Verities

USA Today's "reality check" falls short.

Democratic Veteran takes a quick look at this USA Today article, noting briefly the irony of the Bush camp trying to paint John Kerry as a hypocrite on Vietnam.

What struck me about the USA Today article, though, is that USA Today has absolutely no idea what the phrase "reality check" means.

The article is about how the Bush team will try to portray Kerry should he become the Democratic nominee. About halfway through the article, we're presented with a series of Bush lines of attack, each followed by a "reality check."

But the "reality checks" don't seem to check any reality. They don't tell us whether the Bush attacks are true or not. They're just more "color" about the topic. Here's an example:

He switches positions when it's politically expedient. Kerry voted against the Persian Gulf War in 1991, but in 2002, he voted for a resolution authorizing Bush to go to war against Iraq. His explanation: In 1991, he believed the first Bush administration should take more time to try diplomacy before military action. In 2002, he believed this Bush administration had agreed to pursue diplomacy first.

Kerry voted for Bush's education bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, but now says he'd repeal it because it doesn't work. He voted for the USA Patriot Act, which expanded government power to monitor citizens after the Sept. 11 attacks, but now opposes it as too intrusive. He opposed the death penalty for terrorists who kill Americans abroad but now supports it.

Reality check: Bush's strategists are planning ads focused on some of those things. Campaign manager Ken Mehlman said in an online chat Feb. 9 that Kerry's opposition to Bush's education bill means he wants to "take our nation backward." Some Democrats aligned with other candidates say privately that Kerry will have to come up with better explanations. [Bold in original]

Now, tell me: why the hell is that last graph labled "reality check"? What does it do to clarify whether the Bush line of attack reflects reality? Nothing. It's not a "reality check," it's just more detail about what the Bush crew is planning.

Here's another one:

He's on the wrong side of issues that matter most to voters. "We question his judgment in consistently voting to cut defense and intelligence funding critical to our national security," Mehlman says.

After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Kerry voted to cut spending on intelligence by $1.5 billion over five years. In 1996, he voted to cut defense by $6.5 billion. He has since said that some of those votes were mistakes.

Bush's advisers see vulnerability in Kerry's stand on an emotional and divisive issue: gay marriage. In 1996, Kerry voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of gay marriages and allowed states to refuse to recognize those performed in other states. Kerry opposes gay marriage but supports civil unions and partnership rights.

Reality check: The differences between Bush's priorities and Kerry's are likely to dominate the competition for moderate and independent voters. How this debate plays out will depend on the shape the economy is in, progress in Iraq and whether gay marriage becomes a big campaign issue. [Bold in original]

Again, why is that last graph labled "reality check"?

Weird. Looks like USA Today has been taking lessons from FactCheck.org.

Everything Old is New Again

Reuters:

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban guerrillas have been battered so badly they are reduced to "cowardly" acts such as bicycle bombings, a senior Pentagon official said on Tuesday.

Uh, weren't they always "cowardly"?

The President, September 11, 2001:

THE PRESIDENT: I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims of these attacks. Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.

Yep, that's what I thought.

Heritage Analyst Lies With Numbers; NYT Falls For It, Smears Edwards

The New York Times on Saturday did a mini hatchet job on Sen. John Edwards:

Welfare Queen, Meet Coatless Girl

RONALD REAGAN used to talk about a "welfare queen" in Chicago with a mink coat and a Cadillac, but he got in trouble when no one was able to locate her. Mr. Edwards is on safer rhetorical ground. He does not claim to know where the poor people in his speeches live.

In his stump speech about the "two Americas," he has repeatedly deplored the plight of the 35 million Americans below the poverty line by imagining a 10-year-old girl "somewhere in America" who goes to bed "praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today, because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm."

...

To some critics of Mr. Edwards, a more serious question is whether the coatless girl is any more representative of America's poor than Mr. Reagan's Cadillac-driving welfare recipient. After all, clothing has become so cheap and plentiful (partly because of textile imports, which Mr. Edwards has proposed to limit) that there is a glut of second-hand clothing, and consequently most clothing donated to charity is shipped abroad. The second-hand children's coats that remain in America typically sell for about $5 in thrift shops.

"Edwards would do better to say there's a girl somewhere in America who's cold because her family can't afford to fix the furnace," said Robert E. Rector of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, who has analyzed data from the Census Bureau and other agencies on the living standards of the poor. Since the typical American family below the poverty line has a car, air-conditioning, a microwave oven, a stereo and two color televisions with cable or satellite service, Mr. Rector said, it was implausible to assume the family could not afford coats.

Those last two paragraphs didn't ring true, especially the portion of Rector's claims that I've bolded above. So I went to Heritage's web site and found this chart. I then poked around enough in the original Commerce/HUD/DOE data to satisfy myself that Heritage had the numbers more or less right.

Basically, the data shows that 72.8 percent of "poor households" own a car/truck, 75.6 percent own an air conditioner, 73.3 percent own a microwave, 58.6 own a stereo (which includes "Portable/Boom Box" units, which can be had for less than $50 -- not exactly a high-ticket item) 55.3 percent have two or more color televisions, and 62.6 percent have cable/satellite television.

Rector apparently has decided that since each one of these items is owned by more than half of households in poverty, more than half of households in poverty must own all of these items.

That's silly.

As an example, say you have ten kids. Six of them have blonde hair, six have blue eyes. Does that mean that more than half -- the "typical" kid -- has blonde hair and blue eyes. Of course not; it could break down like this:

Hair__Eyes
BL___BR
BL___BR
BL___BR
BL___BR
BL___BL
BL___BL
BR___BL
BR___BL
BR___BL
BR___BL

40 percent have blonde hair and brown eyes; 40 percent have brown hair and blue eyes, and only 20 percent have blonde hair and blue eyes.

We wouldn't say, based on the fact that 60 percent of these kids have blonde hair and 60 percent have blue eyes, that the "typical kid" has blonde hair and blue eyes.

Rector's cheating; he's lying with numbers. And the New York Times bought it.

Further, even if Rector's math weren't fuzzy, this still wouldn't be proof of his point. Ownership of a boom box or a window air-conditioner says little about the purchasing power of a family in poverty. Maybe they bought the air conditioner years ago, before falling into poverty. Maybe the boom box cost $30; maybe the car cost $500 and is necessary to drive to work. Maybe because they spent that $500 on a car that is necessary, they can't afford a coat for their daughter.

This $5 coat thing is a little suspect to me as well. Even if I grant the premise that you can walk into a Salvation Army and buy a warm coat for $5, I strongly suspect that the supply of adequate warm $5 coats is smaller than the number of cold kids. Why? Partially because it just seems intuitive. And partially because I see cold kids -- and cold adults -- every day, wearing thin, warn coats that can't possibly keep them warm.

Basically, I think the NYT has been had. They deserved it, though: they relied on data from a conservative organization that generally opposes poverty programs. Did they think they'd get an impartial view of the state of poor American families from Heritage?

And when did the standard for saying a politician is stretching the truth become "a group that is ideologically opposed to him, using some fuzzy math, says he's inaccurate"?

Flashback: The Washington Post Covered Up Allegations of Bob Dole's Affair.

Some people are trying really hard to see a liberal-bias-double-standard in the mainstream media's decision to more or less ignore the Kerry affair "allegations." Despite the fact that the major media covered allegations of affairs involving Bill Clinton much more than allegations about any Republican, some see an anti-Republican bias:

InstaPundit:

THE KERRY INFIDELITY STORY seemed to die down over the weekend, but this report says that it may come back: "A woman who claims she had an affair with presidential hopeful John Kerry has taped a kiss-and-tell interview with a U.S. TV network, it was revealed last night. " (Via Timothy Perry).

UPDATE: Drudge has an informative flashback on the much-less-circumspect treatment given unsubstantiated rumors of infidelity on the part of then-President George H.W. Bush in 1992. Read the whole thing, and have a laugh at the sanctimonious behavior of some of those same named journalists today.

Yeah, there's a double standard here. A big one, and it's not just the Joe Conason flipflop noted by Mickey Kaus earlier, or the different Joe Conason example noted by Drudge. You'll see more of this stuff as the election gets closer. They just can't help themselves.

Drudge:

As main press players blast the DRUDGE REPORT and foreign outlets for revealing details of a behind-the-scenes campaign drama surrounding candidate Kerry and the nature of his relationship with a mystery woman -- just 12 years ago the same players peppered former President George Bush with questions surrounding an infidelity rumor!

It's worth keeping in mind that the major media didn't report about Bob Dole's alleged affair during the 1996 campaign. Here are Leonard Downie, Jr. and Robert Kaiser acknowledging it:

Our book contains a detailed account of a big debate inside The Washington Post in 1996 over whether to expose a long-ago love affair of Sen. Bob Dole, the Republican candidate for president that year. Len Downie decided we wouldn't do it, after a heated argument within the staff. ... Our general rule of thumb is, a politician's private life must have some connection to the performance of his public duties before we're ready to write about it.

Now, the mainstream media does seem to pick and choose which personal allegations they cover and which they don't. A double-standard of some sort may exist. But it isn't a pro-Democrat, anti-Republican double-standard.

Dishonest Blogging

On Saturday, I took InstaPundit and Captain’s Quarters to task for how they portrayed this Boston Globe article.

Based on the Captain’s response, I’m not sure I explained my complaint clearly.

So I’ll try again, in greater detail, because I think this is an important topic.

Captain Ed wrote in response to my earlier item:

“While I may have worded it a little strongly, if Burkett's only witness to the alleged events say they never happened, then it seems to me that Burkett is being dishonest -- in other words, lying.”

But he’s missed the point entirely, presumably because I didn’t make it well. I take no issue with the Captain’s conclusion that Burkett lied. I take issue with his claim that the Globe drew that conclusion. I'll start from the beginning:

Captain Ed headlined his post on the Globe story like this:

"Globe: Bush AWOL Accusers Lied."

InstaPundit wrote this:

“THE BOSTON GLOBE REPORTS that the Bush AWOL story is collapsing”

Now, both could be valid interpretations of what the Globe article means. But they are NOT valid or accurate characterizations of what the Globe said.

That’s a huge – and hugely important – distinction.

Captain Ed read the Globe article, and concluded that Burkett lied. Fine; that, to me, is perfectly fair. I don’t believe (as of this writing) Burkett’s allegations, either. But the Globe absolutely, unequivicably did not report or conclude that anyone lied. That’s Captain Ed’s (valid) interpretation, and he’s wrong to ascribe it to the Globe. It’s misleading and untruthful.

Likewise, the Globe in no way, shape or form reported that the “Bush AWOL story is collapsing.” InstaPundit read the Globe article and concluded that the story is collapsing. Fine; that’s a reasonable (though, I think, incorrect) interpretation. But, again, InstaPundit is just plain wrong to portray the Globe as reaching that interpretation. It’s misleading and untruthful.

Look at it this way: say the Boston Globe scored an exclusive interview with … I don’t know; David Kay. And say Kay told the Globe that some of the statements in Bush’s 2003 SOTU about Iraq were inaccurate. And say the Globe headlined its article “KAY: Bush Lied.” Would that be a fair or accurate characterization of Kay’s comments? Hell, no.

But that’s what InstaPundit and Captain Ed have done: they’ve unfairly and inaccurately characterized the Globe’s reporting by ascribing their own interpretations to the Globe.

Now: why do I care?

Well, to me, one of the great qualities of the Blogosphere is that there are a great many people out there, banging away, offering a level of detail and information and fact and smart, insightful analysis that the major media is unable or unwilling to provide for various reasons. That helps illuminate a wide variety of issues, and fills in many of the gaps in coverage in the major media.

Good bloggers offer a level of both information and intelligent analysis that is, in many cases, much greater than we can get from any other news source.

Unfortunately, too many of us too often pick up the bad habits so troubling in the major media. Most obvious is the habit of conflating fact and opinion. To be clear: I’m not saying InstaPundit or Captain Ed or Atrios or anyone else shouldn’t offer their opinions; reading the well-reasoned opinions of smart bloggers is a large part of why I read blogs in the first place.

But "Globe: Bush AWOL Accusers Lied” and “THE BOSTON GLOBE REPORTS that the Bush AWOL story is collapsing” aren’t matters of opinion or analysis. They are factual inaccuracies. The Globe reported nothing of the kind.

If InstaPundit had written “This Boston Globe article provides evidence that the Bush AWOL story is collapsing,” that would have been fine. If Captain Ed had written “Globe Article Provides Evidence Bush AWOL Accuser Lied,” that too would have been fine. In both cases, they would have been making clear that these were their interpretations. Hell, if Captain Ed had written “This Boston Globe article means the moon is made of green cheese,” I’d be fine with that (I wouldn't agree, but, for the purposes of this discussion, I'd be fine with it.) It would be clear that he’s offering his conclusions, not describing the Globe’s.

Instead, Captain Ed and InstaPundit offered their opinions as facts.

And, worse, they presented their conclusions as though they were the Globe’s conclusions. That’s misleading and untruthful. It doesn’t serve their readers well. And it doesn’t reflect well on their credibility.

NOTE: Going back to Captain Ed’s post for a moment, there’s another way his headline ("Globe: Bush AWOL Accusers Lied") is inaccurate: the Globe story only provides evidence (if you interpret it as such) that Burkett lied. Captain Ed portrays it as providing evidence that the people who accuse Bush of being AWOL lied. The reality is that, at most, the article provides evidence that Burkett, who made the allegation not that Bush was AWOL, but that his records were tampered with, lied. In other words, Captain Ed’s characterization of the Globe article bears no resemblance to reality.

NOTE 2: I should state, as clearly as possible, that I have no reason to believe that either InstaPundit or Captain Ed was being malicious, or intentionally misleading. They may well have simply been sloppy. And I’m less concerned by these specific examples than I am by the fact that this sort of sloppiness (and, probably in some cases, deliberately misleading behavior) is quite common.

NOTE 3: I hasten to add that it's highly likely I will make (or, possibly, have allready made) the sort of mistake I've criticized InstaPundit & Captain Ed for making. Most of us will (and/or have.) When I do, please point it out. You'll be doing your fellow readers, and me, a service.

"Declined"?

Is it just me, or are the first six paragraphs of this WaPo article completely pointless?

Meanwhile, there's this:

He would not be flying in Alabama, because he was not trained on the aircraft at that base. Still, around the same time, records indicate that Bush declined to undergo a physical exam -- a requirement to maintain his flying status. By August, he was suspended from flying and never again took a military physical or flew for the Guard.

White House communications director Dan Bartlett said that Bush declined to take a physical because he was not flying in Alabama and that when he returned to Houston, his unit was phasing out the F-102s that Bush flew.

That's two uses of the word "declined" in the span of three sentances. What the heck is that? It makes it sound like the physical was completely optional. Like he "declined" a second glass of milk with dinner.

Anyway: it's a pointless article, all in all. Skip it.

CBS doesn't run ads on "controversial" issues. Well, unless they are White House ads.

CBS Pulls Bush administration ad:

CBS has stopped running the Bush administration's publicly funded ad for the new Medicare prescription drug law pending a review of its content by congressional investigators.

The 30-second ad, titled "Same Medicare. More Benefits," has prompted strong criticism from Democratic lawmakers and a range of interest groups who say it is a barely disguised commercial for President Bush's re-election campaign.

Democrats asked the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, to examine whether the administration should be using taxpayer money to air the commercial. And several lawmakers have been lobbying network executives to get them to yank the ad, pending the GAO review.

"As soon as we became aware of the investigation, we pulled it," CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said Friday. He said the network stopped airing the ad several days ago.

Interesting.

What's more interesting is that CBS ran the ad in the first place. Flashback to mid-January:

U.S. football fans will not see ads featuring scantily clad vegetarians or a political attack on President Bush during February's Super Bowl after CBS said on Thursday that advocacy advertisements were out of bounds on professional football's biggest day.

The network, over the years, has rejected dozens of advertising proposals by advocacy groups, who argue that the network only airs controversial messages that it agrees with.

,,,

In a letter, CBS told PETA that it would not run advertisements on "controversial issues of public importance."

CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said the policy had been in place for years. "We have a policy against accepting advocacy advertising," he added.

CBS has a policy of not running ads on "controversial issues of public importance," huh? Then why did they accept the Bush administration's Medicare ad in the first place?

Medicare is certainly an issue of public importance. And it's so controversial, a recent House of Representatives vote on the topic featured Republican members of Congress offering a bribe to one of their colleagues in an effort to get him to vote their way.

Misrepresenting the Globe/Burkett article

This is the kind of garbage I'm talking about.

"Captain's Quarters" headlines its observaations on the Globe article thusly: "Globe: Bush AWOL Accusers Lied." Well, that's not true. The Cap'n indicates that the BOSTON GLOBE says Burkett lied; the Globe says no such thing. That's the confused Cap'n's conclusion. The Globe article doesn't really offer any evidence that Burkett lied, either: it just says that three people say it isn't true. That isn't proof, especially when those three people are not exactly disinterested parties.

And Instapundit takes the same approach:

THE BOSTON GLOBE REPORTS that the Bush AWOL story is collapsing

Again, that's not true. The Globe reported nothing of the kind. The Globe reported some facts, which led Glenn Reynolds to conclude that "the AWOL story is collapsing." That may or may not be a fair interpretation, but it's Reynolds' interpretation, not the Globe's.

And that's not the only way Reynolds misrepresented the Globe article: the article dealt solely with Burkett's allegations of tampering with Bush's file, not the whole "AWOL story," yet Reynolds spins this into the Globe reporting that the entire story is collapsing. Reynolds' charectorization of the Globe article manages to be a perfect distortion in only 11 words.

It's real simple, guys: reading an article, drawing conclusions based on it, then claiming the article reported your conclusions in the first place is dishonest. You're misleading your readers. Knock it off. Please.

(Tomorrow, I hope to update this with a couple examples from the other side: people taking Burkett's allegations as "proof," which they are not. Anyone who has an example handy, please, let me know.)

UPDATE: Calpundit points out that Conn doesn't actually contradict Burkett.

UPDATE 2: I cleaned up some of the language above ... I'm still working through the tone of this blog; bear with me.

Checking in on the Bush/National Guard document dump

Here's the latest AP article on the Bush Guard records.

The White House initially declined to open up Bush's National Guard record, saying that lingering questions about his service during the Vietnam War were asked and answered when he ran for president. Then, late Friday, a two-inch stack of his military records were released with a thud.

...

In response to questions about Bush's National Guard service, particularly during a brief stint in 1972 and 1973 when he was assigned to a unit in Alabama, the White House on Friday released papers from his military file. They show a glowing recommendation for promotion to 1st lieutenant in 1970 and exemplary performance evaluations from his commanders at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas.

Among other records released is one indicating Bush had a dental exam at a National Guard base in Alabama on Jan. 6, 1973.

Inexplicably, there's no mention of this little detail:

But the records provided no evidence Bush served in Alabama.

...

Earlier this week, the White House for the first time released payroll records it said proved Bush served in Alabama.

Those records, which were not included in the documents released Friday, showed Bush was paid for 25 days of service during the one-year period in question - most of them in 1973. He was not paid for any service during a more than five-month period in 1972, from April 17 to Oct. 27.

Not so fast...

AP:

President Bush, trying to calm a political storm, ordered the release of all of his Vietnam-era military records Friday to counter Democrats' suggestions that he shirked his duty in the Texas Air National Guard.

But ...

Bush's medical records, dozens of pages in all, were opened for examination by reporters in the Roosevelt Room, but those documents were not allowed to leave the room.

I'm speechless. No matter how often they say they're releasing "all" the files or "everything," they aren't. They lie.