17 December 2010, a Friday

How amusing it is watching the NYTimes try to both report and spin at the same time this morning. Watch:

There’s the report. Below it we find:

There’s the spin, as the NYT, glumly watching the Democrats bowing to the realignment of power, now count it as a productive month for the president. The logical conclusion to this line of thought, of course, which you won’t find them following—naturally--is that the president could have had MANY previous productive months if only he had dealt with Congressional Republicans in the first place.

Instead, back in the beginning, he told them, imperiously tossing his toga over his shoulder with the faux Roman columns looming behind him: "I won." Both sea levels and Republican Party levels were on the decline now, he said, we are reclaiming our planet.

"Now" turned out somewhat differently, however, so he has transmogrified into the affable, smiling host of "Let’s Make A Deal" calling for an agreement—any agreement will do, he begs, to save my presidency while the NYT will still be able to give me credit for having had a productive month as a result.

My wife asks me why I laugh about politics all the time, but how can you not laugh at that spectacle? Picture it...King Canute Obama, standing on the shore, commanding the seas to go out--only this time, sure enough, they do. The waves decline, the water recedes; sea bottom appears where none showed before.

King C. Obama, impressed with himself but slightly startled only trying not to show it, looks around to consult with his wise men and lo, they have all departed for higher ground. Rapidly declining sea levels really do happen, you know. In fact, that’s the surest warning sign of a tsunami approaching,

See what happens when you play well together?

The charge is pretty clear...he directed them to question the legitimacy of the findings, Media Matters complains. But how did he tell reporters to do that? What do they quote him as saying, in their complaint?

Why, that’s terrible! He asked them to act like journalists, not cheer leaders! And who thinks that’s not fair?

I must have missed the political bias in telling journalists to advise listeners that there were two sides to the argument.

Huh? What’s that? Only Republicans think that way, Democrats have already made up their minds, so that clearly indicates political bias on the part of Fox? Oh.

Okay, what’s the complaint about?

To the best of my knowledge, Mr Gore took two science classes in his entire life and barely squeaked by in both of them. Estimates are not the same thing as scientific fact, and a great many things some people thought would prove to be true actually turned out to prove the opposite.

Estimates and projections are products of imagination. Extrapolations are not interpolations, far from them, and even the latter are fraught with dangers for scientist and non-scientist alike.

People lose fortunes every day in the stock market by believing that an accurate knowledge of the past will allow them to accurately predict the future. If you have ever attempted to follow the stock market at all you will have learned that there are dozens if not hundreds if not thousands of gurus out there all telling you that their own proprietary signals have enabled them to be more successful than all of the others.

"It is not our place as journalists　to assert　such　notions　as facts,　especially　as this debate　intensifies," the man said. It isn’t anyone’s place as an honorable scientist to do so, either. A notion is a notion, not a scientific fact.

Am I wrong, or does Dionne sound doubtful here? Is Krauthammer setting them all up? Dionne says that in order for his mortal antagonist to be right, Obama has to prove to be smarter than he has shown so far?

I think Krauthammer will gladly lose that one. Okay, EJ, you are right and I’m wrong...he isn’t.