Too Biased Even To Describe The Bias

Every other Sunday NY Times Public Apologist Clark Hoyt delivers a comedy classic.  This weekend he regales us with a explanation of the Times non-coverage of the ACORN debacle (my emphasis):

It was an intriguing story: employees of a controversial outfit, long criticized by Republicans as corrupt, appearing to engage in outrageous, if not illegal, behavior. An Acorn worker in Baltimore was shown telling the “prostitute” that she could describe herself to tax authorities as an “independent artist” and claim 15-year-old prostitutes, supposedly illegal immigrants, as dependents.

But for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still. Its slow reflexes — closely following its slow response to a controversy that forced the resignation of Van Jones, a White House adviser — suggested that it has trouble dealing with stories arising from the polemical world of talk radio, cable television and partisan blogs. Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.

Mull over over the phrase I emphasized for a moment - see anything missing?

Let's see, does anyone think the Times does a poor job of covering stories that are getting wild attention from the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann?  That is not my experience - it's old times, but the Times went all-in with the most extreme charge in the Jeff Gannon/Valerie Plame flare-up, based on "research" from the Daily Kos that didn't make sense and didn't hold up.

That is a bit of a weak start for Hoyt - the perceived problem is not that the Times passes over all the partisan media, it is that the Times ignores the right-wing media.  Dare we mention John Edwards, Charles Freeman, and Eason Jordan?

Hoyt writes of Missing Cities:

The Times quoted a statement by Bertha Lewis, Acorn’s chief executive, saying that the two activists, James O’Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, spent months visiting Acorn offices in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia before getting the responses they wanted. But the article left out one city Lewis cited: New York [link]. Between the time of her statement and the publication of the article, a new video surfaced, featuring an Acorn worker in Brooklyn advising Giles to bury money from prostitution in a tin.

Some readers saw a deliberate effort by the paper to help Lewis out of a tight spot. Scott Shane, the reporter, said he had been unable to reach Lewis and felt that including New York among the cities she mentioned would have implied unfairly that she was lying, something for which he had no evidence. He said he thought it was unlikely that employees in New York would inform her of their misconduct before the video appeared. I think he should have included New York.

My goodness - why not just run the allegation about New York, then, with an explanation that the ACORN exec may have been misinformed.  Maybe Times readers are adults capable of making their own choice as to whether she was lying or in the dark?

The Times has spent too much time listening to Obama and Gibbs - now even they are deploring these distractions:

Dean Baquet, the Washington bureau chief, said, “We did not ignore the Acorn story, so I don’t think it’s fair for people to say we blew it off.” ...Baquet said people need to keep Acorn in perspective with other Washington stories: health care, two wars and the deep recession.

Right, and the Washington Bureau missed the Van Jones story because everyone was out on holiday.  With Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas still on the calendar I am confident the Times will miss a few more stories unfavorable to Team Obama.

Let's finish up Hoyt's swan dive into the tank:

Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”

Despite what the critics think, Abramson said the problem was not liberal bias.

Nooooo. 

I recommend Memorandum and the InstaPundit for these poor Times hothouse reporters.  Memeorandum is a news aggregator which kicks up a lot of stories from the left, so the Times reporters will feel right at home.

Comments

[bishop]

'epic fail', Hoyt does come from McClatchy, where he learned ignoring convenient facts like the 2002 backgrounder with Richard Clarke that cast doubt on his most fervent
more recent claims.

[Extraneus]

Admission that their readership is far left:

Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”

Put RISEN and LICHTBLAU on it!

(Imagine if Clark didn't have a sense of humor?)

[Richard]

"She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies."

It's a dirty job, but somebody's go to do it.

[It's dawning on people. A pig in a poke. Nobody 'important' looked in his mouth.]

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that we'll impeach Obama because he is crazy and impotent, but the excuse will be the neverending lies.
===============================

[Jane]

I recommend Memorandum and the InstaPundit for these poor Times hothouse reporters.

I recommend that they close the doors and end the charade.

[bishop]

They'll do what they always do, rely on the media matters point person

[From a little acorn, a mighty joke grew.]

I'm getting more and more steamed about that 'gamechanger' that got snuffed. The reporter talks of abusive and threatening phone calls from the Obama campaign.

Impeach this administration. Before it is too late.
==============================

[Gmax]

Despite what the critics think, Abramson said the problem was not liberal bias.

No I am sure that the real problem is falling revenues, and you can only cover so much and boy a newspaper bailout would be so darn attractive right about now...

[Topsecretk9]

Huh.

“We did not ignore the Acorn story, so I don’t think it’s fair for people to say we blew it off.” ...Baquet said people need to keep Acorn in perspective with other Washington stories

This is a strange statement especially given THEY HAD a story on deep ACORN corruption and KILLED last year it because they admitted it was a "game changer" and might hurt their precious One.

[MDr]

The Gray Lady is still following - "All the news that fit to spike"

[centralcal]

You are so right, Tops.

[Donald]

Big game in Foxboro at 1:00PM. Just sayin.

[matt]

Interesting panel at the CA Republican convention with Breitbart and 3 other media personalities. It's turning into all out warfare with the Left wing media.

The story suppression, propaganda, and laziness are being exposed more and more, and the fissures in the edifice are growing.

As to the NYT, You got it wrong Mdr; it's

"All The News That Fits"

Viva La Revolucion!

[Jack is Back!]

Its not liberal bias. Its eastern left-wing elitist establishment bias. Big difference.

These folks are more than your typical limousine artsy-craftsy, arugula eating liberal. They are complicit apologists and enablers of a corrupt and dangerous marxist oriented statist administration.

Someone I know who is close to the Sulzberger family but of a much different political culture has told me that they are in big trouble financially. More than is known. They are losing close to $2 per paper each issue. That cannot be going on forever unless Warren Buffett is your angel and that is unlikely.

[Surely some of the Sulzberger clan are leveraged.]

All the News That's Left to Print.
====================

[Jack is Back!]

Nah, the big game is in Detroit at 1 PM - at least they will be dry:)

Donald, what kind of reception you think Matt Ryan will get coming back to Beantown?

[Jack is Back!]

How come the NY Times didn't run this picture in today's Style section?

And what the hell does it say about Zappy and his crazy left wing socialistic administration? They drink blood?

[Donald]

Well Jack, they're yankee sports fans so I lean to the "hate" card.

That said, he's like the nicest guy in pro football, and did great things for BC.

By the way, BC's current quarterback, Justin Tuggle, I played against his dad Jessie (Long time Falcon's middle linebacker) in high school (War Eagle) and then officiated his Justin's midget football games when he was like 6 years old. Half that team was made up of Falcon players kids. They got waxed. Justin was like a back up tackle or something. When he got to high school, he played for a really stupid/crappy high school coach and I felt the guy would destroy any opportunity. Fortunately, the numbnut got fired, and Justin got a good look.

I hope Matt doesn't get killed in Detroit. He is beyond talented, however he doesn't have the Matt Ryan head.

Matt Ryan/Michael Vick. We still have numbnuts calling up talk shows and calling Ryan a bitch, and Vick got screwed. Also, that Vick is the once and future king. Outstanding.

Sorry folks, this ain't got nothing to do with the fall of civilization but I'm giddy. Giddy I tell you.

[MayBee]

Scott Shane is the reporter who completely whitewashed the Chicago Annenberg Challenge for Obama and Ayers.

[bishop]

And he provided the 'torture narrative' that Law & Order used this week, he also out Keith Martinez, the on who broke KSM

[PD]

Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire.

One thing this story did not lack was facts. I guess having the whole thing on videotape is somehow nothing more than false narrative in Hoyt's world?

[Rob Crawford]

PD -- In Timesspeak (a variant of Newspeak), a "fact" is a piece of information that can damage the political fortunes of Republicans. Thus, outright speculation about McCain having an affair is a "fact", while the ACORN story shows a complete lack of "facts".

It all makes sense when you use their dictionary.

[Elliott]

Does this mean the Ayers/Dreams questions will make the NYT one day? Gazing upon the One's final diary entry at Kos, the gimlet-eyed critic of literature perceives at once that his unwillingness to act on the recommendation of his commander in Afghanistan is tragically foreshadowed by his reluctance to deploy the apostrophe:

I think its the right thing to do and I also think it will help us win. I also agree that it is the job of Democratic elected officials to help shape public opinion, and not just respond passively to opinion thats been aggressively shaped by the Republicans PR machinery. I am simply suggesting, based on my experience, that people will respond to a powerfully progressive agenda when its couched in optimism, pragmatism and our shared American ideals.

[JM Hanes]

When the best the Times' managing editor can come up with is "insufficient tuned-in-ness," there's a lot more missing than important stories. How desperate do you have to be to use incompetence as a defense against accusations of bias? Gail Collins, the retired editorial page editor, now writes some of the most insipid, paragons of untuned-in-ness, in the MSM. Perhaps that's because the Times' editorial board opinions have long suffered from an insufficiency of attention to reporting in the Times' news pages.

Baquet, Washington bureau chief, whines at the unfairness of it all. As usual, the public editor remains blissfully unaware that he highlights management hypocrisy in his every column, to whit, executive editor Keller lays out his exquisite sensitivity to the blogosphere for all but Hoyt to see. The Times uses its own blog pages as a convenient purgatory for experimental apologias and vaguely cited stories the gatekeepers apparently aren't sure they can afford to bury completely.

How apropos that the paper's record number of anonymous sources and its public editor will now be joined by an anonymous editor of publicly available news that Times reporters, armed with journalism degrees, are not equipped to ferret out.

[hit and run]

SUNDAY BAD UPDATE:

Bad is still in the hospital, they're still running tests, etc etc etc.

I won't be doing any updates more specific than that here on JOM, but you can email me -- jomhitandrun @ gmail . com -- if you want to be included on email updates.

Also, there is a nifty way to send her a message via the hospital website. They will print out your message, put it in an envelope and deliver it to her in her room. Email me if you want instructions.

Finally, if anyone would like to send something to her (flowers, balloons, dvds, dirty magazines or whatnot), Jane the Linchpin is organizing the hell out of that community.

Email her -- fwdaj @ live . com -- if you want to sign up.

[Original MikeS]

I wish those folks, with powerful urges to reform private enterprise, would reform the frigging Times.

[Gregory Koster]

Dear JMH: Nope. Hoyt is being used as the public dummy, to be laughed at for swallowing the bunk that comes out of the editorial rooms month after month. We're still laughing at Clark, but the laughter has an irritated edge. He's turning into a bore, and the sight of him coming out of Keller/Baquet/Abramson's office tugging his chin, thinking how he's going to write this latest column even while the "KICK ME" sign that Keller&Co have taped onto his backside flaps in the wind still induces laughs, but laughs with an urge to follow up.

Related topic: TM had a fine < a href="http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/09/looking-for-the-gitgo-on-gitmo.html"> post on the preliminaries to Greg Craig's execution by bus for not making Guantanamo Bay disappear. I noted in this thread that the article TM cited was not actually by the Washington POST, though it appeared to be. It was a collaboration between the POST and ProPublica that home for canned liberal zombies created by Herb and Marion Sandler, close vampire buddies of Soros's who did just fine out of the bank crash last year, thanks. The article TM cites is classic "inside politics." You'd think the POST, in the forefront of The Once's posterior cleaning squad (their motto "It's Rump-Licking Good!" would be able to find the florist who is picking out roses for Craig, prior to the execution. Instead they have to join forces with ProPublica and its snicker-worthy motto "Investigative journalism in the public interest, not that vulg-ahr crap that O'Keefe/Giles do."

Why? I have a lurid notion that this is a straw in the wind to the coming press bailout. The Cardin bill in the Senate is insufficent. What good to recast press companies as nonprofits when they are losing dough by the barrel? Perhaps ProPublica gets all the dough, and if the POST wants a chunk, they better sign up with ProPublica, who will act as political commissar.

Too paranoid? Or not? How about it, gang?

Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster

[JM Hanes]

Elliott:

I must admit to a frisson of high anxiety, when you laid bare the syntactical sin of collective nouns and plural pronouns.

The red pen is dead, long live the red pen! Hear my confession!

I split infinitives with increasing, though uneasy, regularity! I have excluded whom from all but my most pedantic polemics. Mark down the auto-pilot correction of my own offspring's mauling of me and I me, as stoic vice not remedial virtue! I mix metaphors with indiscriminate abandon and think to evade the consequences of such literary crimes with limp disclaimers!

Alas, the transparent halfheartedness of my repentance will surely never pass the editorial muster that forgiveness requires. I can only hope that the red pen writes, and having writ, moves on.

[Topsecretk9]

"Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire."

Like the New York Times in depth expose on anonymous sources thinking McCain was close to a youngish intern?

What's hilarious about this is the NYT's also IGNORED A FACTUAL story with far more sources happening in part in their own city but they choose not to cover it because it was tawdry.

[JM Hanes]

Gregory:

It's my impression that the proposed press bailout has been proving quite unpopular on the Hill. It seems that there's considerably more enthusiasm in certain quarters for "reforming" the internet.

BTW, I, for one, would be perfectly happy to stipulate as to your sincerity and your name -- although I wouldn't dream of assuming that yours means mine and must admit to some confusion on that point. :-)

[Topsecretk9]

The tawdry story the NYT's ignored was John Edwards.

Scott Shane is the reporter who completely whitewashed the Chicago Annenberg Challenge for Obama and Ayers.

And Maybee, IIRC he was quite snotty with the liberal CA professor about too, no?

[Talk Talk.]

Not to mention all the dangling participles I like to speak of.
======================================

[tommy]

"Jill Abramson, ...and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media..."

Even their lame, transparent attempt to cover transparent bias has to knock Fox News while they have no problem spouting CNN, MSNBC, and even Daily Kos as if they were reputable sources.

[Chile goes boom, boom.]

G&JMH, I think it is fairly safe to say that that sort of Pravda Press is very much the intention of, shall we say, a certain segment of Obama's coterie, but, and it is a very big BUT, that sort of authoritarianism will no more fly in the US than in the USSR. Oops, what I just said.

Seriously, glasnost came from copying machines. Glasnost ought to be Palin's theme. She heard about it out her back door.
==================================

[Utterly unconscious of their bias, despite ingenuous explanations of it. Another beaut..]

Yeah, tommy, thanks for the prime addition to my silver plated irony collection: Opinion Media.
==============================

[Gulping Traitor Aide by the Gallon.]

Er, disingenuous. Hmmm. Come to think of it, ingenuous fits; the naivete astounds.
===========================

[boris]

"that sort of authoritarianism will no more fly in the US ..."

And yet the AGW scam persists despite a decade of cooling and real science from skeptics.

Overuse any disinfectant and evolution will eventually produce a more virulent strain impervious to it.

ISTM we are seeing the more virulent strain. Complacency is not indicated.

[About Scott Shane]

My contemporaneous post about Shane's Ayers article is at my name's link, and includes a list of those who helped him spread the story.

Shane wrote the ACORN story in the way he did in part because others let him off the hook on the Ayers report by not doing things in an effective way.

[Come on, Commatariat.]

Yeah, boris, that's a good example of why I said 'Oops, what I just said'. How long was the USSR under the thumb before glasnost? How imminent, actually, functionally, past, is the application of a similar authoritarian press technique? What happens when they can track dissent through the internet?
====================================

[jimmyk]

And now one of the good ones from the NY Times, William Safire, is dead at 79. RIP.

[caro]

Now, JMH, Elliott is a sensitive man and uses a purple pen, I am sure.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Clauses, good people, clauses. Write everything in unconnected clauses. Don't worry about grammar, syntax, typos, etc. It is all just A-okay. I know this because when my son was in 9th grade, he got an A++ on an unreadable paper and when I questioned the teacher about it, I was told that all that mattered was "what content he was trying to portray, the rest was window dressing."

[bgates]

The red pen is dead, long live the red pen!

JMH, I don't think Elliott would hold you and me you and I? the two of us to such an exacting standard. His concern is with one too gifted to make such errors. I must admit, the quotes he's provided from Obama's Kos diary would have contained mistakes if they had been written by somebody else, so it's important to have explanations for how Obama is using these apparent junior-high-school-level failures to point us to deeper truths.

Hey Elliott, do you think you could do the same thing with his foreign and domestic policy? That would be really reassuring.

[Rob Crawford]

I dunno, Sara. Doesn't seem fair to make the Clauses do that much extra work, considering the hell they must go through in December.

[bgates]

Rob - December? Since they relocated to DC in January it seems like they haven't had a minute's rest. The old man has got to be the hardest-working civil servant we've ever had.

[daddy]

JiB,

Thanks for the link to that photo of the Spanish Prime Ministers Adam's Family Goth-ette daughters. That's who we ought to be comparing Michelle to fashion-wise, not Sarkozy's babe.

Anyhow, Spain, with unemployment at 18.5 percent, is where 17 California Legislators are going to visit, (with wives, girlfriends, aides, entourage etc) for 3 weeks to study water. That's what had me laughing so hard on Friday when listening to ">http://www.kfiam640.com/pages/johnandkenshow/"> The John and Ken Show hour 3 rant. If anyone is interested, click on the "Sacramento Hacks on Junkets to Europe" podcast on the right of the page, and after 4 minutes spent savaging Randy Quaid for robbery, they get on a non-partisan roll thats funny and worth listening to.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Uh oh.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. Thirty-six percent (36%) are Very Angry.

Despite the high level of political anger last year that helped fuel President Obama’s election, 59% say the current level of political anger in the country is higher than it was when George W. Bush was president.

[Extraneus]

Is that our Larwyn who Fausta hat-tipped at Jack's link?

(And there's that practiced smile someone linked about the other day. Boy, is there anything more important to teach a kid? Be worth sending them for lessons if necessary, I'd say.)

[Jane]

Later than ever - the latest podcast of FWDAJ is up - lun.

Also both Caro's and JMH's pix are linked there if you want to see them again.

[daddy]

I am not one to talk about lousy writing style or run on sentences, but I think we can all agree that it is good Elliott is not a Roman Centurion and JMH is not an anti-Roman graffiti writer from Monty Python's Life of Bryant: ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8&feature=related"> The Latin Lesson:)

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Switzerland arrested Polanski and there is talk of extradition to US. Can someone tell me why the statute of limitations would not have run on this? Is it because he bolted after a conviction? I can't remember the case well enough from back then. The "victim" would be, what, 44 now?

[daddy]

Yea! Over the top Jane. Can't wait:)

[Blockbuster.]

Speaking of bias, everyone drop everything and go take a look at the link under name for Steve McIntyre's destruction of the Yamal temperature proxy series, which has been instrumental in many of the climate reconstructions that purport to re-inforce Mann's crooked hockey stick. Even the non-scientifically minded among you can appreciate the second graph. It shows the effect of cherry picking data in the results of the series. It is a very damning post.
====================================

[matt]

If ever there was a day to honor, syntax, grammar, and style it is today.

Requiescat in Pace, Mr. Safire.

[Ann]

Jane and Elliott,

Are you watching the FED EX Cup? Mickelson -9
Tiger -6 It's a shootout!

[Ann]

Sheesh, scratch that last line.

[caro]

Jane, I have been getting your podcast through my iTunes but it stopped updating about four weeks ago. I resubscribed but it still doesn't update. Do you know what happened?

[daddy]

Sara, (sort of a Ted Stevens update)

Your link to Polanski and the underage sex Statute of Limitations reminded me of a recent update related to Ted Steven's.

As we all remember, the lead witness against Stevens, Bill Allen, has already been shown to have been lying at trial, and the Prosecution Team behind him is under investigation for withholding evidence, coaching Allen how to lie, etc.

Well Allen was also the lead witness in Former Alaskan House Speaker ">http://www.adn.com/news/politics/fbi/kott/story/949199.html"> Pete Kott's Conviction.

Kott (who very well may be guilty) has been released from jail as a result of the corrupt Prosecution details that emerged after Stevens was falsely convicted and lost re-election. Anyhow, here we learn that Bill Allen had been under investigation for having sex with multiple underage partners, but that around the time all this witch-hunt started to use Bill Allen to go after Alaska Republican's:

"detective, Kevin Vandegriff, originally suspended his investigation in 2004 at the request of federal prosecutors, but by 2008 had reopened it.."
.Allegations about Allen's sexual activity with a minor arose briefly in a closed hearing in Kott's trial. In her motion, McCloud said the disclosure by prosecutors caught Kott's trial attorney, Jim Wendt, by surprise. When prosecutors assured the judge the information was irrelevant to Kott's trial, the matter didn't go further. "

I don't know if it would have effected the Stevens trial or this one, or if that's normal or abnormal legal-wise, but its another bit of ammunition against Bill Allen and why he might do a corrupt Prosecution Team's biding to stay out of jail. Up here there is no Statute of Limitations, so they're going after Allen again.

[Lesley]

Daddy - What do you hear about Bruce Weyhrauch? Last I heard his case is going before the USSC.

[Old Lurker]

JiB, Warren Buffett is already back stopping WaPo so probably cannot do the same for the Slimes.

[MayBee]

Sara- why did you put victim in quotation marks? She was a 13 year old rape victim.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Maybee: I agree she was raped and abused according to her age at the time, but I couldn't remember the case well enough to remember the details. She is on record of NOT wanting Polanski pursued since she has already settled with him for a sizable amount of money. Do we still consider her a victim if she doesn't consider herself one at this late date?

[It was not consensual.]

She was victimized at the time. Plied with champagne and quaaludes, she still protested.
=================================

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Have you guys seen this video? The blog wars are heating up with LGF. Yikes!

Well I guess that'll teach him to go after Pam Geller.

[oldleprechaun]

"All the news that fits, we print".

[MayBee]

Yes, she was a rape victim.
I don't think we want to start a legal standard wherein rich rapists can pay off their victims and avoid legal penalty.

Of course it is more of a benefit to her personally to get a large settlement rather than see him go to jail. That would be true for any crime victim, wouldn't it? Yet allowing that to take precedence in the legal system is the definition of corruption.

Finally, as Kim points out, she was drugged and anally raped. That would make her a victim at any age, but that she was 13 just makes it more heinous.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Well, having been raped and despising the idea that I was a victim, I wouldn't want to relive it now, 40 years after the fact and apparently she wants no part of a prosecution either. It was another life for her and I can see very well why she wouldn't appreciate being pulled back in and labeled all over again. However, as a legal and personal matter, I'd like to see Polanski castrated and strung up.

[Dixie]

I picked up the NYT this morning because I was waiting for my house guest and internet was down - went to week in review so the experience would be as short as possible - and to my delight found this GEM of an article. I could barely believe the intellectual dishonesty - even in the NY Times.
BUT - I thought it was good news, actually, because:
1. It was so poorly made an argument that even a hardened liberal would wince at it.

2.The lack of real explanation in it as to why they didn't think it was a story - when other leftwing outlets HAD covered it (MSNBC), and when the dem-led government had been furiously cutting ties with Acorn all week, really puts the NYT's "reasons" under suspicion, even from lefties, I'm sure.
I mean "we don't watch Fox news" is clearly not only not true, since they love to call Fox news out, its not a reasonable explanation since Fox wasn't alone in reacting to the story - Teh WON & co seems to have noticed it too. Makes the Hoyt piece seem like an implicit admission that there was another reason- that the right had it so right on this one that even the NYT couldn't spin it leftwards.

3. Well, either that or the NYT now considers being viewed as incompetent better than being thought biased. This, when everyone, including their loyal readers, already knows they are biased (check the comments on the article- those who defend the NYT basically say - "so it's biased- so what?"), so even to their faithful the claim "it wasn't liberal bias" will appear openly dishonest.

So now the NYT has positioned itself as self-avowedly incompetent AND self-evidently dishonest as WELL as (shamefully) biased - all to their own loyal readers. Even leftards like to think they are being told the truth - I would not be surprised if tiny seeds of doubt about everything else in the NYT were planted in some lefty minds this morning.

Either way, they really, really fucked up not only with the original silence, but then, beautifully, with this hilarious and (dare I say incompetent) "defence" of their silence.

= NYT DOUBLE OWN GOAL.

[MayBee]

Oh, Sara. I'm not even into the whole blog war thing but that was very funny. Thanks.

[Harland Brace]

CSGH.OB: China Sun Group.

Best China lithium battery stock. Big move north all this week.

http://www.thestreet.com/storycomments/10596216/1/china-sun-groups-chairman-qa.html

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Results from Instapundit poll, you could select two:

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Yea! Chargers Win 23-13!!!!

[caro]

Sara, at the beginning he says, "HoosierHoops can stay". Is HH a player? I haven't kept up on the blog war either.

[Dissonance digs deep. Into your brain it will creep.]

Nice stuff, Dixie.
===========

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Caro: I don't know. I stopped reading LGF last year when he started in with his obsession with creationism vs evolution. I saw this morning that he has banned over 1200 of his commenters. I stay out of blog wars. I know they are used to generate traffic, but it is too much b.s. and game playing for my taste.

[Jane]

Jane, I have been getting your podcast through my iTunes but it stopped updating about four weeks ago. I resubscribed but it still doesn't update. Do you know what happened?

Caro,

I had no idea, but I will find out.

[bgates]

Sara - do you think Sproles can keep taking that kind of beating all season? Will LT ever come all the way back?

The #3 in that poll surprises me. Petraeus has been appropriately apolitical; how do we even know he's a Republican, much less whether he's the right kind of Republican? He might be Colin Powell all over again.

[Dixie]

Thanks Dissonance- clicked on your id and happy to find your blog - BTW also was at O.U. - Modern History at Lincoln - what college were you at?

[bishop]

Well General Petraueus is a distant No 2, because he's been successful in war, in Iraq
and the successful part of the AfPak theatre, Mitt tags along at 3, with Condi at #4, I'm not going to quibble

[matt]

Petraeus, be assured, is no Colin Powell. He is smarter, more disciplined, and no Washington Warrior. He's the real deal.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I don't think Elliott would hold you and me you and I

You and me. Remember, take the "you and" part out and see if it reads right: "I don't think Elliott would hold I " doesn't work.

[bgates]

Matt - he can sure fight wars, and that's a valuable skill for a general, but what would domestic policy look like under President Petraeus? Has he ever given a hint?

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

bgates: No, I don't think Sproles can take that kind of beating over and over. LT will be out one more week I heard, and then a week off. He has turned into such a weeny, hasn't he?

[JM Hanes]

I think Petraeus is the real deal too, but aside from believing he's my kind of general and knowing he's on America's side, does anyone really have any idea about what his policy perspectives might be? Who knows what he thinks about universal healthcare or nationalizing education or whipping Wall St. into shape -- or dealing with Iran and N. Korea, for that matter?

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

I see from a Larwyn update that Merkel won in Germany. This is good, right?

[PaulL]

The Polish foreign minister is considering asking Obama to pardon Polanski. LOL!

[Captain Hate]

I have a hard time calling LT a weeny for a number of reasons. His success depends on being able to cut quickly and if he's too banged up to do that, I don't see where playing and absorbing hits to make it worse does him or the team any good.

[Steve]

"Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies."

IOW, they're going to grab some intern and put him/her to work looking at Media Matters to see their take on what the "teabaggers" are ranting about that day, then forward that info to the editors so they can assign a reporter to pick which story to copy and paste from the Media Matters site.

Nice work if you can get it.

[Extraneus]

Anyone have questions about Petraus's patriotism? Leadership skills? Competence?

Me neither.

Let's grade him vs. Obama. 10-1, 10-1, x-y? (Just kidding. 8-2?)

The bar is pretty low these days, unfortunately.

[Rick Ballard]

"This is good, right?"

It puts her in contention with Bibi and Sarko for leadership of the free world. The news agencies were all blithering about how "tight" the German election would be but it appears that the German socialists just had their worst post war performance. Merkel's Christian Democrats ceded a couple of percent but they ceded the points to the right, not the left.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I see from a Larwyn update that Merkel won in Germany. This is good, right?

Right. Angela has the same respect for the Communist system that you'd expect from someone who largely grew up in East Germany. She's more pro-market than the CDU as a whole and a good fiend of the USA.

Even better, the FDP made significant gains, so the new coalition should be Merkel's CDU and the FDP and more economically libertarian than the current one; the FDP's motto is "So viel Staat wie nötig, so wenig Staat wie möglich!“ or "As much of a State as necessary, but as little of the State as possible."

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Oh, by the way, you may see American news sources call the FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei) "liberal." Dn't be fooled by this, they're liberal in the "classical liberal" sense. I had an acquaintance who was an FDP MP, and he specifically called out von Hayek, John Stuart Mill, and Locke as important influences on the FDP's philosophy.

[bishop]

You can't fool someone who's lived in the East, with the promise of a glorious revolution.

[Jim Miller]

From Strunk and White: "Some infinitives improve on being split, just as a stick of round stovewood does." Most don't, but some do.

On the other hand, if you start mixing metaphors, you will remind some of us of the NYT's Frank Rich. (At one time, I often wrote posts criticizing his columns. I haven't for some time, in part because I always ended up adding a little "appendix" correcting his writing mistakes.) I can -- sort of -- understand why so many journalists are close to innumerate, but I can not understand why so many of them can not -- or will not -- write clearly.

And if that isn't bad enough, let me add this warning: At least a few people visualize metaphors when they read. So, if you mix metaphors, part of your audience will be confused, amused, or both.

[bgates]

Sara, you know that move where a guy is running unimpeded into the end zone, and he jumps or flips in just for fun? I'd have to be carted off the field after that maneuver, so I'm reluctant to criticize the stones on one of the guys who gets tackled for a living. He sure is confirming that 30 is old for a running back, though.

The Polish foreign minister is considering asking Obama to pardon Polanski.

I'm all for Polanski spending the rest of his days in a deep dark hole, but just as a political move that idea brings tears to my eyes it's so beautiful. Makes you wonder if the Swiss are pissed off enough about that UBS stuff that they were in on it.

[bgates]

Anyone have questions about Petraeus's patriotism? Leadership skills? Competence?

No, the questions I saw (and asked) were about his political philosophy and party affiliation.

Let's grade him vs. Obama.

We're not going to be able to fit the names of the hundreds of millions who would be better than Obama on a primary ballot. Let's grade him vs. the rest of that field.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Hey, guys, don't get me wrong, I love LT, I'm just p.o.'d at him right now after an interview I saw at the end of last season that was one big whine fest. I'll get over it once he is back on the field carrying his weight and scoring. :)

Now Rivers is another story. Everyone I know loves the guy, but just looking at him rubs me the wrong way. I can't even remember why, it is just a visceral reaction. My son barely speaks to me over this as he is a big Rivers fan.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

I could go for either a Palin/Petraeus or a Romney/Petraeus ticket.

[Extraneus]

We're not going to be able to fit the names of the hundreds of millions who would be better than Obama on a primary ballot.

lol

Ok, I admit that was cheating.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Obama’s Two-Part Health Care Plan is Hazardous to Your Health

The name given to this panel in the President’s Stimulus Bill is The Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, and is an already funded $1.1 billion enterprise run by federal bureaucrats—not practicing doctors on the front line or patients. All 15 members of The Council have already been appointed by President Obama. The two part Plan consists of 53 boards and councils, whose underlying method of cutting costs is based on rationing and denying care, not preventing health care need, much like the British Health Care System.

Part II of the Obama health care plan, dubbed “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act,” empowers this Council to create another level of bureaucracy, The Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, which as in The British System, will determine whether to approve or reject treatment for patients based upon the cost of treatment and the number of years the patient will likely benefit from the treatment. This will have the biggest impact on seniors, but rightly has caused concern for Americans of all ages.

Part I of the President’s plan dictates that doctors and hospitals will be overseen and reviewed by The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. This “Coordinator”, who has already been appointed by President Obama, will be responsible for monitoring treatments to ensure doctors and hospitals strictly follow what the government deems appropriate and cost effective, and to “guide medical decisions at the time and place of care.”

The language buried in the Stimulus Bill goes on to say that hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new systems will face penalties. The Secretary of Health and Human Services will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time.” According to those in Congress, penalties could include large six figure financial fines and possible imprisonment, even if the treatment was successful.

Section 102 of the Obama health care plan has the Orwellian title, “Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage.” What this section really mandates is that it is illegal for you to keep your private insurance if your status changes, e.g., if you lose or change your job, become a senior citizen, or graduate from college and land a job.

Section 123 of Part two of the Obama health care plan, establishes a Health Benefits Advisory Committee to “recommend covered benefits.” In Section 142 of the plan, a Health Choices Commissioner is established to “be responsible for the establishment of health benefits.” So according to the bill, this “Committee” recommends what benefits the public are offered and The Commissioner enforces their decision. Essentially, the people receiving or providing the care have no input in the process. ...more