PostWatch

Next Week, We End Mideast Violence and Revisit the Designated Hitter Rule

Should homosexuals be allowed to marry? I'm not sure. But wait, there's more--at PostGlobal, where I was invited to write about the issue in a comment-board discussion. PostGlobal is part of the humongous Washington Post News Interactive empire, known around here as washingtonpost.com. At the moment my comments are featured on the homepage, but the link there is broken so go here if you lack direction in life. Apparently this puts me on a PostGlobal topic list so I may be posting more comments there, and links here.

Channel Your Inner Techno

I have one brother--one--who will be proud of me for having attracted a lot of hits from AR15.com.

AR15 as in this:

The hits, however, follow a query on a discussion board about the music in the Geico caveman at-the-airport commercial. Which by far is the most popular post I've put up in weeks.

You AR-15 guys, you're not so tough. Throw in a little Röyksopp and suddenly you're all wistful and dreamy about the soft summer rain on a day, really, not that long ago....

Oh wait, that's me.

And Now... The Rest of the Story

Warming Called Threat To Global Economy by Juliet Eilperin isn't the worst story I've ever seen on global warming; it quotes a critic saying the latest study forecasting doom underestimates the costs of taking action to solve an exaggerated threat. But the story overlooks a more serious flaw.

The lede:

Failing to curb the impact of climate change could damage the global economy on the scale of the Great Depression or the world wars by spawning environmental devastation that could cost 5 to 20 percent of the world's annual gross domestic product, according to a report issued yesterday by the British government.

The report by Nicholas Stern, who heads Britain's Government Economic Service and formerly served as the World Bank's chief economist, calls for a new round of international collaboration to cut greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

The critic:

Some economists questioned the British study's projections, however, saying they overestimated the impact of global warming on the world's economies, especially those of developed nations. At the same time, these critics said the report's assertion that it would cost only 1 percent annually of global GDP to curb climate change underestimated how much spending would be required.

"There's just a very small part of GDP" in industrialized nations "that's affected by weather in a direct or indirect way," said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, which accepts some contributions from fossil-fuel companies. "It's very difficult to sketch out this disaster scenario."

But wait, there's more. Elsewhere. From the science policy blog Prometheus, Roger Pielke Jr. comments in a post titled Stern's Cherry Picking On Disaster and Climate Change. After noting Stern's projections of Apocalypse, Pielke says:

The source is a paper prepared by Robert Muir-Wood and colleagues as input to our workshop last May on disasters and climate change. Muir-Wood et al. do report the 2% trend since 1970. What Stern Report does not say is that Muir-Wood et al. find no trend 1950-2005 and Muir-Wood et al. acknowledge that their work shows a very strong influence of 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons in the United States. Muir-Wood et al. are therefore very cautious and responsible about their analysis. Presumably this is one reason why at the workshop Robert Muir-Wood signed on to our consensus statements...

Which include this: ...it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that might be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions. Pielke, who directs the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, adds:

The Stern Report’s selective fishing out of a convenient statement from one of the background papers prepared for our workshop is a classic example of cherry picking a result from a diversity of perspectives, rather than focusing on the consensus of the entire spectrum of experts that participated in our meeting....

There's more, including Pielke pointing to a comment by Richard Tol:

I do not often agree with Bjorn Lomborg, but in this case he was right.

The Stern Review was announced in the British media as the report that would bolster the green credentials of Gordon Brown, the heir-apparent to Tony Blair. Brown needs this, as David Cameron, the Tory leader, is much greener.

Surprisingly, no journalist thought it strange that a "scientific review" would a priori support a political position.

Now, after reading the report, I think that Bjorn Lomborg was wrong: The Stern Review is more alarmist and less competent than even Lomborg suspected.

I believe that's environmental economist Richard Tol. Bjorn Lomborg we know.

Another Secret Stem-Cell Breakthrough

Why is it a secret for the Post? Because it's not about embryonic stem cells. Via NRO, the Daily Mail reports British scientists grow human liver in a laboratory:

British scientists have grown the world's first artificial liver from stem cells in a breakthrough that will one day provide entire organs for transplant.

The technique that created the 'mini-liver', currently the size of a one pence piece, will be developed to create a full-size functioning liver.

Described as a 'Eureka moment' by the Newcastle University researchers, the tissue was created from blood taken from babies' umbilical cords just a few minutes after birth.

Creating whole organs this way could be at least 15 years off, according to the story, but repairing smaller areas of damage might take place within just five. Not bad.

Let's see, the last two stem-cell stories I can find by the Post's Rick Weiss (or anybody) consisted of an embryonic technique to cure Parkinson's that created cancerous tumors and claims that embryonic cells had been extracted without destroying embryos that soon proved false.

If there's an A1 story over the same period about a significant advance in adult or cord-blood stem cell work, I'm not aware of it. 

What World Do You Live In

Howard Kurtz is a nice guy but it's never easy to forget he's a reporter embedded in mainstream media. From today's live chat:

Vienna, Va.: Many of the newspapers (and at least one commenter in this discussion) state as fact the the Harold Ford ad was racist. In your opinion, does having a white woman say "call me" to a black man automatically make an ad racist?

Howard Kurtz: Anyone who thinks that ad didn't have racist overtones -- based, by the way, on Ford attending a Playboy-sponsored party at the Super Bowl with, I believe, thousands of others -- isn't living in the real world. Look at it this way: The RNC-financed ad was so offensive that Ford's Republican opponent, Bob Corker, denounced it.

(I added the link to the ad)

As I said at the time, I had to do research on the internet tubes to learn how my white racist brain was supposed to react. Democrats, some of whom may actually believe it, informed us that it was about "miscegenation" and antebellum taboos about protecting white women from evil black men.

But I thought that was about defending the honor of virginal Southern Belles. Apparently the tradition extends farther and includes defending the sacred respect naturally attached to floozies. Those good ol' boys are simultaneously more reactionary and broad-minded than I thought. 

I criticize people for reading minds but it sure does seem like there's a lot of projection going on. The left is the go-to guy if you're in the market for blackface, or antisemitism, or outing gays and, perhaps this is just a one-off deal, announcing that Republicans don't love God. Nice party you got there.

As for Mr. Kurtz, even nice guys are better off when they know what decade it is.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin does a blackface review and remembers one I missed: Maryland Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele. Well, it's hard to keep track.

That's Gotta Hurt

Post Beats News or in our neck of the woods, Post beats Post:

October 30, 2006 -- The New York Post today surpassed the Daily News and The Washington Post to become the 5th largest newspaper in America after bucking the national trend and chalking up a whopping 5.1 percent jump in circulation.

The Post's average paid circulation was 704,011 for Monday to Friday in the six-month period ending Sept. 30, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported.

That's an increase of 34,348 copies over the same period in 2005.

Spruiell at NRO has a list of the top 25, with total circulation and the percentage rise or fall from the same period last year. Of those 25, only three newspapers increased their numbers: The New York Post (5.3%), the New York Daily News (1.0%), and the St. Louis Post Dispatch (0.6%). (I can't tell you why we have two different figures for the New York Post's increase, but 5-something-percent is pretty good).

The Washington Post fell 3.3%, which back-of-the-envelope puts it near the middle of the pack. High-fives for not being the Los Angeles Times (down 8.0%) or the Philadelphia Inquirer (down 7.5%). Or The New York Times, twice, since they fell 3.5% and paid a gazillion or so for the Boston Globe which is down 6.7%.

If You Say So

From Va. Catholics Pushed To Support Same-Sex Marriage Ban by Chris L. Jenkins and Michelle Boorstein:

Of Virginia's more than 7 million residents, 620,000 are Catholic, according to the conference.

A solid majority of the state's Catholic voters -- 60 percent -- said gays should "be allowed to form legally recognized civil unions," compared with 38 percent who said they shouldn't, according to a Washington Post poll conducted this month. Slightly more than half of Catholic poll respondents -- 51 percent -- said they oppose the proposed constitutional amendment, compared with 46 percent who said they support it.

In contrast, the result for all poll respondents was 53 percent in support of the amendment and 43 percent against.

The gist of the story being that even though most Virginians support the amendment, most Catholic Virginians do not.

What the story fails to examine except in one quote is the dicey question how Catholic are you. I say this strictly as a question of political science rather than trying to look into the souls of anyone other than my own scary self. Here's the only time the question is addressed:

Joseph Strada, president of the Brent Society, a lay Catholic group of the Arlington Diocese, noted that only about one-third of U.S. Catholics go to Mass at least once a week. If they don't go, they won't be properly informed about gay marriages, civil unions and other issues, he said.

"To me, it's not surprising, because they're not going to a church they disagree with," he said. "If they don't attend church, they don't know what the church teaches. So it's obvious they won't have reliable answers."

After which we meet two Catholics polled by the Post/ABC News, both of whom say they oppose the amendment. One of them disagrees "with the church's stance on abortion." We never learn how active they are in the Church, how often they attend Mass, etc. Again, I'm not talking about what God knows about them. I'm wondering what the pollsters know--or don't.

Informative story, I'm just sayin'.

What Do You Mean 'We'

Dick Armey in Where We Went Wrong:

Where did the revolution go astray? How did we go from the big ideas and vision of 1994 to the cheap political point-scoring on meaningless wedge issues of today -- from passing welfare reform and limited government to banning horsemeat and same-sex marriage?

"Cheap political point-scoring" = 1. Banning Horsemeat 2. Banning same-sex marriage. Two equally meaningless wedge issues.  Apparently.

I don't know where Armey has been--other than out of office--but if banning same-sex marriage is cheap political point scoring, the score's pretty good: Most Americans have opposed it for some time and during the last national cycle in 2004, 11 states approved banning it even after some focused efforts to the contrary:

The closest race came in Oregon, where gay rights groups concentrated much of their effort and money and thought they had the best chance of winning. Opponents of the amendment raised about $2.8 million, enough to run TV and radio ads in the Beaver State and outspend pro-amendment forces, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Yet, in the end, the amendment passed by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent.

In the remaining states, the amendments passed with 60 percent of the vote or more, with the margin at a whopping 86 percent in Mississippi.

Correct me if I'm wrong--seriously--but I'm unaware of a single state where a ban has reached the ballot box and failed. Armey's on target in this column when he talks about arrogance and the GOP's ridiculous record on spending, but the party doesn't exist as a national force without the support of social conservatives. He doesn't have to like that, but he must be able to count. At least to 11.

Intellectual Corruption and Susan Glasser

Susan Glasser is editor of Outlook, the Post's big Sunday roundup of Op-Eds. Last week she ran a column by Yvonne Ridley defending the use of the veil, deceptively identifying Ridley as an editor and author. As PostWatch and many others said at the time, Ridley is a radical terrorist sympathizer; that's not invective but a fair way to describe someone who thinks the Taliban got a "bad press," who defends the actions of suicide bombers and who has praised monsters including the man who engineered the Beslan School massacre. In her column today, ombudsman Deborah Howell provides Glasser's answer:

Outlook editor Susan Glasser disagreed: "We identified Yvonne Ridley in the same way we would any other author of a piece in Outlook. We steer clear of characterizing our writers' views. That's up to the readers, and clearly this one didn't have a problem deciding what to think about Ridley. She is a very controversial figure, but what these people want us to do is to put a label on her that marginalizes her and prejudges her opinions. I thought her opinion on this particular subject was worth airing, that she was well qualified to write the piece and to raise some interesting notions -- not often aired in this paper -- about Western men and their hypocrisy on Islamic women, regardless of whether you agree with her or not."

Well, I guess we know that Glasser agrees with some interesting notions about "Western men and their hypocrisy on Islamic women," so that's useful information. But with this response, Glasser has filed a petition for ignorance. The Post, we have now come to learn, is not supposed to inform the public. It's more of a brain-teaser; if you're willing to research the author of a column defending the veil and discover she defends suicide bombing as "martyrdom operations," more power to you.

Lesson, class: You cannot rely on the Post to provide the information you need to evaluate events. I've been saying that for years on this blog, and now Glasser announces that doing so is not even the paper's intention.  This is your destination when the road is mapped with left-speak. Glasser:

She is a very controversial figure, but what these people want us to do is to put a label on her that marginalizes her and prejudges her opinions.

Some people ought to be marginalized and have their opinions prejudged. Among them are figures who excuse and glorify terrorism. And the editors who promote them, conceal their true beliefs and defend that deception not as an oversight but as a positive virtue.

Nor does Howell cover herself in glory:

I wasn't familiar with Ridley and agree that identifying her more fully would have helped readers put her comments into context. But what struck me as even more important was that Glasser could decide to run such a controversial article. This wouldn't happen in many countries.

If the Fourth Estate doesn't wake up it won't be happening in this country forever either.

Press Release Journalism

I've done it myself, especially on deadline with space to fill--write a story prompted by a press release or a teleconference.

One still hopes the stories that result are honestly reported. If you read this blog, you already know  occasionally that doesn't happen at the Washington Post.

From Instapundit we learn that Mudville Gazette is writing about a supposed grass-roots effort by active military to petition Congress against the Iraq War--and that it appears to be a classic Astroturf campaign. In this case that means it's organized by professional antiwar groups who then proceed to deceive the public about its origins.

The Post was among the many papers thus deceived. At least we hope it was deceived, in Wednesday's Grass-Roots Group of Troops Petitions Congress for Pullout From Iraq by Ann Scott Tyson. Tyson is our old friend who comically described the National Priorities Project as a "non-partisan research group" in a story last year about nefarious military recruiting practices that magically appeared after an NPP PR blitz. The presence of a real-time "cost of war" clock, NPP publications with frank antiwar titles and a variety of other hints were not sufficient to convince Tyson otherwise (we eventually convinced ombudsman Deborah Howell that the story was a bit flawed).

Tyson's effort last week about the group called Appeal For Redress has nothing along the lines of the New York Sun's Active Duty GIs Being Recruited To Lobby Congress Against War. For example:

A staff member at Fenton Communications who requested anonymity said his company was approached last week by a longtime peace activist and former director of the anti-nuclear proliferation front known as SANE/Freeze, David Cortright, to publicize Appeal for Redress. Mr. Cortright is now president of an Indiana-based nonprofit group, the Fourth Freedom Forum, and his biography on the organization's Web site says he helped raise "more than $300,000 for the Win Without War coalition to avert a preemptive attack on Iraq in 2002–03."

Mudville has a lot more detail, including a quick change in the registration info for the Appeal For Redress website so that it's no longer linked to the Fourth Freedom Forum. Reasons you might not shout that from the rooftops include the following as reported by Discover The Networks.org:

We must ask ourselves why these [9/11] attacks have occurred, and what the United States has done to incur such wrath" - Fourth Freedom Forum President David Cortright

Oh, Cortright is mentioned in Tyson's story alright. Just not that quote, or that form of identification:

Madden said he and Hutton met and learned of the vehicle for expressing their views to Congress when they attended a lecture at the YMCA in Norfolk by David Cortright, the author of "Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War."

Whoa--close call.

Moving right along,it looks like there are some active and/or recently discharged military who are interested in this group. But the combined multilayered fact-checking resources of Ann Scott Tyson, staff researcher Julie Tate and assorted editors seem to have overlooked the men behind the curtain, and it ain't just Cortright--check out the lengthy Mudville Gazette post. In the meantime, since the Post prints press releases and lets free blogs do the digging, we will ponder what mainstream media's competitive advantage is supposed to be.