Donkasaurus Post

We’re all for keeping government small where appropriate, which is, ideally, most places.

But we’re not all for the blatant pattern of subjective misrepresentation that goes on, virtually unchecked, all over the Internet — including by sites that are routinely, well, cited.

In this Post, a Biggovernment.com writer starts blatantly spinning in the second sentence (emphasis added):

…basis of calls for extreme climate change regulation.

But it is in the title, and the very first sentence, where the piece starts of misleading, right off the bat.

The title: “Penn State’s ‘ClimateGate’ Inquiry Determines Further Investigation Is Needed.”

How is this misleading? Well, for one, it gives no indication of the more relevant fact that Mann was cleared of any wrongdoing in three of the four charges, and the only three that really matter, namely:

1. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?

2. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?

3. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?

Which charge was Mann not yet cleared on?

4. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously
deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities?

Notice the difference between “conceal, destroy, misuse, falsify (No.’s 1-3) and “seriously deviating from accepted ‘practices’ within the academic community” (No.4) — along with how subjective that latter standard might be. It’s not unethical; it is prima facie evidence, if in fact it is found to have been the case, of having made an academic mistake. Sometimes going outside of such practices may even be a good thing. (We are not suggesting that this is necessarily the case here, just pointing out the subjective, and somewhat insignificant nature of this charge.)

Mann has been accused of all kinds of things, including some very serious allegations made round the Internet in striking and very public and repeated fashion (including at Biggovernment.com.) To come out with a headline that reads “Inquiry Determines Further Investigation Is Needed” in light of these facts, and the actual findings, is being purposefully misleading.

The very first sentence to the piece is also misleading:

In looking at four “possible allegations” of research misconduct against meteorology professor Michael Mann, a Penn State University panel has determined that further investigation is warranted for one of them

People have short attention spans, the most relevant points are put first (except here at Donkasaurus Post, were we expect you to be bored before you have even gotten past the title.) Only at the end of a long sentence is it noted that further investigation is warranted for “one” of them, meaning, by exclusion, not the other three. But there is no mention that Mann was exonerated on all three of the first three allegations. Or what they were, in comparison to the “fourth charge.”

No mention in the second paragraph either. Or the third. Or the fourth. But what is mentioned in the fourth paragraph, instead?

I suspect panel members are secretly hoping someone else will shoulder responsibility for determining Mann’s guilt or innocence.

Note: “Mann’s guilt or innocence.” And his guilt or innocence over what, exactly? This article has never told the reader, who is only informed by finding allusion to it, buried deep in the recital of the official press release that is included as part of the piece, finally.: That is, his “guilt” or “innocence” as to having “engaged in practices that seriously deviate from accepted practices.” (Note also that the sentence strongly implies that the panel came to no decisions whatsoever, although it is true that the first sentence does somewhat implicitly contradict this.)

For a site that is presumably concerned with “Big Government,” that sounds more than a bit “Big Brotherish.” But it’s probably not intended as such; but instead, only as much spin as can be gotten away with, to make it seem like the gap between the intense hype and heavy accusations against Mann that reverberated around the Internet and even into the mainstream media, and what Mann actually did, is not nearly as large, as in fact, it is.

As long as we are using the terms “guilt or innocence” completely inappropriately; on charges of blatantly misleading its readers, Biggovernment.com is found guilty by this panel, of the charges leveled against it…

..Namely, we’ll bury deep down in the repeated press release, of “seriously misleading its readers.” Unfortunately, “seriously misleading its readers,” is not a very big deviation from “accepted practices.”

And that is the problem, in America, today.

“When Democrats Attack,” according to the dictionary of far right wing blogging, is whenever they open their mouths, and say something that the far right wing does not like.

Obama makes a point about the Supreme Court. A good point, too, since it will be impossible to disentangle the pure nationality of many large corporations today. And coming on the heels of what is probably one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of the United States. And suddenly, to some on the far right, it’s a hateful,”fomenting” attack.

By this standard, whereby Obama simply impugned the decision of the Court itself, what would one call what has been said by many leaders of the far right wing against Obama?  Rape and pillage?  That may still not do justice to the disparity between what the far right has said about Obama, and getting upset at Obama for publicly disagreeing with, and calling out a decision that he (for the most part correctly) claims overturns decades of law, and even more precedent, in this country.

Here’s the real issue, and it’s one of substance, not of attacks.  (But turning it into this once again anti-Obama game is a way to avoid the substance):

Was Citizens United v.  the Federal Election Commission a good decision or not?

Corporations can now spend unfettered amounts on behalf of candidates for public office. Corporations are not individuals, but represent an amalgamation of individuals, organized into what is purely a legal, in many ways fictional entity, with a decided and usually very solitary goal — normally the pursuit of profits in its field.  Now, suddenly, money expended — which directly correlates the ability to acquire money, and the money so acquired, with the ability to directly influence the outcome of elections — can be spent by body-less legal entities that have almost none of the responsibilities of an actual human being.

Body-less legal entities who nevertheless now, under this bizarre, and extremely ill founded Supreme Court decision, will have not just the same free speech rights as individuals, but in some ways even more “right,” or at least practical ability — as a corporation’s ability to make money is often unlimited. In fact, such ability is in most cases, a corporation’s sole purpose.

This is not bad, normally, but it is when radically right wing Supreme Courts (four far right wing Justices, four moderate to liberals, and one conservative who in this ruling made a mistake) decide that this is also unfettered free speech, as well; and that the battle for the greatest direct influence upon our elections should be between corporations and individuals, not between  individuals as members of corporations or not, and between those corporations, yet again still, with the most money.

There is already too large of an influence of money upon the integrity of our larger elections, and invariably, on the part of those who hold office. The Supreme Court, voluntarily, through a terribly reasoned opinion, just made it a lot worse; and, in some ways, much more direct. If advertisements didn’t work, our economy wouldn’t revolve around them.  It’s little different for politics.  Only now, its body-less, sometimes even border-less, often for profit, corporate entities, doing the advertising. Sometimes, with it not even being openly acknowledge or recognized as such.

Pundit (un)cool: “Where’s ma job at “duuuuuude.” Seriously. McArdle, speaking in the Atlantic.

She’s a bit off on the numbers, too.

As noted here, by actual blogger Tbogg (not to be confused with “Tbow” who is Donkey Joel – Here might be the most ignorant and presumptuous media post ever — Achenbach’s “man“):

Megan McArdle – neither economist nor historian:

But the last two recessions were characterized by lingering unemployment–the infamous “jobless recovery” under Clinton and Bush.

Reality:

When Clinton was in the White House, the economy generated 17.6 million jobs during the corresponding period — from January 1993 to December 1998.

Bites:

The Unemployment Rate Was 4.2 Percent in 1999 — the Lowest Since 1969. The unemployment rate was 4.1 percent in December bringing the average unemployment rate for 1999 to 4.2 percent — the lowest since 1969. The unemployment rate has fallen for seven years in a row. It has remained below 5 percent for 30 months in a row. For women the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent — the lowest since 1953.

Obviously unemployment is not understood by those who should be unemployed.

A professor weights in on McArdle, on another occasion:

But the punchline for this story is that Megan McArdle in fact knows very little — not nothing, but not much either.

Which brings me back to my headline.  I don’t read McArdle much because I know she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and the glibness of her ignorance and the infantile quality of her ideology … piss me off.

Well, at least, for a person who claims to be an economics expert, McArdle knows her unemployment facts.

Where did Apple get the name for its new iPad;  From the iPhone?

Not exactly:

Some lines worth considering:

Talking head and blogger Sarah Palin spoke out on Fox News saying that Alito’s “Wilson moment” was OK, and that Justice Alito was just “calling him out.” She based her careful judgment on her longstanding and intimate knowledge of Supreme Court protocol. Oh, wait.

In other deep layer of Palin analysis, she went on to discuss health care “mandation.” What’s “mandation” you ask? According to Dictionary.com it means “No dictionary results.” Strange…

And finally, she described the entire state of the union from President Obama as being like “a lecture.” And we all know how she feels about lectures. Maybe that’s why she went through five different colleges.

Palin was also basing her support of Justice Alito’s “calling out” the President on the history of the law and the Supreme Court,  upon her intimate knowledge of Supreme Court cases.  Where it appeared she couldn’t name a single Supreme Court case.

Note, however, that after the aforelinked debacle, Palin crammed for a crash course, and got to pimp some misleading political spin at the same time, all while Fox’s  Carl Cameron did his magician like “Fair and Balanced” act, craftily veiling his two minute TV rehabilitation commercial for her even while,  rather emphatically, getting in Palin (and Fox’s) anti mainstream media message at the end.

The mainstream media is poor, as Cameron, and Palin, subtly, and not so subtly, imply.  But not because it is unfair to Palin;  but because of quite the opposite.  As an example, the ideologically fervent, and almost always incorrect, misleading, or simply rhetoric stuffed Palin is treated with kid gloves relative to the facts.  And the media has done a better job covering Palin than many other things, in fact, and it still has not covered Palin correctly.

Notice that at the same time Cameron also renovated this snafu on Palin’s part as well — where Palin apparently could not name a single source of news she routinely read. Now, according to her and her fair and balanced mouthpiece Cameron, easily explained by how ”annoyed” she was at that same media, even though in the video itself (just linked to), Palin expresses her “great appreciation for” that very same media.

If Palin was thus acting sycophantic here by telling the world her “great appreciation for the same media” she would later tell her rehabilitator Cameron that she was so annoyed at she would not answer critical questions, wouldn’t it have made far more sense to have simply name some sources (if she really dutifully reads them) and some Supreme Court cases (if she really knew any) rather than come off as looking extremely uninformed when that was already a chief concern to begin with? And then make her point about media annoyance?

You betcha.  Palin didn’t because she froze. And she froze because, as evidenced by her constant misleading rhetoric, it is unlikely that she really had read very much of substance, or knew much about the Supreme Court or its decisions at all.

But that’s nothing that spinmeisters Fox and Palin (and now back, naturally on the “Fair and Balanced” station, together again), couldn’t cobble back together, as the link of  Cameron and Palin above, aptly illustrates.  (Just not to active hard core Democrats perhaps, who sometimes don’t seem to want to grasp that just because they think something is purely empty, doesn’t mean everyone else is not being somewhat influenced by it on some level, or that being the most watched cable “news” source is not just coincidental with the movement of this country that past ten plus years. But then it’s not clear that Democrats see the movement of this country the past ten years, either. )

As noted in the Anchorage Daily News piece just linked to, also consider Palin’s suggestion from her recent book  that the media is “worthless as a source of factual information anymore.”

This is sometimes true. But mainly because they will publish wildly misleading and incredibly ill informed pieces like this one by Palin herself, and play to the same propaganda as a legitimate “side’ to a ‘factual debate” that Palin repeatedly, and erroneously, promotes herself.

The irony is unbounded.

Fox, most trusted name in news, largely because it’s ridiculously trusted by ideological conservatives.

It couldn’t possibly be because this heavily ideological “news” station, with the thinnest of obscuring veneers of “fair and balanced” over its persistent and cleverly veiled advocacy, tells some people what they want to hear (while convincing them of how fair and balanced they are being), could it?

Let’s look at an example: Fox was obsessed with ACORN.  So much so that it actually derided other news stations, who were already over covering allegations against this voter advocacy and neighborhood outreach organization,  for not giving covering this even more.

Once ACORN was essentially absolved, however, of voter fraud for the past half decade –

A new report on the community group Acorn by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has found no evidence of fraudulent voting or of violations of federal financing rules by the group in the past five years.

–big news given the neat constant coverage and reiterations of various allegations and accusations of voter fraud against, Fox suddenly clammed up:

And how many times did America hear how this group, which supported Obama, had engaged in fraudulent voting or violated federal financing rules at the same time?

How many times will this “error of the year” be corrected? With near round the clock coverage of it just like Fox seemed to insist the “ACORN scandal” required?

Not exactly.  A google search of the terms ”ACORN,” and “fraud,” with either “voter,” or “voting” within the domain of foxnews.com yielded a plethora of results.  But in the first few dozen (we got tired of checking after that) there was no mention of the news above that ACORN had been cleared for the past half decade (changing “fraud” to “fraudulent” did not change this fact).

In fact, in the first few dozen results, none were even in the last two weeks or so, while November, October, and September found all kinds of ACORN and fraud stories on Fox.  It seems like, once the “story of the year” brought some news that didn’t suit “fair and balanced” Fox’s ideology, it went from being a ’story of the year” to pretty much off of Fox’s radar.

Now it seems a similar pattern is emerging with regard to the famous ACORN under cover sleuths, now that they have been caught, in a little “mini watergate,”  apparently trying to bug Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s office – a pretty serious offense.

While a bit unsettling that Americans (or anybody) would pose as repairmen to gain access to a Senator’s office for the apparent purpose of espionage, we’re not all that sure that this is all that huge a story.  But given that Fox obsessed over the ACORN “pimp” scandal that this same person helped create, more attention certainly was warranted.

Dowd seemingly loves stereotypes, hypocrisy, and playing right into the worse kind of media “false balance” creation.  Here is an example where Dowd chastises Republican “caricatures” of Hillary Clinton (mean, and unfair ones, too) and then later engages in similar caricatures herself, in the exact same column:

Notice the irony:

The Alaskan [Palin] who shot to stardom a year ago as the tough embodiment of Diana the Huntress has now stepped down as governor and morphed into what theRepublicans always caricatured Hillary as—preachy, screechy and angry.We’ll ignore Maureen Dowd’s dopey Diana characterization, and focus on this: “morphed into what the Republicans always caricatured Hillary as—preachy, screechy and angry.”

[That is, she writes] “What the Republicans caricaturized Hillary as – preachy, screechy, and angry.”

Yet here is Dowd, in the very same column in which she later notes this fact, writing: “Hillary, who so often… came across as aggrieved, paranoid and press-loathing.”  [That is, herself essentially at one time calling Clinton "aggrieved," "paranoid," and "press-loathing."]

Yesterday, in addition to more of the same, Dowd also wasted her column fantasizing about the leadership implications of  how Scott Brown is “always game for a game of pickup basketball.”  By that standard, Dowd should probably be fantasizing about us here at the Donkasaurus Post, even more than Scott Brown. But alas (thankfully) we fall short of the perfect leader/Dowd masturbation bank material because we don’t see the point in drinking pepsi, which Dowd seems to later add to her faux leader fantasy wish list.

Seemingly missed by the aforelinked piece (and others), Dowd’s piece was apparently, satire.  But apart from a bad job of trying to mock people’s excessive faith in a “leader,” as opposed to everything else that matters more, or just mocking overhyped faith in Obama’s power, or perhaps an even worse job of mocking Brown’s overblown importance,  it didn’t really satirize much at all. Yet Dowd did, once again, quite often non satirically, play into more misleading stereotypes than a good column should in a year.

And it seems that in addition to “satire” there was more than a little Freudian fantasizing going on.  But not much, as per usual, of substance.

Here is what was written in a comment earlier this afternoon, prior to the NFC conference championship game.

Can Favre finally end his career on something other than a pick? Or will he throw one, retire, mow the grass for a while, miss the game terribly, and then go “You know Deanna, why not give it one more try…”? Here’s hoping he is not in that position…

Well, apparently, he is in that position. And on this one, it is his doing, and his doing alone.

After a donkey like 12 men in the huddle penalty (itself, in the waning moments of a tie game, following two lame ultra conservative “run” attempts that both failed miserably) moved the Vikings back to the Saints 38 yard line, and now with 19 seconds left on the clock and third down upon them, Favre scrambled right.  He bought some time.  He had open grass in front — enough to give the Vikings perhaps 7-10 yards, and put them in position where Ryan Longwell, who had an exceptional record this season on long field goals, could kick for the win and a trip to Super Bowl .

Instead, Favre threw the ball.  (Earlier in the game, Favre had apparently hurt his leg, but in moments like these, that is all but inconsequential, let alone for the player who holds the NFL record for consecutive quarterback starts.)

And not only that, he threw it somewhat long, which in general reduces the chances for success — which here, looking at a 56 yard field goal attempt if it falls incomplete — is a strategically bad call since a mere 5 to 10 yards radically increases the Vikings chances to win the game outright.

So surely Favre had a wide open receiver and relatively easy throw to make up for the lower odds of going for a middle range pass, right? (Which if successful would result in an even easier field goal attempt, why if it is an easy throw to an open receiver it is a good move.)

Nope.  Neither one.   It was actually a pretty hard throw, across his body — the types of throws that NFL quarterbacks routinely botch, and that even good ones, such as Favre, can botch.  Combine that with a tight, rather than wide open throwing window, along with the fact that Favre had free real estate for some decent scramble years, and it was a bad decision.

And it resulted in a pick.

As the Saints, winning the overtime coin toss a few game seconds later, got the ball and moved down the field and kicked the field goal themselves for the win and Super Bowl trip, it was, also, apparently, just as it was two years ago, the last pass Favre will throw in the NFL.

That is, unless the man who has had more coming out of retirements than George Bush did excuses for why our federal debt ballooned under his watch, now, at the age of forty-one, decides one more time that he just can’t take mowing the grass with that feeling still in his mind.

And if he got “that close” this season, why can’t he do it again.

Favre takes a lot of criticism for not just “retiring.”  (Or for not staying retired).  But in one sense we wouldn’t blame him.  A person should play a professional sport so long as they want to, and the team wants them to play.  It may be disappointing for some fans, who don’t want the image muddled (though in this case its hard to know what could muddle it worse than throwing a pick a few yards shy of a field goal attempt that would have sent the Vikings to their first Super Bowl in over thirty years); but the truest of athletes, ultimately, as much as they love the fans, sometimes just love the game itself even more.

Favre seems to be just this type of athlete.

But he still made a super Donkey play on that, ostensibly, last pass of his career; just as we worried about when writing the block quoted comment above,  shortly before the game itself.

The popular liberal Daily Kos website had this — no kidding around here — as the 3d sentence in a front page Post there today:

Brown’s victory gives Republicans the numbers in the Senate to filibuster most Democratic legislation…

Yes, it does, if one goes by the reasoning of the New Yorker’s Hendrik Helzberg, where the Filibuster is an evil tool that only one party has the right to both use, and prevent the other party from using.

Because, of course, Democrats used it all the time to stop legislation earlier this decade, right? And in particular, to stop all those super ideological Judicial appointments by the Bush Administration, too.

Or maybe not.  Let’s look at the ramifications of Democrats presuming that the filibuster is an occasional tool, except when their opponents badger them, then it is only an “extraordinary circumstances” tool, on the one hand,  but that in the hands of their political opponents can simply be used with impunity to no challenge at all.

The slippery slope toward a pseudo Big Brother-ish type of American Society just got a bit steeper and more slippery:

Could stacking your Twitter or Facebook contacts lists with financially-responsible friends help improve your chances of getting a loan?

The answer could be yes, according to a report out this week from CreditCards.com. In a story entitled, “Social networking: Your key to easy credit?” reporter Erica Sandberg writes that, “In their quest to identify creditworthy customers, some (creditors) are tapping into the information you and your friends reveal in the virtual stratosphere.”

There’s something pretty eerie, and undemocratic,  about this.