A Week of Consistency

The MSM and Democrats seemed to have a lot of trouble gaining much traction with the “all Scooter all the time” media deluge. On Tuesday the Democrats used a rules trick to put the Senate into closed session to try to switch the media focus back to “Scooter-Wilson-Plame-Iraq” and had some success, but only shortly. Imagine the MSM howl of “partisan politics”, “how coarse the dialogue has become in Washington”, and “the opposition party trying to overturn the will of the people” if the shoe was on the other foot.

Even though I have full intellectual understanding that the liberal mind has no interest in consistency, sometimes it is especially breathtaking. Right in the midst of the mass finger pointing on the importance of “secrecy” and the horror of “leaks”, we have the Washington Post breaking the story of “covert CIA prisons” where terrorists may be held. So how did they find out about these “secret prisons”? Well obviously through “leaks”, but we aren’t calling for any investigation on THOSE are we? It is easy to understand at least, leaks that might hurt Republicans or America in general are “good”, those that might help a Republican or America are “bad”.

On a related topic, a set of emails from Michael Brown, then head of FEMA was leaked to the press during the week with resounding glee. We see glee from the same people who are constantly yammering about “privacy”, the horrors of Homeland security and claimed to live in fear of John Ashcroft. I personally think that you should assume that any email you write may show up anywhere, but apparently this is another lefty issue where the answer they believe in is something like; “If you are of a Republican stripe, then any communication that you have should be open for publishing at any time and in any partial viewing that we want to provide. We should also be able to create our own documents and attribute them to you as in the case of CBS and the Bush National Guard Documents”. Democrat or lefty of any sort? Well, of course all personal or even vaguely personal information should be completely private and maintained as such independent of whatever suspicion of crime exists, up to and including conspiracy to kill US citizens or overthrow the Government. Again, at least it is simple!

The riots in France are a rare case where the MSM hasn’t told us what to think yet, which I suspect means that they don’t know what to think. They have talked up France, Germany, and much of Europe for a long time without pointing out that fact that there are a lot of structural economic problems there, as well as racial/social tensions. My guess is that the MSM will continue to try to ignore the fact that the very systems that they have held up as the models for the US to follow have deeper problems to deal with than the US, but much in the same flavor. Aging populations to which more has been promised than can be delivered, young educated in state sponsored education systems that are increasingly unionized and weak, work forces and companies hampered by regulation and union contracts that make then non-competitive in a global market, and deficits of many forms out as far as the eye can see. Hey, but at least they have the undying admiration of the US Media and lefties.