and it’s funny too

I give you the results of a Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism survey of a year of The Daily Show, which state, shockingly to all of us I’m sure, that:

The program’s clearest focus is politics, especially in Washington. U.S. foreign affairs, largely dominated by the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq, Washington politics and government accounted for nearly half (47%) of the time spent on the program. Overall, The Daily Show news agenda is quite close to those of cable news talk shows.

Some other very interesting results there which you may also find (not) so surprising. (via)

nepal is not tibet

Driving home I was listening to This Week and, as usual, spent much of the time arguing with the people on it. Normally I don’t share because, well, the day has not yet been invented which has enough hours for that. This time though, George Stephanopoulos (oh how I miss Sam Donaldson’s gusto in pronouncing that name) questioned our National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about Bush’s possible attendance at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, which leaders from several countries will be boycotting. Six times during the interview Hadley referred to the controversy surrounding “Nepal”. Once, I’d laugh it off. I’d even let it go twice, heck, I’d be generous and let three demonstrations of utterly embarrassing ignorance from one of the top members of the State Department slide. Six times though without once recognizing that you mean Tibet? That’s enough to make me boil over.

He was not corrected any of those times of course (though in the write up online, “sic” was at least inserted following each mention). He also did a masterful job of not answering the direct question of whether or not Bush would attend the ceremonies, implying though that he would.

And since I’m on it anyway, Jimmy Carter, questioned about the comparison with our boycott of the 1980 Olympics said the situation was not the same at all. Back then it was because a country’s military had just started to invade a sovereign nation. The difference being apparently that the sovereign nation of Tibet was completely invaded by another country’s military over 50 years ago. Who cares about something that happened that far in the past?

perspective

The big Iraq war news of the day seems to be that the death toll of American soldiers has reached 4,000. I expect soon to hear from certain quarters how this milestone signifies the devastating nature of the war and how we must withdraw immediately. Here’s a little perspective on just how “horrendous” that casualty figure really is:

We fought for less than two years in World War I and lost 116,708 soldiers
During the four years of our involvement in World War II we lost 416,800 soldiers
We fought in Korea for three years and lost 36,516 brave souls
For the first five years of major combat operations in Vietnam (1964-1969) 35,957 men and women gave their lives.

So the loss of 4,000 soldiers during five years of fighting makes this war the least deadly war we’ve fought in the last 100 years (and a quick look further back reveals that it may be second only to the War of 1812 overall).

UPDATE: As current reports focus on the death toll, I did, as noted in a comment, leave out the wounded figures. To give the more complete perspective, let’s look at those too.

Currently in Iraq, 29,451 Americans have been wounded (more than half of whom returned to duty within three days).
In World War I, 204,002 were wounded.
For World War II, the figure rose to 671,846.
In Korea, 103,284 suffered non-fatal wounds.
I can’t find a year by year breakdown of WIA figures for Vietnam, but averaging out the total number gives us about 85,168 for five years.

So the number of wounded over five years is also significantly less than any major conflict of the past century and the ratio of deaths to wounded is significantly greater (1:7.3 versus the previous high of the Korean war 1:2.8).

who watches the watchers? almost no one

There was a big domestic intelligence conference held in San Francisco this week. The Wired blog Threat Level has an almost exclusive writeup of it. Almost exclusive because

A total of three reporters showed up over two days to hear from officials such as Leonard Boyle who runs the Terrorist Screening Center, Charlie Allen — the chief intelligence officer for the Department of Homeland Security, and Los Angeles police chief William Bratton. THREAT LEVEL was the only media outlet to show up two days running, and neither of San Francisco’s dailies sent a reporter.

was it too obvious?

I kept telling myself that I should write down these thoughts, but then I’d remind myself of how obvious they are and surely someone would get around to pointing them out. Here we are a week later and it’s just now that I see someone point how if Pat Robertson had said what Reverend Wright said, it would have been a non-issue (note: that’s from the SuicideGirls newsfeed so the link may not be work safe).