You have to love this part,
Mr. Kuhner said he was not yet convinced by reports from officials of the elementary school that Mr. Obama attended in Indonesia about its secular history. "To simply take the word of a deputy headmaster about what was the religious curriculum of a school 35 years ago does not satisfy our standards for aggressive investigative reporting," he wrote.
mrsbarackobamamrsbarackobama... [looks up]
I also liked the part at the end: Drudge didn't pick up our story, so we e-mailed it to FOX!
I thought this part was funny:
And in an interview, John Moody, a senior vice president at Fox News, said its commentators had erred by citing the Clinton-Obama report. "The hosts violated one of our general rules, which is know what you are talking about," Mr. Moody said.
But this sort of thing is a huge deal -- I haven't checked the Daily Howler yet, but Somerby ought to be delighted. It's a nasty ugly little smear that's getting front page play as a smear, rather than as the story the smearers are trying to spread.
If the media keeps this up, politics could get healthy again.
If the media keeps this up, politics could get healthy again.
Your optimism is charming, LB. We know it's debunked, but so were all the stories of Kerry shooting himself to get a purple heart, and yet...
Not like this, were they? I don't remember page one stories saying "Smear. This is where it comes from." I remember weirdly 'balanced' analysis pieces saying 'These four people say Kerry's wounds were self-inflicted. These four people say they weren't. While official records created at the time suggest that the latter four people (present at the time of the injury) are correct, the first four people point out that there are some gaps and inconsistencies in the official records suggesting they might have been forged.'
If you actually read the stories with attention, the conclusion was obvious, but they were not at all clear that people were just making up vicious lies.
I haven't checked the Daily Howler yet, but Somerby ought to be delighted
Do people still read that guy? I stopped reading him a while back because it seemed like he'd gone a bit nuts.
Oh, he was always a little Ahab-like. But Ahab with a point, and this, exactly, is his hobbyhorse. I check him every couple of weeks still.
I read Somerby everyday. I think it's one of the funniest and most informative blogs out there. I agree with LB: he is like Captain Ahab, but I think the facts that he's pushing are just about the most needed facts out there to understand how our media works. There really does need to be more work done on how the media creates and maintains narratives (whatever their veracity).
So, how is he insane?
This is hilarious stuff:
"Note to Kornblut: Next time, dumb-ass, just shut the fuck up. Just tell us what Clinton has said.
Note to liberals: You'll have to name-call, shout and complain to make them stop this reflexive misconduct. And we'll have to know what to complain about. More on that tomorrow. "
It's funny, but you win one dinky little election and the media seems to decide that maybe you have a point. It's pretty nitucable. It's like NBA referees giving the superstars the breaks. Once you've defeated the other team and the referees too, the referess switch to your side.
It's pretty nitucable
Couldn't have said it better myself; nitucable it is.
you win one dinky little election and the media seems to decide that maybe you have a point
I was thinking this last night, and thinking of you (and Chomsky), John. It really does seem true that the media worships power, and now that the Dems are on the ups, they're getting more favorable coverage.
Not during the Clinton-era, the media didn't worship power enough to give favorable coverage.
Was that true before Monica? Genuine question.
I liked this part: "With so much anonymity, "How do we know that Insight magazine actually exists?" Professor Whitehead added. "It could be performance art."
Clinton wasn't just opposed to/by the Republicans; he was opposed to/by a fair number of Dems early on as well. And, after 1994, the Republicans were seen as the BSDs.
15: You betcha. All the Whitewater bullshit was pre-Monica, as was Travelgate, Vince Foster's suicide, Haircutgate, and all the rest of the nonsense. Monica actually brought some sanity to the coverage of Clinton because he'd finally actually done something wrong.
18- You consider receipt of a consensual blowjob worse than them murder of Vince Foster??
ONE definition of "madrassah" is, in fact, the building or group of buildings used for teaching Islamic theology and religious law, which would typically including a mosque, but also the building where Obama Hussein went to school. It should be noted that he also went to a Catholic school.
But it was a secular public school. IOW, WTF?
19: The operative word in 18 is "actually."
Are you claiming there was NO Islamic theology or religious law taught there?
Or maybe 19 forgot to add the <sarcasm> tag.
(You know, this is why I hate it when people post under one-first-name monikers. I thought 'Jake' was familiar, but now I'm starting to doubt it.)
Yes. I am. If you've got anything to point to not originally sourced to that same Insight story that indicates that the school Obama went to was contemporaneously referred to as a madrassa, or that it taught Islamic theology, link it. Links to unsourced blog posts will be ignored.
When in France as a youth, John Kerry went to an "école"! These schools often contain teachers who love France more than America! In fact, he may have been taught by one such teacher that France's culture and traditions are second to none, and he may even have completed assignments that were predicated on that belief!
How on earth can we fail to credit him with dual allegiances???!!
As of yet, I don't know either way. It seems that ABC News sent a producer and camera crew to Government Elementary School Number 4 in Indonesia, where Obama attended school from ages six to eight. They found normal looking boys and girls, basketball, computers, and even SpongeBob SquarePants. Even if it no longer is a "madrassah", the question remains whether it WAS one at the time Obama Hussein attended. Or, did he simply get brain-washed somewhere else a la The Manchurian Candidate? Inquiring minds want to know.
I think Jake sounds familiar indeed. I just remember his argumentative style being attached to a different first-name moniker.
Ogged, I love the part you quote in (1) but the best part is what precedes it. "We can't afford to check facts, but we have standards of hardhitting journalism":
Mr. Kuhner, in an editor's note on Insight, said the Web site could not afford to "send correspondents to places like Jakarta to check out every fact in a story." The Web site pays up to $800 for an article.
Mr. Kuhner said he was not yet convinced by reports from officials of the elementary school that Mr. Obama attended in Indonesia about its secular history. "To simply take the word of a deputy headmaster about what was the religious curriculum of a school 35 years ago does not satisfy our standards for aggressive investigative reporting," he wrote.
And the non-email address also looks familiar.
Hey, Jake: You appear to be Charlie, who got banned the other day. If you expressly deny being Charlie in the next five minutes, you can continue to post unless you become intolerable on your own merits. If you are Charlie, stop posting.
I am not Charlie, but I am looking for the link requested above. I'm wondering if you are going to make me "link" to Catholic theology actually being taught at the private Catholic school Obama Hussein attended as well?
FL - it seems that ABC News has at least confirmed the school CURRENTLY teaches a class in Islam:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2822061&page=1
33: Well, you might link to the claim that liberation theology was taught at the private Catholic school he attended.
No one except a true idiot or someone's who's brain is drunk with hate would care where a politician went to school when he was 6.
And, of course, a class in Christianity.
So, Charlie/Jake: do you think the story as published in Insight and repeated on Fox is correct or defensible in referring to the school as a madrassah, saying it espoused Wahabism, or in any other regard?
If you don't, then what is your point?
I am not Charlie
That's funny, because your IP address matches other comments left under the monikers Charlie, Al, and Thomas. Go away.
I mean, I went to a pro-America and Christianity school, ages 6-8, and now I am well known to hate both!
Man, no one banned his IP address? I didn't even check, because I figured he changed it.
Sloppy work, co-bloggers.
I asked him not to comment; I didn't ban his IP address. We're all supposed to be gentelmen, you know.
I went to Catholic kindergarten!
I wonder what's in the minds of these fucking idiots, besides government cheese.
Even in fairy world where Obama went to a Wahhabist training camp at a public school in Indonesia before going to a Catholic liberation theology boot camp, in fairy world this is when he was, what, six? They Manchurian candidated a black kid in the 60s in the hopes that one day he'd grow up to be President and embrace jihad or maybe suicide bomb himself at the State of the Union? Twenty years before Iran became an Islamic republic?
24/27: yes, something liek a tag would have been appropriate. 19 had no real point, and the remark wasn't even very funny. Like too many of my comments, it was a substanceless waste of server space. I apologize.
I'm not in a gentlemanly mood. CharlieAlThomasJake is posting from [redacted - don't come back again].
45 should have said "sarcasm". I forgot that when I put it insodie the little carrot things it disappears. I'd ask how 24 was composed, but I know I'd forget before I ever used the knowledge anyway so I'll asve you the trouble.
I previewed and then deleted at least four different comments quoting Jake/Al/Charlie/HateBot's line about wondering whether he was brainwashed at his school or elsewhere. I am taking my own advice to Rah: sometimes the Internet is better for what we don't say.
If you think it ought to be deleted, I don't mind, Ogged.
And yes I said carrot things just to irritate the pendants.
48: I'm with Ogged -- couldja edit that down? I'd like to retain the right to be indignant if outed sometime.
I just redacted it. If anybody wants to know which law firm not to use, you can email me.
56 - I've seen studies suggesting that personality disorders bordering on the truly pathological can make for very effective attorneys. Who no one likes at all, but who get the client what the client wants.
He was commenting from a law firm? Wow.
I missed the IP outage and am glad you redacted it. CharlieAlThomasJake, you're playing with fire.
Is anyone else now browsing the profiles of that not-large firm, wondering which one is the culprit? I see a few candidates.
And my selection criteria is nothing but "looks like a total tool".
49: You use HTML character entities, like this:
<sarcasm>
which becomes <sarcasm> when rendered by your browser.
I want a followup on this report that SpongeBob SquarePants attends a madrassa. I thought he lived in a pineapple under the sea! Yeah, if by pineapple, you mean mosque!
Is anyone else now browsing the profiles of that not-large firm, wondering which one is the culprit?
Yes, and I have a candidate, but it appears that many people are nicer than me and that we shall be deprived of the fun of speculating on who CharlieAlThomasJake is.
Idealist, is it based on who's most toolish-looking, or do you have some special JD powers that reveal the truth, despite efforts to conceal it?
My gut tells me it must be one of the guys with the goatees.
No, I'm going with the guy in the leftmost column, 10th from the top.
Of course, posting from a law firm doesn't mean he's a lawyer. I have to say that he doesn't sound like a lawyer -- this isn't intended to be snotty about his writing style rather than his content, there's nothing wrong with his writing style, it just doesn't sound lawyerly to me. Short sentences and light on the punctuation. Lawyers tend to ramble more.
But that's just an impression. He could be a lawyer.
Idealist, is it based on who's most toolish-looking, or do you have some special JD powers that reveal the truth, despite efforts to conceal it?
No special powers. Just who looks like they might be a dick.
Sweet. You know what would be mortifying, were I that guy? Being picked out correctly by the heuristic "find the guy who looks like a dick."
If you were that guy, it probably wouldn't bother you so much.
LB, although you're right that he's not necessarily a lawyer, I suspect you work with and against a lot of relatively upper-tier lawyers. I think you're overestimating the profession as a whole.
69: No way, dude. Low-income clients, suing to improve environmental standards, etc. I'm thinking right-most, 4th from the top for some reason. I just get the vibe.
My current employers provide firewalls for a number of law firms and I immediately ran to make sure they are not one of our clients. They aren't. I am unreasonably glad of this.
I mean, look at me - I couldn't type my way out of a paper bag if it were suffocating me. And I'm a lawyer.
I've litigated against some bottom-feeders, and they still run to the verbose. I wasn't intending to describe Charlie's prose as illiterate, just that it didn't smell legal to me. But I could easily be wrong.
There are many promising candidates. No offense if anyone here works there, but by the looks of things it seems like an unusually toolish law firm.
I have to say that he doesn't sound like a lawyer
Really? He sounds exactly like a lawyer to me. Now that you are back in a fancy big law firm, you have forgotten the number of assholes who inhabit our profession.
I'm thinking right-most, 4th from the top for some reason
That was my guess.
FWIW, he sounds exaclty like a lawyer to me, too.
Alphabetically, the first one with a last name beginning with P felt it germane to note in his bio that he has twice been a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
I'm being very restrained and not even trying to guess, because I know I'd develop a strong opinion and start seeing if I could find any way to check it. I have forgotten the name of the firm.
All good guesses, but can you really count out the first guy, second column? Or the sixth-from-the-bottom, second column?
There's so much potential here I'm willing to believe we've falsely accused Charlie/Al/Thomas/Jake. They might actually be four different people, all posting from that same firm.
It wouldn't be the first time two apparently different people from the same IP address were commenting here.
Hell, for all we know it might be one of the ladies. Also, white guys who shave their heads look like thumbs.
Unless they grow handlebar mustaches, at which point they become werewalruses (werewalri?).
You know, I looked up the IP and did a reverse DNS on its ass, only to find out that the authoritative nameserver claims to find no records for it.
Wait, is handlebar what I mean? You know, the kind that hang down and look like tusks.
the authoritative nameserver claims to find no records for it
Lots of sites, especially if they have their email/website/etc. hosted elsewhere, do not have reverse PTR records.
Ah, but a tracepath finds the culprit, and also reveals the particular office (you'll never guess).
Problem: all of the attorneys at the office in question look like tools.
Wait, we may have a winner: right column, ninth down. The picture is only semi-toolish, but the bio is off the charts.
This is hilarious, but you guys really seem like you're playing with fire here. I don't mean in a legal sense, I think, but rather in the sense of ... don't you all (still) value Unfogged as a place set apart, blog-wise? Remarkably free of trolls, even after all this time (and all these links from high-profile types)? Don't you think this thread, or threads like this, expose Unfogged to a bit more risk in this sense?
Or maybe the damage has already been done, I don't know...
I must be miscounting (some rotten person reminded me of the firm's name by emailing the link again. Damn you!). There's nothing particular about ninth down in the rightmost column.
Not that I have any opinion on who Charlie is, but just to unfairly mock people with funny names: there's no justice; there's Justus. With a first name like that, you could set up an entire ad campaign.
94: Well, we had the troll, and we banned him, and we kindly refrained from linking his employer. Possibly mocking him at length will enrage him enough to set his minions on us, if he has them, but I don't see that it's all that much more likely to than just going on about our business. He was trolling us already.
I think I agree with #94. Ignoring trolls, asking them to leave, and just a broad sense of fair play has worked remarkably well so far for Unfogged.
I agree with 94 and 97. Until someone e-mails me the name of the firm. Then GAME ON!
Did you read his bio? "Nothing particular[ly]" toolish about the blatant ego-stroking in the first paragraph?
Although your choice is also good. It's very difficult to decide.
"He was trolling us already."
Well, I guess that's what I meant by "the damage is already done," but I admit I don't know much about the dynamics of long-term troll/blog relationships. It does seem to me (logically, but maybe this isn't true?) that some part of a blog attracting a long-term and persistent troll is the willingness of the blog's residents to interact with him. And 'interaction' in this context probably includes openly looking him up and guessing his identity, etc.
I'm not criticizing, LB. Lord knows I appreciate the yeoman's (and yeo-woman's) work y'all do in demanding pastry from some trolls and banning others. I'm just saying, if you want to keep the blog's head down (troll-wise), w-lfs-n's tracerouting strikes me as on par with Emerson's strategy of full-on troll-baiting: probably satisfying, but perhaps with unintended negative long-term consequences for everyone else.
I'm tired of guessing, so I'm just going to blast email the whole firm and ask them who's been trolling unfogged.
Shorter 97: "Two out of two Tims agree: Dance with the Troll Avoidance Strategy what brung ya."
I feel the need to explain since no one gets any of my jokes that 102 was supposed to be a humorous response to 101.
If I'm not mistaken, this is the first full-on IP banning, and only the third person firmly asked to leave. That's an impressively low number for a no-registration, long-term blog.
Indeed, when I banned the IP address a bit ago, there were no other IPs in the list.
Oh hey, amazing Unfogged IP monitor-ers: another humorless dirty-hippie type and I both post from the same computer, because we live in the same house. Not the computer from which I post now, however. Either or both of us may vex or annoy, but we are separate entities (in case you ever wonder). And neither of us is a lawyer.
Yeah, I hate to IP ban, and the previous two people who were asked to stop commenting did so graciously. But whoeveritis came back, which didn't leave us a lot of choice. I am a bit uncomfortable with public speculation as to his identity though.
108- It's all Apo's fault. Perhaps you should out him in retaliation?
It's not bothering me so far, because it's opaque to anyone who wasn't looking when Apo put the name up (and it was up for three minutes, if that). We aren't toying with genuinely outing the guy.
I agree with 108. (coming late to this since my internet access was down most of the afternoon)
But I will lay off if it bothers you guys.
104: Brock, you should explain the joke in person over a beer at the next Boston meet-up (whenever that may be). Just don't leave before finding us, this time.
Perhaps you should out him in retaliation?
Everybody already knows I'm gay. Except my wife.
And apologies if I made anybody uncomfortable. I'm in a foul mood due to the massive project that's due tomorrow and the likelihood that I'll get to spend all night in the office tonight. I shouldn't even be commenting right now. Bad apo.
At the next Boston meetup, we shall all wear name tags that read "Brock Landers."
I just read the second page of the article, and I'm amused by this:
"The reporter has to give his or her word that, 'It is solid, Jeff,' " Mr. Kuhner said.
Who needs verifiable sources, when there is honor among men.
Now that you are back in a fancy big law firm, you have forgotten the number of assholes who inhabit our profession.
How exactly does the second clause follow from the first?
I was wondering that one myself, as I spent the afternoon taking dictation over the phone from one of my esteemed superiors.
I spent the afternoon taking dictation
Whether it is fortuitous that this is not a euphemism is left to the reader.
Aw, I missed all the fun. Now I can't even use the firm name in a painfully white-shoes rap.
The Swift Boat charges were far more substantial than these. They were more difficult to cleanly refute because (at least in my opinion) there were some valid points mixed in among the invalid ones.
In the future everyone will be female for 15 minutes.
128: At the very least big chunks of them were flat lies, of the form I described above -- people not witnesses to an event making claims that all witnesses to the event were lying and the contemporaneous records of the event were false. Those portions of the charges should have been treated with this sort of debunking rather than with the 'how could anyone decide between these two stories' respect they got.
If you wanted to argue about whether American soldiers felt betrayed by the Winter Soldier hearings, whatever.
In the future everyone will be female for 15 minutes.
Even the females?
Will everyone be female for the same 15 minutes, or do we take turns?
Cursed first-name handles. But even when I'm contrary, I try to stay on this side of the trolling boundary.
See, I knew we had a real Jake!
In the future, everyone will be Jake for (at least) 15 minutes.
136: Possibly two, depending on how one pronounces abbreviated handles.
No, your handle is properly pronounced 'Jack', in a droning voice intended to convey that it's the sort of acronym used to give a folksy name to a computer. Like HAL. You didn't know?
Au contraire, "JAC" should be pronounced "yahts" as if it were a word in Slovenian.
If you look at the social security administration name database, you will see that at the rate things are going, by 2030 we will indeed all be named Jake. Makes for some tense moments in supermarkets when one hears one's name shouted in a disapproving tone by a female voice.
Actually, I think the key here is "names that begin with the letter J." This seems to be, far and away, the most common initial letter to names, at least in my experience. For the first five years after I graduated from college, all my roommates had names that began with the letter J (seven roommates, in total).
130
Presumedly this is the sort of story you are objecting to. However it simply was not the case that all the eyewitness accounts agreed with Kerry's version. And the contemporaneous records argument was considerably weakened by Kerry's refusal to release his military records.
If you read that story, all the witnesses on Kerry's boat support Kerry's story of coming under fire, as does at least one witness from another boat. The witnesses who claim there was no enemy fire were all on other boats - whether or not they're lying, they were clearly in an inferior position to see what happened on Kerry's boat. The contemporaneous records supporting Kerry's story include the Bronze Star citation for Thurlow, one of the people calling Kerry a liar in 2004 -- that is, either Kerry is telling the truth, or Thurlow accepted a fraudulently supported medal back in 1969. O'Neill, the source of many of these stories, makes the claim that the contemporaneous after-action report confirming Kerry's story is discredited because it's initialled 'KJW' and that identifies it as having been written by Kerry, despite the fact that those aren't Kerry's initials and they appear on reports relating to actions where Kerry wasn't present.
The 'not releasing his records' thing I never really understood -- his campaign was saying all along that all the records were available from the campaign, and then eventually after the election they all became available from the Navy. Admittedly, that was weird, but I don't see how it fits into this particular story at all -- what from Kerry's records would be applicable here?
Does that really sound like a hard call for which story is more credible? Particularly where O'Neill was politically active and vocal back in the 70's, in opposition to Kerry (they debated on the Dick Cavett Show) and never brought up this claim of fraud then?
With so much anonymity, "How do we know that Insight magazine actually exists?" Professor Whitehead added. "It could be performance art."
Hardly! Institutional Critique, maybe (cf. Andrea Fraser's "From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique," or her work).
I call for a moritorium on all Vietnam-era Presidential candidates.
And I, again, reveal how easily baited I am.
Another kudos for the Times. They finally focus on what a man is wearing. (Why they do so here is left as an exercise for the reader).
The prince, who had chosen the Harlem educational organization because of his interest in urban renewal, arrived in a double-breasted medium blue suit and black leather lace-ups. Camilla wore a brown skirt, brown suede pumps, a double strand of pearls and a long chocolate-brown coat that despite its leopard-skin trim and beaded embroidery on the collar, did look a bit linsey-woolsey, as they say.
Linsey-woolsey? Gee, you New Yorkers sure talk funny.
I saw that and wondered as who says? I know the word as an old-fashioned word for a non-kosher fabric that doesn't seem to exist any more, but I've never seen it used to mean dowdy. Maybe it does mean that, but I suspect the writer's heard the word, guessed what it means (wrongly), and is showing off how smart they are. I hate when people do that.
Yeah, the whole article was so twee. Describing C&C as laughing more than than had to at the "fitting" play within the play, etc.
To me the reason why the Times did the whole "aren't they just so cute" thing, including the description of what both were wearing, is because C&C is basically powerless (at least here).
145
I thought Dobb's reporting in this story (and others) was reasonable. Do you agree?
As for which story is more credible, I don't see it as as easy a call as you do. Eyewitness accounts of a scary combat situation many years after the fact are inherently unreliable. I believe it is common for soldiers to believe themselves under fire when they aren't or to continue firing long after the enemy has stopped. I believe it fairly likely there was no enemy fire at all or that it was limited to the immediate aftermath of the mine detonation. In which case Kerry was not under fire when he retrieved Rassmann. This does not mean anybody is lying. Of course the anti-Kerry vets had an agenda which would tend to color their memory but so did Kerry. As for the medal citations it is my understanding that just as the military did not always critically evaluate reported enemy body counts they did not always critically evaluate medal recommendations and as a result embellishments were common in both cases.
As far as I know, Kerry has never unconditionally released his military records. Since many of the records were released through the Kerry campaign it is plausible to believe that Kerry was only releasing the records which made him look good and that the complete record would depict him less favorably. I believe a court would never allow such a selective release into evidence even if the opposing side could not point to anything specific missing.
C&C is basically powerless
They rule the ærobic exercise floor.
153: Jesus, you're an idiot. There are multiple contemporaneous written accounts of what happened in the Navy records. Kerry was both famous and controversial in the 70s, within five years after the time he received the Silver Star, and none of the 'Swift Boat Veterans' ever brought up anything fishy about the events of that day until thirty years later.
For Kerry's story to be false, he and his other crew members (as well as people on other boats, to provide the narrative for the other guy's Bronze Star) had to concoct a false story in 1969, and fake the records despite the presence of other people who weren't part of the conspiracy. While Kerry got a Silver Star out of the deal, there's no obvious gain to any of the multiple other people who lied for him; there wasn't any reason for anyone to fake a medal for him for political reasons, given that he wasn't yet a politician. Further, the other people, not part of the conspiracy, who were present had to keep quiet for no obvious (and no later explained) reason for thirty years, while Kerry became both famous as a war hero, and bitterly unpopular among supporters of the war.
Conversely, for the SBVFT to be lying, all they had to do was to make up a story, after Kerry was already a candidate for the presidency. They have literally no contemporaneous evidence, only stories that were never told until thirty years later.
If you can't tell the difference in probability between the two stories, and why a story that treats them as if they were equally credible is fucked up, there's something truly wrong with your ability to evaluate evidence.
Even with this: This does not mean anybody is lying.
pathetic excuse to avoid evaluating comparative credibility, can you really sit there and say with a straight face that as between a story told the immediately after an event happened, and one told for the first time thirty years later, that there is no reason to assume the first is more credible than the second?
And this:
I believe a court would never allow such a selective release into evidence even if the opposing side could not point to anything specific missing.
Is really, really, remarkably stupid. You don't get discovery of anything in a court case unless you have some concept of how it might relate to relevant evidence. What do you think might be in Kerry's records that would cast further light on what happened that day -- a note from his doctor saying "Just kidding, we really shouldn't have given him a medal"?
And yes, he released all of his records. God knows why the ninny did it the way he did, but there wasn't anything damaging in there.
This is exactly why the sort of coverage the Swift Boat Veterans got was so unfair and damaging -- because nitwits who can't evaluate evidence look at a story that's treating patent lies respectfully and decide without thinking that the truth must be somewhere between the two positions.
I do so enjoy it when LB gets pissed. Can it be wrong to delight in such beautiful wrath?
As I said, easily baited. Hopefully this argument is all a put-on.
I'm actually about 90% sincere. You're patient enough and careful enough in your writing that when you do go for the smackdown, I can hear the *thwack* from here.
nitwits who can't evaluate evidence
Charitably, "can't" should perhaps be "won't."
DaveL and LizardBreath, sittin' in a tree...
Not that it actually convinces anyone. But it's a step up from grabbing people by the shoulders and shouting "For the love of God, man, think!" I do try not to get excited, but I fail often.
(And Shearer? My apologies for calling you an idiot. I'm sure you aren't in any intrinsic sense. You are merely being an idiot on this topic.)
I read 155 and thought of this. LB, thou art not made up.
156
Kerry as far as I know still has not made his military records public. He has allowed specific reporters to examine them. See here.
158
As for my sincerity I have argued Kerry's side of this on right wing blogs. See for example here (first comment) or here (comments 30, 37, 97). I don't find your ranting any more persuasive than Admiral Hoffmann's. It is difficult for partisans to be objective.
164: So you're tacking in the opposite direction to be obnoxious? You'd think your pride in the ol' massive intellect would keep you from arguing the stupid side. But I guess boring and annoying the commenters at Unfogged is such an exquisite pleasure that you are willing to stoop.
apostropher - I'm not sure what an "IP address" is, or what got "redacted" earlier today, but if I have posted anything worthy of banning, please feel free to explain.
Michael and Cala - perhaps you should look up all the definitions of "madrassah" if you really think 6 year-olds attending and being brain-washed is really no big deal.
LizardBreath - I am not defending either, but still searching for the truth. My "point" as I stated above, is that I don't know either way as of yet. If they currently teach a class on Islam theology, that could indeed fit the definition I provided above. Not sure if the Swiftboating of Kerry is an appropriate analogy, yet.
More relevant to this election, I have still not found which exact classes little Obama Hussein took at Government Elementary School No. 4 (but I found the correct school name: "Sekolah Dasar Negeri 04") or the "Catholic" school in Jakarta between 1967 and 1971. As someone pointed out, even that won't answer whether he was brain-washed elsewhere. But since you asked so nicely, I will continue the quest as soon as I get a chance. Wish me luck . . .
166: "Obama Hussein" s/b "the Anti-Christ," of course.
"Sekolah" is just Indonesian for "school." "Madrassah" is, too; it doesn't even mean "religious school", except in crazy betrolléd America. It, hold onto your toupée, has a cognate in Hebrew! Good god, the Israelis could go to madrasahs, too. And even if it means 'religious school', it doesn't mean 'omg brainwashed six-year-old suicide bomber training camp' when they've got female instructors and boys and girls in the same class.
Of course, that's probably just the secret terrorist plain-clothes training day, when they took the picture.
You were the one making fun of the "fairy (tale?) world" where six-year olds attend Wahhabist training camps, not me.
166: There is nothing to explain. We don't want you here. We asked you to leave and you simply returned under a different name. From here on out, we'll likely just delete any comments you post.
165
My position is somewhere in the middle, that Kerry's war record was not as good as his campaign represented or as bad as the Swift Vets would like to believe. This irritates partisans on both sides.
I think Dobb's reporting was reasonable and attacks on him are just working the refs.
171: I believe LB's central contention is that you're giving way too much credibility to the SBV claims. Would your views on Kerry's record be about the same if they had never been made? If so, then I don't think there's a problem.
172
I never thought Kerry's war record said all that much about his fitness to be President so in that sense my view of Kerry didn't change much. However about his war record specifically I thought the Swift Vets threw a lot of mud and some of it stuck (as far as I was concerned anyway). So it affected my opinion a bit even though the Swift Vets obviously had an axe to grind and were eager to portray everything Kerry ever did in the worst possible light.
My contention is the Swift Vet story was different from the madrassa story in that you had people willing to be quoted by name disputing Kerry's version of events. If you had several people claiming to have attended a madrassa with Obama and disputing Obama's characterization of the place the madrassa story would not have gone away so quickly. So I don't accept LizardBreath's analogy.
By the way, lost somewhere in all the toolmockery, which I did as much as anyone to faciliate, perhaps to my regret, was my intent to express exactly how shocked I was by 46. 51 was an extreme understatement, one that I wouldn't have left so understated had I not expected others to keep ringing the same bell. I really thought community reation would be less like ogged's "aw, don't do that..." in 48 and more like "WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU APOSTROPHER?!?!?!" As in, I'd have thought 46 would be percieved not as maybe possibly sort of giong a bit too far, but as an 'invasion of Iraq'-caliber lapse of judgment. Isn't outing an IP usually considered completely over the top, except as an absolutely last resort in a serious situation? I'd like to hear Labs weigh in on this.
I wouldn't have done it to anybody except that jackass. He'd been asked to leave twice and kept coming back under a different name, not to engage in meaningful conversation but just to be as annoying as possible. I consider it a shot across the bow. It wasn't because I disagreed with his opinions, as obviously I could be outing people left and right if that was the issue, and it wasn't just trolling, as we've had plenty of those, too.
I thought it was over the top a bit myself, but in the case of a long term and seriously unpleasant troll who has already been banned and returned, lying about his identity, not very far over the line. To give a sense of where I'd draw the line -- if he kept on coming back, changing IP addresses so we couldn't effectively ban him, I would be tempted to first threaten to ("If you comment here again, I'm going to regard that as permission to post the name of the law firm you comment from"), and then actually out him. So Apo was over where I'd draw my line, but not all that far away. (And took it back quickly.)
How did your project go last night?
177 to Apo, not LB. Unless she also had a project.
That is to say, he's somebody who has taken as his mission in life to be as disruptive as possible and hijack as many threads on liberal blogs as he can. Fine. Everybody needs a hobby, I suppose. But when somebody asks you directly to quit ringing their doorbell, and you just keep coming back wearing a different fake moustache, there shouldn't be any surprise when that person answers the door and points a gun in your face.
Okay, well, in my book Apo's still the hero, but he's now been shown to be human.
I'm still at work, still working on it. Due by close of business today.
Thanks. It's an internal deadline (and an internal document), so it isn't the end of the world if it doesn't get done on time. But it's the final report on a market assessment project that's been going on for a year and I really really want it out of my box once and for all.
Shearer-
You've continued to say a bunch of stupid things, while making one reasonable point. To start with the reasonable point:
My contention is the Swift Vet story was different from the madrassa story in that you had people willing to be quoted by name disputing Kerry's version of events.
This is a fair point, that allowed the Obama story to be dismissed more offhandedly, because on inspection there was no one at all standing behind it. The Kerry story required some evaluation of comparative credibility. Still, where the issues of comparative credibility are so clear, it's the responsibility of the reporting media to report them clearly.
This:
I never thought Kerry's war record said all that much about his fitness to be President so in that sense my view of Kerry didn't change much.
Indicates that you didn't understand the Swift Boat story at all. Most people agree with you that being a war hero isn't all that big a deal for judging a politician -- everyone who voted for Bush over McCain, for example, and everyone who voted for anyone in the Democratic primaries over Kerry (like me -- I voted for the guy who skied through Vietnam).
The point of the story wasn't "Kerry wasn't a hero", it was "Kerry lied and faked records to fraudulently make himself look like a hero." Someone who does care about military heroism is going to be disgusted by the latter even when they'd overlook the former, and even someone who doesn't care much, like you or I, about the former will be put off by the latter. The latter is the vicious lie the Swift Boat Veterans were spreading, and their stories should be evaluated on the basis of whether there was any reason to believe that claim -- not some nonsense about whether there's no reason to believe that Kerry was such a big deal as he'd like you to believe. If there is reason to believe that the Swift Boat Veterans were telling the truth, then Kerry was a fraudster; if they were not telling the truth, they were viciously defaming him by calling him a fraudster without basis. Trying to say that no one was actually lying, maybe both sides had a point indicates that you fundamentally don't understand the story.
In other words, this:
My position is somewhere in the middle, that Kerry's war record was not as good as his campaign represented or as bad as the Swift Vets would like to believe.
Is moronic. There is no position in the middle. If Kerry committed fraud with relation to the events for which he was decorated (can we stick to the Silver Star for now? The possibility of imperfect accuracy of memory on issues in themselves unimportant isn't what we're talking about), then the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks were valid. If he did not commit fraud with relation to those events, then the Swift Boat Veterans defamed him. You have three choices: believing he committed fraud, believing he didn't commit fraud, or remaining agnostic on that point, but there is no sensible position in the middle.
You earlier said this:
I believe it fairly likely there was no enemy fire at all or that it was limited to the immediate aftermath of the mine detonation. In which case Kerry was not under fire when he retrieved Rassmann.
Sit back for a moment and think about the evidence on each side of that isolated factual question. Supporting Kerry's version (that he was under fire while rescuing the other guy) is every contemporaneous account, including several official written reports that should have been prepared by different people, one of which was the basis of Thurlow's Bronze Star (if they weren't prepared by different people, this would have to have been the result of a conspiracy for which there is no evidence). Every one of the sailors on the boat that was the scene of the relevant activity supports Kerry's version to this day, as do some sailors on the other boats. Kerry's version was public and unchallenged for thirty years after the events happened -- thirty years in which he was a public and controversial figure. People supporting Kerry's story have been doing so since 1969, at a point where there was no immediate political relevance to the story.
On the other side (that he was not under fire at the time) you have stories supported by no contemporaneous documentation, first told over thirty years after the events they relate to, and in those thirty years the story-tellers were aware of the competing version and let it go unchallenged. Thurlow, one of the people now saying that Kerry was not under fire at the time of the rescue accepted a Bronze Star on the basis of a report saying that all of the boats were under fire at that time -- he is a liar no matter which story is true, either having accepted a medal on fraudulent grounds in '69, or lying about the facts in 2004. People telling the SBV version have only appeared at a time when the story is of immediate relevance to a Presidential election.
How on earth do you look at the evidence on both sides of that question, and think that it's more probable that the Swift Boat Veterans version is true, rather than Kerry's version? Any objective evaluation of the evidence puts all the credibility on Kerry's side.
Finally, this bit of preening:
This irritates partisans on both sides.
looks to me like the fundamental basis of what's led you so badly astray on this issue. The fact that people care deeply about an issue is not evidence that they're wrong -- it's not evidence at all. Looking at a heated disagreement and thinking that you can always find the truth by coming in somewhere between the two sides is not a valid way of figuring anything out -- regardless of how excited people get about their positions, there's still no other way to find the truth than actually evaluating the evidence.
You're doing yeoperson's work, LizardBreath. Pity it's so quixotic, at least with regards to Shearer personally.
Partisans on one side or the other may think that Lizardbreath is doing yeoperson's work, or alternatively that 184 is the ravings of a madwoman with a pro-terrorist agenda. The truth, as always, lies somewhere exactly in between, or in both, or nowhere and neither-both simultaneously.
Oh, I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't enjoy it, and Shearer is doing an excellent job of defending exactly the sort of thoughtlessly uncritical attitude that made reporting like that in the quoted story so damaging.
Dobbs didn't lie -- I'm taking most of what I'm saying about the facts from his story (although he did leave out the fact that the SBV began telling their stories for the first time thirty years after the events they relate to -- it would have been hard to include that and still sound evenhanded.) But even though Dobbs' story was basically true (I'm not aware of any particular inaccuracy) and pretty close to complete, it was still written in a fashion that made it more likely to spread the smear and give it credibility than to debunk it.
It's good practice picking apart what makes one story (what the Times did with the Obama story) an excellent way to handle a smear, and another story (the SBV story Shearer linked) a bad one.
184 is just magnificent, and it almost makes me not regret Shearer's presence here.
Although I did typo which medal we were talking about -- this story was about Kerry's Bronze Star, not the Silver Star.
Actually, I think the most reasonable course of action is to split the difference. The star was actually made of some kind of bronze/silver alloy.
184
"... The fact that people care deeply about an issue is not evidence that they're wrong -- it's not evidence at all. Looking at a heated disagreement and thinking that you can always find the truth by coming in somewhere between the two sides is not a valid way of figuring anything out -- regardless of how excited people get about their positions, there's still no other way to find the truth than actually evaluating the evidence."
I don't agree with this. People didn't care about Kerry's war record because it had any intrinsic importance, they cared because they much wanted (or didn't want) Kerry to defeat Bush for other reasons. This meant Kerry supporters (haters) had a strong bias towards (against) Kerry when interpreting the evidence. This almost inevitably leads to biased conclusions (and the more excited and emotional people are the stronger this bias is likely to be). Hence a dispassionate and unbiased examination of the evidence is in fact likely to reach conclusions somewhere in the middle. The problem is worse when Kerry supporters (or opponents) are publically arguing their case, trying to influence the undecided or uninformed. The pressure to adopt extreme positions increases. Consider the partisan "spin doctors" you get after debates. How often do they understate the case for their side?
Of course if you want to narrow things down a little from in between the positions of partisan advocates on both side then you will have to examine the evidence yourself.
Note the above analysis applies to "character" type issues of no intrinsic importance to the average voter. In other cases (such as the Iraq war) where the average voter is likely to have strong opinions unrelated to particular candidates there is pressure for candidates to adopt positions near the median voter so as maximize their appeal. In such cases the "correct" policy is in fact likely to lie outside the range presented to the voters.
187
I think we have a rather fundamental disagreement about how reporting should be done. I think a reporter should try to neutrally present the facts as best as he can and let the reader draw his own conclusions. I think Dobbs did a good job of this. You want a reporter to hear both sides and declare a victor. I believe this is unwise. It makes a reporter's own prejudices and biases more important. Once a reporter has decided the victor he is likely to slant the evidence and his story to favor his conclusion. He becomes personally committed to the verdict and will be reluctant to change it. For an example of the dangers look at Dan Rather who has been reported to still believe in the authenticity of the CBS Bush memos.
Another problem with a reporter declaring a verdict is that this is an inappropriate model. The courts have to reach a definite conclusion, a reporter doesn't. In most cases a more appropriate model is that of an oddsmaker shifting the line as more evidence appears. An oddsmaker recognizes uncertainty and avoids becoming committed to either side and so should a reporter.
191: You still don't understand either that believing that someone else evaluated evidence in a biased fashion should not affect how you evaluate that evidence, or that the SVB story had no meaningful middle ground between the possibilities that Kerry was a fraudster or that he was defamed.
192: Given that you evaluated the evidence described in 184, and came to the conclusion you stated about it in 145, I wouldn't rely too much on your own ability to set odds. Personally, I'd have been perfectly happy with a story that made it clear it was about 100-1 Kerry was being defamed. To put it another way, while the reporter's job may be to set odds, there are possible odds other than 50-50.
184 193
If the Swift Vets make 10 charges and 9 of them unjustly portray Kerry in a bad light but the 10th is valid then Kerry is being defamed but the 10th charge is still valid. I think it is obvious that the Swift Vets had no desire to be fair to Kerry and as result many of their statements and conclusions were defamatory in the ordinary meaning (unjustly unfavorable) if not perhaps the legal meaning.
So I think there is a middle ground in that some of charges could be true while others could be false and defamatory. Hence the odds should be set for each charge individually. The odds that all the charges made about Kerry's war record are true are in fact nil. However I don't think the odds that any of them are true are also nil.
Regarding the issue of whether Kerry was under fire when he retrieved Rassmann, first by saying it was "fairly likely" he was not I did not mean more than 50%, I would consider a 40% chance to be fairly likely. As to why I think there was a substantial chance Kerry was not under fire, this has to do with how I evaluate the a priori odds and the reliability of eyewitness testimony. I believe if you could do many experiments in which a mine was detonated in similar circumstances but there was no other hostile fire many of the crew members would honestly believe and report afterwards that they had been fired upon. Similarly if there was hostile fire for a period of time (or from one bank only) I believe many of the crew members would honestly believe and report afterwards that the fire had continued longer and/or been more extensive than it actually was. Conversely if you did many experiments in which the fire was as extensive as reported, I think there is a good chance someone would have been hit. I also doubt that the Viet Cong would invariably accompany a mine detonation with sustained fire from both banks. Combining all this I come up with a good chance that the amount of enemy fire was exaggerated more or less independent of witness testimony. Note the witnesses are not independent as witnesses are susceptible to suggestion.
Agghhhh! The obtusity!!!!!1!! It BURNS!!!!!!11!!!!
I should give this up, because you aren't learning anything, but you are moving from one clearly stated bad argument to another, and it's fun picking them apart.
Again with the point of the story: the SBV were accusing Kerry of wrongdoing. They were saying he committed fraud to make himself look like a hero. The only important piece of analysis to do on the story is whether there is any reason to believe Kerry committed fraud. If he did, the SBV attacks were valid and important (even if being a decorated combat veteran is irrelevant to being President, as I agree that it is, lying to falsely present yourself as having deserved decoration for valor in combat is an important indication of bad character.) If he did not, the SBV are a bunch of vicious, contemptible liars, regardless of whether they incidentally said something true along the way. It's hard to talk for more than a sentence or so without saying something true, and the presence of a supporting truth or two in a fabric of lies doesn't make the lying more respectable.
Now, let's look at this:
If the Swift Vets make 10 charges and 9 of them unjustly portray Kerry in a bad light but the 10th is valid then Kerry is being defamed but the 10th charge is still valid.
Say I'm a candidate, and an opponent releases a press release saying: "LizardBreath is a bad person for the following reasons: (1) she eats babies alive because she enjoys their suffering and the misery of their parents who she makes watch, (2) as you would expect from the prior charge, she eats an overly fatty, unhealthy diet, and (3) she hasn't even got the self-discipline to exercise regularly." The latter two charges are, in fact, true. But reporting on the charges that said: "While not everything in what has been called the 'BabyEating' press release is well supported, two of the three charges appear to be solidly borne out by the facts," would be filthily irresponsible.
What you said is empty-headed idiocy unless you have a strong sense of what the charges are that you think are true, and whether they actually relate to fraud or wrongdoing of any kind on Kerry's part.
Further:
Regarding the issue of whether Kerry was under fire when he retrieved Rassmann, first by saying it was "fairly likely" he was not I did not mean more than 50%, I would consider a 40% chance to be fairly likely. As to why I think there was a substantial chance Kerry was not under fire, this has to do with how I evaluate the a priori odds and the reliability of eyewitness testimony.... Combining all this I come up with a good chance that the amount of enemy fire was exaggerated more or less independent of witness testimony. Note the witnesses are not independent as witnesses are susceptible to suggestion.
I will leave to one side the fact that you, like I, know about as much as my sheepdog about combat in the Vietnam war, and so that your estimation of the 'a priori' odds that anyone was under fire at any time is completely, but completely, worthless. Even if that bit were reasonable, though, you've still missed the point of the story.
Kerry's version of the story: "I was properly decorated for rescuing Rassmussen under fire. All the contemporaneous reports and witnesses support me, and I'm not lying -- I was under fire when it happened."
The SBV version of the story is: "Kerry lied to inflate his reputation, and shouldn't have been decorated. He's a disgusting liar and a fraud."
Your "in the middle" version: "I don't believe anyone's report's of combat -- it's too confusing and everyone tends to overreport the danger they were in. While I don't see any reason to believe that Kerry intentionally misrepresented anything, I react to the reports of the incident as I would react to any report describing combat, by assuming that the reporters mistakenly claim the situation to be more dangerous than it was. I doubt Kerry's report, although not his intent to tell a truthful story, in precisely the way I doubt all reports of combat."
By saying that your version is 'in the middle', it implies that Kerry did something sort of bad, just not as bad as the SBV claim he did -- you say elsewhere that 'some of the mud stuck'. That's a crazy way to interpret the three stories: the only meaningful accusation is that Kerry lied. An interpretation suggesting that while he didn't lie, he might have been honestly mistaken still leaves him as having done nothing at all wrong, and the SBV coverage as a smear. (If you're going to come back to "maybe both sides were honestly mistaken", that's equally crap. If it's really that hard to come up with an accurate version of events at the time they happened, someone who shows up thirty years later with a different version and calls the first version a lie, like the SBV, is not being honest -- they can do the same calculation about how hard it is to remember anything, particularly thirty years ago, that you just did.)
A clear evaluation of the stories of both sides where they address the possibility that Kerry committed fraud leaves all the credibility on Kerry's side. Any coverage that leaves that point unclear (like the coverage I hypothesized above on whether I eat babies) is irresponsible, and that's exactly what stories like the one you linked did.
196
Reporters aren't going write stories explicitly calling people like Thurlow deliberate liars without overwhelming evidence because the paper's libel lawyers won't let them. There is just no upside to getting sued even if you are likely to eventually prevail.
Of course my apriori odds are uniformed but this is typical of how people think. People think Kerry is or isn't the kind of guy who would game the system to acquire medals and reach different conclusions by evaluating the same evidence in the light of different apriori odds.
Kerry was a fraud is the extreme version of the Swift Vet charges. A more moderate version is that Kerry's combat performance was typical of Swift Boat captains and not extraordinary as might be inferred from his medals. The difference means little to me but might be important to the voter who was impressed by the medals.
Reporters aren't going write stories explicitly calling people like Thurlow deliberate liars without overwhelming evidence because the paper's libel lawyers won't let them. There is just no upside to getting sued even if you are likely to eventually prevail.
Right, but you can write the story perfectly clearly without using the word 'liar'. If the story you linked above had begun with the paragraph: "An analysis of the evidence of the SBV's inflammatory accusations that presidential candidate John Kerry faked his account of an incident for which he was decorated revealed no contemporaneous evidence that the facts were as the SBV claim. Further, these accusations have appeared for the first time in 2004, over thirty years after the events in question. When asked why, if he had been aware of a discrepancy between the events of that day and the official story appearing in all records of the time, he had remained silent through Kerry's thirty-year career in the spotlight, first as a leader of VVAW and then as a United States Senator, [spokesman for the SBV] had no comment." I'd have been happy as a clam in mud. No one said 'liar', but the evidence was displayed in a clearly comprehensible form.
Kerry was a fraud is the extreme version of the Swift Vet charges. A more moderate version is that Kerry's combat performance was typical of Swift Boat captains and not extraordinary as might be inferred from his medals. The difference means little to me but might be important to the voter who was impressed by the medals.
Here, the moderate version is not politically damaging unless accompanied by the charge that Kerry committed a fraud. The moderate version, if presented on its own, boils down to "You can't trust the military to know who to hand medals out to -- the whole concept that decorations are anything like a meaningful honor is bullshit. Doesn't matter what he had hanging on his uniform, Kerry was nothing special." And that's a very politically difficult charge to make, because it doesn't just hit Kerry, it hits every decorated veteran. (And, beyond being politically difficult to make, it's also not terribly damaging. Kerry was trumpeting his military service in an attempt to present himself as not anti-military, and as generally kind of butch. An undistinguished combat career would have served his purposes about as well as the heroic career he had.)
The fact that the out-and-out lies were treated respectfully rather than contemptuously let the SBV frame the part of their attack that was vague enough to be undisprovable as an attack on Kerry alone rather than on military service generally. If the media had been doing a respectable job, the attacks wouldn't have been damaging at all.
A more moderate version is that Kerry's combat performance was typical of Swift Boat captains
Oh yeah, that was the real point of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign -- "let us re-calibrate the number of standard deviations above the mean for Kerry's Vietnam performance, original estimates were in the 2-3 range but it would be more accurate to say .25." That's because the Swift Boat Veterans were a bunch of autistic engineers with no capacity for emotion, unlike the irrational partisans out there who needed to either think that Kerry was the greatest war hero of all time, or else he was a giant fraud who lied and cheated his way to war medals.
See, the truth is always in the middle -- John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam and won a few medals. When the Swift Boat Veterans claimed that Kerry was a fraud, I could not help but be disappointed by the hysterical liberals who flipped out. Why did they have to think that John Kerry was the greatest man who ever lived? Why couldn't they be reasonable? Also, calling Kerry a fraud was a baseless and despicable smear that was treated with way too much respect, but this is what happens when we live in a world of irrational partisans (see again all the liberals who thought Kerry was the greatest war hero of all time). This is why I try to keep emotion out of my politics -- it might lead me to think that some things are more important than others, and that's just absurd.
I could not help but be disappointed by the hysterical liberals who flipped out. Why did they have to think that John Kerry was the greatest man who ever lived?.
I'll need a cite to believe any such lunatic ever existed. Like LB, I'm very suspicious of "even-handedness" in cases like this, and I specifically mean yours.
I guess JBS's position is beyond parody, huh?
