http://realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/blog_8_23_04_1015.html

The NYTimes is quickly becoming yet another Guardian-style, self-referential left-lib journal whose parochial worldview begins and ends in Manhattan. Perhaps a good niche market strategy but certainly not a strategy for maintaining paper of record status.

Well done, Pinch. Good thing Papa’s not around to see the tawdry little slut his Gray Lady’s become.

“How does one gain such status?”

It’s not about being right. It’s about feeling right. I bet Eleanor doesn’t know anyone who’s ever voted Republican…

…and that story was old when Nixon was elected.

Classic institutional arrogance.

Eleanor Clift’s latest gem was a 500-word sneer at undecided “swing voters.” She quoted Donna Brazile and a few random swing voters from one of Brazile’s focus groups in order to characterize undecided voters generally as clueless, stupid, irresponsible. Clift has taken an easily quantified, fairly straightforward sociological phenomenon and treated it with less care, precision and seriousness than your average soap opera digest writer.

No effort to even define or quantify the “swing voters.” No reference to any research. No effort to sift through the research and evaluate possible explanations. No attempt at independent thought or hypotheses, or attempt to test those hypotheses in light of her experience as a journalist.

Ditto for Krugman and nearly any topic outside economics. Dowd doesn’t deserve a comment.

Why does such laziness deserve a platform like the NYT OpEd? How does one gain such status? As the internet and blogosphere expand people’s access to expert analysis– or even just conscientious analysis, hell, analysisperiod– can the privileged position of our MSM blowhards be sustained?

pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain

Richard, I swear to God I didn’t see this before I posted my response to Terrye.

Eh, how much of a war hero could Bob Dole be? He just got one Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, and he was in combat for three years.

Hell, if they can take money with a straight face for what they put out, there’s no possible foul in me venturing an opinion for free.

Rick Ballard -

I proposed that Kerry expected to coast for the five weeks after the convention, confident that whatever questions about his Heroic Vietnam Experience ™might be raised would be blasted by the media. All the charges were already “public”, right? The SBFT even had a press conference back in May that was MENTIONED in major papers. Yup, it was already covered.

I think that Kerry is probably a shitty chess player – and almost without question a catastrophically poor poker player…in a straight game. He has been the junior senator from Massachussets (and before that Boy JFK) for so long he’s forgotten that there really are responsibilities in life beyond his ambitions. As a senator he concentrated on placating his progressive liberal moonbat constituency by voting for policies that would have disarmed, blinded, and bankrupted the country. One senator out of a hundred…even four or five at a time…could be as feckless as Kerry for their whole career but still polish a bench in the Senate because larger men stepped up in enough numbers to choose the right paths. In a nation of even moderately engaged and informed voters, he’d never be remotely considered for any higher station.

Kerry’s NEVER paid for a mistake. Not that I can see. His senate record has been defined as being Ted Kennedy’s page. No bills. Nothing but a relentless, bloviating, hollow prescence on the Senate floor, marked by infrequent attendance in committees, for two decades. No executive leadership of committees…unless you count the P.O.W. betrayal. I imagine we’ll be hearing about that, too, but not from Kerry’s campaign..

No, I’m not indulging in hyperbole. If Kerry thinks he’s got a problem with the Swifties, wait until the RNC starts releasing an ad a week from Labor Day until the election highlighting his record in the Senate. He discounted the possibility that a non-public person like O’Neill would be taken seriously because he’s wired to accept that what media declines to cover isn’t important.

He hasn’t run for office motivated to serve. He’s run by deciding which skids to grease in order to get what he wants. And that in a tiny little liberal state with monolithic machine politics.

The Democrats have no one to blame for what has happened to this candidacy but themselves. I guess they forgot there are rules, too; their apoplectic intent to remove Bush from office has overwhelmed any chance they might look at themselves for a minute and honestly assess what their problem is. Problems are, I should say.

Here’s a freebie for them:

A national party cannot survive the leadership and manipulation of its constituency at the hands of individuals starkly incapable of assuming the responsibilities concommitant with the powers they seek. It just doesn’t work. Whatever the good intentions of the New Deal and subsequent liberal social policies , they have in the end led directly to the practice of vote managing of dependency demographics, class warfare, and have undoubtedly extended the existence of institutionalized racism to the present time.

America is not a government taking care of people. It is three hundred million citizens pursuing their hopes and dreams with the prospect of tyranny only a thin sheet of parchment away. I don’t want to see anything even approaching a single-party system in this country, but the current roster of people at the top of the Democratic party appear more a threat than a loyal opposition. Democrats better find themselves some more Zell Millers.

I’m also getting tired of retired officers and non-retired journalists complaining about the SBVT charges because they are unseemly. I just heard it on Fox from Geraldo and Col Hunt.

What happened to going for the truth?

I also noted that Bush and Kerry are neck and neck. The electoral vote is up and down though.