Just further proof of the right wing corporate owned media's blatent lack of objectivity. They no longer report the news, they manufacture it to serve their agenda.
Speaking of right wing biased media manufacturing the news, MNPublius is reporting that KSTP (privately owned by a Republican, surprise surprise) has been conducting push polling with misleading questions about Al Franken. . . .
Looks like the Soros talking points memos you reprinted were weighed, measured and found wanting, Flash.
But don't feel too bad. The full time Soros sockpuppet troupe didn't do any better.
Have you seen the completely botched "story" MiniMoney did?
"MDE (NON-)SHOCKER: AP PROFILE OF GOP's BRODKORB OMITS MANY PAID PARTY GIGS"
(All caps the authors LOL!)
Schmelzer was in such a rush to get his tear stained little tantrum to post he failed to bother to read the article he was crying about. So of course, the contradiction of his major premise was rubbed into his nose five minutes after he posted.
Then, instead of gracefully accepting the smack-down he had earned, posting a retraction and taking the post down, he changed the title...pfft.
No wonder Soros only pays those goofs pennies. Hell, they're overpaid at that!
Consider the possibility that the AP reporter -- despite institutional bias against conservatives -- actually did his job well. Mike comes across in the story as he does in real life: an honest partisan, who has done some very solid reporting on misbehavior by Democrats, including both Entenza and Franken.
Hidden in the story is an inconvenient truth that goes beyond what was reported; the story explains that Brodkorb got the goods on Franken's failure to buy workers comp for his employees is that he did "simple searches on government Web sites and delivered the goods", but doesn't acknowledge that none of the reporters for the MSM bothered to do the same thing and report it until the story was presented to them, wrapped in a bow.
Was that MSM laziness or a coverup for Franken? My guess is the former, but it's just a guess.
It's true that he doesn't have a counterweight on the left; I think the Minnie Mon tries to be a counterweight but it appears that they just collective don't have enough folks with reportorial skills and the willingness to spend time on researching misdeeds of Republicans in the way that Brodkorb does.
Or, of course, it could be that there are so fewer skeletons in Republicans' closets hereabouts, but . . .
I don't know, Joel. 1.2 million Iraqi skeletons seems like kind of a lot. Not to mention over 4,000 American skeletons.
I suppose it depends on what you consider to be important, what you think is newsworthy.
Now it's 1.2 million.
Couple of months ago you said it was a million...so according to Charley, our US Storm Troopers have killed 200,000 innocent Iraqi's in two months.
Well, that's a record that Stalin would have been proud of.
Unfortunately, it's as much BS now as it was then.
According to "Iraqi body count", a website I'm sure Charley would heartily approve of is claiming 90,897 dead.
But hey, you go with the 1.2 mil, Charley. It makes the story so much better.
Pretty cheap shot, Charley; I expect better of you, and usually get it.
Joel, sorry you thought it was cheap. Perhaps responding to your wording of "skeletons" was ill-advised. But consider some sense of proportion here. I cannot imagine that anyone would actually claim with a straight face that any of these so-called scandals are very important compared with the mountain of dead bodies we are leaving behind in Iraq.
As for you, Swiftee, you are comparing apples and oranges. While I am glad you are finally noticing that quite a few innocents are dying in Iraq, the Iraq Body Count measures something quite different than the Johns Hopkins study that was printed in the Lancet, a respected British medical journal.
The Iraq Body Count tallies the death toll form various reliable media outlets. Their results are given as a range, since news outlets will sometimes report that "at least" so many have died, but "as many as" some number may have died. These are only deaths by violence that are reported in the papers, whether from suicide bombings in markets or cruise missiles hitting someone's house.
The Johns Hopkins study, on the other hand, is the much larger figure of "excess deaths," that is deaths from all causes that occur at a higher rate than the rate before the war. The methodology was to take a random sample of neighborhoods around Iraq and send a researcher in to ask who had died in that neighborhood during the past year. Some might have been shot or bombed or had their heads cut off, but some would have died from malnutrition, or untreated disease, or in childbirth, and so on.
Care was taken to eliminated unrepresentative neighborhoods, like Falujah for example. The study was extensively peer-reviewed and the methodology extensively scrutinized. The original results were published in late 2004, with results in a range that centered at about 660,000 "excess deaths." Sociologists have extrapolated from that baseline, indicating that the current number is about 1.2 million.
George W Bush discounts the results. Cheney doesn't, but he doesn't really care. Nobody else questions either the methodology or the results.
G.I.s certainly didn't kill all those people, Swiftee. The war did. And those numbers average around 500 people every day that this tragic war goes on. And don't think that this is anything like a partisan issue with me, since I am quite aware that the death numbers during Clinton's sanctions were also horrible.
I defy you or anyone else to try to justify those deaths, Swiftee. I even defy you to explain why in the hell we invaded that benighted country in the first place, since the reasons seem to change every few months. I defy you to tell me what possible good can come from continued occupation of that country.
Virulent leftists and anti-American propagandists, not sociologists, have extrapolated from that baseline, indicating that the current number is about 1.2 million.
They count drownings in bathtubs too?
But you go with it Charley, it works for you.
I can't justify the war, and I don't have to because I was against it when it started.
As to justifying the vast majority of Iraqi deaths that can be attributed directly to 'our' presence, well that's pretty easy. When you shoot at our soldiers, or try to blow them up, you stand a *real* good chance of dying yourself.
And for *that* I'm very pleased.
Swiftee, you have told me something new -- that you were against the war. I hadn't known that.
So would you mind mentioning why you were against it and if you are for or against the occupation at this point, just over 5 years later.
Oh, as for your "drowning in bathtubs" question, yes all deaths are counted. It is unlikely, however, that bathtub drownings have increased, since the water supply is most parts of Iraq is less reliable than before the U.S. invasion.
But the important part of the 1.2 million deaths is that they are EXCESS deaths, that is 1.2 million more people that would have been predicted to die before the war. From all causes.
I was against it because:
A) It was not apparent to me that the threat, while viable, was imminent.
B) It was, even to the casual observer, hastily and poorly planned.
And if I needed another reason...
C) The Pope said "no".
But now that we are involved, we cannot bail out until the country is stabilized. It's just as much a matter of morality as was not going in, in the first place.
To pull out now would be an Obamanation. The Sunni's and Shia's would be at each others throats (literally) within a week, racking up a body count that would make your conflated posturing a joke.
And Iran would be right behind them.
We started it. Now we have to finish it.
Thanks, Swiftee, for answering why you were against the war. Surprise of surprises, I had all those reasons as well.
You may be even more surprised that I actually tried to get the pope to move to Baghdad in early 2003. I am not a Catholic, but I truly figured that if Bush would hesitate bombing Baghdad for anything, it would be because he didn't want to kill the pope. The way I figured it, nobody else would do. No other political leader or religious leader.
I tried every way I could to email or phone somebody who would speak to the pope. Finally I just made a phone call to the Vatican and talked with this fellow with a very thick Italian accent, who said he would float the idea.
What I didn't realize was how very sick the pope was with Parkinson's at that time. So it didn't happen. We had our "shock and awe." And now it has been 5 years, and there is still no end in sight.
So next question, now that we are on a roll:
What sort of advantage to you see from a continuing occupation? I'm not asking for any promises of happy-ever-after, but I would really like to know how you think continuing the occupation could help avoid the bloodbath you describe.
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