Denial machine

Orson Scott Card recently lost it over climate change:

Global warming is, in other words, somewhere between Piltdown Man and cold fusion on the scale of fake science. But when I say this, the true believers become angry. Not because they can contradict my statements -- they can't. Every word I just wrote is consonant with the evidence as it now stands. They become angry because Global Warming has become the vengeful, punitive deity of a new fundamentalism: Fanatical Environmentalism. Global Warming is rather like the idea of biblical infallibility or creation science -- impervious to evidence or logic.

He's wrong, of course. Climate "truthers" have to rely on manufactured evidence and spin to bolster their claims.

The documentary shows how fossil fuel corporations have kept the global warming debate alive long after most scientists believed that global warming was real ... It shows that companies such as Exxon Mobil are working with top public relations firms and using many of the same tactics and personnel as those employed by Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds to dispute the cigarette-cancer link in the 1990s. Exxon Mobil sought out those willing to question the science behind climate change, providing funding for some of them, their organizations and their studies.

Big Oil recycled Big Tobacco naysayers into climate naysayers.

Conspiracy theorists on the left in the US deny that Saudi hijackers were responsible for 9/11, and conspiracy theorists on the right in the US deny that global warming is happening. Both of them are railing against authorities, be it government or scientists, that they both discount and distrust. It's as if they are merely collectively disagreeing over which threat to deny, be it the global warming or terrorism.

Two birds with one stone for Musharraf?

After al-Zawahiri has declared war on Pakistan over the Red Mosque attack, Pakistan apparently declared war in return.

According to a top Pakistani security official who spoke to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, the goal this time is to pacify the Waziristans once and for all. All previous military operations - usually spurred by intelligence provided by the Western coalition - have had limited objectives, aimed at specific bases or sanctuaries or blocking the cross-border movement of guerrillas. Now the military is going for broke to break the back of the Taliban and a[l]-Qaeda in Pakistan and reclaim the entire area.

If militants are indeed targeting Bhutto, Musharraf could come out a winner if the Taliban et al kill Bhutto and Pakistani forces successfully suppress Islamic militants. Two rivals for power would be eliminated at the same time.

At least 136 people were killed and more than 387 wounded around midnight Thursday in a suicide bombing near a motorcade carrying former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who returned to the country earlier in the day after eight years of self-imposed exile, according to hospital and police sources.

Alternately, perhaps Bhutto is flypaper. While she's alive, she's a more attractive target for militants than Musharraf.

Spin via omission

This is far from a representative sample, but the LA Times report on Sanchez' speech contained:

Sanchez lashed out specifically at the National Security Council, calling officials there negligent and incompetent, without offering details. He also blasted war policies over the last four years, which he said had stripped senior military officers of responsibility and thrust the armed services into an "intractable position" in Iraq.
"The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat," Sanchez said in a speech to the Military Reporters and Editors' annual conference in Arlington, Va. "Without bipartisan cooperation, we are destined to fail. There is nothing going on in Washington that would give us hope."

That doesn't quite parse right. What's this about bipartisan cooperation? The CBC report carries an extra portion entirely omitted from the above report, Sanchez' conclusion that the USA must stay in Iraq:

While he was pessimistic about current U.S. strategy, he also said withdrawing all troops is not an option.
"The American military finds itself in an intractable situation … America has no choice but to continue our efforts in Iraq," he said.

That last bit certainly isn't aimed at (most) Republicans.