Caroline McCarthy, Staff Writer, CNET News.com wrote a Halloween piece, Could the ‘War of the Worlds’ scare happen today?, wondering if something like the Orson Welles 1938 radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds, which caused some level of panic, could occur today.

The consensus in the article is that there is too much diversity in the media and the competition causes so much fact checking that it is impossible for something like that to occur on any widespread basis today.

Excuse me, but what about the claims about Iraq that resulted in a real war with thousands of deaths? Where was this “fact checking” of which you speak? The media of all types went along, promoting those who made the claims based on distorted intelligence, and ignored those who where trying to point out the errors.

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BBC notes Musharraf defends emergency rule by saying “terror,” “disaster,” “enemies,” “suicide” without bringing up the reality that the annoying Supreme Court had read the Pakistani constitution and was about to officially state the obvious: Musharraf’s election win was totally bogus.

Barnett R. Rubin of Informed Comment Global Affairs is in Pakistan and has been blogging about the situation.

Meanwhile, to the West of Pakistan, Warren P. Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers writes an article telling us: Former envoy: U.S. driving Turkey, Iran together

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Before he was rudely interrupted by being in the middle of a coup, Barnett R. Rubin wrote about shabby reporting by Michael Goldfarb, author of the blog “Worldwide.Standard.com” at the Weekly Standard

He notes that on July 6 of this year, a survey showed that “60 percent of Americans opposed a war with Iran.” Now, however, he claims, “a majority of Americans now favor military action against Iran.”

The July poll from Angus Reid asked, “If the U.S. government decides to take military action in Iran, would you favour or oppose it?” 63% said they would oppose it.

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Post-Tropical Storm Noel – Canadian Hurricane Centre reports:

Position: 47.5 N 64.3 W. [7AM CST]
Movement: North-Northeast near 40 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 75 mph.
Wind Gusts: 85 mph.
Minimum central pressure: 968 mb.

PTS Noel is about 55 miles East-Northest of Chatham.

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Florida License Plates

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A weekend feature of Why Now.