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Liberalism: Why think when you can “feel”?

AP and Washington comPost pile on “Winter Soldier 2007″

As a follow-up to my earlier post on the Scott Beauchamp (or is it Jesse Macbeth? I get confused on all of the left’s “troop atrocity witnesses”!), the AP and Washington comPost team up to push their leftist brethren at the The New Republic in front of the train. Observe:

Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at The Poynter Institute school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., said granting a writer anonymity “raises questions about authenticity and legitimacy.”

“Anonymity allows an individual to make accusations against others with impunity,” Steele said. “In this case, the anonymous diarist was accusing other soldiers of various levels of wrongdoing that were, at the least, moral failures, if not violations of military conduct. The anonymity further allows the writer to sidestep essential accountability that would exist, were he identified.”

Steele said he was troubled by the fact that the magazine did not catch the scene-shifting from Kuwait to Iraq of the incident Beauchamp described involving the disfigured woman.

“If they were doing any kind of fact-checking, with multiple sources, that error _ or potential deception _ would have emerged,” Steele said.

He added that he was also troubled by the relationship between Beauchamp and Reeve, his wife, who works at The New Republic. “It raises the possible specter of competing loyalties, which could undermine the credibility of the journalism,” he said.

Paul McLeary, a staff writer for Columbia Journalism Review who has written about the matter, said The New Republic failed to do some basic journalistic legwork, such as calling the public affairs officer for Beauchamp’s unit.

“There is a degree of trust and faith editors have to put in their writers,” McLeary said. “If you’re on a tight deadline, you have to go as far as you can. The New Republic definitely didn’t go as far as it could in terms of checking out its stories.”

Ethics violations…the MSM? Get outta here!

The AP isn’t exactly a beacon of ethical journalism, either. Ergo, when the comPost and AP can’t get excited about your troopbashing story, that’s a pretty good tipoff that said story is a steaming pile of bovine feces.

August 9, 2007 Posted by | Iraq, media bias | 1 Comment

Wisconsin to implement universal health care? Good!

Let it be a lesson in failure for the other 49 states! From John Stossel, via RCP:

“On, Wisconsin … run the ball clear down the field!”

It’s time to amend the Wisconsin football song so we can cheer on the Badger State’s politicians as they move toward health-care socialism.

The Wall Street Journal editorial-page editors are upset that Wisconsin’s state Senate passed “Healthy Wisconsin”, which will give health insurance to every person in the state. Of course, the Journal editors are right in saying that the plan is “openly hostile to market incentives that contain costs” and that the “Cheesehead nation could expect to attract health-care free-riders while losing productive workers who leave for less-taxing climes.”

In addition, as the Journal put it, “Wow, is ‘free’ health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes.”

And, of course, down the road it will cost much more than that. Even the $15 billion is based on the usual Pollyannaish assumptions such as millions in savings “from putting more emphasis on primary care.”

As usual, most of the new taxes will be imposed on employers. Progressives believe money taken from them doesn’t cost anything. Rich corporations will simply waste less on lavish perks and excess profits. But taxes on business are often paid by workers, stockholders and consumers. Businesses that can’t pass the taxes on to someone else will close or move out of state.

But progressives are oblivious to this fact. They see Wisconsin becoming a fairyland of health happiness supervised by the 16-person “authority” that will oversee the plan. Socialism will work this time because the “right” people will be in charge.

Does it never occur to the progressives that the legislature’s intrusion into private contracts is one reason health care and health insurance are expensive now? The average annual health-insurance premium for a family in Wisconsin is $4,462 partly because Wisconsin imposes 29 mandates on health insurers: Every policy must cover chiropractors, dentists, genetic testing, etc. Think chiropractors are quacks? Too bad. You still must pay them to treat people in your state.

Want to buy insurance from another state, like nearby Michigan, where an average policy costs less? Too bad. It’s against the law to buy across state lines. Your state’s Big Brother knows best.

The WSJ writes about a “last line of defense against” Healthy Wisconsin, but I say, let Wisconsin try it! Their suffering will be for the greater good.

As I interview people for my health-care TV special scheduled to run on ABC this September, I’m struck by how many hate the current semi-free-market system America has now. I say “semi” because it’s not a free market when about half the health-care bill is funded by government. But it’s still better than socialism. It allows for innovation like the creation of better drugs, pain-relieving joint replacements, artificial hearts, LASIK eye surgery, and who-knows-what-else that may reduce pain and extend my life.

Socialism will kill that, but people seem to like socialism, at least when it’s sold as free stuff from politicians. Wisconsin’s Capital Times reports that “two-thirds of Wisconsin residents support the Democratic plan — even when presented with opponents’ arguments that it would be a ‘job killer’ that could lead to higher taxes … Said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, one of the plan’s sponsors, ‘Everything we have heard [against the plan], we put in the poll. And it still comes back at 67 percent approval.’”

That’s why America needs “Healthy Wisconsin.” The fall of the Soviet Union deprived us of the biggest example of how socialism works. We need laboratories of failure to demonstrate what socialism is like. All we have now is Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, the U.S. Post Office, and state motor-vehicle departments.

It’s not enough. Wisconsin can show the other 49 states what “universal” coverage is like.

I feel bad for the people in Wisconsin. They already suffer from little job creation, and the Packers aren’t winning, but it’s better to experiment with one state than all of America.

Note to self: ditch any future plans to live in Wisconsin. Economic ignorance offends me.

August 9, 2007 Posted by | economic ignorance, socialism | 4 Comments

Another compelling reason for eliminating the income tax

By now, most of you know that I am a proponent of the Fair Tax. Here’s yet another reason why, courtesy of Neal Boortz:

PITY THE FOOL

The fool I’m referring to here is the poor sap from New York who caught that Barry Bonds home run ball in San Francisco earlier this week. The ball is reputed to be worth in the neighborhood of a half-million dollars.

Here’s the rub. Accountants certainly aren’t in agreement on this, but some are saying that this character owes the IRS about $200,000.

Think about it. If someone gives you a car worth $500,000, you must include that car as income on your tax return. The extra income shoves you into a higher bracket, and you’re going to fork over at least $200,000. Well, what’s the big difference between someone giving you a half-million dollar car and a half-million dollar baseball?

New York tax lawyer John Barrie says: “It’s an expensive catch. Once he took possession of the ball and it was his ball, it was income to him based on its value as of yesterday.”

Some tax experts say that no, you don’t have to pay the tax until you actually sell the ball. Sell, that’s not the way it would work for the car, so why would the government treat that ball any differently?

Isn’t this just grand? Our wonderful tax system at work. Does anyone out there have any suggestions as to how we might change things?

Yeah, I have a suggestion: FAIR freakin’ TAX!

August 9, 2007 Posted by | Fair Tax, taxes | 4 Comments

“Winter Soldier Syndrome”

For those of you who haven’t been following the “yet another faux firsthand account of ‘atrocities’ perped by our soldiers” saga of Scott Beauchamp, here’s the run-down and updates, courtesy of Michelle Malkin:

The tale of Army Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the discredited “Baghdad Diarist” for the discredited New Republic magazine, is an old tale:

Self-aggrandizing soldier recounts war atrocities. Media outlets disseminate soldier’s tales uncritically. Military folks smell a rat and poke holes in tales too good (or rather, bad) to be true. Soldier’s ideological sponsors blame the messengers for exposing anti-war fraud.

Beauchamp belongs in the same ward as John F. Kerry, the original infectious agent of the toxic American disease known as Winter Soldier Syndrome. The ward is filling up.

U.S. military investigators concluded this week that Beauchamp concocted allegations of troop misconduct in a series of essays for The New Republic. “The investigation is complete and the allegations from PVT Beauchamp are false,” Major Steven Lamb, a spokesman for Multi National Division-Baghdad, told USA Today. The New Republic is standing by Beauchamp’s work. But Michael Goldfarb, online editor and blogger at The Weekly Standard who first challenged Beauchamp’s writing, reported Monday that Beauchamp had “signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in The New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods — fabrications containing only ‘a smidgen of truth,’ in the words of our source.” (Beauchamp admits to lying, so he’s either lying to TNR or to the Army. Either way, he’s a de facto liar, and TNR’s response is to “stand by the story” of an admitted liar? Brilliant. – Ed.)

To illustrate the soul-deadening impact of war, Beauchamp had described sitting in a mess hall in Iraq mocking a female civilian contractor whose face had “melted” after an IED explosion. “I love chicks that have been intimate — with IEDs,” Pvt. Beauchamp claimed he said out loud in her earshot. “It really turns me on — melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses.” Beauchamp recounted vividly: “My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing. The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall.” It wasn’t true. After active-duty troops, veterans, embedded journalists and bloggers raised pointed questions about the veracity of the anecdote, Beauchamp confessed to The New Republic’s meticulous fact-checkers that the mocking had taken place in Kuwait— before he had set foot in Iraq to experience the soul-deadening impact of war.

Military officials in Kuwait tried to verify the incident and called it an “urban legend or myth.” Beauchamp’s essays are filled with similarly spun tales. How much of a bull-slinger was Beauchamp, an aspiring creative writer who crowed on his personal blog that he would “return to America an author” after serving (which he told friends and family would “add a legitimacy to EVERYTHING I do afterwards”)? The very first line of his essay “Shock Troops,” which opened with the melted-face mockery, was this: “I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq.”

“Nearly every time.” At “my base in Iraq.” Complete and utter bull.

Defenders of The New Republic, a left-leaning magazine infamously duped by another young and ambitious fabulist, Stephen Glass, say the Beauchamp saga has been 1) blown out of proportion; 2) perpetuated by sloppy, rumor-mongering bloggers; 3) used as a distraction from the troubles in Iraq; and 4) exploited by “chickenhawks” who deny that war atrocities happen.

But the truth is, you won’t find a single Bush Kool-Aid drinker among the military bloggers, embedded independent journalists, and active-duty troops who prominently questioned the Beauchamp sham. They know it ain’t all going swimmingly overseas. But unlike Pvt. Beauchamp, they’re committed to telling the whole truth about the war, not just approximations and embellishments that will score easy magazine gigs and future book deals with elite New York City publishers. The doubters of Scott Thomas know atrocities when they see them. But, unlike the TNR editors, they know steaming bull dung when they smell it.

Too good to check, eh, TNR?

August 9, 2007 Posted by | Iraq, media bias, shameful | 4 Comments

MN bridge collapse due to design failure?

Someone call Ed Schultz and let him in on the disappointing news: the bridge collapse was NOT Bush’s fault! From the Old Gray Hag:

Investigators have found what may be a design flaw in the bridge that collapsed here a week ago, in the steel parts that connect girders, raising safety concerns for other bridges around the country, federal officials said today.

The Federal Highway Administration swiftly responded by urging all states to take extra care with how much weight they place on bridges when sending construction crews to work on bridges. Crews were doing work on the deck of the Interstate 35W bridge when it gave way, hurling rush-hour traffic into the Mississippi River and killing at least five people.
…
If there was a design error in the 1960s, failure to identify it before the bridge collapse indicates a problem with the federal inspection program, said Thomas M. Downs, who was the associate administrator of the Federal Highway Administration from 1978 to 1980.

If only that Chimpy McHitlerburton hadn’t been partying in college or flying around in the Texas Air National Guard, he could have done something back in the late ’60s and early ’70s about that bridge. Heck, he didn’t even do anything as governor of Texas about the Minnesota bridge in the 1990′s! He’s got 40 years of blood on his hands from this catastrophe!

For those of you on the left, the prior paragraph was sarcasm.

August 9, 2007 Posted by | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Kos-tard fined $30k by SEC

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer moonbat. From Drudge:

Prominent liberal blogger Jerome Armstrong has agreed to pay nearly $30,000 in fines in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations that Armstrong touted the stock of a software company, without disclosing that he was being paid to do so, the NY TIMES reports.

Armstrong is the co-author of _Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics,_ with Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. He is also the founder of the Democratic activist site MyDD.com.

Under the agreement, Armstrong neither denies nor admits to the allegations.

“It’s good to see the matter finally end,” Armstrong said in an e-mail message to the TIMES.

Yeah, I usually fork over $30k for stuff I didn’t do. What’s funny is that the Kos kooks are always knocking people who earn money from corporate America (unless they’re John Edwards or George Soros or their ilk), yet one of their own is doing the same, and illegally so!

By the way, Kos’ retort to Drudge for his story: “Yeah? Well, uh, you’re gay. Neener-neener!” And these retards run the Democratic Party!

August 9, 2007 Posted by | hypocrisy, moonbats | 3 Comments

   

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