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A Chiffonade of Facts

I was amused by the juxtaposition of these two statements:

First David Kurtz writes about Bush:

It's no surprise that this President is not one to test his beliefs and conclusions against the facts, neither the old facts nor the newly emerging facts. In the strange twilight of the Bush Presidency, the new revelation about what the President was briefed on and when about WMD falls into that category of things we thought we knew but for which we lacked all of the hard evidence.

Thirty minutes later, on the same site, Josh Marshall writes:

...it is a classic case of presupposing the result in the methodology itself.
...
You decide that the 'problem' is 'sectarian violence' -- not an improbable analysis in itself. Then you systematically devise a manner of counting that cuts away all sorts of carnage and mayhem that doesn't fit within an extremely narrow interpretation of the 'problem.' And voila, things are improving.

So... Bush is unwilling to allow new facts to influence his thinking; the DoD is presupposing the favored conclusion while carefully assembling facts which only support that conclusion; and "we" have known Bush's mental state, but just needed the facts to prove it.

Doesn't anyone know how to arrive at conclusions based purely on facts, or do we all do the math backwards ?

Let's let Josh Marshall sum up:

The truth is that once you take a screwdriver and saw to the numbers smart people can come up with a lot of ways to fool others and themselves, in many ways all the more so if the people doing the counting have a highly articulated theory behind their reasoning.

Right. Except replace "numbers" with "facts" and "counting" with "talking". And, I'd use a sharp kitchen knife for a chiffonade, not a screwdriver and saw.

Akash Bhairab To Gate G-15

WTF?

Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.
...
The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal's only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

The Pope Sanctions Thugs

Walter E. Williams has a question (which he will keep rephrasing):

There's a more fundamental question that I'd put to the pope: Should the Roman Catholic Church support the welfare state? Or, put more plainly, should the Church support the use of the coercive powers of government to enable one person to live at the expense of another? Put even more plainly, should the Church support the government's taking the property of one person and giving it to another to whom it doesn't belong? When such an act is done privately, we call it theft.

And when such an act is done by a church, in this case the Catholic Church, it's called "tithing". In many countries, the government does this collecting for them, coercively. I'm pretty sure the Pope, sitting fat and happy in his fancy palace, like all other Popes before him, is way in favor of it.

(via - who apparently won't post my erudite and pithy comments any more. so sad.)