Death Throes Of The Exempt Media, Vol. MCCLXII

Today’s example of the Exempt Media meltdown comes from the Washington Post in a hack-job report on blogger Bill Roggio. I’d write about it, but Hugh Hewitt, Paul Mirengoff, and Bill himself have done an excellent job in tearing Jonathan Finer and Doug Struck into tiny shreds.
I have to express some disappointment with the Post in this instance. While I know they write from a liberal viewpoint, I’ve usually considered them more fair and professional than the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, although in both cases that can fairly be called damnation by faint praise. In this case and in their coverage of the John Roberts nomination especially, they have gotten carried away by their prejudices and need to correct their reporting if they want to maintain anhy kind of credibility. Right now, they remind me of the proverbial little girl with the curl smack in the middle of her forehead. When they’re good, they’re very, very good … but when they’re bad, they’re horrid.
UPDATE: Mark Tapscott talks about how the Post can walk this back and cover bloggers more honestly in the future.

So You Want To Be Part Of The Game?

Every once in a while, sporting events get interrupted by mouth-breathing morons who decide that the only thing missing from the game is a personal appearance from a walkin’, talkin’ rectum — namely, themselves. Usually lubricated by healthy doses of alcohol, these idiots hold up play, distract the fans, tie up security, and all to feed their own senses of inadequacy. At one time, the interruptions had some humor to them, but that was before:
* A crazed Stefi Graf fan stabbed Monica Seles on court and pretty much ended her career (1993)
* Royals coach Tom Gamboa got attacked by a father-son duo and barely avoided being stabbed (2002)
* Houston Astros outfielder Bill Speiers suffered whiplash and an eye injury from an attacking fan (1999)
* Umpire Lan Diaz gets tackled by a Chicago fan (2003)
With this kind of track record, players on the field know that if fans get past security, the only protection they have is that which they provide themselves. Just because the person in question wears the team colors of a particularly hapless NFL squad doesn’t make them any less potentially dangerous. Anyone who doubts that this type of behavior carries career-ending risks just hasn’t paid attention — and anyone who sticks up for the mouthbreather fans who pull these stunts should ask Monica Seles what she thinks about fans making themselves part of the game.
brownsfan.jpg
Wanna join the game? Welcome to the NFL, dipstick.
UPDATE: Here’s the news story from the Post-Gazette on the picture:

With 9:17 left and the Steelers lined up on offense at Cleveland’s 28, a roly-poly Browns fan wearing orange socks charged out of the stands, through the Browns’ sideline and toward Verron Haynes, lined up in the backfield.
Haynes veered away from the fan, who continued toward the Steelers’ sideline. He slowed, turned his back and Harrison grabbed him and slammed him to the ground, holding him until security could cart the man away. …
“When he first came out he took off after V,” Harrison said. “He started toward our sideline, he turned around and started backing up toward our sideline, so I don’t know if the guy had anything on him or whatever. With his back to me, I thought I could take him down safely without risking injury to myself or my teammates and hold him there until the proper authorities came.”

The idiot should count himself lucky that he didn’t require an ambulance to take him off the field.

Poland Stands By The Coalition

A hearty round of applause, please, for our allies in Poland who understand the necessity of guarding freedom and democracy. Despite an earlier indication that the Poles would stick to a withdrawal timetable that would have seen their 1500-troop contingent leave Iraq within a few weeks, Poland announced instead that it would maintain its forces in Iraq throughout 2006 in keeping with a request from the new Iraqi government:

Poland’s government says it has taken the “very difficult decision” to extend its military deployment in Iraq until the end of 2006. The new conservative government’s decision reverses the previous leftist administration’s plan to pull troops out in early 2006.
Poland, a staunch ally of the US, has about 1,500 troops stationed in Iraq. …
But Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, elected in October’s parliamentary elections, has asked the Polish president to keep them there for another year.
“This is a very difficult decision, but we take into consideration the fact that the mandate of UN stabilisation forces has been extended to the whole of 2006 and, secondly, strong requests of Iraqi authorities that we stay there,” he said.

Poland has long provided a substantial share of combat-ready troops to guard the emerging democracy in Iraq. In March, they will start focusing instead on training Iraqi security forces to enable a transfer of power to the national contingent. The Poles have about half of the troop commitment of Italy and just a bit more than Australia, and command a central region of Iraq that includes the once-hot city of Najaf, the center of Shi’ite quietism espoused by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Their continuing commitment allows the Americans to continue their focus on training Iraqis as well as pursuing the Zarqawi terrorist network as the Iraqis seat their first democratically elected constitutional government ever.
In a time when European politicians often fall back on reflexive anti-Americanism to score short-term political points, let’s remember that some of our friends understand the stakes involved in the Iraqi front of the war on terror. Three cheers for the brave and steadfast Poles.

More Genocide Evidence Found In Iraq

The BBC reports that yet more evidence of Saddam Hussein’s genocide against the Shi’a came to light today, as workers attempting to restore water service to Karbala discovered a mass grave containing the remains of men, women, and children. The grave contains what the BBC refers to as “rebels” from the 1991 uprisings against Hussein following the defeat of Saddam’s forces in Kuwait, but one has to wonder why they would call the children rebels:

A mass grave has been discovered in the predominantly Shia city of Karbala south of Baghdad, Iraqi police said.
Dozens of bodies have reportedly been found, apparently those of Shia rebels killed by Saddam Hussein’s army after its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.
The Shia revolt was crushed and as many as 30,000 people were killed, many of them buried in mass graves.
The remains were uncovered by workmen digging a new water pipe in the centre of the city known for its Shia shrine.
They called the police, who cordoned off the area. Clothing found with the bodies indicated that they included men, women and children.

Had this grave contained the remains of men only, one could understand the explanation of its existence to bury rebels killed in an open battle. However, the presence of women — not usually associated with Shi’ite political or military activity — and especially children point to something else entirely. It sounds almost as if the BBC wants to couch this discovery in terms favorable to Saddam. The BBC assumes that all Shi’ites rebelled against the Saddam government, which would make all Shi’ites open targets for reprisals.
This mass grave shows something different than just a rebellion gone bad. It demonstrates that Saddm put down a rebellion among the Shi’a by indiscriminately killing civilians and dumping the bodies where they presumed no one would ever find them. That makes Saddam and his henchmen genocidal maniacs and mass murderers — not exactly news to anyone, or at least anyone outside of the offices of the BBC.

Did Munich Bomb At The Box Office?

Debbie Schlussel, whose opinion of Munich mirrors my own, announced on her blog today that the Spielberg film flopped on its first release weekend, coming in twelfth at the box office in limited release. Intrigued, I took a look at the numbers Debbie references — but alas, Debbie is mistaken.
True, Munich wound up at #12, but the film only got shown on 532 screens. (I was actually lucky to catch it in my neighborhood with that kind of release.) Its per-screen average comes in around $3,000 for Christmas and the day after, which would make it more lucrative than King Kong and only second to Casanova for the week.
Does that mean that it’s a blockbuster? Not hardly; we need to wait to see what happens when it goes into wide release to see if that average holds up, and for how long. The strategy behind the limited release allows Munich to build some word-of-mouth momentum, avoid a head-to-head clash with Kong and Narnia (for at least a week or two), and still qualify for the Oscar buzz. It can still fizzle out, like Syriana appears to have done since its opening.
I’m afraid that Debbie has indulged in a bit of wishful thinking. Hopefully we can rely on the wisdom of the American public to deliver that kind of judgment on Spielberg’s paean to moral equivalency, but it hasn’t yet been seen that we will. My guess: Americans embrace appeasement this winter, unfortunately.
UPDATE: Debbie and I disagree on the meaning of the numbers, but we agree that I screwed up the spelling of her name — which seems a little silly, since it’s in the title of her blog. Sorry!! Be sure to visit her site, which I’ve added to my blogroll.

Russia, Ukraine Play Petro-Hardball

Former allies Russia and Ukraine have now seen their relationship deteriorate rapidly since the Orange Revolution, not exactly an unexpected development. However, Russian antagonism has escalated the breach into a full-fledged economic battle, with both sides holding the other hostage over Russian oil:

Russia and Ukraine are on the brink of a political crisis over gas prices that symbolises the widening gulf between the two former Soviet countries.
The state-controlled Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom, is threatening to cut off flows on January 1 if Ukraine does not agree to pay quadrupled prices for the energy that comprises a third of its needs.
Ukraine currently buys Russian gas for its homes and factories at a heavily subsidised $50 (£29) per 1,000 cubic metres but a disgruntled Moscow wants to raise the cost to $230, in line with world prices.
Kiev has retaliated by threatening to increase tariffs for gas transit to western Europe and raise the rent paid by the Russian navy to keep its Black Sea fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.

Russia notes that eighty percent of its European deliveries has to pass through Ukraine, making the government in Kiev a de facto partner in Russia’s oil exportation, along with their military supremacy on the Black Sea. The Russians could cut off Ukraine altogether, but Ukraine could at that point revoke all licenses to transmit oil to Europe as well as evict their navy from its Black Sea ports. Such a move would then guarantee a response from Russia’s European clients, pressuring them to settle their differences with Kiev.
What are those differences? It appears that the revocation of the subsidies came as a direct result of Ukrainians electing the West-leaning Viktor Yuschenko over the hand-picked Russian favorite, Viktor Yanukovich. Vladimir Putin has decided to take that decision rather personally, and as a result feels the need to punish the intransigent Ukrainians that dare to prefer closer ties to European democrats over ties to increasingly autocratic Russia — and this temper tantrum demonstrates why.
Europe may have to reconsider allowing Russia to take on the G-8 presidency next week until this has been resolved. That may put more public pressure on Putin to behave himself and convince him that price wars will be harmful to everyone in the long run.

Gray Lady Still Pining For Her Lost Convicts

One of the silliest memes generated in the last few years is the counting of imprisoned convicts during the regular Census. The Gray Lady has long complained about the practice of counting American citizens as part of the Census in the counties where they are incarcerated, instead of either (a) counting where they would be living if the poor dears hadn’t gotten themselves convicted, or (b) not counting them at all. It seems that the NIMBY-fueled practice of building prisons out in the hinterlands, where the attendant security and potential crime associated with jailkeeping becomes Someone Else’s Problem, dilutes the political impact of the Big Apple:

The first Constitution took for granted that enslaved people could not vote, but counted each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning representation in Congress. This inflated the voting power of slaveholders and gave them much more influence in legislative matters than their actual numbers warranted. No American would knowingly tolerate such an arrangement today. But a glitch in the census that inflates the populations of some state legislative districts – thus exaggerating their voting power – has led to a contemporary version of that problem. It involves counting prison inmates in the district where they are confined rather than where they actually live. The Census Bureau could fix this problem in a heartbeat, so it needs to get a move on.

This isn’t the NYT’s first swing at this pitch, but at least they have stopped using ridiculously fictional numbers for their arguments. (See here, here, here, and here for CQ posts on this same subject from the Times’ last attempt at this argument.) Unfortunately, the Times still uses the same faulty logic to shift blame from New Yorkers to the Census Bureau for their policy decisions.
First off, the Times attempts to draw a fictional distinction between where an inmate lives and where he is incarcerated. In fact, an inmate lives in prison, not where he’d like to live if he hadn’t gotten convicted of a crime. I might live in California, but if I robbed a bank in Minneapolis, I’d be living in Stillwater and not Sacramento. Second, what the Times proposes would require sliding scales of living based on the expected detention time. If I was only going to serve two years and parole out, I would get counted as 8/10ths of a person for NYC, perhaps? And that would get decided when, and what if I decided to move to Utica instead after my actual release? Nor does the thought of simply skipping over convicts work, especially not from a Constitutional point of view. The intent and the language included in the Constitution did not limit the count to “voters”; it meant to count each person in the United States. The shameful 3/5ths compromise that the NYT suddenly supports meant to get around the fact that the prevailing law did not recognize slaves as humans, an odd position for the Paper of Record to take vis-a-vis convicts in prison.
But most of all, this editorial fails because it refuses to admit the culpability of NYC and other large cities in sending their convicts out of their jurisdiction. Why? They refuse to spend the money on building and maintaining prisons for long-term convicts. They don’t want to eat up valuable real estate that could bring in tax money rather than spend money on taking care of their own criminal element. The people in these large cities would rather shove that responsibility off onto the hicks in the countryside. That NIMBY impulse may serve them well when it comes to gobbling up tax revenues, but now that it impacts their political representation, they want to eat their cake and have it too. Meanwhile, the people who have to deal with NYC’s convicts in their communities have to deal with all of the extra cost of securing their communities and watching as eminent domain eats up their saleable real estate.
The Big Apple can take one of two actions to solve the problem. Either they take up some of that real estate that goes to pricey condos and office space and start housing their own security problems, or they can convince Congress to amend the Constitution declaring that convicted felons aren’t really human beings at all and don’t deserve to be counted in the Census. Otherwise, the editorial board should really move onto another subject entirely.

Hillary And Chuck Line Up Defense Pork For Contributors

The New York Sun reports this morning that their two senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, really know how to put the quid in quid pro quo. While Schumer in particular vehemently protested attaching an authorization for ANWR drilling to the Defense Department appropriation bill, he and Hillary both stuck spending amendments that directly benefitted serious contributors to their election coffers:

Senators Clinton and Schumer are asking the Pentagon to spend $123 million of its wartime budget for New York projects that the Department of Defense didn’t ask for – but that in many cases are linked to the senators’ campaign contributors. …
Two New York congressmen sit on the House Armed Services Committee: Rep. John McHugh, a Republican of Watertown, and Rep. Steven Israel, a Democrat of Long Island. Many of the companies and executives who won earmarks this year donated money not only to Senator Clinton, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and to Mr. Schumer, but also to Mr. Israel. And several of those designated for earmarks gave to members of the Joint Defense Appropriations Conference Committee, which wrote the New York projects into the defense spending bill.
Highlights of the earmarks announced by the Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Schumer include:
* $5 million in taxpayer money to STIDD Systems in Greenport, a company whose president and chief executive officer, Walter Gezari, gave $2,500 to the Friends of Hillary political action committee in May. Mr. Gezari, whose company makes seating for military vessels, gave $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee in March. He has donated $108,350 to federal politicians since 1998. Federal lobbying records show that his company spent $400,000 lobbying Congress this year.
* $1.8 million in taxpayer money to EDO Corporation, an Amityville defense contractor that makes aircraft equipment. The company’s political action committee has given $17,000 to Mr. Israel over the past four years and $15,000 to Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat of Pennsylvania who is the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Defense. EDO’s political action committee also gave $1,000 to Mr. Schumer’s campaign committee and $853.44 to Boulevard Caterers in Farmingdale for food at a fundraiser for Mr. Schumer. The company spent $1,145 on food for one of Mr. Israel’s fund-raisers in April 2001.
* $8 million in taxpayer money to a publicly traded defense contracting firm, DRS Technologies, and its electronic warfare and network systems program in western New York. The firm’s political action committee gave $8,000 to Friends of Schumer and $30,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, of which Mr. Schumer is the chair. DRS, which is based in Parsippany, N.J., gave Mrs. Clinton’s political action committee $2,000 in May through its DRS Technologies, Incorporated Good Government Fund.
* $2 million in taxpayer money to a Buffalo nanotechnology firm, Nano-Dynamics, Incorporated. Its chairman, Allan Rothstein, contributed $4,400 to the Friends of Hillary political action committee over the past year. Its chief executive officer, Keith Blakely, gave $2,000 to Mr. Schumer’s campaign on October 26, 2004, as did the company’s president, Richard Berger, and its vice president, Glenn Spacht. Mr. Spacht’s contribution to Mr. Schumer was the only political donation he made to a federal campaign last year, according to records at the Federal Election Commission.
* $3.5 million in taxpayer money to SuperPower, Incorporated, a Schenectady subsidiary of Latham-based Intermagnetics General Corporation SuperPower’s president, Philip Pellegrino, gave $3,000 last year to a political action committee operated by Intermagnetics that, in turn, gave $2,000 to Mrs. Clinton this year; $1,000 to Mr. Murtha; and $1,000 to Mr. Stevens.
* $2 million in taxpayer money to Plug Power, Incorporated, a Latham developer of fuel cell technology for redundant power supplies. The company’s president, Roger Saillant, has given $2,000 to the Friends of Hillary committee over the past two years, and $3,000 to the Friends of Schumer committee over the past four.

Earmarking funds forces the DoD to spend their money specifically on these resources instead of other pressing issues — such as logistics and supplies to Iraq and perhaps protecting New York from another terrorist attack. Porkbusting has focused on this tactic recently, but in light of the screeching over Stevens’ bid to attach ANWR, this string of sellouts to contributors appears unbelievably hypocritical on Schumer and Clinton’s parts.
Since Schumer had such a problem with Stevens’ approach, the two Senators should explain each of these items in detail to help us understand how this improves American defense and makes our men and women fighting abroad any safer. That, after all, was the heart of the anti-ANWR wailing last week — that the DoD budget was somehow sacrosanct and should be above political machinations. Instead, we find out that the New York Congressional contingent finds it a perfect vehicle to pay off their major backers for the cash contributions they made.

Have The Russians Started The Great Game Again?

The London Telegraph reports that MI-6 may have kidnapped Pakistani nationals in Greece after the London subway bombings this summer. Media reports have already forced the Greek intelligence services to recall agents from Kosovo, and the alleged victims have named a high-level British diplomat who may face the same fate:

Amid growing controversy, the magazine Proto Thema said at the weekend that those who took part in the alleged abductions included a man listed as a senior diplomat at the British embassy in Athens as well as several named Greek officials.
A Government “D” notice requests British newspapers not to name MI6 officers, even if they are identified abroad. However, the name given by Proto Thema matches that of a man identified as a British intelligence officer on the internet and in allegations made by the renegade MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson. …
Seven of the 28 Pakistanis have testified before an investigating magistrate that unidentified Greek and British men forced their way into their homes in four Athens suburbs after the bombings.
They were allegedly blindfolded and driven to unknown destinations. They claimed to have been questioned about friends and relatives in Britain, and about the persons they had phoned.

The men later got dumped in the middle of Athens, blindfolded, after British and Greek intelligence apparently satisfied themselves that the Pakistanis had nothing to do with the bombings. The unnamed diplomat would be the second MI-6 operative unmasked in recent weeks as the various competing intelligence services in Europe have apparently engaged in a series of outings to embarrass each other and to force the evacuation of rivals from the Balkans. Although the Telegraph doesn’t name the countries involved in these spy games, the only other power interested in the Balkans would probably be the Russians.
If the Russians have anything to do with this story getting out, one has to question what Vladimir Putin can be thinking. The Islamist threat in the Caucasus hasn’t gone away, and yet he’s been playing footsie with Iran and probably interfering with the West in the Balkans on behalf of the Serbs. The only “strategy” possible to discern in these activities is that Putin only demonstrates reliability towards opposition to the West, even at the risk of what looks like long-term Russian interests.
It seems strange, but then almost everything done by Putin over the past few years has been increasingly strange. He appears obsessed with returning Russia to the status enjoyed by the Soviet Union, but without learning any of the lessons of its collapse. Russia could unleash an economic wave by cleaning up its markets and providing adequate protection for free enterprise, but instead Putin has nationalized industries and undermined the stability of private property. In a moment in history when Russia could finally stand up and play a positive role in the unleashing of human potential, he has taken the nation back to its worst Tsarist impulses.
In the meantime, the British and the Greek intelligence services will have to deal with the embarrassment of the Pakistani kidnappings, and wonder what role their erstwhile Russian allies have played in this debacle.

Blowing Kyoto Smoke

Given all of the hot air that foreign politicians spew about the failure of the United States to join the Kyoto accord on greenhouse emissions, the new BBC report on their own compliance should come as shocking news. In all of Europe, only the UK has met its 2005 obligations, with Sweden being the only other European nation that has a chance of coming close:

The UK is almost alone in Europe in honouring Kyoto pledges to cut greenhouse gases, a think-tank claims.
Ten of 15 European Union signatories will miss the targets without urgent action, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found.
The countries include Ireland, Italy and Spain.
France, Greece and Germany are given an “amber warning” and will not reach targets unless they put planned policies into action, the IPPR said.

The EU nations want the US to adopt the Kyoto limits without explaining for themselves why they haven’t taken the economically painful steps it prescribes for themselves. The US Senate foresaw the problems, both economic and strategic, and unanimously told then-President Bill Clinton not to bother even presenting it to them for ratification, 95-0. Not only did the limitations promise significant recessions in the future, but Kyoto specifically exempted two major economic powerhouses under the guise of empowering industrial development. One of these nations, India, needs the assistance, but the second — China — not only doesn’t need help but will start to challenge the US for military supremacy in the Pacific Rim. American security has allowed the Asian nations to rise up as a formidable economic force after spending most of the 20th century in poverty. And China accounts for almost as much greenhouse-gas emission as all of Europe.
Kyoto would handcuff the US while allowing China an unfettered path to sconomic and political domination of the region, the latter being especially unacceptable given China’s autocratic one-party regime. Europe, of course, could hardly care less about Chinese expansionism; they care more about reflexive anti-Americanism. The entire raison d’etre of the EU has always been to provide a global economy to rival the US, and Kyoto gives them an opportunity to slow us down. And just as with their debt controls, the EU contingent has no problem breaking treaty mandates on emissions as long as they feel it necessary to do so to remain competitive, making the agreement worthless anyway.
Kyoto represents nothing more than the rhetorical equivalent of the very subject of the treaty — hot gas with almost no substance at all.