Do you really think the dems will make themselves popular on a platform of tax hikes, cutting military spending (cut and run) and impeachment proceedings-

heh- I'd love to see them try to sell that one.

They're bankrupt-that says something.

Perspective is an interesting thing....Time is a right leaning magazine? That cracks me up.

Yeah, I never flew them. ;)

Time is an extremely pro-business magazine, with liberal politcal leanings. So which is it?

In any event, despite gaffes here and there, some big, some small, the overall, over-the-decades repuation for certain press entities allows them to be considered legitimate and mainstream ... no matter what Leo may think of them personally.

So like it or not, Leo, Time Magazine is mainstream media. And The Lancet is about as prestigious a journal as you can find. On the conservative side, we accept The Wall Street Journal as mainstream. But we do not have to accept Fox News. It does not have that reputation attained over the decades.


And so I will continue to quote Time and The New York Times and The Lancet and, yes, The Wall Street Journal as authoritative journalism. I have plenty of far-more-left-leaning press sources that I do not trot out here. But disputing - on face, with no evidence - reports in Time or the NY Times or other mainstream, reputed journals of record bespeaks only a pathetic bankruptcy of real argument.

Many people on the left do not accept the WSJ as legitimate because of the conservative position of its editorial page.

The Lancet is certainly an authority and respectable publication. But that does not mean that everything it prints has the golden glow of received truth. The 2004 version of the report (published in The Lancet as well) certainly did not and had significant issues.

I read the whole article earlier today and feel better about some issues. One issue I have is that in the caveats section the authors seem to ignore, dismiss, or overlook some significant motivations for lying or exaggeration by interviewees and the report also says that 92% of the reported deaths had death certificates in support but then doesn't explain why these official documents are not part of the government agency death counts.

I did learn more about where their number for the pre-war mortality rate came from. It is from the same survey results but would be subject to some of the same reporting biases (that is, exaggeration of post-war fatalities would likely go hand-in-hand with minimization of pre-war fatalities) and the authors do not address why their resulting pre-war mortality rate (5.5/1000/year) is so much lower than the results of similar quantifications done before the actual war (generally 6.5 or higher).

It is also confusing in that it simultaneously mentions that the biggest cause of violent death recently is car bombs but then offhandedly mentioned that coalition forces are reported to shoot indiscriminately on crowds.

One thing that gets overlooked in the Right's rush to denounce is that the report lays most of the blame on the insurgency and terrorism. The authors obviously feel that this is the fault of the coalition as well but the Right does not and I would think much political hay could be made (at least in Iraq) by emphasizing just how much damage the insurgency has done to Iraqi civilians.

I still have problems with what I read (where are the 600,000 bodies, or more since the authors feel their results are conservative, that they think have died that doe not show up in any official counts. That is a lot of bodies). But they are somewhat muted from this morning and do address several issues I had with the first survey.

Whoops, got confused by the Lancet reference and put that here instead of the random political thoughts thread.

Hey ISM - can you point out to me where I've ever quoted Fox News? Honestly, I don't think I ever have.

And all I did, ISM, was to laugh at Time being described as a right leaning magazine. Why not point out to Tref by name as well that it does not lean right?

Try something original, dear. Those arguments are old and trite.

Michael Savage has the most annoying radio voice, hands down. He also mangles the English language to an appalling degree and is a freaking psycho, but the voice thing trumps all the other negatives.

I never listened to Air America. I form my own opinions with regards to my political ideology. I do listen to Hate Radio on occasion, sometimes for the entertainment value and also to discover what new and sleazy things they might be up to. I'm also reasonably sure Sean Hannity's inflated head is going to reach the breaking point and he's going to explode on-air. Don't want to miss that event!

I agree about Michael Savage. But I'm so appalled by what he is saying that I don't have time to be turned off by his voice.

Whereas with Franken I don't have a problem with what he is saying so have plenty of time for his voice to grate on every last nerve.