No Joe-Mentum?

"Last week was the best for President Bush since his re-election. That isn't saying much, of course. His second term has been one long slide into political and military misery. But one person seemed particularly ebullient last week; and there are signs she has some reason to be.

"I'm referring to secretary of state Condi Rice, whose long, quiet war of attrition against the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis of incompetence has been showing some rare, stray glimmers of success.

"I don't want to go overboard. Nobody should underestimate Cheney's ruthlessness or Rumsfeld's bureaucratic skills. They're still entrenched and are biding their time. But they have temporarily lost the Iran debate. The switch towards a policy of agreeing to direct negotiations under strict conditions was a victory for Rice and Merkel and Blair."

Philly Inquirer blogger Dick Polman weighs in against stenography:

"After I poked at the Associated Press for failing to fact-check Dick Cheney and thereby allow him to utter a demonstrably false remark, somebody named Anonymous complained that 'the AP article was a straight news story. Straight news stories are supposed to report facts and what was said. Separate analysis or commentary articles would then debate the merits of what Cheney said. That's journalism 101.'

"I disagree. Anonymous tell us that 'straight news are supposed to report facts and what was said,' but, under that outmoded definition, journalists are mere stenographers, copying down whatever a politician wants to say, and passing it along to readers who often lack the time to determine whether the remarks were true. Under that so-called 'objectivity' standard, a politician is free to dissemble without being challenged. I don't feel that we should be content with passing along misinformation in 'straight' stories. The reader deserves a full context, and that means politicians should be fact-checked -- a job that's relatively quick and easy to do, in the Google era. Providing accurate factual context is not 'commentary.' It's what 'straight' reporting should be about."

I would have thought the American Library Association was a polite and nonpartisan organization. Apparently, according to this Michelle Malkin post, I am wrong:

"First Lady Laura Bush, who served as a public school teacher and librarian in the Houston, Dallas and Austin school systems, is scheduled to speak to the American Library Association's (ALA) annual conference in New Orleans next week.

"The First Lady isn't planning to speak about anything political. The non-controversial topic of her panel: 'School Libraries Work: Rebuilding for Learning' in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Nevertheless, her mere scheduled presence has moonbat activists within the ALA steaming. On a library e-mail list publicized on the SHUSH blog this week, ALA councilor-at-large Mark Rosenzweig's rant must be quoted at length to be believed:

"I must, with the weariness and frustration that accompanies the anticipated yet still painful, hereby protest that this event turns our conference into a grand political photo-op for the administration of President George W. Bush, whose administration bears such a heavy responsibility for, among other things of which I will remind you, the debacle of the response to Hurricane Katrina and for its on-going aftermath.

"Mrs. Bush is anachronistically called the 'First Lady,' with the fake gentility which is the hallmark of our provincial cult of the Presidency, but what she is, in [political] fact, regardless of her surfeit of -- to me -- rather cloying charm and her much publicized attachment to libraries as the no-political-downside way of demonstrating Bush Administration largesse, is the First Supporter of President Bush and one his most valuable public relations assets . . . she supports virtually every policy of her husband's administration -- tax cuts for the rich, the destruction of social security and Medicare, the privatization of public lands, the hand-outs to corporations, the support for the plundering by Big Oil, the covering for the abuses of the [pharmaceutical] industry, the invasion and occupation of Iraq (and the lies that were told to enable it), the blockade of Cuba and the threats to Latin America, the nuclear sabre-rattling, the USA Patriot Act, covert domestic surveillance, the attacks on the Bill of Rights and the entire Constitution, the flaunting of international law, and, let's not forget, 'Gitmo' and Abu Ghraib and Haditha . . . .

"Welcome to the 21st century librarian: book-smart, reality-stupid, Bush-deranged bigots. Let's hope the First Lady's security detail comes prepared. You never know what these tolerant people will throw."