Friday, July 30, 2010

Dishonesty of right wing media latest example

MEDIAMATTERS for July 20, AD 2010


"Fox News twisted reality to claim that the "U.S. Backed Freedom, Not Prison, for Bomber." Matt Drudge splashed a huge headline across his website announcing that the "White House Backed Release Of Lockerbie Bomber." Pam Geller -- whose deranged rantings have earned her frequent appearances on Fox News and bylines on Andrew Breitbart's "Big" websites, Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller, and the American Thinker -- called for a "special investigation" and a "charge of treason" for Obama.
Rush Limbaugh -- while bragging, as he often does, that he was "executing assigned host duties flawlessly" with "zero mistakes" --claimed that Obama "backed the release" of the Lockerbie bomber because he wanted to "make nice with the Muslim world."
Late Monday, when the State Department released the administration's correspondence with the Scottish Ministry of Justice, it confirmed in unambiguous terms that the administration was "not prepared to support Megrahi's release on compassionate release or bail," and that "it would be most appropriate for Megrahi to remain imprisoned for the entirety of his sentence."
So, after this story completely fell apart, did conservative media figures correct the record and let their readers/listeners/viewers know that the administration did not "support" or "prefer" the release of the Lockerbie bomber?
Of course not.
Conservative blogger Jim Hoft -- whose ongoing popularity and influence in conservative media says a lot about their complete indifference to accuracy and credibility -- linked to the letter and proclaimed that the administration "preferred" his release. This was akin to pointing at the ground and saying "this is the sky."
Fox Nation, almost 48 hours after the story had completely fallen apart, still had the following headline and image on their front page:

And you can be sure that in a few months, whenever Sean Hannity or anyone else in the noise machine decides to twist a news story to claim that the Obama administration is "weak on terror," they'll point to the time the administration supposedly "preferred the release of the Lockerbie bomber" in order to buttress their point.
It's a perpetual dishonesty machine.
If this were an isolated incident, perhaps it would be possible to (partially) excuse conservative media outlets for their shameless performance "covering" this story. But as we detailed this week, the right-wing media routinely promote fake stories (for example, the epic freak-out over the imaginary Obama proposal to "ban sport fishing.")
For another good example of how the perpetual dishonesty machine works, have a look at this segment from Tuesday's Fox & Friends. In it, Glenn Beck, Steve Doocy, and Peter Johnson Jr. seized on reports of the U.K. supposedly "admit[ting] its socialized health care is a mess" in order to attack health care reform. They rehashed some old favorites from conservatives' misinformation campaign about health care reform, claiming that we "modeled" reform on the British system and fear mongered about imaginary "death panels." Neither of these attacks were true when they appeared last year, they weren't true this week, and they won't be true the next time Fox's hosts bring them up. 
This pattern is undeniable, and at this point is just expected behavior for the conservative media. The larger problem is that "mainstream" outlets still frequently treat garbage from conservative media figures as newsworthy, and ombudsmen at major newspapers like The Washington Post regularly chastise their colleagues for not seizing on conservative nonsense faster.
It says a lot about the state of the media when Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and other prominent media conservatives can be caught pushing a blatantly false story, offer no correction, and have their behavior met with a collective shrug. Conservative media outlets retain their unfortunate power and influence over the public discourse because they are able to lie largely without consequence.
They did it all this week, they did it all last week, and they'll do it again next week."

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Black Dahlia the true story

Steve Hodel's case for his father George Hodel having been the
murderer of Elizabeth Short ?(aka The Black Dahlia).

Monday, July 26, 2010

Another county heard from re soy

here's the other side of the soy story. seems a lot of anti soy stuff originates
from some group founded by a guy who bragged of the healthfulness of
animal fat and his high fat diet and died of a stroke at 42. part of the animal
problem of course is how they are factory farmed.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Barbarians among us

an excellent article. I am not sure I accept his comparative definitions
of barbarism and civilization, because some of that network of
institutions and relationships informs barbarian societies even more
so, defining when and where someone is safe to deal with, and
allowing conditions under which they will not be safe to deal with.

But overall, this is very good.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

the chicken came first - back to creationism.

http://www.helium.com/items/1891932-scientists-reportedly-crack-chicken-or-egg-riddle

seems a protein found only in eggs and in chicken ovaries is needed to make eggs.
Ergo, the answer to which came first, the chicken or the egg? is: the chicken.

Sounds like an unintended argument for Creationism or Intelligent Design to me.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

language links between Siberians and some Native Americans

Interesting discussion on evidence for connection 
between the Siberian tribes and some Native American
tribes. 
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.archaeology/browse_thread/thread/a650681012201d36?hl=en
I recall reading that some Turkish tribes consider the
Amerindians to be their lost brothers, though whether
they came to this conclusion due to some of their
own bringing back behring strait info from school, or
had some legend developed earlier, maybe in
connection with Russian exploration and trading,
I don't know.

I DO know, that some Turkic rug designs and some
Amerindian designs look similar.

FYI "Turk" is not properly a synonymn for moslem,
except in the old millet system of the Ottoman Turks.
Turkish language group people exist in many tribes.
The Bulgarians though technically Eastern Orthodox
are in fact turk by origin, but not Osmanli/Ottoman
turkish descent. Many Turkish tribes in the old
Russian empire and later USSR domains, have moslem
and Christian members and often some shamanistic
animist people as well.

The northwestern Indians retain legends of the
ghostwind horse, probably a leopard appaloosa, that
was given them by Russian explorers long before
the Spanish came. Bashkir Curly type horses also
occur among Amerindian breed descent horses in
the USA, another Siberian variety. A segment of
the Nez Perce is trying to recover its original
appaloosa horse, by crossing Akhal Tekes with
fairly high percentage Ameridian derivation appys,
calling this the Nez Perce Horse, reminiscent of
the high quality animals that Lewis and Clark
reported among the Nez Perce, Shoshone and
others.