The Politburo Diktat

Marine Corps Times reports:

A major from Baton Rouge, La., was awarded the Silver Star July 14 for gallantry in combat while serving as the commander of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, in Iraq.

Then-Capt. Jason E. Smith led a rescue convoy through Fallujah on April 13, 2004, to reach Marines who were surrounded by enemy forces and needed support to evacuate casualties.

“To me, it wasn’t an option to just leave those guys there,” said Smith, who returned from Iraq more than a year ago and is now serving as an inspector-instructor with 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment, in Baton Rouge.

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John Cole thinks the Dems should hire him a fact checker: “The chief spokesman for the ‘reality-based’ community at his best. Is he this stupid? Did he just get ‘caught up in the moment?’ Or is he simply lying?”

In reference to the Kelo decision, the infamous eminent domain case last month, Dean laid it at the feet of “Bush and his right-wing Supreme Court.”

Let’s see. There are nine justices on the Supreme Court. Bush 43 nominated none of them. But let’s keep going. The three reliably conservative justices (Scalia, Thomas, & Rehnquist) all voted against the Kelo decision. If any of the justices could be termed “Bush’s,” these three conservatives might be so called. But they voted against it.

Dean is just lying. He does not care about the facts. He just lies to make points.
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Dear Barbara: Try looking

Here’s the deal. The Kossacks and Lefties are claiming that the “Air America stole money from poor kids” story is fake. Leading the charge, Barbara O’Brien of Mahablog. At her own blog, at dKos, at the American Street, etc., her post has sprung up.

“Air America stole from poor children” … a story that appears to be phony. … So how does the Washington Times know about this outrage? From “sources quoted anonymously by the Bronx News,” it says. I live about a ten minutes’ drive from the Bronx and wasn’t aware there is a Bronx News. Nor could I find the Bronx News through Google.

She couldn’t find the Bronx News through Google? Either she didn’t try very hard, or she’s lying. If you’re looking for an article by “Michael Horowitz” of the “Bronx News,” and you don’t Google those four words and look at the sixth entry, I have to wonder just how hard you wanted to find it.
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Musharraf says Brits should have banned Islamist groups

Musharraf calls ‘goose and gander” on Tony Blair. While I have to admit that he has a point, I would be very surprised to learn that Osama bin Laden is hiding in the wild Lakes District near the border with Scotland.

BRITAIN is regarded as a safe haven by Islamic extremists because it has failed to crack down on them despite urging other countries to do so, the president of Pakistan has warned.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, General Pervez Musharraf suggested that Britain had paid a price for putting the right of free speech before the need to curb militant Islamic organisations that openly advocate violence.

“They should have been doing what they have been demanding of us to do — to ban extremist groups like they asked us to do here in Pakistan and which I have done,” he said.

In particular, he said, Britain should have banned Al-Muhajiroun and Hizb ut-Tahrir, groups that he accuses of preaching anger and hatred and of calling for his own assassination.

Mamamontezz has the details.

Bad News - New York Times

Richard Posner, the hardest-working Federal Judge in the public-intellectual business (and co-author of the increasingly influential Becker-Posner blog) thinks out loud about the news media in Sunday’s New York Times (already available on the Web.)

Excerpt:

Being profit-driven, the media respond to the actual demands of their audience rather than to the idealized ‘’thirst for knowledge'’ demand posited by public intellectuals and deans of journalism schools. They serve up what the consumer wants, and the more intense the competitive pressure, the better they do it. We see this in the media’s coverage of political campaigns. Relatively little attention is paid to issues. Fundamental questions, like the actual difference in policies that might result if one candidate rather than the other won, get little play. The focus instead is on who’s ahead, viewed as a function of campaign tactics, which are meticulously reported. Candidates’ statements are evaluated not for their truth but for their adroitness; it is assumed, without a hint of embarrassment, that a political candidate who levels with voters disqualifies himself from being taken seriously, like a racehorse that tries to hug the outside of the track. News coverage of a political campaign is oriented to a public that enjoys competitive sports, not to one that is civic-minded.

It’s a long piece, and something of a “thumbsucker,” as I understand they call it in the trade, but well worth reading.

Oh, one more short excerpt. Can’t resist.

The public’s interest in factual accuracy is less an interest in truth than a delight in the unmasking of the opposition’s errors. Conservatives were unembarrassed by the errors of the Swift Boat veterans, while taking gleeful satisfaction in the exposure of the forgeries on which Dan Rather had apparently relied, and in his resulting fall from grace. They reveled in Newsweek’s retracting its story about flushing the Koran down a toilet yet would prefer that American abuse of prisoners be concealed. Still, because there is a market demand for correcting the errors and ferreting out the misdeeds of one’s enemies, the media exercise an important oversight function, creating accountability and deterring wrongdoing. That, rather than educating the public about the deep issues, is their great social mission. It shows how a market produces a social good as an unintended byproduct of self-interested behavior.

Confession: Posner has always been kind of a personal hero of mine, though I certainly don’t always agree with him. The guy is a whip-smart Federal judge and law school professor who also somehow manages to find the time to crank out one or two really well thought-out, beautifully-written books a year, and now he’s blogging as well. (When does he sleep? Does he, in fact, sleep?)

Since he has staked out positions, over the years, on just about every controversial issue under the sun, the likelihood of him ever, say, getting the nod for the Supreme Court is slim to none.

That’s all right. From the look of things, he’s having a lot of fun doing exactly what he’s doing right now.

(Also posted at enrevanche.)

This July is the 60th anniversary of the publication, in The Atlantic, of Dr. Vannevar Bush’s hugely influential article, “As We May Think.”

As World War II was drawing to a close, Dr. Bush laid out an agenda for, and made some predictions about, the new disciplines of computing and information management that, in hindsight, look almost prophetic.

Among other things, he predicted–in 1945!–a system of managing information, the “memex,” (presumably for “memory extender,”) which sounds a hell of a lot like a personal computer running a standard set of productivity applications and a Web browser:

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely…

1945, y’all.

I think there’s a case to be made, and I’m only half-kidding, that Dr. Bush was actually a time-traveller, or a visitor from another planet.

It’s a wonderful article.

I wonder what Dr. Bush would say if he could see one of us sitting in a WiFi-hotspot coffee shop with a nothing-special $1000 laptop (estimated cost in 1945 dollars: less than $100, maybe as little as $50 or so) wirelessly connected to the whole world, Googling for information as we sip our soy lattes.

Other than “what the hell is a soy latte?”

(Also posted at enrevanche.)

WWII as an online game

just a sample:

Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
T0JO: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
Hitler[AoE]: wtf
Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
Stalin: WTF u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
benny-tow: haha
benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa im gonna need help in italy soon sum1
T0J0: o **** i cant help u i got my hands full

Clenched fist salute: Cake Eater

U.N. Mystery Man: Who Is Jean-Bernard Merimee and What’s His Oil-for-Food Tie?

by Claudia Rosett

NEW YORK - As investigations proliferate into the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, one of the more intriguing mysteries involves a former French diplomat with a direct link to the U.N.’s executive suite: Jean-Bernard Merimee.

The 68-year-old Merimee, one of several individuals now under investigation in France for alleged involvement in Saddam Hussein’s Oil-for-Food scams, is well known for his role in the early 1990s as French ambassador to the United Nations. What investigators have not so far highlighted is that during the period Merimee is alleged to have come into commercial contact with Saddam’s regime, starting in December 2001, he was working not for the French government, but as a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Merimee’s name first surfaced in relation to Oil-for-Food early last year, with the publication in Baghdad’s Al-Mada newspaper of a long list of politicians and businessmen worldwide alleged to have received lucrative oil allocations from Saddam, which could be resold to commercial dealers for an easy profit.

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Criticizing Saleh’s regime is like shooting fish in a barrel, but few things irk me more than the targeting of kids. As previously discussed, the kidnapping and imprisonment of kids in Yemen is used both as a punishment against adult relatives and as a tactic of intimidation against reformers and critics.

In today’s mailbag from Yemen, we find this petition for Ibrahim al-Saiani, 14 year old boy in prison (without charges since May) in need of medical treatment and near death. The petition asks for a doctor and his release if he is being held only for being a Shiite. It follows an Amnesty International urgent appeal.

Regardless of all the divisions in the world, I think we can agree that this one kid needs a doctor and its cruel to deny him one.
More here. Sign here

In the ever-widening circle of media scandals now embroiling the country, evil genius Karl Rove is believed to be behind Contestant-gate and Dance-gate. Forsaking his secret relationships with the dowdy Ms. Miller and the aloof Mrs. Wilson, “Roving Karl” apparently took up his confidential messaging with the distinctly hotter Paula Abdul and Kelly Monaco. Investigators are still investigating possibilities of a Kelly-Karl-Paula threesome; rumors of a grainy, raunchy videotape persist.

Investigators are also looking into Rovian plots and connections between possible vote-rigging in “American Idol,” Florida in 2000, “Dancing with the Stars,” and Ohio in 2004.

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Mark at Be Lambic or Green is hosting the Skeptics’ Circle next week, and he’s looking for ’skeptical’ entries .

His instructions are here:

Orac has posted some commentary on what the Circle should be and where it should go (not to mention a call for new hosts).

Sadie means it, too. Never, never, never doubt this woman’s determination.

NASA grounds shuttle fleet

Two and a half years and $1 billion dollars later, NASA hasn’t fixed the danger from falling foam insulation. I certainly hope that it hasn’t damaged Discovery and that Commander Collins and her crew get home safely. But in any event, this is a complete disaster, much worse than an unforeseen, new problem. This is exactly the problem they have been trying to fix.

NASA has grounded its space shuttle program after revelations Australian Andy Thomas and his six astronaut colleagues on Discovery came perilously close to a launch disaster.

At least two chunks of foam insulation broke off Discovery’s fuel tank and tumbled into the atmosphere — an echo of the problem that doomed sister ship Columbia and its crew 2 1/2 years ago.

“Call it luck or whatever, it didn’t harm the orbiter,” said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. “Until we fix this, we’re not ready to go fly again.”

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Does the Plame/Rove affair: 1) need a name that will stick? and 2) seem awfully confusing, at times resembling a game of Clue?

In that spirit, I offer up …(forgive me Father, for I have sinned, in non-critically linking to Annoyingana Huffington) .. this link to the Huff Puff.

Briefly, Judith Miller did it. Pissed off at Wilson July 6, 2003 Op-Ed piece, because it undercut her reporting as much as the administration, Judy Miller started the leaks and counter-leaks that quickly sprang throughout Washington that month. Whatever one’s views about any of the questions or personalities, this post convincingly puts together many of the known pieces (e.g. Why the Hell IS Judy Miller in jail anyway?):

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