Conservative BS Re: Obama's Pakistan Claims:
Insty and Nedra, I'm Looking At You

So I run across this at Yahoo! news. The first thing that strikes me is how odd the first paragraph is:

"WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive."

So I think: jeez, this sounds like one of those stock reports, where it's SOP to include a hypothesis about why the Dow went up or down, but to report it as if it were undisputed fact. Like "The Dow was down today because of bad blah blah blah reports from China," or "Stocks were up today on profit itching from the pork snouts sector."

I almost just passed over it, but then I realized that this bit of BS was so egregious that it might actually be some kind of parody...but no other signs of that. Then I looked at the byline. It was, in fact:

Nedra Pickler, pseudo-journalist.

Yup. So here we have what is, in effect, a blatant attack on Obama masquerading as a lede. In effect, Pickler is asserting, without proof, that Obama is talking about sending troops into Pakistan in response to a debate dispute, in an attempt to make himself look better.

What's not there of course, is the really crucial information. Right up front it should say:

"Nedra Pickler, well-known conservative hack, makes shit up in order to undermine Democratic candidate."

Then I find that, over at Instapundit, this has become: "Invade Pakistan!"

Jesus, these people.

What Obama actually says makes real sense--far more sense than basically anything that has come out of the current administration...well, ever. However, were it me, I'd be careful with any talk about sending troops into Pakistan...even though Obama is absolutely right that we might have to do so. this is a claim that's too easy to misunderstand--or intentionally distort.

I was in no way pro-Obama two months ago...but the guy just keeps looking better and better. And the fact that the conservative noise machine is so intent on smearing him just serves to endear him to me.