I'll have to write a little at a time on this, but thought I'd get started. My immigrant parents were in town the last few days and given the illegal immigration marches over the weekend immigration was a topic of some discussion...

First, it really irks me that 'illegal immigrants' has succumbed to the pressures of political correctness. When did using a factual expression become so taboo? "Undocumented immigrants" - what a joke. I guess some of the following may be next:

• Islamic extremists (Muslim purists? )
• French socialists (Worker rights activists?)

Second, I have grown very tired of the media continually saying that illegal immigrants, presumably Mexicans, are filling jobs that "Americans won't do." What a load of crap. What are these menial tasks that are so below our standard that we'd rather have "lowly" Mexicans perform rather than demean ourselves with these tasks:

• landscaping???
• painting???
• construction???
• housekeeping???

Crap, and double-crap. To suggest that Americans won't do these jobs is both a slap in the face of Mexicans and an extremely uninformed, haughty attitude from the "privileged", media elites most of whom have never broken a sweat in anything other than an over-priced jogging suit while walking their manicured poodle on a hot day.

The marches.

This is just a guess, but how many LEGAL Mexican immigrants can really support lax enforcement of illegals? I mean if I spent all this time, money and effort going through the proper channels only to find that millions of people are cheating the system, getting the same benefits as me and are about to be given legitimacy through amnesty I would be pissed!. So, who is at the marches, illegals and non-immigrants who don't know squawk? They should have another rally so we can round up the illegals and formally charge them with their crime.

In Georgia this past Friday, Hispanic immigrants (I'm guessing both legal and illegal) took the day off of work to protest (just so long as it didn't affect their job status). Driving in to work myself, I noticed the quite Hispanic landscaping crew doing their thing. I guess they realized they could get canned for not showing up. While the media keeps telling us these are jobs no American will perform, somehow they are really important jobs because they told me the Friday boycott was going to affect a lot of businesses - yeah, Hispanic ones. So which is it, are these jobs really important or not. I don't care which it is, just explain it to me, please.

My parents.

I am by no means anti-immigration. My parents immigrated, legally. I am by no means anti-Mexican or Hispanic. I believe, as most probably do, that our immigration laws are as antiquated as our terrorism related laws were before 9/11. But that said, I am anti illegal immigration even if the laws are out-dated. I certainly am not allowed to break laws and get a free pass because the law just happens to be poorly written and out of date.

My parents related a story to me of a cousin of mine from Italy who came to stay with us for 6 months back in the early 80s. My mother got a call shortly after the 6 months to make sure my cousin had returned to Italy. Funny how INS can stay on top of legals so easily, but just can't their hands around illegals.

My father is from Switzerland originally. When he immigrated in the mid-60s, he had to register for the selective service, sign papers that he would not accept welfare and provide proof of an existing job in the United States. He says that the same was true of his native country at least during the same time period. So now, we have people jumping across the border, taking advantage of our social services in many cases not paying taxes and sending most of their money back home, yet we can't do anything about it. Not to mention the security risks and just the general impact to our sovereignty.

The other part of this topic that we discussed was the language issue. While there are probably still pockets of New York where most adults in a community speak Italian only, that is to their detriment and that's okay. My parents each speak 4 languages fluently. They learned the language of their host country as they moved. They recognized that to reach any level of success, it was in their interests to do so. Today, we are making it easier and easier to live in this country and never learn our language. I think foreign languages are great, but talk about eroding our identity.

The Politics.

There is a solution. I'm not sure what it is, but with all of the smart people in Washington, I'm sure there's a very good set of alternatives that would make this a win for most everyone. The problem is there would be at least 1 loser - the politician - and that makes seeing a real solution a pipe dream. There is not one politician that has the "cahones" to make a call here. What's worse is that the only reason we have the problem we have now is that this has been going on for years with politicians pandering instead of making tough decisions to fix an escalating problem and now it's going to be a lot harder to fix than it was. And in another 20 years, when we're all speaking Spanish as a first language and al Qaeda has nuked Houston, it will continue to be harder because there won't be any Americans at all any more. We'll all just be members of the global Islamic community.

Okay, so I'm going a little over the top, I know. But, just like Social Security and the debt, politicians are so wrapped up in what gets them elected rather than what is good for the country that this problem and others will never get fixed. So, no point in worrying about fixing the problem, let's move on.

What IS the problem?

Amnesty.

solution???

on my daily tear-off calendar:

According to Family Circle magazine:

• 67% define themselves as fathers first and spouses and workers after that
• 52% feel fatherhood is their true calling
• 87% say the rewards of fatherhood trump those of career

According to me:

• father first, spouse a close second, worker a distant 5,345th
• True calling? that is a tough call, but I truly believe, as a non-religious person - that being a father is why I'm here. Period.
• rewards of fatherhood. I can't believe it's not 100%.

My training update for the weekend:

Saturday:

• get Zach to baseball park at 8:00am, game at 9:30am (Zach's team crushed puny opponents!!)
• Kathryn softball game at 10:30 (they lost, but Kathryn played well, had fun)
• Lunch, get Kathryn ready for dance competition
• 1:30 until 8pm - Kathryn dance competition.  She did well, team did well. She got to collect the team trophy for one of their performances.
• Dinner, Bed, exhausted.

Sunday:

• Baseball practice with the kids - just some extra practice for the 2 of them with me as coach.
• Then,  I ran 13 miles in about 1:55 (just under 9 min miles). Not bad, but my legs are not feeling like they should - I need to work this out or may not be running a marathon any time soon.

Biked to work this morning in mid-30s. It is remarkably cold this morning, and has been for the last week or two, for Atlanta in late March. But no problems, beautiful sunny weather!

Ride on

I have a few NYT corrections that are interesting. I know I'm hammering the media a lot lately, but what you focus on expands and it seems there's a non stop glut of shoddy reporting going on.

As with my last post, I have to give credit to Powerline for these examples as I don't have time nor the desire to read any newspapers any more...

This from the 3/23 NYT Correction section (emphasis is mine):

An article in The Metro Section on March 8 profiled Donna Fenton, identifying her as a 37-year-old victim of Hurricane Katrina who had fled Biloxi, Miss., and who was frustrated in efforts to get federal aid as she and her children remained as emergency residents of a hotel in Queens.

Yesterday, the New York police arrested Ms. Fenton, charging her with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny. Prosecutors in Brooklyn say she was not a Katrina victim, never lived in Biloxi and had improperly received thousands of dollars in government aid. Ms. Fenton has pleaded not guilty.

For its profile, The Times did not conduct adequate interviews or public record checks to verify Ms. Fenton's account, including her claim that she had lived in Biloxi. Such checks would have uncovered a fraud conviction and raised serious questions about the truthfulness of her account.

Gee, you think?

And then there's this from just a few days ago...

A front-page article last Saturday profiled Ali Shalal Qaissi, identifying him as the hooded man forced to stand on a box, attached to wires, in a photograph from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal of 2003 and 2004. He was shown holding such a photograph. As an article on Page A1 today makes clear, Mr. Qaissi was not that man.

The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi's account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account. The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it.

Despite the previous reports, The Times should have been more persistent in seeking comment from the military. A more thorough examination of previous articles in The Times and other newspapers would have shown that in 2004 military investigators named another man as the one on the box, raising suspicions about Mr. Qaissi's claim.

The Times also overstated the conviction with which representatives of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International expressed their view of whether Mr. Qaissi was the man in the photograph. While they said he could well be that man, they did not say they believed he was.

They make it sound as if they had all of this "proof", but  yet the real proof was in the NYT itself. You should read the whole Powerline post. It's just interesting how if a story fits what you already believe to be true, it doesn't require quite the burden of proof. Just ask Dan Rather.

Meanwhile, the story is already out there with the headline and the first paragraph being consumed with nary a reader bothering to check the typically boring correction section. And all of this disdain for blogs that lack the "several layers" of "checks and balances" which obviously make for accurate and objective reporting that just can't be matched. Actually, the checks and balances on popular blogs are even better than for the NYT and others. The NYT has a finite list of busy editors who may or may not even know the subject matter reviewing and approving articles. In the mean time, bloggers have thousands upon thousands of truth checkers reviewing it instantaneously and pointint out omissions and inaccuracies (of course, the blogger doesn't have to share the corrections).

The AP is an interesting organization. It is the backbone, by its own words, of the news media. Most just glance over the fact that most major stories in most major news papers are actually Associate Press stories of the so-called "wire". Most just assume, if they even care, that they live up to their mission:

AP's mission is to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed.

The scary thing to me is if there is any chance of Orwell's1984 Ministry of Information coming true where history is basically shaped to meet current realities through mis-information, this is it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that something nefarious is going on, I'm just saying that if you wanted to make it a reality, this is one place you would start.

So, I "cherry-picked" three recent examples where the AP appears to me to substantively violate their mission statement:

1.       Katrina Revelations.

Videos shouting "proof" that Bush did in fact get warned of the levees being breached in advance of the storm. Of course, if you were paying attention, the warning was really that the levees may be over-topped. Only if you think that a breach and over-topping are the same thing would you report it that way when in fact if you knew something, anything, about levees you would understand that there is a major difference with a breach being several magnitudes worse.

2.       Proof Saddam had no WMD and no ill intentions.

With 3 brief little sound bite quotes from recently released translated videos and documents captured from the former Saddam Regime, the AP writes a story about how poor Saddam was trying so hard to tell everyone that he wasn't playing with WMDs any more and concluded that "the documents make clear Saddam's regime had given up banned weapons." What are those 3 little quotes:

• "We don't have anything hidden!"
• Saddam wondered whether U.N. inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years" in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "When is this going to end?" (note the AP additions to the quotes that make them so much more telling. Whether it is accurate or not is difficult to know.

Yeah, that proves it alright. It is CLEAR. I get it. Makes you wonder then what other documents and videos might be saying when you see these quotes:

• in a 2 person discussion of the U.N. inspectors "So they were concentrating their efforts on the biological issue, and it’s a small program compared to the chemical, missile and nuclear programs."
• "Sir, this is a meeting of the highest leadership in our country, we did actually produce biological weapons."
• "You said it’s for medical purposes, using it for medical purposes only requires kilograms not tons. Meaning that the Ministry of Health can use 200 kilograms the entire year for examinations, but it doesn’t use 37 tons"

This and the rest of the documents may not "prove" Saddam had any WMD, but it certainly makes muddy what the AP considers "clear". Read the whole document. There's lots of similar documents. I read this one and went back and forth sometimes reading something that seems to indicate they have an active nuclear program and other times seeing a sincere effort to meet U.N. requests. It's interesting, but don't expect any answers.

3. Bush Bashing: Straw-man arguments.

Jennifer Loven, an AP reporter, basically uses this piece to let us unsuspecting Americans know that Bush is using straw-man arguments to dupe us into believing his lies. While the article may or may not have some accuracies in it, how is this "objective" and "balanced"? She is inaccurate in some of her examples and her overall tone is how Bush actually relies on it far more than any other politician - ever.

Example of a Bush straw-man according to Loven:

• Bush statement related to a Kerry quote from the '04 election: "My opponent and others believe this matter is a matter of intelligence and law enforcement". Loven contends that this is an "extreme stance that bears little resemblence to [his] actual position."
• Here is the actual Kerry quote: "

  The war on terror is less -- it is occasionally military, and it will be, and it will continue to be for a long time. ... But it's primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world -- the very thing this administration is worst at."

It seems to me that the quote - even with some context around it, is anything but "extreme" and "bearing little resemblance" to Kerry's position.

Bottom line: the AP isn't living up to their mission. Given that most of the news we read in our major news papers from the New York Times to the Atlanta Journal Constitution rely on the AP for news, how can we expect to put any faith in them?

If you have any examples of bias in the other direction, I'd be interested in seeing them. I don't think the AP is purposefully partisan in either direction, but as I've said before, reporters cannot escape their own personal biases.

On approximately 3 occasions, my number of visits went up substantially and quickly. It typically takes me a week or two to get 100 visits, but during these 3 times I get over 100 visits in a couple of hours. Very strange and it made me curious.

Well, last weekend I was talking to my wife about a little blogger on Blogstream with the name "Young Liberal" and going by the name of Autumn. The name of the post attracted me and initially made a brief comment on one of her blogs. It was the second time I visited her blog where I realized through other posts and comments, that the author was, according to her own admission, 12 years old and basically at home alone often. I didn't think much of it and I continued to comment on her points in a civil manner.

My wife put 2 and 2 together and suggested that those bursts of visits was exactly related to me having "contact" with this purported 12 year old. I don't know, I'm a little skeptical, but gosh it seems that it is possible. I question why I would get so many distinct visits if someone were "checking up on me" - it doesn't seem to make sense that I would have SO MANY in such a short period of time - it's not like there are 100 people out there from law enforcement checking in on little old me. But, still it seems odd. I considered that it could be someone performing some research (i.e. "let's pretend to be ... and see what kind of people respond"). Maybe.

Anyway, just putting it out there. If anyone else visiting commented on her blog specifically, did you notice the same thing?