Fair and balanced coverage

I've frequently bashed the (conservative) bloggers at The Corner in several of my posts, so, I thought it necessary to commend them when I saw this excellent post by Veronique de Rugy criticizing Karl Rove for distorting the facts in his characterization of Obama as the irresponsible, big spender (yeah, chew on that for a second).

Yesterday, Karl Rove had a piece in the Wall Street Journal called "Obama's Fiscal Fantasy World," showing Obama as the big spender and irresponsible president that he is.

However, I think the Obama administration's record is bad enough on its own that we don't need to distort the truth about what happened on the budget side during President Bush's two terms in office. Yet, that's what Rove does.

...Rove conveniently omits the last fiscal year of President Bush's second term (FY2009). He defines the two terms as lasting seven years instead of eight. That's wrong.

Here's an excerpt from his WSJ piece. Do not read it on a full stomach.

After a year of living in his fiscal fantasy world, Americans realize they have a record deficit-setting, budget-busting spender on their hands. Voters are now reading the fine print on all that Mr. Obama proposes and as they do, his credibility, already badly damaged, suffers.

Even as Karl Rove continues his Orwellian quest to use his administration's record to show that up is down and Bush is right, it's nice to see partisan people such as Ms. de Rugy stand up for the correct facts. The fact is, Karl "deficits don't matter" Rove does not have the credibility to attack Obama from the position of fiscal responsibility. Kudos to Ms. de Rugy for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.

Muscular Moral Relativism

President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech appears to have been well received in this country, both among the left and the right.  That's nice.  It's an interesting speech:

But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world.  Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this:  The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.  The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.  We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will.  We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.  And yet this truth must coexist with another -- that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy.  The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms.  But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly inreconcilable truths -- that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly.  Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago.  "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions."  A gradual evolution of human institutions.

Yes. War is sometimes necessary when other avenues fail. America's power has helped ensure peace for the last sixty years.  Etc.  Hardly something a liberal peacenik would say.  Those that fearfully predicted that this President would be a knee-jerk anti-war President willfully ignored early hints that his outlook might be more realist than idealist, more Nixon than Wilson.  Andrew Sullivan talked up the realist aspect of Candidate Obama's foreign policy views a long time ago.  In fact, there were always more indications that Obama would disappoint his anti-war backers well before he would the more hawkish ones.

But, even as conservatives praised his speech, some couldn't resist a few jabs:

His decision to push for a surge also garnered Obama comparisons to Bush, who had done much the same thing in Iraq three years earlier. The Oslo speech, too, reminded some of Obama’s predecessor – with a twist.

“The irony is that George W. Bush could have delivered the very same speech. It was a truly an American president's message to the world,” said Bradley A. Blakeman, a Republican strategist and CEO of Kent Strategies LLC who worked in the Bush White House.

Added Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations: “If Bush had said these things the world would be filled with violent denunciations,” said “When Obama says them, people purr. That is fine by me.”

What bizarre logic.  Dear Mr. Mead: George W. Bush had the world's support to go to war against Afghanistan after 9/11.  That was a just war, if there ever was one, and was globally perceived as one.  Bush could have delivered a speech such as this one on September 12th, 2001 and would have faced few "violent denunciations".  But, Bush went on and invaded Iraq over the deep objections of the rest of the world.  That unpopular war, one that most certainly did not meet the traditional definition of a just war, led to widespread suspicion that Bush simply believed that any war America undertook was just.  The Bush doctrine was an affront to traditional just war theory.  That is why "the world" began reflexively denouncing any military effort Bush advocated, regardless of its merit.  So, yes, if Bush said these things today, the world would boo and hiss.  When Obama says these things right now, people purr.  But, if Obama decides to invade, say, Jamaica, under the guise of the war on terror, you can bet that people will most certainly not purr when he says these same things subsequently.

Beef, Ground on a Bias

Conservatives like to complain about the "liberal mainstream media."  A lot.  They blame the "MSM" for a laundry list of evils, for everything from fawning coverage of Democrats at the expense of Republicans to ignoring "real news" to gibberish about them advocating the indoctrination of kids.  Prime targets: New York Times, MSNBC, National Public Radio, ABC, CNN, and so forth.  (Always mysterious to me why Faux Noise with all its ratings dominance is excluded from the MSM category.)

This nonsense aside, there are much better grounds for pointing out liberal bias than whining about unfairness.  Case in point, today's New York Times article about the dangers posed by ground beef.  Starting with the horrific story of a young woman, Stephanie Smith, who became paralyzed after eating a hamburger tainted by E. coli, the writer goes on to describe "why eating ground beef is still a gamble":

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows.

Yuck.  E. coli is an ever-present danger, and apparently, my beloved hamburger is the biggest vector of this bacteria.  Who knew you could become paralyzed from E. coli???

Anyway, point well taken.  I will now never buy ground beef unless I know that it was ground at the grocery store from a good (single) cut of meat, or maybe if I'm buying from a local, reputable rancher.  I'm definitely never buying anything from Cargill.  I even applaud the Times for their fantastic exposé of meat grinding practices.  Good journalism.

But, then, they have to go and say this (emphasis mine):

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen. 

WTF?  How do you make the leap from exposing unsanitary meat production practices to fingering the federal government for not sufficiently regulating meat grinding?  I don't need more federal laws, I just need more investigative pieces like these that uncover the unsavory side of food production so that I, as a consumer, can be informed and make appropriate choices.  This, dare I say, would be an old school conservative point of view.  Their liberal bias is what leads the Times to blame the federal government for not preventing all hazards out there.

Freedom of Difference

The hullabaloo over Obama's selection of Rick Warren to lead the invocation at the Inauguration has exposed the limits to which progressives are willing to embrace "post-partisan politics." While I can understand their disdain for a man who rejects gay marriage and supported Prop 8, those who protest his selection make the critical error of perpetuating the mentality that one must only associate with those that agree on everything. For all his faults--and there are enough--Rick Warren is hardly a Pat Robertson or James Dobson, those luminaries who blamed 9/11 and Katrina on the presence of gays in this country. Moreover, Warren has consistently tried to move evangelical Christians toward social causes such as poverty-alleviation, an important service for which the nation ought to be grateful. If for nothing else, Warren ought to be embraced for his attempt to change the evangelicals' dismaying record of being one-trick ponies, for their willingness to ignore social injustice so long as "higher values" such as a public expression of faith are allowed. In this context, Obama's invitation to Warren ought to be commended because someone evangelicals admire will now publicly lead them in praying for the new president and his leadership. If you think this is a meaningless gesture, then you are no more interested in having a government for all Americans than were the cast of characters who "led" for the past eight years. Warren's presence at the Inaugural stage ought to be more disconcerting to the Christian right than for the progressive left. This is a splendid opportunity to engage the two parts of the country that do not care to acknowledge each other, let alone tolerate their differences in views. The fight over gay marriage will continue as it should in popular culture, values, and in government--including in the courts. That should not prevent collaboration in other important areas, particularly in tackling poverty. An acknowledgment of the other might be a good first step toward increasing collaboration. And, who knows, it might actually lead to greater dialogue and the chance for persuasion, as opposed to legal coercion.

From the Dept. of the Absurd

Priceless "hypothetical" from The Corner today that apparently now qualifies for reasoned discussion:

Does the selloff on Wall Street have anything to do with the increasing likelihood that Obama will be our next president?

Well. I understand feeling morose about the trailing candidate's electoral prospects, and I understand partisanship and feeling a certain level of paranoia, but does it behoove an influential blogger like Kathryn Lopez to post such drivel? The worst part is the too-cute-by-half title: "Coincidence?"

If, on the other hand, Ms. Lopez believes this sort of thing to be worthy of discussion, I have some more fodder:
1. Coincidence? The weather in DC has steadily become cooler over the last few months while Obama's poll numbers have improved.
2. Coincidence? Wall St. has gone to crap ever since Tom Brady blew out his knee.
3. Or how about this? Republican prospects have really sucked since the economy tanked. Er, actually... Never mind. That one makes too much sense.