The sin of symmetry

An interesting piece from the Washington Post that notes the media's penchant for symmetry (instead of being objective, truth seekers) and how it's allowing the McCain campaign to run roughshod over the truth.

The most outrageous of McCain's distortions involve Obama on taxes. He asserts that Obama's new taxes could "break your family budget," and that an Obama presidency would inflict "painful tax increases on working American families." Hardly. Obama would lower taxes for most households, and lower them more than McCain would. The only "painful tax increases on working American families" would be on working families making more than $250,000.

Likewise, the McCain campaign has its story about Sarah Palin, and it's sticking with it -- facts be damned. She said "thanks but no thanks" to that "Bridge to Nowhere," except that she didn't: She backed the bridge until it was unpopular, then scooped up the money and used it for other projects. More than a year after McCain began railing against the bridge, Palin, then a gubernatorial candidate, said the state should build it "now -- while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist." 

 Obama's not innocent of stretching the truth, but he's also got enough of a conscience to stop lying when he's caught.  McCain, on the other hand, is "playing to win."

Things you probably (don't) know

It's a new era in presidential campaigns: lie until you get caught...then lie some more. What might you believe if they stopped lying?

• Gov. Palin did support the bridge to nowhere, before the feds cut the funds.
• Barack Obama's economic plan will cut taxes for 95% of Americans. If you read are reading this blog, that's you.
• McCain's economic plan will not take money from public schools.
• McCain no longer says the economy is sound.

This takes me back to a FactCheck.org story I meant to blog about ages ago: when we hear lies about the candidates, they tend to stick, even after they've been debunked. Not only that, we may even attribute the falsehood to the debunker (e.g. I heard that on FactCheck.org!). Crazy.

Liquor advertising revisited

Statistician friend Rick criticized my earlier post on liquor advertising, noting that there's more to the problem than just the portion of minors reading a particular magazine.

I agree, but that's because we both have tunnel vision. I argued that the liquor marketing rule - of no ads in publications where >30% of readers are under 21 - was pathetic because 30% of people are under 21.

Rick argued that you have to take into account the portion of magazine readers who are minors:

This is true, but relevant only if the under-21 crowd reads magazines at the same rate as the over-21s.

If, say, 85% of all magazine readers are over 21, then requiring 70% of-age readership is a weak criteria and should be criticized.

If only 50% of magazine readers are over 21, then 70% is excellent (because a magazine with 70% of-age readership is much higher than average)

We're both wrong. Consider this: Publication A might have 65% readership by over-21s but total circulation of 10,000 and publication B might have 90% readership by over-21s and 1 million circulation. The decision to not advertise in A protects 3500 kids whereas the decision to advertise in B gets 100,000 of them.

In that case, it doesn't matter what portion of the magazine reading population are minors (or whether the ad threshold is 70% or 85%). The point is that the threshold isn't designed to minimize the number of minors exposed to liquor advertising. They'd have more luck banning liquor advertising based on circulation than on the demographics of readers.

There's probably 1000 other ways to crunch the numbers, but I stick with my first point: liquor advertisers aren't doing very much to ensure that a disproportionate share of their advertising hits the over 21 market.

Bush lied

Putting these two words together seems to elude most major media outlets, even when the President ponies up. An excellent analysis of the media's pathetic revisionism shows that even when Bush admits he's a liar (having determined that Rumsfeld would in fact be resigning before the election while saying the exact opposite - a lie), the media like to give him the "benefit of the doubt." Folks, the doubt has run out. In fact, continuing to use these silly euphemisms like "untruth" is insulting. He's a liar.

Note: I didn't really closely enough to realize my friend at 28th Ave linked to the same analysis I just did. He's my source on the second link on newspeak.

Superb Iraq War journalism

In an era of 24-hour news, you rarely see the kind of in-depth investigative reporting that reveals the truth about society and government. The mention courtesy of Shadoweyes, this Mother Jones timeline exposes what we knew about Iraq and when we knew it, with particular attention to how the Bush administration ignored its own intelligence to lead us to war. It gives you a chilly sense of foreboding as you see the inexorable move to war amidst all the evidence against it.