Macho Nachos

A Tyranny of 14

Thanks, John McCain. Thanks for showing us that there really are worse things than allowing 45 Senators to control a body of 100. We could, for instance, have 12 Senators control a body of 100, which is exactly what we saw happen tonight with the "compromise" solution authored and championed by everymedia's favorite "Maverick." Forgive us if we're less than thrilled at the prospect that this "centrist" coalition (including Robert Byrd, of all people!) wields so much power.

For all the things that might justifiably be said about John McCain, one can certainly never accuse him of being stupid. McCain has certainly understood throughout the process that while Owens and Brown would certainly make fine additions to the circuit courts of our nation, they have never been the issue. The control of consent by the minority has been the issue from the very beginning.

I am afraid that we have been led into yet another trap by media-cult-of-personality McCain on this. At some point in the game, McCain had to realize that he simply wasn't getting enough people to go along with him to vote "no" on the Byrd Option, and so he instead decided that it would be infinitely more cunning of him to kill the Byrd Option with a compromise. It's not as good as being the leader of a "Maverick Caucus" of 6, but it's almost as good, by God. Notice how carefully this has all been orchestrated. Earlier in the evening, reports were circulating that an emergency meeting was taking place in *gasp* the offices of John McCain. When the deal was announced, it was McCain striding confidently to the head of the pack with deal in hand.

The effect of this compromise has been simple. Before, we had to go get the approval of Harry Reid at the head of 45 Democrats to get a nominee pushed through. Now, we have to go get the approval of John McCain at the head of 14 "centrists" (this is a euphemism for "Democrats", including those who have not yet realized which party they belong to).

Everybody gets screwed on this deal. Reid gets screwed because clearly McCain can garner the cloture votes over Reid's objections. Frist gets screwed because he's effectively handed over the GOP leadership position on judges over to McCain by accepting this compromise. Now, the party leaders from either side must come crawling to McCain's door for permission in fear that whatever public position they take, McCain can assemble his crack coalition behind closed doors and wash away four years worth of party discipline. Everybody gets screwed except - as usual - John McCain, who has created for himself automatic media spotlight during all future nominations, as reporters go to the real source of Senate power to find out whether the nominee will get through. Given that the upcoming SCOTUS fights are sure to be the most politically charged and publicized fights since the election aftermath of 2000, McCain has somehow managed to create more of a media frenzy upon himself than he had before.

Unless you intended to send a party run by John McCain into control of the Senate, it's time to pick up the chant again. Not. One. Dime. Not until this party re-learns the meaning of party discipline on the issues that matter to us the most. Not. One. Dime. Not until a Majority Leader arises with the courage and tenacity to face down McCain and the MSM and do the right thing.

Not. One. Dime. Not until the tyranny of the 14 has ended.

Bloggers Scoop the MSM?

Chris Hanson has an interesting article in the print edition of today's Washington Post that examines the reasons for the recent Newsweek debacle. I hate to keep beating this drum but it seems that over and over again we are faced with the reality that the MSM is slowly coming to understand that they have a credibility problem, but they are singularly incapable of understanding why. In an unintentionally hilarious piece of ridiculous finger-pointing, Hanson posits the interesting notion that the reason the MSM keeps floating dubious stories is because they're afraid they'll get scooped by the bloggers.

May 22nd, 2005: 14:43:29, Not Rated

Hanson first addresses the rather obvious point that the MSM has a legitimate problem, rather than just a problem of perception, and for this he should be praised.

Newsweek's mistake is only the latest example of a deepening crisis in American journalism. Too often these days, reporters and editors seem unable or unwilling to perform a basic duty - sifting rumor from fact, salesmanship from independent analysis - and instead become conduits for falsehoods, half-truths, and propaganda.

In this wise, Hanson is spot on. Where he goes astray is in his search for the cause of this shoddy reporting:

Ironically, Newsweek and its Koran-abuse reporter, Michael Isikoff, inadvertently helped create today's fact-challenged media tornado. Seven years ago, cyber-gossiop Matt Drudge... scooped Newsweek on its own Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky blockbuster, posting on his Web site a leaked synopsis of the story Isikoff had prepared for the magazine about the affair between the president and the intern. So began the shift to intense Web competition among mainstream news outlets. To avoid being Drudged, they began posting their scoops online, on what had hitherto been glacial newspaper sites that never carried exclusives ahead of the paper editions. It was suddenly a deadline-every-second world, with little time for verification...

Newsweek thought its Koran-in-the-toiled exclusive worthy of just a few lines in its gossipy Periscope section. The Newsweek team could have held the story for more verification. Instead, they checked the draft with a Pentagon official. He did not dispute the anecdote, and Newsweek evidently got the wrong impresion that heh ad confirmed it. This was a far cry from the laborious checking and multi-source requirements that had delayed Newsweek's Lewinsky story in 1998.

What stunning ignorance. Hanson either doesn't understand, or willfully ignores, several important differences between Drudge scooping Lewinsky and anything that happened with the current story.

First, the Lewinsky story was true - proven so at long last by irrefutable DNA evidence. What we are dealing with here is another animal altogether, an unverified smear.

Second, they ignore the fact that bloggers, in the real sense of the word, are more or less incapable of scooping the MSM, and were especially so on a story dealing with news out of Cuba.

I know personally that MachoNachos has exactly zero foreign correspondents in Cuba who might have scooped Newsweek on this story. However, when you add the combined blogs of my esteemed colleagues at RedState, we bring our total of Cuban correspondents to... zero. Although, let's be honest, there are other blogs bigger and more resourceful than us, so if we add together Hugh Hewitt, Powerline, Captain's Quarters, Roger L. Simon and Instapundit, we bring our final total of correspondents covering Guantanamo bay to .... zero.

The fact of the matter is that most bloggers have what some people call "day jobs." We blog for fun or pleasure, and occasionally a little profit. The MSM serves a news gathering function that we will never adequately serve. The reality is not that the MSM is concerned that we will be so quick at gathering facts that we will scoop them, the reality is that we are so quick at confirming or falsifying facts that the MSM has already dug up that is really putting a burr in the MSM's saddle. Should we really believe that Isikoff floated this story without further confirmation because he was concerned that John Hinderaker might beat him to the punch?

As long as the MSM continues this incredible myopy about the danger that the blogosphere really presents to their existence, their continued existence will be a dubious thing. Newsweek didn't get in trouble because they floated a sloppy story out of concern for being scooped. Newsweek got in trouble because they floated a sloppy story without the proper concern for the fact-checking power of the blogosphere. The Blogs don't present a threat to the MSM, the MSM is a threat to itself, and it's the bloggers who are just now alerting the public to the fact.

MachoNachos

P. S. In the "point-and-laugh" section of the above mentioned editorial, I offer this:

Conservative bloggers pounced quickly to discredit the documents then-CBS anchor Dan Rather relied on last fall in his infamous report about President Bush's National Guard performance... many people think the documents were proven to be forgeries and the gist of the report false. But in reality, no one has demonstated conclusively whether the documents are fake...

If Dan Rather uses rather obviously forged documents, and Dan Rather never admits that they're forged, do they become real? To Chris Hanson they do. Indeed they do.

The Life of Nacho

What was originally scheduled to be a six-state galavant through five safely Red states has somehow turned into a week-long marooning in the bluest area of the whole country. Let me explain how this happened.

As many of you know, in August I will be moving to Nashville to begin my transformation to the dark side - er - law school. In preparation for this, Mrs. Nacho and I were to spend a couple of days this week in Nashville looking around for a suitable starport - er - apartment, and also job prospecting. After this, we were to go to Illinois for a cousin's graduation, and thence return home.

However, upon arriving at the Nashville system (yeah, I watched Star Wars III last night, did you have a point?), Mrs. Nacho received a telephone call asking her if she could start a job she had previously applied for the very next day. Mrs. Nacho said yes, and so our trip to Illinois was nixed. I knew that Grandpa and Grandma Nacho were scheduling a road trip to DC this week to visit Sister Nacho, and so I called them up to see if they'd be interested in dragging Nacho Junior and myself along for the trip. Hence, here we are, and shall be for the greater portion of the following week.

The silver lining to all of this, is that obviously I have internet access, so that you all may resume your access to my pointless pontifications. I will try to resume normal blogging schedule hopefully by Monday.

Word to your mothers.

Nachos Away!

No time to blog today, and perhaps tomorrow either. On the road and away from much internet access. I see that in the snarky email contest, we have one snarky email for Newsweek, and one snarky email for me. How charming.

Perhaps more tomorrow.

A different kind of blogging day.

Tom Maguire has a great piece today about more efficient health care systems, and the money they could all save us. I lack the gusto to pursue it. Powerline has an article about NARAL's concerted attack on conservative judges that, on any other day, provokes no less than four rants from the Nacho corner - but not today. Charles Johnson, in usual form, has an article about Islamofascist terrorism that will make your blood boil - but mine is barely simmering. At least about that. Today is a different kind of blogging day for me.

Today has been a day for me to sit back and reflect on the worldwide disaster wrought by Newsweek's incredibly incompetent fact checking. 15 people have died already. It will be impossible to measure exactly how many more will die in the future due to the anti-U. S. Sentiment their horrible irresponsibility has caused. And what do we get in response? Whoops, our bad. Sort of. It's enough to turn down the all the noise that every other story in the country has generated. For me, for at least one day, there is no other story but this Newsweek debacle.

The more this settles in, the smaller the stories of MSM corruption in the past become. We celebrated when Dan Rather was taken down a notch because he was making an ideological attack on our president. We celebrated when Eason Jordan resigned because it was vindication of the honor of our armed forces. It is difficult to imagine that a similar light awaits at the end of this particular tunnel. If the entire staff of Newsweek is fired tomorrow, from the CEO on down, it will never compensate for the fact that that lives have been lost - and for the first time, we have been confronted with deaths that are unquestionably laid at the doorstep of a major U. S. media organization. What an incredible shame.

The facts of the story grow more incredible by the minute. By their own frank admission, Newsweek was aware of several other stories that other journalistic organizations had declined to run because they found their own sources to be frankly unbelievable. Newsweek decided that their story was both credible and newsworthy apparently on the basis of one, single source.

Beyond the obvious irresponsibility of airing such a potentially explosive story on the testimony of a single source, the editors of Newsweek never even thought to ask their source the question, "Are you positively sure that's what the logs said?" Because immediately after questions began surfacing, their one single source said, "Wait, perhaps I was mistaken." To anyone who is vaguely familiar with jouralistic ethics, this kind of action is inexcusable.

What is even more frightening about this entire incident is that it somehow occured even in the era of heightened media accountability that the blogosphere has spawned. The MSM knows that they're being stalked by the bloggers for the slightest hint of mistake. They complain about it constantly. There is absolutely no way that Isikoff and the editorial staff of Newsweek should not have known that their story would instantly be crawled all over with a fine-toothed comb by a jillion ideologically-motivated partisans with all the resources of the internet at their fingertips - and they went ahead and published the trash anyway.

What is frightening about this is that it raises a number of legitimate questions about our understanding of the past. Before the emergence of "alternative media" in the last 15 years, how many MSM stories were equally shoddily researched, and based on false premises? How many deaths should have been laid at their door, but never have been? If this is how the MSM behaves knowing full well that the Virtual Mongol Horde is looking over their shoulder, is it even possible to comprehend the possible limits of their mendacity in the past?

Being the optimist that I am, I am still desperately trying to find the silver lining in all of this - and perhaps I have. Perhaps it is the case that we have finally heard the end of the ridiculous canard that ideas, words, and lies don't sometimes have lethal consequences. Perhaps at least some will come to realize that maybe, just maybe, the American Media coverage of war(and Iraq, and virtually every other American Military conflict) really does have the capacity to embolden our enemy and place our troops at risk. Perhaps it will be time for us to re-examine some of the cherished fallacies of history that have primarily been the creation of the MSM.

Who will believe them when they tell us that a lone senator, Joe McCarthy, held the entire country (and somehow Hollywood) in fear of being labeled a Communist? Who will believe them when they tell us that Vietnam was a war we never had any hope of winning? Who will believe them when they tell us that Richard Nixon's offenses were far, far worse than Bill Clinton's?

Perhaps more importantly, who will believe them 30 years from now when they tell us that Ken Starr was the re-incarnation of the Satanic Joe McCarthy, or that Newt Gingrich took out a "Contract on America," or that the entire world quavered in fear of being locked up in prison for no reason at all under the dark reign of Darth Ashcroft?

Orson Welles was probably even more right than he understood when he postulated that those who control the past control the future, and those who control the present control the past. If there is anything positive to say about the deaths that will be caused, perhaps it will be that they died in the service of saving our present, past, and ultimately our future from those who would do our country the greatest harm. I'll leave you to determine who that is.

Snarky E-Mail Contest!

As I'm sure you all know by now, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff recently ran a story which claimed that interrogators flushed some pages of the Koran down the toilet. This, in turn sparked riots across Afghanistan which to date have claimed 15 lives. The only problem is, the story wasn't true. Or at the very least, wasn't verifiable. Newsweek's response? Whoops. Sorry about that.

Frankly, that's not nearly good enough for us.

This kind of mendacity requires the kind of retaliation that only the blogosphere can provide. And if there's one thing I've learned that bloggers are intrinsically good at, it's snark. I have determined that two things must take place:

1. We must flood the collective inboxes of the Newsweek staff with snarky emails. While Isikoff himself is certainly a legitimate target, he alone is not responsible for the printing of this story. Besides which, the idea is to make him a pariah around his own office for this farce. It's the least we can do.

2. I will personally sponsor a contest, in which the winner will receive (1) $25 gift certificate to amazon.com (or other online retailer of your choice)

The rules of this contest are as follows:

1. All emails must be pasted into a comment in this thread on this blog to be considered.

2. ABSOLUTELY NO PROFANITY WILL BE TOLERATED. If your email contains profanity, your comment will be deleted, and the email will be disqualified from consideration.

3. You must include in the comment the person to whom the email was addressed, and the date and time it was sent.

4. The duration of this contest will be from Monday, May 16th to Monday, May 30th. Any late submissions will not be considered. UPDATE 5-17-05: I can tell you from the hit count that this contest is generating more interest than this humble site has ever seen. Do not be deceived into thinking you will win easily because of low submissions!

5. Repeat entries are allowed encouraged please send Newsweek as many snarky emails as you possibly have the free time to do.

The scoring for this contest shall be as follows:

1. I shall set up a review board of three trusted conniseurs of snark (TBD), including myself, who will independently review all emails, scoring them on a basis of 1 to 10. Points will be determined by style, snark content, and the overall humor. Remember that brevity is the soul of wit.

2. In addition to this cumulative total, bonus points are also available as follows:

3. A bonus of 10 points will be awarded if your snarky email receives a verifiable personal response from a Newsweek staff member. This response must clearly indicate that they actually read your e-mail and are not just sending you a form response. If someone is willing to sponsor an award for the e-mail that receives the snarkiest response from a Newsweek staff member, e-mail me.

4. A bonus of 20 points will be awarded to any emails snarky and clever enough to make the mail call page at MSNBC. 20 points will also be awarded to anyone who receives a personal response from Isikoff himself.

5. A bonus of 30 points will be awarded to any email incredibly snarky enough to make the print edition of Newsweek.

6. Any email of such shocking snarkiness that Isikoff personally mentions it in an article complaining of his treatment by the blogosphere will automatically be declared winner, and the bonus prize will be doubled.

Enjoy!

When MSM corruption kills

I think we're going to put the whole Ken Starr/CBS thing on the back burner around here for a while. As we have noted before, almost immediately after the release of the Newsweek story detailing the supposed desecration of the Koran, which sparked deadly riots across Afghanistan and a spike in anti-American sentiment worldwide, questions began to surface about the authenticity of the story. Now, Pejman Yousefzadeh links us to this, from MSNBC/Newsweek:

Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them "not credible." Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.

Whoops. Sorry about that, to the 15 people who have lost their lives. Sorry about that, U. S. troops who are now in greater danger. Our bad.

If heads do not roll at Newsweek, there need to be some protests in the streets here in the good old U. S. of A. More to come.

Vicente Fox shows his true.. er.. colors

You absolutely have to read this story from Reuters, in which Mexican President Vicente Fox said:

"There is no doubt that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States,"

We'll let you draw your own outrageous conclusions from there. Perhaps my favorite part of the article actually came from the Reuters writer:

A key partner in U.S. border security, Mexico is upset at new U.S. controls on foreign-born people, including tougher rules to obtain drivers' licenses.

Mexico is a key partner in U. S. border security like Ken Lay was a partner in cleaning up corporate crime.

UPDATE on Ken Starr/CBS

As the dust swirls on the Ken Starr/CBS story, a wider range of the blogosphere is picking up the trail, including Tom Maguire, Wizbang, and Patterico. By far the most interesting tidbit of the day, picked up by Wizbang and Maguire, is that one of the editors of the Indianapolis Star saw the television piece and came away concluding this:

Frist's threat to go nuclear isn't setting off alarms only among left-wing organizations and Democratic operatives. Conservative legal scholar Ken Starr, the former Whitewater prosecutor who is now dean of Pepperdine University law school, told CBS News that the Republicans' plan is a "radical, radical departure from our history and our traditions, and it amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government."

Further, the AP also got the clear indication from the CBS report that Ken Starr was saying that the nuclear option would be a "radical, radical departure":

Kenneth Starr - an appeals court judge on the D.C. circuit from 1983-1989 - came out against the Republican plan to ban judicial filibusters on Monday. He told CBS Evening News that it is a ``radical, radical departure from our history and our traditions, and it amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government.''

This has already been picked up in The Guardian (UK), and the Philadelphia Daily News.

QED, Starr's words were clearly distorted, and the rest of the MSM has picked up the distortion and spread it around like crazy. CBS needs to do the following two things:

1. Release the videotape of the entire conversation and
2. Issue an apology/clarification immediately

The longer they delay in doing this, the wider the scandal becomes.

Ken Starr and CBS

I'm not sure how many of you have been following the Ken Starr/CBS interview controversy, but it seems that the more most bloggers (including me) mull this story, the more outrageously scandalous it becomes. Much, much more talented minds have commented on this already, including Ramesh Ponnuru (who gets a hat tip for the original story), Jack Kelly, and Hindrocket.

The substance of the controversy is as follows: CBS News recently aired parts of an interview between correspondent Gloria Borger and former special prosecutor Ken Starr. As the interview was aired, the report showed Starr saying, "This is a radical, radical departure from our history and from our traditions, and it amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government," immediately in response to a question about Republicans' attempt to end the filibuster. Ponnuru found this an odd position for Starr to take, and emailed him to ask about it. Starr has since responded with this email:

I sat on Saturday with Gloria Borger for 20 minutes approximately, had a wide ranging, on-camera discussion. In the piece that I have now seen, and which I gather has been lavishly quoted, CBS employed two snippets. The 'radical departure from our history' snippet was specifically addressed to the practice of invoking judicial philosophy as a grounds for voting against a qualified nominee of integrity and experience. I said in sharp language that that practice was wrong. I contrasted the current practice and that employed viciously against your father with what occurred during Ruth Ginsburg's nomination process as numerous Republicans voted, rightly, to confirm a former ACLU staff worker. They disagreed with her positions as a lawyer but they voted -- again rightly -- to confirm her.

Kelly is correct in his assessment that this story is potentially bigger than Rathergate, because Rather, in his heart, really believed that the documents were genuine. If Starr's account of this manipulation is accurate, it amounts to unmistakable and deliberate fraud by a MSM outlet to aid the Democratic party.

Hindrocket is reporting (admittedly without written confirmation) that Starr has asked to receive a copy of the full video to back his contention, and has been turned down by CBS. If this portion of the story is also true, it means that CBS is in need of a serious Rathergate-style accounting by the blogosphere.

One wonders how many more blows to their credibility CBS can sustain, and how incredibly obtuse their news division must really be if they learned nothing from the Rathergate scandal. More to come.

UPDATE: 5-13-05, 6:13pm CST

I have posted a link to the original video clip here, and also a transcript of the relevant portion here. Enjoy.