Does Truth Exist?
There’s been a bit of a stink this morning, and rightfully so, after the Washington Post decided to make a front page story out of claims that Obama is secretly a Muslim.
This is a story that reminds me so much of the Swiftboat attacks on John Kerry. It reveals a serious problem in how major media outlets conduct political reporting.
There is an assumption that balance is achieved by giving both sides of an issue equal weight. This is simply not the case. We are lucky enough to live in a world where there are objective realities. We can verify that something is true or false.
The problem is, it isn’t easy. It takes hard work to show that something is demonstrably false. You can’t simply compile a few quotes and head home to write. You have to do your due diligence.
We have seen the media take the lazy route. Instead of doing research and presenting the reality as fact and the rumors as unsubstantiated attacks, the media simply records both sides as worthy of equal time. This simply is not the case. We live in a world where sometimes there are many many equally valuable opinions and where sometimes there is simply a single reality. It’s part of the media’s job to distinguish between these cases and provide us with the truth, where ever possible. Sometimes that means calling a lie a lie.
Beat That Dead Horse
Without the proper means to gauge which investments are safe and the bottom falling out of previous investments, there has been a rapid decline in the market for commercial paper.
The combined value of two major sources of credit - outstanding commercial and industrial bank loans, and short-term loans known as commercial paper - peaked at about $3.3 trillion in August, according to data from the Federal Reserve. By mid-November, such credit was down to $3 trillion, a drop of nearly 9 percent.
Not once in the years since the Fed began tracking such numbers in 1973 have these arteries of finance constricted so rapidly. Smaller declines preceded three recessions going back to 1975.
These are investors unwilling to take the risk involved in backing corporate loans. This could rapidly cause a major recession or depression. This is why it’s so important to have a working system for assessing the worth of investments. When that system breaks, everything else comes down like a house of cards.
Daily Irrational: Mitt Romney
Today’s Daily Irrational spewed from the mouth of Mitt Romney. Mitt, who has a vested interest in not making religious affiliation a part of the political campaign, has decided that maybe there is a place of religion in determining who should fill a political office. When asked if he’d be willing to give a cabinet level position to a qualified candidate of the muslim faith, he said no.
…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.
Personally, I’d think that the nearly 3 million Muslim Americans deserve some representation at high levels. Recent census data shows that population more than doubled between 1990 and 2001 going from 0.3% of the total population to 0.6%. The Mormon population in contrast shrank over that time frame from 1.5% to 1.4% of the total population.
The real issue though, is that if Mitt seriously considers Jihadism to be the principal foreign policy threat, it would seem smart to make sure to include moderate Muslims in the decision making process as we plan a response. Denying any qualified candidate because of their racial or religious background is wrong. To exclude a perspective that could be particularly valuable is downright irrational.