musing minds

The other day on Fox news, they had an attorney for a convicted sex offender and Marc Klass on to discuss the 2500 foot “barrier” around schools that dictates where a convicted sex offender can and can not live.

The attorney was saying that we are a mobile society and keeping a convicted sex offender from living in that 2500 foot radius makes no sense, as the convicted sex offender can still get in his/her car and go to a school. He also said that the half mile radius was too large and, in an urban area, would just push the convicted sex offender further out, into the suburbs, causing the same problems there.

Marc Klass was agreeing with him on this point.

Is it just me, or isn’t the point of the 2500 foot radius to keep our children from walking past the convicted sex offender’s home on their way to and from school? Generally, (at least in my town) if you are within a half mile of a school there is no bus service and the children must walk to school. I don’t want my children walking past a convicted sex offender’s house twice a day, every school day.

Consider that this rule is to the benefit of both the children and the convicted sex offender. For the children, they don’t have to be so afraid to walk to school. I would think that the sight of many children walking past the house each and every day would pose a great temptation. By removing the convicted sex offender from the path the children walk to school, this temptation just isn’t there.

Without this rule, a convicted sex offender could wait for a child to come by by him/herself and get them into the privacy of their own home quickly, with a much better chance of getting away with it. With the rule, the convicted sex offender must look for victims where it will be harder to do so.

I think our children are far safer with this rule in place, than they are without it.

Welcome Basil’s Blog readers! Please look around.

While the one sided coverage of Iraqi casualties continues, a lone voice in the MSM wilderness, Katherine Kersten of the Star Tribune, writes an excellent piece about the media’s failure to inform and provide context on Iraq. While I strongly urge you to read the whole thing, check out her concluding line:

Our major media have a duty to give us the big picture on Iraq. This — not the tears of Crawford — is what we owe fallen soldiers and their courageous comrades.

It would be nice if this lone voice turned into a chorus, but I’m not holding my breath. (H/T Powerline)

Below I post about the possible self-fulfilling prophecy of an Iraqi quagmire based on an unprecedented display of biased one-sided reporting. Powerline does a nice job of going back in time and putting into context the sacrifice that has been made to defend freedom. They help us imagine how WWII would have been reported by today’s MSM and how that may have effected the outcome.

They also drive home the point of the complete absence of context to the daily Iraq death tabulation by referring to a stunning fact: the peacetime accidental casualty rate in the military forces between 1983-1996 was greater than the current casualty rate in Iraq by a two to one margin.

Launching August 29th – The Grand Old Portal

From the press release:

The Grand Old Portal is a human-edited search engine of Republican websites on the World Wide Web. This search engine is different from other search engines as it only lists sites that support the Republican Party. Each site that is submitted is reviewed by an editor who then determines if the site will be listed in the search engine.

Webmasters who run websites that support the Republican Party are invited to visit http://www.GrandOldPortal.com and submit their website for inclusion in the search engine. Even though the website will not be launched until the 29th of August, webmasters are still encouraged to submit their websites now for inclusion.

Via GOPBloggers

Angry’s new address is http://agwnblog.com and his new email is agwnblog at gmail dot com.

This change has been made in our blogroll.

MuNu is back up!

Rusty Shackleford is at his backup site http://mypetjawa.blogspot.com/

The MuNu emergency site is http://munuemergency.blogspot.com/

John Gibson had two guests today talking about immigration, Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO)and Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minuteman Project.

The transcript follows:

Gibson: A week after Arizona declared a state of emergency along its border with Mexico, the Feds have finally stepped up and responded. The Homeland Security has promised to help the state fight illegal immigration, drug smuggling, human trafficking, and the violence that comes along with those activities. So what does this promise really mean?

Congressman Tom Tancredo joins us now. The Colorado Republican is Chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. Congressman, Governor Napolitano in Arizona put on a lot of pressure and the Feds have said OK we’ll come help. What kind of help can she realistically expect?

Tancredo: Well that’s a great question. I don’t know what help has been promised and I don’t know what they’re actually going to do because, of course, everyone in America has been begging them to go down on the borders and do something about the fact that we have an invasion. And so far they’ve ignored it. Now I am happy that both Governor Napolitano and Governor Richardson have done a U-turn, a political U-turn on this issue. You know you do wonder I have to tell you when those two folks look in the mirror in the morning how many faces do they see? {laughs} Because, honestly, it’s just incredible to me that you can be so pro-open borders, work so hard for the ah you know to placate the immigration crowd and then the next day when you decide it’s politically, the thing to do, popular, make a big turnaround.
Continue reading →

The Right Nation a wonderful Italian Blog who has linked to us in the past ( South Park Conservatives Roundup and Piccoli maccartisti digitali crescono ) Now has an all English version of their website for those of us who don’t speak Italian…

The Right Nation

Via Brian Maloney‘s Linkfest at Michelle Malkin

One of the concepts that stuck with me from my days studying sociology (man does that seem like a long time ago) was the self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s such a powerful concept. We believe something to be true, conduct ourselves as if it’s true, and the result of our conduct reifies our original belief. I recall an example the professor gave in the context of discriminatory behavior. When he was young he worked in a store in a neighborhood which had a number of recent Polish immigrants. Apparently Poles were generally viewed with suspicion in his neighborhood, and his boss told him to watch out for them stealing from the store. Sure enough, over the next several months my professor caught a few stealing. “My boss was right”, he thought, “they are thieves.” Of course the moral of the story was that Poles were no more inclined to steal than anyone else. He had simply focused on Poles to the exclusion of all others, and so his prophecy had been fulfilled. Let’s take this concept out of university setting and see where else it applies.

With the aid of a biased media that practices agenda journalism, irresponsible partisan politicians may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of massive proportions with respect to the Iraq war. Central to a self-fulfilling prophecy is a one sided view that is blind to facts that do not fit with the preconceptions. While there can be no doubt that there has been significant bloodshed in Iraq, just compare the stories one hears in the MSM (well actually it’s hard to call them stories rather than a constant news cycle of fifteen second spots highlighting the latest bombings) and what we learn from the blogosphere. There is good news from Iraq – shops are opening, commerce is increasing, infrastructure improving, the press is free, democracy is taking root – but the media never, and I mean never reports it. To put matters in perspective, imagine if you lived in China, knew nothing of the U.S., and the only source of information you recieved was a daily stream video of the most horrific homicides from across the country. No Yankee scores, no crop reports or factory openings, no other indirect sources of information about the U.S. such as books, movies or T.V. shows, just news reports of the most horrific murders several times a day, every day. Sure those individual reports would be technically “true” but collectively the image portrayed would be of a country embroiled in bloody anarchy.

The media has created the perception of an irretractable quagmire in Iraq, and many irresponsible politicians on the left, and even some from the right, are acting as if this media-driven perception is the truth, thereby beginning the process of fulfilling the prophecy. You see, there is a very real terrorist insurgency in Iraq but it lacks the necessary popular support and military capability to overthrow the government. Contrary to what you read in the papers, Iraq is carrying on despite the bombings and kidnappings. It doesn’t take an expert to figure out that if the U.S. cuts and runs before Iraqis are militarily self-sufficient, two things will happen: the current Iraq regime and military forces with be weakened both in terms of actual strength and morale, and the terrorists will be emboldened and likely gain in strength. The prophecy is fulfilled.

Just like the shopkeeper only looking at the Poles to find thieves, if all we look for is a quagmire, a quagmire we will have.

There are millions of Americans with very strong views about the war in Iraq. Many of them have lost loved ones in Iraq, many of them are very outspoken. Some of them support the war, while others oppose it. Given Sheehan’s radical views, why is she given such special attention?

One possible explanation is that the media is simply treating her as a freak show, akin to the Michael Jackson saga. She’s news because she’s on the fringe. But consider the tone of the coverage and ask yourself whether the media approaches her with skepticism or deference. Is there a tone of condescension or respect? Are the “facts” that she recites scrutinized or simply regurgitated? It seems pretty clear that the media isn’t treating her as if she’s the story. No, her message is the story.

Sadly this appears to be yet another example of agenda journalism. The media will occasionally directly come out and call Bush a liar, say the war is unjust or proclaim the deaths of brave soldiers to be in vain in editorials. But they also have a simple way to send this same message through reporting of the “news” under the guise that they are impartial presenters of fact – they find people who espouse those views and give them airtime. Usually it takes the form of the “person on the street” interviews, as if the selection of people sought to be interviewed is completely random and representative of the public in general. The Sheehan story is an extreme example of this.

A sample of one can never be representative of the views of the population as a whole. You don’t have to be a statistics major to figure that out. However, it can be representative of the views of those doing the sampling.