve done everything we can in Iraq militarily, and that our troops should come home and deployed eslewhere, like Afghanistan. McCain and Bush think we should stay until the job is done.  The polling shows that Americans are overwhelmingly on Obama’s side of this.

But this doesn’t mean Bush and McCain have flip-flopped. Bush has floated the idea of drawing down troops before every major election, and it’s always set to begin after the vote is cast. It didn’t take long after the last midterm election for the promised withdrawal to become a “Surge”. What McCain and Bush are doing is muddying the issue because they know Bush’s handling of Iraq is wildly unpopular, and that the Republicans can not maintain control of the White House if they openly campaign for continuing the occupation as they are now.

This is why those who support a continued occupation of Iraq support John McCain, and those who want to leave support Obama. Even though Obama is making the same noises about basing any decision on the reality on the ground, people know he’s committed to leaving. Supporters of McCain know that no matter what McCain says, if he’s elected the troops will remain. So proponents of both those positions are willing to fuzzy the issue by making leaving “contingent” on the Generals, or predicting, yet again, that things will be stable enough in Iraq to leave.

But make no mistake about it. If you believe in staying in Iraq, you should vote for John McCain. And if you think it’s time to leave, you should vote for Barrack Obama.

We are all probably familiar with the government policy of not allowing photography of the caskets returning from Iraq. Regardless of how one feels about that, this story struck me as a bit ridiculous.

Gina Gray was the director of public affairs at Arlington National Cemetery. I say was because she was fired. The cause of the firing is what is so disturbing. Apparently cemetery officials were installing new restrictions on the coverage of funerals of those who died in Iraq.

Here’s the thing, though: the family granted permission to have the funeral filmed. Gina Gray honored the family’s wishes, which is why she got fired:

Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.

“Had I not put my foot down, had I just gone along with it and not said regulations were being violated, I’m sure I’d still be there,” said the jobless Gray, who, over lunch yesterday in Crystal City, recounted what she is certain is her retaliatory dismissal. “It’s about doing the right thing.”

She is apparently the fourth director in the past four years. But there’s more:

Gray contends that Higginbotham [the cemetery's deputy superintendent] has been calling the families of the dead to encourage them not to allow media coverage at the funerals — a charge confirmed by a high-ranking official at Arlington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Gray says Higginbotham told staff members that he called the family of the next soldier scheduled for burial at Arlington and that the family, which had originally approved coverage, had changed its mind. Gray charges that Higginbotham admitted he had been making such calls to families for a year and said that the families “appreciated him keeping the media out.”

But here’s the kicker. When she got her termination e-mail from her supervisor, Phyllis White, it said she ”failed to act in an inappropriate manner.”