No, just letting my family temporarily drag my fingers away from the keyboard.

“but take it from a woman over 50 there were veterans that hated John Kerry”

I don’t doubt that, but that’s no excuse to give a free pass to people who were very careless with facts in their “myopic zeal” to attack Kerry.

“For instance was there anti Americanism before Bush became president? You would be amazed how many people would say no.”

Of course there was “anti Americanism before Bush became president.” But on 9/12 there was an unprecedented outpouring of sympathy and support for us. Bush managed to turn this around in an awful hurry. Very similar to the way he rapidly turned record surplus into record deficit.

“Some SBVT details can be debated. Some, however, can not, such as these: 254 Veterans came forward to oppose John Kerry”

Names on that list turn out to be people whose names were used without permission. How did this happen? How many others are there like this? So much for details that can’t “be debated.”

Also, SBVT claimed “most combat veterans who served with John Kerry in Vietnam” oppose him. In all likelihood, 2,000 or more Swift boat vets are still alive (estimate based on data here). The SBVT letter lists 239 names. How does this fit the definition of “most?”

“The media was EXTREMELY skeptical of all SBVT claims”

Because many questionable statements were made, as I’ve documented here and elsewhere. And actually, there are many examples of MSM repeating their statements uncritically (examples available on request).

“yet trumpeted the fake Bush TANG memos”

Because there’s lot of other evidence in the TANG story. A good place to start is here.

“it’s not surprising that there are some contradictions.”

O’Neill claiming “I was never in Cambodia,” when there’s tape of him saying “I was in Cambodia,” shouldn’t be dismissed as just “some contradiction” (media clip). This is just one example.

“Roger has done a great job of exposing how unreliable the MSM is as a source of information on controversial subjects.”

A statement like this is hard to take seriously in the face of people like Powerline and O’Neill failing to take responsibility for “some contradictions” (to put it mildly).

Maybe MSM would be less “unreliable” if they got onto the White House payroll (a la Armstrong Williams).

I don’t have any cats. It’s dangerous for me to be around them. They hate me with more passion than I’m really worth.

They hiss, then skedaddle. Then they blame their feeders (I’d say “owners”, but that doesn’t seem to correctly convey the relationship) for allowing me to come by, only occasionally casting a resentful glance when they think no one is looking.

You mean they all get the mulligrubs and sit in a corner with their backs to you?

Glad you made it through without trouble. Sorry about the cat. They’re all like that.

Without making invidious comparisons,it seemed to work in you presidential elections.

Friday was the day for rain here,luckily it’s high up and therefore self bailing.Winds are still very high,as is usual with bad weather the cat is blaming me.

Thanks for asking.

1) Ignorance

All too often, reporters and columnists don’t have the background to cover a story and they are too lazy to acquire it. I understand that small organizations don’t have the money to invest in fact checkers but fact doesn’t let the large ones off the hook.

2) Narrative Structures

We ALL tend to IMPOSE structures on events, either at the time or later. Sometimes these structures are so alluring that obstreporous facts are ignored.

That’s basically what I was thinking. Maybe questions like:

0=Not at all

10=Extremely

How likely do you think it is that Halliburton’s profits were a major reason for the war in Iraq?

In your opinion, how justified were the terrorist attacks on 9/11?

How useful do you think the UN is?

Is the media biased in favor of conservatives?

Is the media biased in favor of liberals?

That kind of thing. That would give us some idea of how people think, as well as what they believe.

I kind of like the idea. Maybe a standard form that all serious bloggers and newspaper commenters have to fill out and make available online in order to post a seal of openness approval or some such. Questions like “Do you belong to a political party and if so which one?” and “Have you contributed heavily or worked as a volunteer for a a particular political campaign, and if so who’s?”.

I think we’re in the middle of a revolution here and blogs and wikis are just the beginning. I don’t think we’ve necessarily found the stable form yet.