A few hysterics have been trying to peddle the line that an unnamed leftists are just as biased against Israel as the M$M is biased against Palestinians. It is not enough, in their view, that people like myself denounce violence on both sides. We must denounce it with equal vigor. And they will be the judges of whether our vigor is sufficient. Otherwise, we are but a mirror image of the warmonger "pro-Israeli" M$M, and no better than they are.
There are so many things wrong with this sort of "holier-than thou" false equivilency stance, that we could talk of nothing else for days on end. But the bottom line is really pretty simple.
You see, I think it's pretty obvious, and quite rational why a progressive blog, particularly one with a significant Jewish presence, would focus much more attention on Isreali state violence rather than Palestinian violence--reasons in addtion to the obvious fact that Israeli state violence is so vastly more extensive than Palestinian violence, however indiscriminate violence on both sides may be.
The reason we focus more on Isreali state violence is that we are morally, legally and politically responsible for that violence in ways that we are not responsible for the Palestinian violence. And if we truly wish to end the violence on both sides, then the way to do that is to work strenuously to end the violence on our side--and that will give us moral standing and credibility to call for ending violence on the Palestinian side as well.
On the very day I describe how questions can be a source of methodological error in my regular series post, I find out about the new Zogby poll commissioned by John Ziegler. Nate Silver at 538 has been all over this one, and good on Nate. But I want to do my own bit of analysis here, just to illustrate my point about questions and methodological error.
A lot of useful, interesting ideas have been expressed here and elsewhere regarding Sara Palin and this race. It is often times difficult to keep our biases at bay in such matters. As a lifelong Democrat and political junkie, my biases are strong. As a budding social scientist (Ph.D. candidate in International Studies), my desire to keep my biases out of it are also strong. And as a 43-year-old American, my desire (if not ability) to use the Force to avoid going over to the Dark Side, also strong, it is.
So this is my attempt to divide this campaign into the Good (optimism), the Bad (Pessimism) and the Ugly (things we don't want to admit to.)
In a sorry attempt to provide so-called balance the Washington Post manufactures from whole cloth a negative story about Hillary Clinton. This is reminiscent of the anti-Gore coverage in the 2000 elections. Al Gore was the front runner and George Bush was a clown and a fraud and therefore the media felt that they had to balance their coverage by knocking Gore down.
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