bustardblog

Beirut

  Hezbollah's promised demonstrations in Beirut, designed to bring down a government that they consider Bush's puppet, has begun in Beirut.

So far I've seen one report saying that tens of thousands of protesters are already there.

Al-Jazzerah reported on the hopes that the demonstration will be peaceful, and quoted the President as saying that "The resistance (Hezbollah) is not going to shoot Lebanese people, and there will not be a civil war."

Der Spiegel's most recent reports indicates that the number of demonstrators is in the "hundreds of thousands." (It is their photo I reprinted above.

Credit for the  increased power of Hezbollah should probably be divided equally between Israel, Iran, America, and Syria - even though only two of the four hoped for the result achieved. Mazel Tov Mme Rice, Mr Bush, and Mr Olmert!

UPDATE:
Loyal commenter Rick admires how talented the Arab world is in orchestrating such huge demonstrations.  Perhaps he forgets the motivation that the people of Lebanon recently received. Since the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel, 17 people have died, and 135 have been wounded by the explosion of cluster bombs left by Israel. Although Israel promised to provide maps to help the Lebanese find them, they have yet to do so. To add insult to injury, the vast majority of the approximately 60,000 cluster bombs were deployed as the cease fire began. ( NY Times )

Insanity and Hanson: What a Team!

(This post is still in draft form. Family health issues made me post it prematurely. (I'll clear it up tomorrow)

Reading Victor David Hanson's piece in the Journal today, as well as Dr. Sanity's rant in her blog, might surprise you. They don't really think that Al Qaeda is the big problem either.

They say it's us. Yup, we Democrats, we liberals, are very close to achieving our goal of destroying Western Civilization.

And it's not just Iraq, Lebanon,Israel, Afghanistan and Iran where we've done our damage - we're also to blame for what is happening in Zimbabwe, as well as a host of other countries.  The fact that the neo-cons have controlled all aspects of the U.S. government for the past six years does not mean that they are responsible for any of the world's ills. We're to blame.  Before asking to be incarcerated at Guantanamo, as I so richly deserve, I need a couple of questions answered.

First, I need them to answer how they came up with their definition of who we are. According to inSanity, we "swoon over despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." When did Nancy Pelosi Swoon? I missed it.   One of Dr. Sanity's favored commenters is "White Ringer" (and I did not make that up.) In his comment he writes to the Dr.: "As you put it, Jefferson had slaves so therefore he is no different than Hitler."

Please give me the name of the leading Democrat or Liberal who equated Jefferson with Hitler. Her piece constantly suggests that Liberal are in fact socialists, or communists. Please give a name Dr Sanity.

Victor Davis Hanson lives in a similar fantasy world. He declares that "Dreaming of killing an elected President... is a new national pastime." What nation does he live in? There is an English, made for TV movie that does a treatment of possibilities that could attend an assassination. It in no way recommends it. It is hardly the talk of my liberal community. To call it "a new national pastime" is nothing more than a lie.

But lying is the one thing at which Sanity and Hanson excel. Their only other skill is the dishonest demonization of those who disagree with them.

The last thing our national conversation needs in the present crisis is their voice. It is one of hatred and dishonesty.

Winning Tips

Yesterday AdNag was kind enough to consult with four consultants on how Giuliani can win the Republican Nomination in 2008. The shorter version?

Rudy, Start Lying Now.

If you want the full version, here you go.

Union Square

Please Double Click to Enlarge
Union Square, May 30, 2006

The yellow tape is from the police - demanding that people "do not cross." It is used at crime scenes, and in situations like this, where there are also lots of signs indicating "Wet Paint."

New Yorkers always disobey this kind of sign. If a crane is hoisting a grand piano into an apartment on the 20th floor through the window, and the moving company hires someone to instruct passers-by to cross the street to avoid possible injury - New Yorkers will always ignore the warning and keep on walking, instructions and risks be damned.
New Yorkers: Fearless? No. Stupid? No.
But we are unwilling to give into life's little annoyances.

Is Memeorandum Legit?

Quite often, I head to memeorandum, hoping to find the news from the traditional media or from bloglandia. Their site purports to feature political web sites that are important, popular and fresh. The implication is that they automatically report and link to whatever is hot at the moment in political blogs.

Yet the blogs to which they link are overwhelmingly right-wing.  Over the last couple of weeks I have randomly recorded the blogs that they have linked to in a portion of their site entitled "More Items."  There is no particular reason why I selected this sub-section, located at the lower left part of their "front page," to analyze. I chose it at random because I could not examine all of their links.  I know of no reason why this sub-section of their site would not be representative of their site as a whole.

I captured and saved ten different of these sub-sections; again chosen at quite random moments.  Over the two week period the minimum amount of time between the "captures" was about four hours, and the maximum was about six days. The most recent was this afternoon.

This afternoon I also noted the 50 most "popular" blogs at Technorati.  Of course, many were not political. Within that sample, I found five blogs that I would classify as leaning to the left, and only four with a right slant. (#5 Daily Kos,#6 Huffington,#16 Crooks & Liars, #22 Think Progress, #34 Talking Points Memo; versus #9 Instapundit, #12 Michelle M., # 38 L.G.F., and #45 Powerline.)  The left ones had a total of 143,365 links from 35,249 sites. The right leaning blogs had 99,902 links from 22,561 sites.

It is no longer true that the right-wingers dominate bloglandia; but still the number of links at memeorandum fails to reflect this reality.

In those ten "captures" there were 106 links to right-wing sites, and only 52 to left leaning blogs. There was a tie in one of the "captures" between the number of links to the left and those to the right; of the other 9 there were two incidents when there were more links to lefties, and 7 where there were more links to righties.

The left is more active, with more hits and more links, than is the right in the world of blogs.  But news sites such as memeorandum would have us believe otherwise.

Does this mistake lie in their metrics or in their bias?

UPDATE: Corrected for sloppy spelling, editing, and categorization. (5/9/06)

Despicable Liar

I do realize that pointing out the odious lies of Michelle Malkin is not a real challenge, but at times I cannot control my obsession with honesty, and the lack thereof.

In the most recent Affaire Michelle concerning her posting of the private information of protesters, she continues her residence in her extremely deep gutter. In defending her scummy act, she wrote "by the way, the disclaimer on my contact page makes clear, "All e-mail is subject to print, including your name. If you don't want me to publish your e-mail,...just let me know." This might be a defense if any of the three SAW students sent her their names, but they did not. She knows that they did not. Not surprisingly, she did not give out any of the private information of those  who actually e-mailed her.Her argument is  entirely bogus and deceptive.

In the same post she complained of the students whining about death threats, and then proceeds to whine about "threats against my family that their minions are sending" - after which she lists several e-mails, none of which are threats.

More of her hysterical paranoia is on view in her post entitled "I am not Afraid of You" at 8:53 P.M. on 4/19.  I'd supply a link, but I don't recommend it unless you've never heard a psychotic patient rant as they are tied into a straight jacket.

(and of course Michelle has not removed their personal information from her site)

(Kudos to Don Surber and texasfred for their courageous condemnations)

Weekly Worst Writing Award

The two most pretentious and least informative sentences of the week not only come from the same web site, they come from the same article and are consecutive! Amazing!

Andrew G. Bostom, of Front Page, proudly penned the following:

Defying the pervasive legacy of intellectual terrorism engendered by the late Edward Said’s Orientalism—a profoundly flawed work, which nevertheless, almost 30 years after its publication, continues to inspire, or intimidate, a distressingly dominant proportion of  today’s Middle East Studies academics—Professor Efraim Karsh stands out as a brave and insightful scholar.

For example, Karsh’s 1997 Fabricating Israeli History deconstructed the revisionist narrative of so-called “Post-Zionist” Israeli historians.

I mean, "Engendering a pervasive legacy of intellectual terrorism" is quite the turn of phrase, and "deconstructing revisionist narratives" is no slouch either. There is a lot of bad writing worthy of note in the blogosphere, and Front Page rarely disappoints.(H/T memeorandum)