Redstate

Posted at 1:54am on May 24, 2008 Of Pots And Kettles

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

There isn't much to be added to the bill of particulars Brother Lane has drawn up against Mark Kleiman. But I'll just throw in a couple of points:

1. It is notable just how much of a volte face Kleiman performs on the "chickenhawk" issue when a Republican candidate is the war hero and the Democratic candidate isn't. Not only does he suddenly adopt a tut-tutting attitude towards anything that even smacks of chickenhawking, he goes so far as to say that war heroes whose fathers and grandfathers were themselves Navy admirals--and widely admired ones at that--are somehow super-privileged as a consequence; "McCain, the son and grandson of Admirals and the husband of a multi-millionaire beer baron's daughter . . ." Funny. John Kerry came from a privileged background too and married even higher up the income ladder than did McCain but one searches Kleiman's archive in vain for derogatory comments concerning this entirely tangential matter. Such sneers, you see, only count when they are directed at Republicans. Just like "chickenhawk" sneers and smears.
   
2. There is something quite rich about Kleiman attacking McCain for "an astonishingly intemperate blast at Obama" and stating that McCain "sounded like a cranky old man" who took a "cheap shot" at Obama, while at the same time opining--in what he no doubt believes is expert, psychoanalytic fashion--that McCain has a "constitutional incapacity for empathy with anyone less fortunate than he is." How Kleiman came across this Lecterian bit of insight into McCain's psyche is anyone's guess, of course, but if I didn't know better, I would say that it is "astonishingly intemperate" and "cranky" (we will refrain from making Kleimanesque ageism cracks--someone has to be an adult around here, after all).

I'm usually not in the habit of demanding blogger apologies--that sort of thing is a waste of time 99 times out of 100. But might this case be an exception?

Posted in 2008 | The — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:01pm on Mar. 30, 2008 Just In Case They Are Necessary

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Some more facts concerning the "trade deficit" can be found here and here.

Posted at 2:38pm on Mar. 21, 2008 This Post Is Dedicated To The Worst Person In The World

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Namely, Keith Olbermann.

Ever since the Obama passport breach story came out, Olbermann has worked himself into quite the lather asking over and over "what did [the Bush Administration] know, and when did they know it?!?!", so convinced is Olbermann that the breach of the passport files constituted a Rovian plot, the likes of which MSNBC pays Keith good money to rail against (whether or not there is actually any basis in reality to do so).

Doubtless, the fever pitch worked itself into a veritable frenzy when it was revealed that Hillary Clinton's passport files were breached as well. The worst fears and most self-righteous fantasies of Olbermann and his comrades-in-rant were apparently realized. The GOP is out to get the Democrats! Nixon would have been proud!

Except, a monkey wrench has now been thrown into the fantasizing: John McCain's passport files have been breached as well.

Kind of makes it more difficult to believe that this is a project of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, doesn't it? I mean, if Republicans are so sinister, so Rovian, as utterly power-mad as Olbermann & Company make us out to be, why would we try to take out our own nominee?

Things that make you go "hmmm," eh? That sound you hear in the background is Olbermann's brain cell (yes, note the singular construction of that word "cell") exploding.

Of course, if Olbermann wanted someone to rail at, perhaps he could have gone after comrade-in-rant Joe Conason. See, Conason thought it wise to call for the release of Barack Obama's passport files. Evidently, it was so important for Conason to find out whether or not Obama traveled to Europe that he essentially advocated the very intrusion into Obama's privacy that Olbermann is spending so much time denouncing.

Look, I know that Florida and Michigan and the prospects of a long and bloody nomination fight have gotten Olbermann and the comrades-in-rant down. But really, there's just no reason for the Reality-Based Community to stop being so reality-based with their commentary.

I mean, they were reality-based to begin with, right?

Right?

Why is no one answering in the affirmative?

Posted in 2008 | Keith Olbermann | Kneel Before Zod | Rooting For Injuries | The — Comments (19)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 6:53pm on Jan. 4, 2008 Remember The Lancet Report On Casualties In Iraq?

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Sure you do. It told us that casualties were over 650,000 and conveniently served to increase the tone and tenor of the critiques and attacks leveled at the American reconstruction effort in Iraq. "The reality-based community" was especially taken with the Lancet survey.

And as with a great many things "the reality-based community" is taken with, the Lancet survey turned out to be disastrously wrong. Key passage:

Officials at Iraq Body Count strongly opposed the Iraq war yet issued a detailed critique of the Lancet II study. Researchers wading into a field that is this fraught with danger have a responsibility not to be reckless with statistics, the group said. The numbers claimed by the Lancet study would, under the normal ratios of warfare, result in more than a million Iraqis wounded seriously enough to require medical treatment, according to this critique. Yet official sources in Iraq have not reported any such phenomenon. An Iraq Body Count analysis showed that the Lancet II numbers would have meant that 1,000 Iraqis were dying every day during the first half of 2006, "with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms." The February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque is widely credited with plunging Iraq into civil war, yet the Lancet II report posits the equivalent of five to 10 bombings of this magnitude in Iraq every day for three years.

"In the light of such extreme and improbable implications," the Iraq Body Count report stated, "a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data."

Will we have any response to all of this from "the reality-based community"? Probably not. Once the propaganda point is made and it permeates the public consciousness, our friends on the other side of the ideological divide don't really like to revisit the subject matter of that propaganda. Why mess up a convenient meme, after all?

Posted in Casualty Count | Foreign Affairs | Iraq | The — Comments (11)/ Email this page » / Read More »