February 2005 – Page 3 – Richard Bennett

Goodbye Eason old chappie

So it’s curtains for Saddam-spinner Eason Jordan: SAN FRANCISCO (AFX) — CNN’s top news executive, Eason Jordan, said Friday he’s resigning amid controversy over his assertion that journalists were targeted and killed by coaltion forces in Iraq. ‘After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being … Continue reading “Goodbye Eason old chappie”

So it’s curtains for Saddam-spinner Eason Jordan:

SAN FRANCISCO (AFX) — CNN’s top news executive, Eason Jordan, said Friday he’s resigning amid controversy over his assertion that journalists were targeted and killed by coaltion forces in Iraq. ‘After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq,’ he said in a note to CNN staff.

With Jeff Gannon a goner too, it’s Blogs 2, Scumbags 0. Not a bad week. Now let’s build on this triumph by helping Howie Kurtz out the door.

H/T Mickey Kaus and Jefe Jarvis.

UPDATE: See Rony Abovitz’ blog for comments from the guy who broke the story from Davos, and Michelle Malkin for the timeline.

San Diego Soliloquies

Jon Gallagher has a blog, and even though he’s being a stinky liberal you should check it out on account of his being all smart, technical, and literate. Right now: San Diego Soliloquies

Jeff Gannon

The anti-war, anti-Bush, left-wing blogosphere is all atwitter over some guy named Jeff Gannon (or maybe not) who used to cover the White House for the Talon News web site. The objection goes something like this (from Daily Kos): Gannon/Guckert’s problem wasn’t that he was a conservative, it’s that he used an alias to obtain … Continue reading “Jeff Gannon”

Gannon/Guckert’s problem wasn’t that he was a conservative, it’s that he used an alias to obtain a press pass for a fake news organization that served as a surrogate for a Republican political operation.

Wow, that sounds pretty horrible, doesn’t it? I’d have to say that any partisan hack who misrepresents himself in order to get a press pass has no credibility and no honor. Who would do such a thing? Daily Kos’s founder, Markos Zuniga for one.

Down with all who do this, of course. And for some reason, the lefties think it’s really important that this guy is gay. Why, I can’t fathom, but they make a point of it most every time he’s mentioned. OK, he’s gay, he’s conservative, and he acts like Kos. So what?

UPDATE: Here’s some more of Kos’ hypocritical droolings about his right-wing mirror image:

So, um, our guy was a treasonous fake reporter who helped expose an undercover CIA agent while getting White House press credentials with a fake name to lob softballs at Bush and McClellan, registered website names dealing with gay prostitution while writing stories advancing the Right’s anti-gay agenda, and when he cowardly quit, purged all his stories from the sites in which they lived.

So the charges are:

1. Exposed undercover agent (false, Plame wasn’t undercover and we don’t know who exposed her).
2. Got press credentials to play partisan politics (true, same as Kos).
3. Gay (true, so what?)
4. Quit when exposed (true, so what?)

So I make that 2 “so what’s”, one “same as Kos”, and one “false charge”. And why was this supposed to be a story again?

The permanent minority

Victor Davis Hanson wasn’t real impressed with Barbara Boxer’s showboating at the Condi Rice confirmation hearing: Democratic idealism that once alone gave the nation its needed social safety net, civil rights legislation, and environmental protection is becoming ossified and in danger of ensuring a permanent party of strident second-guessing and deductive furor at the loss … Continue reading “The permanent minority”

Victor Davis Hanson wasn’t real impressed with Barbara Boxer’s showboating at the Condi Rice confirmation hearing:

Democratic idealism that once alone gave the nation its needed social safety net, civil rights legislation, and environmental protection is becoming ossified and in danger of ensuring a permanent party of strident second-guessing and deductive furor at the loss of almost all political power. A majority of the state legislatures and governorships is lost. The Senate is lost. The House is lost. The Presidency is lost – the Supreme Court almost. Whether Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, or Alberto Gonzales, “minorities” no longer have any need of liberal gate-keepers – or of a particular patron like Barbara Boxer.

Only by policing its ranks of such despicable scum as Boxer does the party stand a chance of making a comeback.

Sims busted for lying, again

King County executive Ron Sims tried to whitewash the election mess again and got busted: After Sims praised the county’s “99.98 percent” accuracy in handling votes, he was asked what that number was based on. Logan said it was based in part on a discrepancy of 1,800 between ballots counted and voters known to have … Continue reading “Sims busted for lying, again”

King County executive Ron Sims tried to whitewash the election mess again and got busted:

After Sims praised the county’s “99.98 percent” accuracy in handling votes, he was asked what that number was based on. Logan said it was based in part on a discrepancy of 1,800 between ballots counted and voters known to have voted.

However, when that discrepancy was compared with the nearly 900,000 votes counted, blogger Stefan Sharkansky pointed out to Logan, the accuracy rate was actually 99.8 percent.

Sometimes it takes a blogger to do the math. Sims claimed his accuracy would have made a bank happy, but Sharkansky pointed out that it amounts to an error of $2000 for every million counted, not so good in fact.

Isn’t it odd that we can bring democracy to Iraq but not to Seattle? In Iraq, we only had to defeat Baathists and terrorists, but in Seattle we have a Democratic Party machine to cope with.

See Sound Politics for more.

Set your Tivos for a smart conservative

John Derbyshire will be on Brian Lamb’s Q&A program this Friday morning, 9-10 Eastern. He’s a conservative who doesn’t buy the Intelligent Design nonsense.

The latest outrage

When Eason Jordan said he covered-up for Saddam in order to keep the CNN Baghdad bureau open, people gave him the benefit of the doubt, but now that he’s claiming the US military has executed a dozen journalists, or maybe not, it appears he had altogether different motives. The man is obviously a slimeball, and … Continue reading “The latest outrage”

Kaus, Reynolds, and Jarvis have got the story right, and Kurtz has disgraced himself.

Behe’s little column

Intelligent Design creationist Michael Behe has an op-ed in today’s New York Times arguing in favor of ID; The Panda’s Thumb has a couple postings ripping it apart, and the religious blogs have some hailing it. I don’t have time for comment on this today, but it’s worth wading into for anyone with a few … Continue reading “Behe’s little column”

It should be noted that ID isn’t only bad science, rejected by virtually all of the world’s biologists, it’s also bad religion that’s rejected by all the world’s honest religious people; see The Revealer for another cogent critique of Behe’s column:

Michael J. Behe, a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, pleads the case of Intelligent Design in The New York Times, explaining I.D.’s “four linked claims,” and disingenuously describing the first two controversial assumptions as “uncontroversial.” It’s an exercise in anachronism, pointing mechanical metaphors backwards towards biology to prove that “life overwhelms us with the appearance of design.”

BTW, I had the opportunity to argue ID with a fellow who works at the Discovery Institute during a recent foray to Seattle, and I have to say I wasn’t impressed by his honesty. But more on that later as well.

Coral reefs create clouds to control the climate

This from New Scientist highlights a fascinating finding about coral: When the temperature soars, coral reefs might cool off by creating their own clouds. Research from the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast shows that corals are packed full of the chemical dimethyl sulphide, or DMS. When released into the atmosphere, DMS helps clouds … Continue reading “Coral reefs create clouds to control the climate”

This from New Scientist highlights a fascinating finding about coral:

When the temperature soars, coral reefs might cool off by creating their own clouds.

Research from the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast shows that corals are packed full of the chemical dimethyl sulphide, or DMS. When released into the atmosphere, DMS helps clouds to form, which could have a large impact on the local climate.

In the air, DMS is transformed into an aerosol of tiny particles on which water vapour can condense to form clouds. This sulphur compound is also produced in large amounts by marine algae and gives the ocean its distinctive smell. Algae play a vital part in regulating Earth’s climate, but no one had looked at whether coral reefs might have a similar role.

Graham Jones of the Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia, and colleagues measured DMS concentrations in corals in the Great Barrier Reef and its surrounding water. They found that the mucus exuded by the coral contained the highest concentrations of DMS so far recorded from any organism. A layer rich in DMS formed at the sea surface above the reef, where it was picked up by the wind.

“Although globally the emission of DMS from the Great Barrier Reef is not huge, on a regional basis it is very significant,” says Jones.

It’s certainly true that corals under stress produce a thicker mucous coat than they do normally, and the same applies to other reef-dwelling cnidarians such as anemones. It’s off that nobody noticed this before, because it’s common knowledge to home reef-keepers.

Incidentally, the coral reef came about historically during the Cambrian period, and it’s one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Next time you find a creationist carrying on about the impossibility of the Cambrian Explosion you can point to two Cambrian things that lead to a big take-off in evolution: sexual reproduction and the coral reef.

The arrogant Juan Cole

Has this Juan Cole idiot every made a correct prediction about anything in the Middle East or West Asia? Last time I checked he hadn’t, which makes his credential-preening bitch-fight with Jonah Goldberg all the more pathetic. (…and I say this as someone who has lived in an Arab country and another couple Muslim countries, … Continue reading “The arrogant Juan Cole”

(…and I say this as someone who has lived in an Arab country and another couple Muslim countries, learned Arabic and a few other languages, and read extensively about the Middle East and stuff, of course.)

If you want sober and informed comment about the situation in Iraq these days you could do a lot worse than turn to Tom Friedman (a man who knows Arabic, has lived in the Middle East, read books, etc, etc). Friedman has some pointed criticism of people like the arrogant Dr. Cole in his election column:

But wait – not everyone is wearing a smiley face after the Iraqi elections, and that is good, considering who is unhappy. Let’s start with the mullahs in Iran. Those who think that a Shiite-led government in Iraq is going to be the puppet of Iran’s Shiite ayatollahs are so wrong. It is the ayatollahs in Iran who are terrified today. You see, the Iranian mullahs and their diplomats like to peddle the notion that they have their own form of democracy: “Islamic democracy.” But this is a fraud, and the people who know best that it’s a fraud are the ayatollahs and the Iranian people.

When any Iranian reform candidate who wants to run can be vetoed by unelected ayatollahs, and any Iranian newspaper can be shut by the same theocrats, that is not democracy. You can call that whatever you want, but not democracy. They don’t allow bikinis at nudist colonies and they don’t serve steak at vegetarian restaurants, and theocrats don’t veto candidates in real democracies. The Iraqi Shiites just gave every Iranian Shiite next door a demonstration of what real “Islamic” democracy is: it’s when Muslims vote for anyone they want. I just want to be around for Iran’s next election, when the ayatollahs try to veto reform candidates and Iranian Shiites ask, Why can’t we vote for anyone, like Iraqi Shiites did? Oh, boy, that’s going to be pay-per-view.

The trouble with people like Cole isn’t their lack of education, it’s their inability to see events outside the US in their native context. The war in Iraq is no longer about George W. Bush, if it ever was. It’s about the Iraqi people and their aspirations for self-rule and the forces of fascism and repression that would deny that to them. For all his training, Cole has unfortunately decided to ally himself and his aspirations with the Iranian mullahs instead of with the Iraqi people.