Rhymes With 'Democracy', Starts With An 'H': NYT Laughs About One Hoax While Perpetrating Others

The New York Times has been having a good laugh over some other "news" outlets which were fooled by a fairly simple hoax. In the words of Richard Pérez-Peña:

A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate [sic] hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.
...

The pranksters behind Eisenstadt [Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish] ... say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.

“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.

Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.

Yeah, sure. But whether or not this hoax is "very elaborate" probably depends on the scale of the hoaxes you're used to dealing with. It's actually quite small compared to some of the hoaxes the New York Times has been perpetrating simultaneously.

Consider, if you will, Michael Cooper's treatment of Sarah Palin as serious:

A Surprise News Conference After a Campaign Without One

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska did something [in Miami] on Thursday that she had not done in her entire campaign as the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee: she stood behind a lectern and held a news conference.

She was asked what had changed.

“The campaign is over,” she said.

Yep. Now that she can't possibly do the McCain campaign any more damage, she's allowed out in public. And we're not howling with laughter?

Granted, the question-and-answer session lasted only four minutes, and for only four questions.

Four minutes? Four questions? And that qualifies as a "news conference"?

But after it ended, Ms. Palin did allow herself a look back, as she addressed a session of the Republican Governors Association conference and told conferees that she had managed to keep busy since their last conference.

“I had a baby,” she said. “I did some traveling; I very briefly expanded my wardrobe; I made a few speeches; I met a few V.I.P.’s, including those who really impact society, like Tina Fey.”

"I very briefly expanded my wardrobe"? Is this woman for real?

And, yes, she spoke of Joe the Plumber, the Ohio man who briefly dominated the McCain-Palin campaign and its talk of taxes.

I would be laughing so hard I couldn't type.

The conference has been dominated by soul searching among Republicans worried about their future after last week’s poor Election Day showing.

Soul searching? Come ON!

To that end, Ms. Palin was again asked whether she would run for president in 2012.

And she ducked the question. But who's counting?

“The future is not that 2012 presidential race; it’s next year and our next budgets,” Ms. Palin said. It is in 2010, she said, that “we’ll have 36 governor’s positions open.”

Ms. Palin tried to play down her celebrity (even after a week in which she was featured in interviews on NBC, Fox News and CNN). In her speech, she tried to shift the focus from herself to the work that Republican governors must now do, including developing energy resources and overhauling health care.

“I am not going to assume that the answer is for the federal government to just take it over and try to run America’s health care system,” Ms. Palin said. “Heaven forbid.”

She implored her fellow Republican governors to “show the federal government the way,” while also reforming their own party.

“We are the minority party. Let us resolve not to be the negative party,” ...

Are we kidding? Did Michael Cooper not just watch the same campaign we did? Why is he not screaming with laughter? Why is he not holding his ribs? How can he possibly type this stuff?

Ms. Palin said. “Let us build our case with actions, not just with words.”

Too funny! It's just too funny.

Let's not just call Bay-rack O-Bamma a terrorist! Let's shoot us some moose! Let's bomb us some Ay-rabs! Let's connect with Middle America!

And if that doesn't get you going, scoot over to Washington, where Mark Mazetti has been transcribing the holy utterances of CIA Director Michael Hayden.

Hayden, as CIA directors must do in the bogus War on bogus Terror, treads as fine line as you're likely to see. On one hand, he has to claim credit for progress -- Americans like to think the hundreds of billions they spend every year on "security" might be buying them something. On the other hand, he has to claim that the situation is increasingly serious -- otherwise why would we keep increasing his budget?

So we get doubletalk like this, from Mark Mazzetti:

C.I.A. Chief Says Qaeda Is Extending Its Reach

Even as Al Qaeda strengthens its hub in the Pakistani mountains, its leaders are building closer ties to regional militant groups in order to launch attacks in Africa and Europe and on the Arabian Peninsula, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday.

The director, Michael V. Hayden, identified North Africa and Somalia as places where Qaeda leaders were using partnerships to establish new bases. Elsewhere, Mr. Hayden said, Al Qaeda was “strengthening” in Yemen, and he added that veterans of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan had moved there, possibly to stage attacks against the government of Saudi Arabia.

He said the “bleed out” from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also extended to North Africa, raising concern that the countries there could be used to stage attacks into Europe. Mr. Hayden delivered his report in a speech to the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, and it offered a mixed assessment of Al Qaeda’s ability to wage a global jihad.

He drew a contrast between what he described as growing Islamic radicalism in places like Somalia and what he said had been the “strategic defeat” of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia — the network’s affiliate group in Iraq.

Fortunately, Hayden has two things going for him. First, by the nature of the bogus war, failure guarantees success, and success guarantees failure. If the CIA fails to eliminate the threat of terrorism, it guarantees success in the budget struggle. And if it succeeds in eliminating a few terrorists every now and then, the inevitable "collateral damage" -- innocent civilians horribly slaughtered or maimed -- guarantees an upswing in anti-American sentiment: nascent terrorism, and just what the bogus warriors need to keep their bogus war alive.

Second -- and far more importantly -- the width of the line he's trying to walk is made irrelevant by the fawning coverage he knows his words will receive. It doesn't matter if he doesn't make any sense, because he knows he's not going to be challenged on it. This wasn't a potentially adversarial situation, like Sarah Palin's four-minute "press conference". It was a speech before a committed body of like-minded war-mongers, the Atlantic Council of the United States.

So, for instance, nobody in the audience would have been prepared to corner Michael Hayden and ask him whether the "growing Islamic radicalism" in Somalia is occurring because of or in spite of the atrocities committed against the Somali people by Americans and their Ethiopian proxies.

Atrocities? Oh, yes! From rendition and torture to bombing convoys of fleeing refugees! Somalia has been brutalized in recent years, without any Congressional debate, without any acknowledgement from either of the presidential candiates, and without any pretext, viable or otherwise. If I were running the CIA, I wouldn't want to talk about Somalia at all -- except possibly at a place like the Atlantic Council of the United States.

Mr. Hayden pointedly refused to give details about the strikes by remotely piloted aircraft, or even to acknowledge that they occurred. He did say that the recent killing of senior Qaeda operatives had disrupted the group’s planning and isolated its leadership.

In mid-October, a missile fired from an American drone killed Khalid Habib, the latest senior Qaeda planner to be killed this year in Pakistan.

“To the extent that the United States and its allies deepen that isolation, disturb the safe haven, and target terrorist leaders gathered there, we keep Al Qaeda off balance,” Mr. Hayden said.

This is so meaningless, it's almost not worth discussing.

To the extent that my aunt has balls, she could be my uncle.

It's just worthless. But Mark Mazetti doesn't care. Keep the paychecks coming!

The radicalization of Pashtun tribes, and their strengthening ties to Qaeda operatives, date in part to the decision by the Pakistani president at the time, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to raid the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad in July 2007, the C.I.A. director said.

Now there's some history for you! All the way back to the summer of last year!

In fact, the radicalization of Pashtun tribes, and their strengthening ties to Qaeda operatives, date in much more significant part to decisions made in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s by our bipartisan foreign policy "elite". But Michael Hayden is not about to say that. And Mark Mazzetti isn't about to say it either.

As for questions, forget it. Hayden didn't even answer the easy ones.

At the end of his remarks, Mr. Hayden deflected questions about whether he would consider remaining at the C.I.A. during the Obama administration and declined to say whether President-elect Barack Obama had asked him to extend his tenure.

“This is the business of the transition team,” Mr. Hayden said. “This is the business of the president-elect.”

If nothing else, it's nice to know there's something that the CIA director wants to leave in the hands of the president-elect! Not that it's likely to do anyone any good.

But closer to the point: The CIA created al Qaeda! The CIA's friends in Pakistan have been maintaining al Qaeda for all these years. And Pakistan's most feared "terrorist" leader is almost certainly a CIA asset. But you won't read anything about any of that from Mark Mazzetti, or from the New York Times, or from the "liberal media" in general.

But what the heck? They're putting out ridiculous manure, selling millions of copies, and making a living; we're telling the truth whenever we can find it, for free, and counting our readers in the hundreds.

Maybe that's why the NYT laughs at the blogosphere!

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Obama Gaining Strength Where It Counts

Support for Barack Obama has been rising among two segments of the American electorate whose support the Republicans usually count on: the rich and the filthy rich.

Reuters reports on a close race between the two candidates, even at the highest levels of the American kleptocracy:

Jim Taylor, vice chairman of the Harrison Group, a market research and strategy firm in Waterbury, Conn ... who produces a quarterly "Survey of Affluence and Wealth in America," said the wealthy were once a solid Republican majority. "It's not anymore," he told the Reuters Wealth Management Summit on Tuesday, citing the findings of his latest survey of 614 affluent individuals taken September 19-23.

That showed McCain had 40 percent of the "affluent and wealth vote," compared with 33 percent for Obama, and given the recent stock market slide Taylor says he would be surprised if Obama's support hadn't risen further in the past few weeks.

In the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, in contrast, about 80 percent of the wealthy supported the Republican nominee, Taylor said.

The Republican nominee happened to be George Bush, but people who support Republicans -- the people who did the most to put him in a position of power -- avoid mentioning his name whenever possible these days. Big surprise.

The collapse of Republican support is even more dramatic among the filthy rich:

For the wealthiest American households, who have at least $1.6 million set aside each year for discretionary spending, McCain was favored over Obama by 49 percent to 28 percent.

"That may sound like a lot but but there was a time when it was 100 to zero percent," Taylor said.

That may sound like a lot? Actually, what sounds like a lot is $1.6 million discretionary spending, minimum, per household.

Even among the most ambitious discretionary spenders, the notion that a Palin-McCain administration would hold the line on taxes and thus provide greater prosperity is not flying particularly well these days:

"Everybody believes that taxes are going up ... no matter who gets elected," said Timothy Vaill, chairman and chief executive of the wealth management arm of Boston Private Financial Holdings, a money-management firm.

So now it boils down to other things, Obama is looking more appealing all the time, especially abroad:

Some wealthy foreign investors with big investments in the United States are unnerved by McCain's running-mate, Alaska governor and self-described 'hockey mom' Sarah Palin, said Charles Lowenhaupt, chairman of St. Louis-based Lowenhaupt Global Advisors, which advises ultra-high-net-worth families.

"The non-U.S. wealth-holders I've talked to, in India for example, were feeling very negative on Obama. And all of sudden the Palin thing has flipped that because as naive as Obama looked they think Palin looks more so," he said.

He said wealthy individuals in India are highly critical of Obama's willingness to strike against terrorists in Pakistan without approval from Islamabad.

"They would say 'oh, Obama is terrible.' I just kept running into that when I was there. But when McCain chose Palin, they said 'oh Palin.' They just don't understand the whole culture around her, the 'hockey mom' idea."

Reuters won't mention it, but Obama's status among the well-to-do is certainly not damaged in any way by the fact that he owes his soul to Wall Street.

Congratulations, Barack. You're a real white boy now!

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She's Perfect! Palin For President!

I couldn't help but admire Sarah Palin last night as she "countered" the "conventional wisdom" that her main weakness is inexperience:

My experience as an executive will be put to good use as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator and then as governor of a huge state, a huge energy producing state that is accounting for much progress towards getting our nation energy independence and that's extremely important.

But it wasn't just that experience tapped into, it was my connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills? About times and Todd and our marriage in our past where we didn't have health insurance and we know what other Americans are going through as they sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care? We've been there also so that connection was important.

But even more important is that world view that I share with John McCain. That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope and that we are unapologetic here. We are not perfect as a nation. But together, we represent a perfect ideal. And that is democracy and tolerance and freedom and equal rights. Those things that we stand for that can be put to good use as a force for good in this world.

John McCain and I share that. You combine all that with being a team with the only track record of making a really, a difference in where we've been and reforming, that's a good team, it's a good ticket.

CNN was running an onscreen feel-good meter, tracking the responses of a focus group of "undecided Ohio voters". The meters seemed to prefer Biden most of the time, but they absolutely spiked when Sarah Palin said:

"America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope and that we are unapologetic here [...] as a force for good in this world."

This is political code, but it is very thinly veiled, and it means:

"It doesn't matter that we have killed thousands of our own people, and millions of foreigners, in our quest for global empire, because we are exceptional, and immune to the laws that apply to ordinary nations.

It doesn't matter that we have turned millions of people into refugees, depriving them of what little they had before we decided to "liberate" them, because we are a beacon of hope.

We don't even have to apologize for destroying Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Somalia, and Pakistan, nor for the covert and proxy warfare we are currently waging against Iran, and Russia, and China, and Venezuela, and many other countries which have never attacked us, because we are God's chosen people, in His shining city, on His hill."

Judgement? Experience? Humbug! I'm talking about the essential skills now, and Sarah Palin has what it takes. She'd be perfect as Vice President. She'd be even better as President.

Sarah Palin proved last night that she can tell the right lie at the right time -- with a smile on her pretty face -- and generate the right response, even from people who don't seem to like her very much!

That's it! That's whole the job.

She's perfect!

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