Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
James Taranto is noticing some peculiar things about the way the Associated Press discusses the federal crime that is the hacking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s e-mail account.
The Secret Service contacted The Associated Press on Wednesday and asked for copies of the leaked e-mails, which circulated widely on the Internet. The AP did not comply.
The disclosure Wednesday raises new questions about the propriety of the Palin administration’s use of nongovernment e-mail accounts to conduct state business. The practice was revealed months ago—prior to Palin’s selection as a vice presidential candidate—after political critics obtained internal e-mails documenting the practice by some aides.
Taranto observes:
Let’s step back for a moment and consider what this says about the press’s attitude toward privacy. A few years ago, the New York Times revealed the existence of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, a theretofore-secret effort to prevent attacks by listening in on overseas terrorists’ phone conversations. In defense of the Times’s action, we heard a lot of pious proclamations about privacy: George Bush might want to snoop on your phone conversations or emails, and the press was merely being vigilant in protecting your privacy.
Yes, it’s still fresh in my mind. I’m hard pressed to recall a more egregious euphemism than the label of “Ordinary Americans” slapped onto terrorists who’d never been anywhere near, or held anything close to citizenship in, the America they intended to destroy. The democrat party threw it out there, over and over again, as if waiting to be called on it and questioned about it…something that never took place. Ordinary Americans, Ordinary Americans, Ordinary Americans.
Yet the AP, in reporting on its own role in the current story, tells us that it refuses to cooperate with the Secret Service’s investigation of the privacy breach. Granted, the AP probably doesn’t have that much to contribute to the investigation. But the symbolism is telling, and surely deliberate. It suggests the press places a far lower premium on privacy than on its own privileges and its adversarial attitude toward government (or perhaps toward Republicans).
Can’t remember where I saw this, but someone else was comparing this to the Watergate break-in. What a difference 37 years makes, huh? Now perhaps someone older than me and with a better-working memory, or someone with more ambition in the research department, can take on the task of figuring out what the Watergate burglars found. I haven’t got a clue. I heard it was said to be “a portrait of Harry S Truman and a stack of unpaid bills.” But I can guaran-damn-tee you this: It’s going to be mighty tough to find any AP stories that say “The disclosure raises new questions about the DNC’s use of the Watergate building to secure their sensitive records.”
But it really doesn’t matter what the Watergate burglars did or didn’t find, if you’re going to compare it to the Palin e-mail hack, for the latter of these was an epic fail. The hackers wanted to find something juicy, and they did not.
The AP’s “questions” are, therefore, rather short-lived. Go out and find something else spooky and ominous to question, AP.
Taranto continues:
Especially telling in this regard is the AP’s reference to the emails as “leaked.” (The Boston Globe uses the verb leak in its headline for the AP report.) Usually this term refers to a government agency or other organization’s failure to keep a secret. A leaker is someone who is authorized to possess information but not to disclose it.
These emails were not leaked, they were stolen. Here we have an actual invasion of an American citizen’s privacy, and what is the press’s attitude? If the AP is representative (and given its organizational structure, it should be), it is to regard “questions about the propriety” of the victim as more important than the invasion of privacy itself.
This is no different than blaming Sarah Palin for walking around the Memorial Pool after dark wearing a bikini and getting raped.
Actually, to make that analogy work, the rapist would have to suffer a sudden attack of erectile dysfunction. But the point stands. Liberal democrats demand the status of aggrieved victim, with truckloads of authority and little or no responsibility — nobody else really knows what to say in response to that, so our tendency is to go ahead and let ’em have it. Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, are treated as aggressors (or practitioners of negligence) in situations in which they really are victims. And that’s not whining, there’s really just no other way to describe it. You can mutter from sun-up to sundown how Palin’s use of Yahoo “raises questions” but if these hackers were so obviously interested in finding dirt while they were snooping around in violation of federal law, and never did find anything, then it simply isn’t a valid concern.
Palin ankle-biters, you are now finishing up your third week trying to find some good dirt. When you finished up your first week, you already looked like the coyote trying to cath the road runner. Now, it’s just getting monotonous. Meep, meep.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
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Why should Palin not use Yahoo?
Gimme one good reason?
I saw screenshots of the “hacked” accounts, and by their own admission there was nothing to see there.
So what do they have to “unravel” Palin’s candidacy so far?
* Her teenage daughter is pregnant before marriage
* She chose to have her down syndrome baby.
* She fired somebody who didn’t fire somebody who had threatened her family with serious bodily harm or death. (Said fire-ee also says that’s not why he was fired.)
* She uses Yahoo
* She has too many kids
* She was the mayor of a small town
* She is governor of a state with a population comparable to Delaware
* She “has no foriegn policy ‘experience'” (she has more than most governors)
* She’s a Christian. She believes in God.
* She’s Pro Life (one of the “choices”, I assume)
* She’s an NRA member. She hunts furry creatures.
* She’s against
affirmative actioninstitutionalized sexism & racism* She favored a project to build a bridge from a popular tourist island (cruise ships) to its airport. She changed her mind. She campaigned against it and stopped it (and Obama voted for it)
That’s what they’ve got.
Obama?
* Kicked off his political career at William Ayres’ house
Ok, I’m done. I don’t even need to go any further. Though it would be quite easy to do.
- philmon | 09/19/2008 @ 19:51