Richard Serrano published a story in the Los Angeles on Sunday entitled U.S. guns arm Mexican drug cartels.

In a marked improvement in the accuracy of Times stories, Serrano did not utter a factual inaccuracy until the third word of the article's first sentence.

High-powered automatic weapons and ammunition are flowing virtually unchecked from border states into Mexico, fueling a war among drug traffickers, the army and police that has left thousands dead, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

The rifles being picked up along the border are of course not automatic weapons—machine guns—but are instead semi-automatic weapons which fire one bullet per trigger pull.

Further down in the article Serrano relates without question the claim that the FN Five-seveN pistol is armor-piercing, without bothering to see if armor-piercing ammunition is available for the pistols in the United States... and of course, it isn't, being barred for all but military and police sale by federal law.

Being ever helpful, I sent Mr. Serrano an email explaining where his story was wrong and needed corrections. Serrano has thus far neither responded, nor corrected his article.

In hopes of spurring some sort of interest in correcting the article, I emailed the National section editors of the Times, and made the radical suggestion that for future articles, they may want to consider interviewing actual gun experts instead of Mexican drug dealers when discussing the capabilities of firearms.

I doubt they'll listen to such suggestions, but we can always hope.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:36 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Sadly, he appears to be serious:

In classic "Wag The Dog" scenario there is a neat little war brewing between American and Russian proxies, and real Russian troops, in the Caucacus Mountains on the Russian border.

It couldn't come at a better time for the Republicans.

McCain gets to act and talk tough against the Russians, while Obama is on vacation in Hawaii, issuing "can't we all get along statements."

It perfectly augments Republican campaign points: Obama is not ready. He is not tough, experienced enough to deal with a dangerous world.

Do you appreciate the power and planning that went into this? I don't think you do.

Not only did McCain engineer the the build-up of Russian forces along the border of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he also orchestrated the Georgian offer of a ceasefire last week, the South Ossetia separatist's response of shelling Georgia, and the Georgian counterstrike that triggered the pre-planned Russian invasion— all carefully timed to coincide with Barack Obama's vacation.

As it is obvious to see, thousands of people have been killed and a country invaded and ripped apart, just to give John McCain a chance to sound tough. But the plot is even more insidious than HuffPo author Blake Fleetwood suggests.

Not only did McCain carefully orchestrate three armed forces in two countries in such a way that it looked like they were acting selfishly in their own best interests instead of as agents of a U.S. Presidential campaign, he also managed to convince Barack Obama to give a spineless response that made McCain sound like a far more knowledgeable, experienced, and competent leader that Obama has ever pretended to be.

The kicker?

In the absolutely most fantabulous move of all, McCain then convinced Obama to flip-flop on his previous spineless position to poorly echo McCain's stance, reinforcing it as the correct one, while gutting his own credibility and showing himself to be hopelessly incapable of performing as a President.

John McCain: He bends steel and breaks candidates and countries with his mind.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 355 words, total size 2 kb.

Sadly, he appears to be serious:

In classic "Wag The Dog" scenario there is a neat little war brewing between American and Russian proxies, and real Russian troops, in the Caucacus Mountains on the Russian border.

It couldn't come at a better time for the Republicans.

McCain gets to act and talk tough against the Russians, while Obama is on vacation in Hawaii, issuing "can't we all get along statements."

It perfectly augments Republican campaign points: Obama is not ready. He is not tough, experienced enough to deal with a dangerous world.

Do you appreciate the power and planning that went into this? I don't think you do.

Not only did McCain engineer the build-up of Russian forces along the border of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he also orchestrated the Georgian offer of a ceasefire last week, the South Ossetia separatist's response of shelling Georgia, and the Georgian counterstrike that triggered the pre-planned Russian invasion— all carefully timed to coincide with Barack Obama's vacation.

As it is obvious to see, thousands of people have been killed and a country invaded and ripped apart, just to give John McCain a chance to sound tough. But the plot is even more insidious than HuffPo author Blake Fleetwood suggests.

Not only did McCain carefully orchestrate three armed forces in two countries in such a way that it looked like they were acting selfishly in their own best interests instead of as agents of a U.S. Presidential campaign, he also managed to convince Barack Obama to give a spineless response that made McCain sound like a far more knowledgeable, experienced, and competent leader that OBama has ever pretended to be.

The kicker?

In the absolutely most fantabulous move of all, McCain then convinced Obama to flip-flop on his previous spineless position to poorly echo McCain's stance, reinforcing it as the correct one, while gutting his own credibility and showing himself to be hopelessly incapable of performing as a President.

John McCain. He bends steel and breaks candidates and countries with his mind.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:25 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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After having Matthew Mosk's attack on John McCain discredited within hours yesterday, the Washington Post was forced into running this embarrassing correction to the A1 story.

Correction to This Article

An earlier version of this story about campaign donations that Florida businessman Harry Sargeant III raised for Sen. John McCain, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton incorrectly identified three individuals as being among the donors Sargeant solicited on behalf of McCain. Those donors -- Rite Aid manager Ibrahim Marabeh, and lounge owners Nadia and Shawn Abdalla -- wrote checks to Giuliani and Clinton, not McCain. Also, the first name of Faisal Abdullah, a McCain donor, was misspelled in some versions of the story.

In other words, the premise of the entire article was fatally undermined because a Obama-supporting journalist and his editors didn't take the time to do the basic fact-checking Amanda Carpenter did in a matter of minutes.

The same "journalist", Mosk had attempted to smear McCain in a previous manufactured story about a land deal in May.

The Washington Post's editors, perhaps thinking they can save on the cost of paper and ink by adopting the editorial business practices of the New York Times, let Mosk go to print again today with another smear, one that amounted to stating that—gosh darn it!—there was nothing illegal going on with MCCain's fund-raising, but there should be:

Sargeant told The New York Times this morning that he at times left the task of collecting the checks to a longtime business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba'a. The problem with that is that Abu Naba'a is not an American citizen. According to court records, Abu Naba'a is a dual citizen of Jordan and the Dominican Republic.

The law on this question appears to be unclear, said Fred Wertheimer, a campaign finance expert who runs the advocacy group, Democracy 21.

"There's probably very little law on this," Wertheimer said. "If it is not illegal for a foreign national to bundle checks, it ought to be, since it's illegal for a foreign national to make contributions in the first place."

As even as Democracy 21 admits, there is nothing illegal about a legal foreign national collecting the legal contributions of law-abiding Americans for a Presidential candidate.

What is perhaps even more revealing that what they said, however, is Mosk's decision to use them as a source. Democracy 21 is a far left advocacy group, run by a former Democratic Senator Dick Clark, and is funded by both George Soros' Open Society Institute, and the Joyce Foundation—yes, where Barack Obama sat on the Board of Directors for eight years.

Mosk's choice of sources is only slightly more objective than contacting MoveOn.Org for their opinion.

Paul Ryan, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, said the Federal Election Commission has not explicitly addressed the question. Ryan said there appeared to be conflicting thoughts on this in a 2004 advisory opinion. For instance, in one opinion the FEC has advised that it is permissible for a foreign national to solicit a contribution, while in another it prohibits foreign nationals from playing any role in participation in a candidate's election activities, such as decisions concerning the making of contributions.

"There's a little bit of tension between these two different interpretations," Ryan said.

Matthew Mosk hasn't been able to find a way to smear John McCain, despite three abortive attempts. The questions isn't so much why Mosk is against McCain, but why the editors of the Washington Post keep letting themselves be used as a platform for his specious attacks.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:28 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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