Innumeracy Update: Recalculating Behind The "Boo Frickin' Hoo"

Glenn and Charles link to this sob story about how burials are down at the (huge) Najaf cemetery so now we're supposed to feel sorry for the soon to be unemployed staff there! One the surface, Glenn's certainly right about what outrageous MSM spin-reverse-meistering this is.

But it's even worse than he suggests when you get out your spreadsheet and chart wizard.

Whenever I read an article where numbers are thrown around ranging from "soared" to 150 per day to 6500 per month -- hmm, it's kind of hard to quickly compare furlongs per fortnight to miles per hour, no? -- as casual evidence for the storyline, I get suspicious. Of a cover up, innumeracy or -- all too often lately -- both.

So let's take the key numeric assertions listed in article in varying units and out of order sequence and normalize and sequence them (see chart -- numbers from article highlighted in table above, my conversions in white cells).

Isn't THAT interesting!

No wonder they quoted the numbers in varying units -- when normalized they show a downtrend culminating in a most recent month's daily burial rate lower than that quoted for the (non war) 1990s under Saddam! Best to leave that storyline left untold by the MSM, no?

Obfuscating the unfavorable-to-MSM storyline? Innumeracy? Both?

Yes.

French Car-b-que Update

"Anti-Sarkozy protests turned violent overnight in France’s second city of Lyon, in Lille, Toulouse, Nantes and Rennes.

More than 500 cars were set alight in cities and suburbs across the country, according to police reports gathered by AFP, many more than the 70 to 100 vehicles that are attacked on an average night in France." [ So let's make sure we've got this straight. If we scaled this up to U.S. demographics (multiply by 6x population), we would have 600 car-b-ques on an average night and 3,000 when the "youths" became especially unhappy. All the smoke and fire engine sirens would make this take over virtually all the big city nightly news. But since it's France and France must be portrayed in unrelentingly positive terms as what we Americans should aspire to be when we recover from our long fascist nightmare, it goes nearly unreported in the U.S. And of course, it's not a scandal that the French themselves are trying to cover up what everyone can smell and hear. (Ah, yes ... that's why they elected Sarkosy in the first place! Even the French tire of bullsh** when it's up to their eyeballs!) I guess it's a lot like the dirty little secret that the French produce most of their electricity from nuclear plants. It doesn't fit the MSMeme... -ed. ]

No Redemption

"Maybe the reason why the Left hates Sarkozy and that renegade "woman of color" Hirsi Ali so much is not because of what they stand for as much as because both remind them of the principles they have betrayed. This secret guilt may stand at the center of the inexplicable hysteria with which the Left regard the neocons and President Bush in particular. Recently a Ramussen poll showed that "only four in ten Democrats will commit to the idea that George Bush did not know of the 9/11 attack in advance. Sixty-one percent of them either believe he did or are unsure." What could account for such a widespread belief in a bizarre conspiracy theory? Why do otherwise intelligent people insist, in the face of incontrovertible evidence that "fire does not melt steel" and embrace all kinds of ridiculous fantasies? I think the extreme demonization of George W. Bush and the neocons is psychologically necessary in order to restore a feeling of moral superiority to the Leftist universe. They would be guilt stricken without it. The more intelligent Leftists must be subconsciously aware of how monstrous the enemy is and secretly cognizant of how great is the betrayal of their own ideals. They can't confront this fact; cannot accept that they are delivering children, as Caroline Glick's example above shows, to cruel murderers. And in order to obtain some kind of solace and to have the effrontery to march in support of "freedom fighters" who are nothing but sadistic thugs, it is necessary for them to invent something worse; to make a caricature devil of GWB to place them once again, if not upon the side of angels, at least in the camp of the lesser evil. George Bush must be made nothing less than the moral equivalent of Hitler or else their ethical universe would collapse.

But George Bush is not Hitler. And one day the better men among the Left will face up to the fact that they have failed a huge moral and historical test. And from that memory, there will be no redemption." [ Which is why they're also so busy constructing the MSMemory Hole -- the more mechanisms of forgetfulness the better... -ed. ]

UPDATE FROM THE COMMENTS: "How anyone can have BDS and still believe that an al Qaeda attack can not happen here. The fact that nothing has happened in these many years should tell them that their conspiracy theories are wrong. The best way for President Bush to become the dictator they imagine is to have an attack on the US to get the “security over freedom” cry going. " [ Bingo. -ed. ]

Iowahawk Has James Covered!

"Dear Subscriber:
According to our records, your 1957 subscription to The Claxon is scheduled to expire soon. Please don't let this happen! $2 per month will buy you the Quint-State area's leading newspaper, delivered each morning by one of our cheerful Junior Claxoneer news lads -- like 12-year old Claxon Carrier of the Year Skip Olbermaier! Each issue is packed with items of interest around our community - like:
- Goings-on at City Hall, including the controversial $0.0032 sales tax plan!
- Publisher Felton Beswick Jr. keeps you up-to-date on the Red Menace!
- The latest Capitol dispatches from our Washington DC cub reporter Bob Smalls!
- Friendly sportscribe Jocko Culligan follows the Quints on another pennant run, and the QSU - - Scalpin' Injuns all the way to the Petunia Bowl!
- "Kiddie capers" with adorable 7-year old Beswick twins Eileen and Feltie!
- Complete TV listings for both channels!
- Household cleaning tips for the ladies from beloved Beswick Manor maid Ol' Aunt Mammie!
- Full color Sunday comics featuring Lil' Chester, Swirley, and Buzz Galvin All-American!
Plus the latest market quotes for stocks, and crop forecasts for local turnip farmers. Just try to get that coverage from so-called "television news"! And if you order now, we'll include free daily delivery of the Evening Ledger. Don't delay, renew today!" [ And it gets much, much better... -ed. ]

What's Left Of It: Barry On Lileks Edition (And I Do Mean Left)

"James Lileks, a terrific writer and one of the best newspaper columnists in America, says on his blog today that his newspaper, the Minneapolis-St.Paul Star-Tribune, has decided to kill his column and have him write straight local news stories. This is like the Miami Heat deciding to relieve Dwyane Wade of his basketball-playing obligations so he can keep stats.

Sometimes I don't understand the newspaper business. What's left of it."

UPDATE: "I wonder if Barack Obama will chastise Barnes and Ridder for the violence they have inflicted on their staff?"

All Truthers, All The Time

"MIAMI — Many potential jurors in the Jose Padilla terrorism-support case say they aren’t sure who directed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because they don’t trust reporters or the federal government.

“There are too many ifs, too many things going on,” one male juror said. “I don’t know the whole story.” Others say they just don’t pay close enough attention to world events to be certain." [ So let me be sure I have this straight. All those MSM 24-hour-a-day attacks on W are just to cover up that they're in bed together covering up that W was the real evil one behind 911? Oh. And yes, it's much more important that we instead pay attention to American Idol and Paris/Britney/< insert-today's-bimbo-here >. I won't write the bad words I'm thinking but I'm sure anyone with an IQ above 60 can guess what they are... -ed. ]

The BDS Pulse Beats Ever Stronger

"Only four in ten Democrats will commit to the idea that George Bush did not know of the 9/11 attack in advance. Sixty-one percent of them either believe he did or are unsure. Bear in mind that no evidence exists that he knew about it in advance, and also bear in mind that Democrats have spent most of the last four years blaming him for the fact that the attack successfully surprised the US when it occurred. Now they also want to believe that Bush was in on the plan that killed almost 3,000 Americans and could easily have killed thousands more."

And It Really Is A Hole...

(link) "TIME.COM WON'T LIKE DON SURBER'S TAKE: "The 1,363rd most visited Web site in the world tried to diss the president of the United States as not being among the world’s 100 most influential people.""

MSMemory Hole Watch (Part 23965)

(link) "MORE BOGUS KYOTO HISTORY FROM REUTERS: "President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing it would cost U.S. jobs and that it wrongly excluded 2012 goals for poorer nations such as China."

Er, no. The U.S. refused to ratify Kyoto under President Clinton. We've been over this before. It's all spelled out in Wikipedia, even. Really, if Reuters can't get simple things like this right, why should we trust them for actual news?"

In Iraq Iran Vietnam With Petraeus

"There were some followups later on, in which Petraeus was pressed on the “how high up the Iranian line does this chain of command go? And he repeated that we know that some of the people we’re interrogating report to General Sulemaini, the head of the Qods Force, but beyond that we don’t know.

As I’ve said before, this is lawyer-talk, not intelligence talk. And of course the journalist’s question betrays the usual lack of knowlege of the Iranian chain of command. The Revolutionary Guards, of which Qods is the foreign arm, report to the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), NOT to the president. So the reference to Ahmadinejad shows the journalist’s ignorance. But to believe that a Qods campaign is being conducted without Khamenei’s approval is as silly as the belief that a Special Forces campaign could be conducted without White House approval. No way.

Finally, notice the data he provides on suicide attacks: eighty to ninety percent are carried out by foreigners via Syria. Put that together with the knowledge that the most dangerous explosives are coming from Iran. Then ask yourself why so many people keep talking about “insurgency,” which implies a domestic reaction to the presence of coalition forces on Iraqi soil.

And the answer is: because it’s all about Vietnam."

And the first commenter has it nailed: "This war began November 4, 1979 in Iran and that is exactly where it will end. The US and the West will come to that conclusion eventually but only after the stakes have been stacked catastrophically high."

Our Crappy MSMemory Hole Today

""All of these papers had hours after the Times of London report to get the London bombings into the story. The Times goes to bed at 7 pm ET and hits the feeds and wire services. None of the American media bothered to check on Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi. Readers should ask themselves whether that comes from a lack of intellectual curiosity, or whether it comes from a bias that puts the circumstances of the detention of a terrorist at a higher priority than the terrorism itself."

Either way, they're doing a crappy job. But if he'd had a connection to Jack Abramoff, you can bet they'd have mentioned it!"

Down The MSMemory Hole: Armed Resistance

"It took place at a university in Virginia. A student with a grudge, an immigrant, pulled a gun and went on a shooting spree. It wasn’t Virginia Tech at all. It was the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, not far away. You can easily drive from the one school to the other, just take a trip down Route 460 through Tazewell.

It was January 16, 2002 when Peter Odighizuwa came to campus. He had been suspended due to failing grades. Odighizuwa was angry and waving a gun calling on students to “come get me”. The students, seeing the gun, ran. A shooting spree started almost immediately. In seconds Odighizuwa had killed the school dean, a professor and one student. Three other students were shot as well, one in the chest, one in the stomach and one in the throat.

Many students heard the shots. Two who did were Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges. Mikael was outside the school having just returned to campus from lunch when he heard the shots. Tracy was inside attending class. Both immediately ran to their cars. Each had a handgun locked in the vehicle.

Bridges pulled a .357 Magnum pistol and he later said he was prepared to shoot to kill if necessary. He and Gross both approached Odighizuwa at the same time from different directions. Both were pointing their weapons at him. Bridges yelled for Odighizuwa to drop his weapon. When the shooter realized they had the drop on him he threw his weapon down. A third student, unarmed, Ted Besen, approached the killer and was physically attacked.

But Odighizuwa was now disarmed. The three students were able to restrain him and held him for the police. Odighizuwa is now in prison for the murders he committed. His killing spree ended when he faced two students with weapons. There would be no further victims that day, thanks to armed resistance.

You wouldn’t know much about that though. Do you wonder why? The media, though it widely reported the attack left out the fact that Bridges and Gross were armed. Most simply reported that the gunman was jumped and subdued by other students. That two of those students were now armed didn’t get a mention.

James Eaves-Johnson wrote about this fact one week later in The Daily Iowan. He wrote: “A Lexus-Nexis search revealed 88 stories on the topic, of which only two mentioned that either Bridges or Gross was armed.” This 2002 article noted “This was a very public shooting with a lot of media coverage.” But the media left out information showing how two students with firearms ended the killing spree."

What War?

"As the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered in 2001, no one could have imagined a day when America's leaders would be criticized for being tough in protecting Americans from further acts of war.

Now, less than six years later, that day has arrived.

Since Sept. 11, a conspiracy-minded fringe has claimed that American officials plotted the destruction. But when scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski accuse our leaders of falsely depicting or hyping a "war on terror" to promote a "culture of fear," it's clear that historical revisionism has gone mainstream."

Thompson Watch

"When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.

Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses — and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.

Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago."

Admiral Stockdale, R.I.P.

"The recent episode of the British hostages in Iran brought to mind the late Adm. James Stockdale. He spent seven years in Hoa Lo Prison, a.k.a. the Hanoi Hilton. For his valor and leadership while captive he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Though tortured 15 times, though kept in leg irons for two years, though held in solitary confinement for four, he would not aid his captors. Refusing to be paraded in front of foreign journalists, he slashed his scalp with a razor blade and beat his face with a wooden stool, rendering impossible that disgrace. Few are capable of such feats of will — Admiral Stockdale was a student of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus — and we could probably not have expected such bravery from the British sailors and marines. Yet we must remember the standards our greatest warriors have set if we are to prevail in this and coming wars." [ Our new dependent rulers insist we must stop fighting and return to bondage. They lack historical knowledge, judgment and courage. -ed. ]

Waning Reserves

""The media used up its reserve of good will when it refused to show all of the 9/11 images and when it went to court to show the most offensive Katrina images. The rest of the nation has figured out that all of their claims of journalistic integrity and ethics are simply nonsense. Journalism is about protecting media organization profits and advancing a political point of view, period.""

Pravda Truthers Onion Heh

"“In a clear sign of its intent to reign in dissident American media personalities, and their growing influence in American culture, US War Leaders this past week launched an unprecedented attack upon one of their most politically ‘connected’, and legendary, radio hosts named Don Imus after his threats to release information relating to the September 11, 2001 attacks upon that country.” (Pravda) You know, the Onion couldn’t have said it better." [ You know, these are the kind of people that the left says we need to ally with. I guess Media Matters *could* be a Rove front organization. Or not... -ed. ]

The Implicit Assumption Revealed: The Dark Nuts(hell) X-Rayed Once Again...

"Implicit in the enemy use of these tactics is the presumption that its political target has a moral sensibility -- that it somehow cares about the threat to kill innocents unless it bends to their evil will. Otherwise it would not be affected. Blackmail is useless against those who don't care for the victims because there can be no assault on the sensibility of the insensible. Pity and virtue are treated as weakness -- but only by evil -- by those who hate pity, and hate it from pride.

But still more evil than terrorists are those who help them in projecting a moral inversion. For terrorists are themselves fully cognizant of the difference between innocence and guilt. It is this fine sensibility that allows terrorists to design one outrage greater than the other; that teaches it to seek out the child that they might mutilate it. Lucifer would have been a poor devil had he not the memory of an angel. But their apologists have no sense of evil; and are in some way morally inferior to the terrorists themselves. They have no memory of Paradise Lost. Darkness and light are all the same to them; or rather darkness is light and night their shade of preference. For the apologists of terror, the victims themselves are "little Eichmanns" and those who try to defend the victims blamed instead of the murderers. And not only do they believe this but will try to persuade anyone who will listen of its truth. The phrase "lost soul" is not just a metaphor but a diagnosis.

How can anyone leave the field to such evil? Or think that we could, by giving it victory, escape it ourselves?" [ To which a wise commenter leaves the following: -ed. ]

"How many times have you heard a critic of the US discuss Middle Eastern Radical Islamic terrorism without pitching it as a reaction to the West, rather than discuss it as a pathology of the societies from which they spring? A pathology which, if Israel or the West didn't exist, would simply be setting a different target, rather than not existing itself?

Choosing to treat terrorism as the response to Western actions, rather than the cause of them, is an act of whistling by the graveyard: It's an act of superstition, not logic, attributing to the West a level of control over other societies that it doesn't even have over its own. But it is comforting to apologists, as it does allow them the moral inversions you describe." [ I would remind the terror apologists once more to take a long hard look at the "oppression" laboratory experiment of North and South Korea. Has North Korea been oppressed by the West? Really? How did we forget to oppress the South then? -ed. ]

The Daily MSMemory Hole

[ Glad to know that this doesn't exist in Carl Levin's mind. What? I guess I'm in a generous mood this morning, huh? -ed. ]:

"Forgetting all of these circumstances, among others, Tom also recalls, as Steve Hayes, myself, and others have for some time, that in 1998, "Ayman al-Zawahiri was in Baghdad ... and collected a check for $300,000 from the Iraqi regime." I would add, for context, that this was in the same time frame as bin Laden and Zawahiri's infamous fatwa calling for the murder of Americans — which, if you read it, argues that American actions against Iraq are a big part of the justification. It also came just a few months before al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in east Africa, the Clinton administration bombed a Sudanese phramaceutical factory because intel indicated it was a joint Iraqi/Qaeda chemical weapons venture, and Clinton counter-terror honcho Richard Clarke fretted that "wily old Osama would boogie to Baghdad" — of all places — if the U.S. made things too hot for Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Sure, maybe all this is just a big coincidence. But, given that al Qaeda is a 24/7 terror operation whose main target is the U.S., I've always wondered for what earthly purpose Senator Levin and other connection naysayers figure Saddam Hussein gave Ayman Zawahiri 300K?"

Speech As Weapon

"What we have then are two positions about the nature of speech. The postmodernists say: Speech is a weapon in the conflict between groups that are unequal. And that is diametrically opposed to the liberal view of speech, which says: Speech is a tool of cognition and communication for individuals who are free.

If we adopt the first statement, then the solution is going to be some form of enforced altruism, under which we redistribute speech in order to protect the harmed, weaker groups. If the stronger, white males have speech tools they can use to the detriment of the other groups, then don't let them use those speech tools. Generate a list of denigrating words that harm members of the other groups and prohibit members of the powerful groups from using them. Don't let them use the words that reinforce their own racism and sexism, and don't let them use words that make members of other groups feel threatened. Eliminating those speech advantages will reconstruct our social reality - which is the same goal as affirmative action. A striking consequence of this analysis is that the toleration of "anything goes" in speech becomes censorship. The postmodern argument implies that if anything goes, then that gives permission to the dominant groups to keep on saying the things that keep the subordinate groups in their place. Liberalism thus means helping to silence the subordinate groups and letting only the dominant groups have effective speech. Postmodern speech codes, therefore, are not censorship but a form of liberation - they liberate the subordinated groups from the punishing and silencing effects of the powerful groups' speech, and they provide an atmosphere in which the previously subordinated groups can express themselves. Speech codes equalize the playing field." [ Antonio Gramsci must be very, very proud ... -ed. ]