Saturday, September 04, 2010

WrongO

Jamie Stiehm - Oval Office rug gets history wrong: "Yet somehow a mistake was made and magnified in our culture to the point that a New England antebellum abolitionist's words have been enshrined in the Oval Office while attributed to a major 20th-century figure. That is a shame, because the slain civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate [MLK -ed] was so eloquent in his own right. Obama, who is known for his rhetorical skills, is likely to feel the slight to King -- and Parker.

My investigation into this error led me to David Remnick's biography of Obama, 'The Bridge,' published this year. Early in the narrative, Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, presents this as 'Barack Obama's favorite quotation.' It appears that neither Remnick nor Obama has traced the language to its true source.

Parker said in 1853: 'I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one. . . . But from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.'"
Obama's fact checking machine seems to be down. Actually, it would more likely seem that it's never been up wouldn't it?

Whoops

Hot Air - So, the wage gap is true. Only, it’s men who earn less: "Time Magazine is now even admitting the gender wage gap against women is unfounded. And, in fact, that some women are presently out-earning men. According to Time, we should think this is super awesome. They even titled the article “At Last, Women On Top“. (I think that’s supposed to be titillating and edgy):
According to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group…."

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Information

Power Line - The role of information in American "Islamophobia": "Thus, while only the most highly informed Americans probably could have imagined terrorist plotting or even pro-terrorist rhetoric in an American place of worship back in 2001, many can imagine it now, and with reason.

Judea Pearl, a professor at UCLA and the father of Daniel Pearl, sees the matter this way:

The American Muslim leadership has had nine years to build up trust by taking proactive steps against the spread of anti-American terror-breeding ideologies, here and abroad.

Evidently, however, a sizable segment of the American public is not convinced that this leadership is doing an effective job of confidence building.

In public, Muslim spokespersons praise America as the best country for Muslims to live and practice their faith. But in sermons, speeches, rallies, classrooms, conferences and books sold at those conferences, the narrative is often different. There, Noam Chomsky's conspiracy theory is the dominant paradigm, and America's foreign policy is one long chain of 'crimes' against humanity, especially against Muslims."