Bloodsucking capitalists...

Maybe the workers will rise up against their oppressors... Oh, and the shareholders! A failing company is being looted, to the detriment of its real owners...

Sulzberger pinches double the pay - NYPOST.com:

Top executives at the beleaguered New York Times Company reaped hefty rewards last year, with Chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger more than doubling his total compensation to $6 million.

CEO Janet Robinson got even more, reaping $6.3 million, a 31.9 percent hike.

The pay numbers were disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings yesterday.

The increases come against a backdrop of declining ad revenue, layoffs, frozen pension plans, unpaid vacations and a 5 percent pay cut for most of the rank-and-file workers last year.

"Our members are really unhappy with what is happening," said Bill O'Meara, president of the Newspaper Guild of New York. "They made a voluntary sacrifice to give up some of their pay to help the company out. People are losing their jobs still."...

Suckers. Ha ha. You trusted liberals? You trusted a bunch pious frauds because they told you they are better than those horrid right-wingers? You probably trusted them because you read the NYT, and you believed your own lies.

Climategate... Plus Reportergate...

This is a good piece on how "journalists" bend the words of people they interview to make them imply exactly the opposite of what they said. Biased reporting on Climategate - Washington Times:

...To judge by recent coverage from Associated Press, the Fourth Estate watchdog has acted like a third-rate pocket pet. Case in point is an 1,800-word AP missive that appeared in hundreds of publications, many carrying it on the front page of their Sunday, Dec. 13 issue with the headline, "Science not faked, but not pretty." AP gave three scientists copies of the controversial e-mails and then asked them about their conclusions. The wire service portrayed the trio of scientists as dismissing or minimizing allegations of scientific fraud when, in fact, the scientists believe no such thing....

As Rush says, they always tell us who they are afraid of...

Mark Steyn, on the AP's preposterous efforts to "fact check" a stolen copy of Governor Palin's forthcoming book:

...Wow. That's ten "AP writers" plus Calvin Woodward, the AP writer whose twinkling pen honed the above contributions into the turgid sludge of the actual report. That's 11 writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

No, the Associated Press assigned 11 writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book, and in return the 11 fact-checkers triumphantly unearthed six errors. That's 1.8333333 writers for each error. What earth-shattering misstatements did they uncover for this impressive investment? Stand well back:...

"Stand well back" I'll have to remember that locution!

And how fine it feels to be supporting such a solid person. Leftists have been desperately hammering on her since "Palin Day," 8-29-08...... and what have they come up with? Nothing of substance. The squirmy-ness of Dems right now has got to be partially because they know deep down that their guy could never stand up to such scrutiny. Aren't there still a few whole years of Obam's life unaccounted for? Not to mention Chicago politics. Dead fish could float to the surface at any time! Or bodies.

Life is so much better when one does not have to live in fear. And it makes a person smarter. There are no "Don't go there" signs in my brain, such as Leftists seem to have. (Think of "political correctness.")

Am I right or am I right?

From a CBS News story, Female Cop Hailed as Ft. Hood Hero:

...Hasan, who was facing deployment overseas, was initially reported killed in the attack but he survived his wounds and is currently in stable condition in a civilian hospital. Officials are trying to piece together a possible motive for the attack, believed to be the worst ever at a U.S. domestic military debate. [sic]...

It's gonna be tough, folks. "Piecing together" a "possible motive" for the attack. It's a good thing we have experts who understand these things. Most likely we will just never know why this mentally disturbed person, who belongs to a "religion of peace," went berserk. He was handing out Korans that very morning, which is surly a peaceful thing to do, right? Right?

Maybe it was something he ate.

(In case someone hasn't been following, my title refers to this post, where I quoted:

...Over the past couple of years there have been several SJS incidents directed against Americans. It is remarkable that even when the perpetrator explicitly linked his motives to jihad, the authorities refused to accept his word....)

Report urges action to preserve "journalism"

New York Times Cutting 100 Newsroom Jobs | The New York Observer:

The New York Times is cutting 100 jobs by the end of the year, the Times' editor Bill Keller just announced to the staff via email....

Ha ha. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of loathsome frauds. Hows that HopeChange workin' out for you guys? Hmm? You pulled every dirty trick known to man to get your party's chomsky elected, and now you're on the street. Could it possibly be that there is justice in the cosmos?

Report urges action to preserve journalism:

NEW YORK (AP) - Journalism is at risk and American society must act to preserve it. That's a key message in a new report co-authored by Len Downie, former executive editor of The Washington Post. [For pity's sake, just drag it in the bushes and let it die in privacy]

In a paper commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School, [are "journalism" schools dying too? Please, please, pretty please?] Downie and Michael Schudson, a Columbia professor, argue the government, universities and nonprofit foundations should step in as newspapers suffer financially. [Of course. they're even crappier than GM. Bailout time!]

Among other steps, the authors recommend that the government ensure the tax code allows local news outlets to operate as non-profits. [Well. at least they will no longer be defrauding their owners—the shareholders—by driving away the 80% of the population who are not trendy urban liberal nihilists.] They urge philanthropic organizations to support local reporting. [As long as no conservative or tacky working-class views are reported.] And they suggest a fund be established using fees from telecom or Internet providers for grants to innovative local news groups. [Yeah. Tax success to support failure. That's what liberalism is all about.]...

A violation of trust....

Glenn links to a post on the death of Gourmet. Al Dente: Gourmet Magazine's Legacy of Good Living:

I'm rarely at a loss for words. I don't know where to start on this one. Like many of you, I received news that Gourmet magazine is closing its doors, and the November issue will be its last. Having worked at Gourmet right out of college between 1989 and 1995, Gourmet is near and dear to my heart. It's part of my soul....

Well, Charlene subscribed for probably decades, and stopped a few years ago when little Lefty comments and jabs started appearing among the truffles. She says it's too bad, because it was for many years a great magazine. (And it wasn't just about haute cuisine; there were lots of articles on the delights of ordinary fare, such as how to make great hamburgers at the Fourth of July picnic.)

This was yet another example of violation of "Safe Zones," which Jay Nordlinger has been writing about. [And more on Safe Zones.]

(I'm sure that's not the main reason why they are folding; most Gourmet Magazine types are probably liberal. But I bet they lost a few more subscriptions than ours.)

Old scores still needing to be settled...

Most of you will probably not be interested in this. I mean, five years ago? That's ancient history! Just skip it, OK?

Most people forget, but I don't forget. Or in this case, forgive. The campaign of intentional lies and smears in 2004 against the honorable and considerable military service of George W Bush would in itself justify the detestation I feel towards Lefty nihilists.

I knew this part of the story back then, but never made much mention of it, because I was not aware that there was any corroboration. What a treat to find that in, of all places, the report on the horrid fabrications of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

BernardGoldberg.com:

...Until now, the controversy over the Rather/Mapes story has centered almost entirely on one issue: the legitimacy of the documents — a very important issue, indeed. But it turns out that there was another very important issue, one that goes to the very heart of what the story was about — and one that has gone virtually unnoticed. This is it: Mary Mapes knew before she put the story on the air that George W. Bush, the alleged slacker, had in fact volunteered to go to Vietnam.

Who says? The outside panel CBS brought into to get to the bottom of the so-called "Rathergate" mess says. I recently re-examined the panel's report after a source, Deep Throat style, told me to "Go to page 130." When I did, here's the startling piece of information I found:

Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush "did want to go to Vietnam but others went first." Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify....

I myself would rank Bush's service as more honorable and probably more dangerous that Kerry's flaky maneuvers. Among other reasons, the F-102 was the most dangerous high-performance jet this country has ever put into production. Of the 875 F-102A production models that entered service, 259 were lost in accidents that killed 70 Air Force and ANG pilots.

Here are some of my old posts on the disgusting affair...

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Just another one of my imaginary conversations...

Pay it no mind. Just fisking some person named Eleanor Clift in some web-site called Newsweek.com:

The first duty of a political party in retreat is to find something its people can rally around, and saying no to Obamacare is working nicely for the Republicans. [Lots of independents and even Dems are not liking it either.] They've managed to hold together in the House and Senate with no real leadership and no real message except to block Obama. [Fairly true. We need Sarah!] Despite all the advantages Democrats enjoyed at the start of this year, the responsibility of being in the majority and actually legislating is causing fissures between the party's dominant wing of progressives and the much smaller group of conservative, self-described blue dogs from the swing districts that gave Democrats control of the House. [So you admit it's NOT the Republicans who are blocking Pelosi-Care.]

Republicans are united, but that shouldn't be confused with victory. Republicans stood together against Social Security and Medicare, [This is a flat-out LIE. Both those had large Republican support.] and when those programs proved popular, opposing them left a residue of distrust for the GOP. President Obama has pushed his bipartisan shtik about as far as it will go, [shtik is the word. It was never sincere.] and if Republican recalcitrance means the Democrats have to go it alone on health care, Obama should embrace the new reality and cry all the way to the signing ceremony. [So DO IT! Shut up and do it. I double-dog dare you.]

Getting Republicans to support health-care reform is a lost cause. [Well, duh. A far-Left massive expansion of government, and she's surprised Republicans aren't on board? How stupid is that?] Other than the two women senators from Maine, there aren't any moderates left for the president to partner with in the GOP. Obama campaigned on his fabled ability to bring people together. [Something he's never actually DONE in his political life. It's just gas.] Voters loved the idea of everybody getting along in Washington, but seven months into the Obama presidency, we know it's a mirage.

The White House needs to find ways to leverage the huge tactical and strategic advantages Democrats had coming out of the 2008 election to advance legislation in Congress. [Hey, I gotta wild and crazy idea. How about legislation that ordinary Americans would approve of? You know, those untermensch who shop at Walmart. I know that's not the Dem tradition, but why not give it a try?] Instead, Obama has played the same old inside game of currying favor with power brokers on Capitol Hill who for the most part, like Senate Finance chair Max Baucus of Montana, represent sparsely populated rural states and respond more to their corporate benefactors than to White House pressure.

Obama won the election because his campaign had a great ground game and they had him, a super communicator who made the media swoon. [How about: "Obama won the election because he made the media swoon."] In the White House, the once crack team was slow to organize while opponents of health-care reform ran roughshod over the message and dominated the debate. All the White House has to counter the opposition is Obama, ['cause the TRUTH is really ugly. You can't use that.] and he's not enough. The magic has waned. People don't line up for miles to see him the way they did in the campaign. And judging by the anxiety showing up in the polls, voters don't trust Obama enough on health-care reform to set aside their historic distrust of government. [This may be too advanced for a journalist to understand, but trust in Obama is irrelevant! He's not writing the legislation, and he's not going to be administering it. (Unless there's a secret cloning project we don't know about. Maybe 100,000 mini-Obamas will run things and sit on the Death Panels, and reproduce themselves forever. In that case "trust in Obama" would have some point here.)]

The '08 campaign was such a searing experience that Obama and his key aides tend to view everything through that prism. [Why was it more "searing" than any other Presidential campaign? It was a picnic compared to 2000, but Bush calmly started achieving real things from his first day in office. With no snivelling about being "seared."] There were the early days when Obama seemed bored and his interest in the campaign lagged, along with his standing in the polls. Then came his heady win in Iowa followed by a humbling loss in New Hampshire, then the period when it all could have slipped away, when Rev. Jeremiah Wright taunted white America and Obama was torn between defending his minister and recovering his candidacy. If there's a campaign analogy to where Obama is now, this is the Reverend Wright period, when the prize hangs in the balance. [This is a very odd analogy. Obama should cynically toss something under the bus? But what? Or who? Or does Wright = health care reform? What joy, we can not only get rid of useless people, we can be JUDENREIN!] Opponents of reform won the first part of summer. Now it's up to Obama to regain the momentum. He prides himself on being a good clutch player, someone who can perform when the pressure's on. [I haven't seen it.] "Just give me the ball," he said to David Axelrod as he stood waiting to go onstage for his first presidential debate with John McCain.

Republican strategist Karl Rove was known for zeroing in on an opponent's strength, destroying John Kerry, a war hero, by portraying him as weak. [He's a weakling and a cad. And only a "war hero" in the descriptions of the press. His fellow vets made it clear they know he's a total jerk.] ....

I'm feeling cranky. It's time to say "Toldja"

Michael Goodwin in the NY Daily News, Health care debate confirms this is not the Barack Obama we elected:

...Where have you gone, Barack Obama? Where is the sunny-side-up young man who promised to inspire and unite an unhappy nation? [It was just an ACT. If you want to know what people ARE, you fool, you look at what they've DONE. Obama never "inspired or united" ANY normal americans in his mini-career.]

Gone into the partisan sinkhole of Washington, that's where. [From the sweet concord of Chicago politics. Right.] Like some novice swimmer too confident of his own ability, Obama is suddenly finding himself in water over his head. [We TOLD YOU. But of course you can't listen to conservatives. That would be tacky.]

His flailing, including a foul habit of demonizing dissent, is not pretty. [Flaily flaily. Obama said OPENLY that he was an acolyte of Sol Alinsy--so what the hell did you THINK was coming? Fool.] And that brief foray into e-mail tracking of critics showed a win-at-any-cost side. [Toldja.]

Where is the appealing man we elected? Where is that Barack Obama? [He never existed! We TOLD you.]

Let's find him quick because the whole nation is paying the price for this impostor's irrational exuberance. Or hubris. [SO, Mr Goodwin, isn't it time you said "sorry" to us conservatives? Hmm? "Sorry, you were right, we were wrong, and now we have a dime-store Sol Alinsky for President?"]

Americans, more of them every day, are growing disenchanted with the expansion of government and the massive pile of debt. [YOU mush-brains elected a far-Leftist, and now you are...surprised? Disenchanted?] Yet the President, certain he can change their minds if only he talks to them again, keeps trying to sell bigger as better. [I bet you are STILL hoping he'll work the deception on you again.]

The public's not buying it. And as a measure of the nation's mood, a recent poll was practically cruel: Nearly half think the President is on television too much. Ouch.

Obama fatigue occasionally surfaced during the campaign, but this is different. [No, it's the SAME. We repeatedly pointed out during the campaign how overdoses of Obama made people queasy. YOU wouldn't listen.] He's the President, and if the country tunes him out, there is no Plan B. He's the rock star-turned-salesman, and everything in his administration depends on his stage act. [Trusting "rock stars" is STUPID.]

That the novelty is wearing thin is obvious. The danger is that the health care fiasco turns him into an unpopular and ineffective President... [He was ineffective from the git-go. For pity's sake, the guy has never run so much as a pop stand in his life! OF COURSE he's ineffective. We told you so. AND we told you the only candidate of the four who WAS qualified was Palin, who has actually run a city and a state successfully. I'm sure you are STILL too shit-stupid to acknowledge this obvious fact. ].

I thought this was pretty funny...

Megyn Kelly of Fox tries to pin down White House spokesman Bill Burton on what's going to happen to those e-mails they've solicited reporting "fishy things." The poor goop desperately wants to avoid admitting that they are keeping the e-mail addresses of those who have been reported for having wrong thoughts... but in fact Federal law requires that they all be kept.

Squirm, squirm squirm...

Tell half your readers to just go away...

Highly recommended: Carl M. Cannon, Sarah 'Barracuda' Palin and the Piranhas of the Press

...Meanwhile, an unrelated development put journalism on the firing line.

That event was the decline of conservative, mostly Southern, Democrats (and, eventually, liberal Republicans as well). A patchwork quilt of ideology and regionalism gave way to a U.S. political system more closely resembling that of Great Britain. Today, an American who is liberal tends to be a Democrat, a conservative is almost always a Republican. This may help clarify things for voters, but it created a little-understood crisis for journalists. If being "liberal" now meant sympathy for the Democratic Party, and being conservative implied sympathy for Republicans, all those liberal newsrooms across the country were gradually going to alienate themselves from about half their readers.

That this might pose a problem never dawned on the men and women who controlled the media — even as it drove their right-of-center readers and viewers away in droves. When I tell my friends working in places like The New York Times that they created Rush Limbaugh, they respond with shock and disbelief. But it's obvious to me that it's true, even as the anointed sages of the Old Media solemnly denied that an animal such as "liberal bias" existed at all....

Most people today don't even realize that there used to be conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans! When I was a boy the most important liberal vs conservative wars were within the two parties. The rise of Goldwater conservatism was a revolt within the Republican party against "eastern establishment liberals" such as Nelson Rockefeller. And the Democrats back then were the (very Catholic) party of traditional morality. Also the party of Southern white racists.

If you are still not sure that the press was grossly unfair to Palin, Cannon lays out the facts in great detail. It was absurd, insane, and utterly vile and dishonest!

Palin Derangement Syndrome goes on...

Jim Geraghty, on the absurd Vanity Fair hit piece on Sarah Palin: Why They Hate Her, The Angelina Jolie of Politics:

...Liberals believe their ideas, philosophy, worldview and policies liberate its believers and contend the conservative equivalents limit people. Liberals see themselves are rejecting outdated beliefs and obsolete ideas, overturning established orders and discarding traditions established by superstitious and ignorant forebears who weren't as enlightened as we are. Conservatives, in their minds, are runaway cultural super-egos, always wagging their fingers about individual responsibility, dismissing excuses, reminding people that they always can't do what they want because of the consequences to themselves and to others.

Conservatism, they suspect, will leave you in a marriage that doesn't satisfy you, burden you with children you don't want, repress your passions and trap you in a empty, boring and unfulfilled life, with no hand of government able to help....

...In her opponents' minds, Palin's made all the wrong choices, and cannot, they insist, be very bright. Yet she's happy and successful. She is an anomaly that invalidates their worldview, and for that, they attempt to immiserate her — regardless of whether she wishes to run for national office again....

"An anomaly that invalidates their worldview." That's for sure. And few things have validated my suspicions that most of what's happening in our world are battles over symbols more than the lefty reaction to Sarah Palin. The crazy thing was that Sarah has never been a "values conservative" in her practical political life. Her issues have always been good government and economic development, especially energy policy. She's never fought in the culture war, she's never mounted any attacks on liberalism or secularism!

But that didn't make any difference. Symbolically, she proclaims that the way to happiness and fulfilment is exactly the opposite of what liberal theory says it is.

"..Liberals believe their ideas, philosophy, worldview and policies liberate its believers..." That stuff is not "liberating," it's slavery.

Shills for the regime...

DRUDGE REPORT: ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA 2009®:

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care -- a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special -- 'Prescription for America' -- originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

MORE

Late Monday night, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay fired off a complaint to the head of ABCNEWS: ....

If I were running the Republican party, I'd organize a counter-protest, an online "news hour," and "news room," and I'd make a big push (including ads on network TV) to get people to "tune in" and watch various conservative stars respond to Obam's socialist propaganda, and criticize the fraudulent "news" media who shill for him. It would be a great time to get ordinary people in the habit of using the Internet to route around obstructions.

Noonarians and Frumarians...

Beldar has a couple of posts Charlene and I liked...

OMG! Like, before he was 30, Obama was a law review editor! ZOMG-OMG!!1!

And...

...Oh, Ms. Noonan, you're far more out of touch than even Arlen Specter is! We don't know yet — we must have patience to learn, but aggressively prepare to seize the opportunities to affect — whether Pennsylvania voters will send a Republican or a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2010. But dear Ms. Noonan, bless your heart and your woefully myopic east-coastal blue-state-infected viewpoints, the "side [which] is winning" for sure, the side which for sure caused Arlen Specter to betray his vows and defect to the Democratic Party, is the side of the true conservatives whom Arlen Specter recognized were certain to oust him in the GOP primary. He doesn't know, and no one yet knows, whether he can win the Democratic Primary, or the general election if he gets the Dems' nomination. But he knew — we all know, Ms. Noonan! why don't you? — that he was going to lose the next race in which he was scheduled to run, that being the GOP primary.

Can you not tell the difference, Ms. Noonan, between fleeing from a battle one is certain to lose, and instead fleeing to a side that is certain to win? No one yet knows which side will win, which is to say, no side is certain to win. But Arlen Specter was certain to lose if he accepted the verdict of his own party on his performance. How could you miss that? How can you expect us to take seriously any of your other advice for the GOP when you're that blind?

There is a certain breed of Republican which is convinced that to become more competitive, GOP candidates must become even "more moderate" than John McCain or Arlen Specter. We could call them Noonarians; we could call them Frumarians; we could call them Parkersonians. Or we could call them RINOs. I will continue to voice my objections to their blather and oppose their ideas, but I will not call them apostates, and if they return to the Reaganite Big Tent, I will welcome them upon their return. Some day, perhaps we will all laugh together when we re-read the ridiculous things they wrote while they were in the thrall of Obamamania, things like "The task for conservatives is not so much to oppose the president, but to help him see." They'll blush, I hope, but feel no greater pain...

My impression is that the Specter case is sui generis, and doesn't reveal much about where Republican politics is heading. My guess is that Pennsylvania Republican voters are not rejecting a senator who "votes Republican 70% of the time," they are rejecting a capricious and erratic man who bestows his votes by personal whim. Who can't be trusted or relied on. I bet they would have stuck with him if he were a principled moderate.

"Smug East Coast upper-middle-class metropolitan condescension"

A symptom ...or a root cause? - Mark Steyn - The Corner on National Review Online:

...It occurs to me that the best chance of saving the US newspaper industry would be if The New York Times collapsed. America's stultifying monodailies are far more homogeneous than almost any other English-speaking media culture. A big part of this is the Times, and the horrible conformity it begets. The Times is the template for the entire industry: Its ethos dominates the journalism schools; it's the model for a zillion other mini-me wannabe-Timeses across the continent, even though smug East Coast upper-middle-class metropolitan condescension would hardly seem an obvious winner for second-tier cities and rural districts. Its columns and features are reprinted coast to coast. Its priorities determine the agenda of the three nightly network newscasts, also (not coincidentally) flailing badly. The net result of the industry's craven abasement before the Times is that American newspapering is dead as dead can be - and certainly far deader than its cousins in Britain, Australia, India, or even Canada.

If the Times closed, what would the mainstream media left behind do? Why, they would have to think for themselves. And some of them would still die. But some of them might get ...lively, and iconoclastic, and one day even ...readable. Not all of them: There would still be plenty of near parodic thumbsucking pomposity for those whose bag that is. But there would be other kinds of papers, too. As the J-school bores say (but rarely do), celebrate diversity!

Just a thought....

I don't imagine it would really help much. Most journalists are second-raters who desperately need to feel superior to somebody. If the NYT vanished they would just ape something else with "New York" in its name. They would rather die than become interested in ordinary people enough to write things that ordinary people would really like. There are such writers, but management would have to go out and hunt for them, and fire a bunch of "journalists"....And that will never happen because newspaper management has the same disease.

Historical note: Until recently only a small percentage of people went to college or university, and there were plenty of smart people who couldn't manage to do so. Usually because they didn't have the dough. (Now we have stupid people going to college, because the seats need to be filled.) Becoming a reporter was a kind of blue-collar thinking-man's job. So there were lots of journalists who didn't feel any need to show they were superior to the swining masses.

There also used to be be some top-notch union leaders who had no other route upwards from the working class. I think the Reuther brothers missed the chance for college because of the depression. And I imagine the literary figure of Jeeves was based on some real-life butlers. Again, because for smart but poor people it might be the only path into "management."

Kick a "journalist" today...

The curious case of 200 nearly identical MSM headlines:

The following headlines have appeared in newspapers within the last 24 hours. This is not an inclusive list....

...There are more. I just stopped listing them because I grew weary -- so weary -- of the physical labor associated with cutting and pasting.

All of the stories were marketed by a liberal "advocacy group" called Families USA .

According to Discover the Networks, Families USA is a member of the "Progressive States Network", which works closely with (you guessed it) ACORN and the SEIU. These ultra-partisan groups have truly one agenda: big government.

During his presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama spoke to a conference of Family USA activists and promised, "I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country."

Data from the Census Bureau debunks the lie continually promoted by the mainstream media of the legendary 47 million uninsured Americans:...

A morning quote...

Response to Ted Olson's Endorsement of Harold Koh - Andy McCarthy - The Corner on National Review Online:

...This is an argument about policy, not personality, honesty or qualifications. The mainstream media did not vet President Obama. His transnational progressive positions were not scrutinized — and even though the President is even now on an important trip, crafting new global regulatory arrangements with other heads of state, we still have not gotten anything approximating an examination of Obama's views. Bluntly, the public has been better informed about Gov. Sarah Palin's handling of the Alaska State Police than about their President's fondness for international redistribution of wealth, international treaties, and the transfer of national sovereignty to transnational bureaucracies and tribunals.....

Enemies of democracy...

Roger L. Simon, The MSM should resign over Obama's failure:

...The election of Barack Obama was orchestrated by our mainstream media. They anointed him. They should suffer the consequences.

But what we have instead is an orgy of finger-pointing. The four New York Times columnists referenced in the Politico article above are simultaneously ganging up on the man they thought, only eight weeks ago, was a combination of the cat's meow and the bee's knees. Nary a word of self criticism in their attacks. No surprise there - and don't expect it in the future, any more than you will get an honest apologia from Messrs Frank and Dodd over Fannie and Freddie. Just like the politicians, these columnists are men and women (Dowd) who are concerned first and foremost about their jobs and power. They won't do anything to jeopardize that. They've had that power for a long time, thinking it was permanent; but now that they see it might not be, they are holding on to it for dear life. Their jumping off the Obama bandwagon so early is a sign of what deep trouble he is in. And they desperately don't want to be blamed for it.

But they will be blamed - by us and by other people. They deserve to be. Their day is over. While pretending to be the friends of democracy, they have been the enemies of it. Their views have been so monolithic serious debate nearly vanished in this country. Only now, in the ferment of a still relatively tiny Tea Party movement, do you see the stirrings of bona fide discussion. Let's hope there is more to come. And that the mainstream media, even if they don't resign, will no longer be the gatekeepers.

There are few things that gratify my heart more than hearing of layoffs and shrinking revenues and ratings in the mainstream press. How I despise that gang of crooks. Their combination of arrogant self-rightousness and meagre intellectual and moral qualities is disgusting....

Goodbye middlemen...

Power Line - SF Chronicle May Fold:

...The collapse of the newspaper industry continues apace; now it's the San Francisco Chronicle that is likely to be sold or even closed down in a matter of months. This follows Sunday's bankruptcy filing by the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, just two and a half years after investors paid more than $500 million for the company.

We've known for a while that the newspaper industry is in desperate trouble, but it didn't occur to us until recently that it may be a leading indicator....

Mostly the dying of the newspapers is about the simple fact that the Internet kills middlemen. Newspapers are "middlemen" who gather up news from all about and package it for resale. But most people don't really want to buy 100 pieces of news to get the one that really interests them. We did it that way for centuries because there was no alternative, but it was always grossly inefficient.

Even if the paper goes "online," the same problem remains. Plus, the job of the "journalist" was always a kludge. Most of the time the reporter is writing about things he knows little about--he or she can't be an expert in more than a tiny fraction of the things covered. So everyone has had the experience of reading an article on the particular industry one works in, or the church you belong to--and cringing because the reporter is wrong on various details. And there are now some bloggers covering things who know a hundred times as much as any reporter about their specific subject.

I was sitting in an auto-body shop recently, and picked up an auto-body shop magazine, and there was mention of some controversy raging amongst the auto-body shop BLOGS! Too crazy!

Many of us conservatives like to opine that the Gasping Media is dying because they cold-shoulder conservatives, and generally publish a pack of lies to help Democrats and the general cause of nihilism. They do, and the bloodsucking parasites richly deserve to have Mr Pointy driven through their hearts. But, I have to guess that even if they were not despicable lefty frauds, their general decline would be much the same...

I hope he fails too....if he's doing what it looks like he's doing....

Peter Wehner, at the Corner...

I have a few thoughts on the "controversy" about Rush Limbaugh saying he hopes Barack Obama fails -- a claim that, based on the lead in to his show last night, left CNN's Anderson Cooper (among a slew of other media commentators) aghast.

The argument Limbaugh is making is fairly simple to follow: Pres. Obama is proposing plans Limbaugh believes (with justification, in my view) will hurt our economy and hurt our country. If Obama fails in getting his plans through Congress, we will be better off. ...

....But those in the MSM are pretending that those who hope Obama's plans fail are really rooting against America. That is nonsense. Limbaugh wants America to succeed; as a conservative, he hopes Obama's astonishing liberal power-grab fails. It's really not all that complicated to understand.

What I wonder, though, is where Anderson Cooper and his colleagues were during the Iraq debate, when the surge was clearly beginning to work -- yet leading Democrats, one after another, said it was failing. This was a situation in which America was engaged in a war of enormous consequences and, if we had lost, it would have been a geo-political and humanitarian catastrophe. Yet anti-war critics -- including Senator Barack Obama -- insisted on promoting the narrative of America's failure in Iraq when the evidence was the opposite.

Where was the outrage then, I wonder?....

Yeah, and how about some outrage over leftists wanting Bush's plan to save Social Security to fail? (Of course they had an important reason to want it to fail---what could be worse for a Lefty than to have the little people become investors, and perhaps lose their dependency on their betters?)

GIGO...

From Big Hollywood...

....Here are some other wonderful facts according to Hollywood:

• Apple, Inc. supplies well over 98% of computers in the USA.
• All good cops are tormented creatures in one way or another. 90% plus are divorced but have amazing relationships with their kids, usually teenagers.
• "Religious types", regardless of religion, are one step away from acting out violently, and usually do! Christians seem the most hair-triggered in this regard. Also, abject fear drives 100% of a "religious type's" decision making process.
• Conservatives by nature have something to hide.
• The rate of drug use at high-end private high schools is 70% plus.
• Most corporations have assassins on the payroll.
• Liberals and minorities are always sincere and innocent, unless of course they cavort with Republicans or Corporations.
• Abandoned warehouses are always available for holding hostages.
• And lastly, raising children in a traditional family is by far the worst possible thing for them.

Any corporation worth its salt should have an assassin or two! What's the fun of being a capitalist oppressor if you can't snuff a few opponents?

Funny Obama-fantasies...

Is the Honeymoon Over for Barack Obama? -- New York Magazine (thanks to Orrin Judd):

... The quick end of that sweet and blissful interval comes as something of a shock. There were five good reasons to expect that Obama's runway would be longer and less littered with obstructions than usual. The first was the smoothness of his transition and the superstar-laden lineup he installed. [Superstars? What a joke! Here is a comparison of Bush and Obama cabinet picks. ] The second was the scale of the economic and financial crisis that confronts the country, which would seem to have raised the political cost of rank obstructionism [Obstructionism in the defense of sanity is no vice! And how 'bout the political cost of dithering incompetence?]. The third was the consensus from left to right that supersize action was required [but super-size Democrat political pork? Consensus on that? Nah.]. The fourth was the magnitude of Obama's electoral victory and the mandate it ostensibly bestowed [Bush had almost as big a victory in 2004. I bet you didn't say HE had a mandate. Anyway, to have a mandate you have to run on something. ]. And fifth were his skills as a communicator, which even his staunchest foes were apt to compare to Ronald Reagan's [Dream on, dweeb. Name ONE single instance where Obama has communicated difficult concepts so ordinary people could suddenly grasp them.] (my emphasis).

That these five factors have produced something less than a nirvana-like political environment can be blamed on an array of villains. [Oh, right. Anyone who opposes the messiah is a "villain."] The irresponsibility of congressional Republicans regarding the stimulus. [Since we think it is bad policy, it would be irresponsible NOT to oppose it.] The ham-fistedness of congressional Democrats [It's not ham-fists, it's an utter inability to put country ahead of buying votes.] (and their propensity to paint targets on their backs). The economic illiteracy of almost every talking head on cable. [And writers at New York magazine.] But there's no denying that the bulk of the blame must be laid at the feet of the Obamans, who have squandered or let lay idle almost every political advantage they possessed at the outset...
[The political advantage was always a mirage. Actually Obama himself is a sort of mirage. He's never accomplished anything of note, never taken a strong stand on anything (except for infanticide), never revealed his philosophy or core values--I myself don't think he has any. He's an amiable con-man, but now he's in territory where reality tends to bite hard....]

Remember "Bush epic fail?"

I remember well the foul dishonesty with which lefty-bloggers and "journalists" used Hurricane Katrina as a club to beat President Bush. Now we see how much they really believed what they wrote, as Obama gets a disaster of his own.

I'd say it is time for a lot of people on the Left to apologize. But that would be what adults do; we can't expect it from "liberals." The Anchoress puts things well:

More Ice storm & More | The Anchoress:

...The severe ice storm that has crippled parts of the midwest and devastated Kentucky is getting a little more attention from the press than it has since last Tuesday, when the storm hit. This is the Monday after. Time Magazine writes a professional-sounding piece that is completely devoid of emotion, mentions President Obama exactly once (in passive voice) and never ever strays into unfair wonderings such as "why isn't more being done," or "where is the President, why isn't he present here," or "how can the president stay warm, eat steak and watch football when scores have died, half a million remain cold and helpless, without power, water, heat and sometimes without food?" No one is asking why there are no pictures of bodies for the press to print. Wolf Blitzer, who famously (and terribly) cried of the Katrina displaced, "they are so poor, and so black," is not standing in teeth-chattering frost declaring, "these people are so cold, and so white..."

That would also be a terrible thing to say, and I think playing the racism card is stupid, but the point is, when Katrina hit, the press pulled out every stop they possibly could - including the racism canard - to identify that disaster with a "Bush epic fail." They ignored his early pleadings to Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco to evacuate. They ignored his declaring NOLA and surrounding areas as Disaster Areas even before Katrina hit, so the fed could immediately get to work. They ignored the proper jurisdiction of emergencies (local, then state, then fed) and the extreme incompetence of the Louisiana leadership and made Katrina all about "what Bush did or didn't do." By contrast, the press seems to be going out of its way to insure that Obama is not associated with this week-long drama at all.

We"ve heard that "Bush ate cake", while people suffered. (Obama ate steak and watched the Super Bowl). Bush did not quickly enough go to the disaster area to survey it and hug people and cry. (Obama - like the derided Bush - is wisely staying away so as not to impede relief efforts, but he remains un-derided). Bush dared to praise FEMA, even though FEMA was late because flood conditions and Gov. Blanco prevented them from doing much at first. Obama...hasn't said much of anything....

The main responsibility for disaster response is always local. That should be obvious. My criticism of Bush is that he should have used to mandate of 9/11 to make FEMA more of a goad to improve local response capability, rather than trying to place more responsibility at the federal level.

Stuff that our "news" media decide is not news...

This is old news to those of us who actually care about that great man and his talented family. But those who get their news from those dishonest people called "journalists" or "liberals" will be totally unaware. So I'm doing my tiny bit to spread the word....

Dick Cheney: The Most Pro-Gay Vice President in History:

...In her book, Now It's My Turn, Mary recounts how her father reacted when she first came out to him: "The first words out of his mouth were exactly the ones I wanted to hear: 'You're my daughter and I love you and I just want you to be happy.'"

Later, he would welcome Mary's partner Heather into their family. They sat together at President Bush's first inauguration in 2001, his second in 2005, and even today at President Obama's swearing-in. Heather joined Mary on the stage with the families of the president and vice president when Bush declared victory in 2004. The two women sat together at the White House dinner for Britain's Prince Charles and his wife Camilla.

In short, in settings both public as well as private, the conservative vice president treated his younger daughter's female partner just as he treated his older daughter's husband: as a member of the family.

Cheney didn't just look out for his daughter. He also looked out for other gay people as well.

When one of her friends, a Bush supporter, feared he might be "outed" and lose his job when the then-president announced his support for the FMA, she brought up his concerns with her father who told her to "tell this person that if anyone — I don't care who it is — if anyone gives him any trouble, he is to come see me and I'll take care of it."

That conservative Republican was willing to go to bat for a gay person.

No vice president in history has done so much for gay people as has Dick Cheney. To be sure, Cheney is the first vice president to have an openly gay child. He treats her as gay activists have long wanted parents to treat their gay children — loving them just as they did before they came out, accepting them as they are, and welcoming their same-sex spouses into their families. And it wasn't just in private where Cheney loved and accepted his daughter.

In public, he was more than just the proud father of a lesbian daughter. He also spoke out on gay issues, even disagreeing with the then-president to express his opposition to a constitutional amendment the his running mate supported.

Yet, when Cheney left office, encomia were not forthcoming from any gay organization. Searches of the websites of the leading gay organizations (e.g.,Human Rights Campaign, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, National Center for Lesbian Rights) reveal no mention of this historic vice presidency.

The leading left-of-center gay bloggers (e.g.,Towleroad, Andrew Sullivan, Pam's House Blend, Joe.My.God, Queerty) were similarly silent.

It would have been a lot different if he were a Democrat....

Actually most Republicans are not "homo-phobic." That's just lying propaganda. Those of us who think, for instance, that changing God's sacrament of marriage is a catastrophically bad idea, think that is harmful to gays most of all! Gays are being sold a bill o' goods by lefty activists who want to destroy our civilization. They are just cannon fodder in the assault on the culture, and are the real victims of the campaign to promote so-called gay marriage.

I just like the way Jonah writes...

Jonah Goldberg:

...There's the enormous I-should-have-had-a-V8! moment as the mainstream press collectively thwacks itself in the forehead, realizing it blew it again. The New York Times — which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box — created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin's background, all the while treating Obama's Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls' bedroom walls. See there, Suzie? That's a Pegasus. That's a pink unicorn. And that's a beautiful sunflower giving birth to a fully grown Barack Obama, the greatest president ever and the only man in history to be able to pick up manure from the clean end...

I can hardly write amidst such turmoil...

Matthew Hoy:

In a report out today, the Associated Press makes an assertion.

President-elect Barack Obama, relatively young and inexperienced, is facing a rapidly growing list of monumental challenges as he prepares to take the reins of a nation in turmoil.

I'd really appreciate it if someone with access to the Lexis/Nexis database would do a search to see if the media ever referred to Obama as inexperienced on its own — not as a report of GOP criticism — during the campaign.

My thoughts:

Hackneyed prose alert. "Monumental" is a word that should be used sparingly. If all your challenges are "monumental," then when one really is monumental, you will have to call it "hyper-monumental."

Did they ever give any incoming Presidents named Bush such sympathetic treatment?

"Nation in turmoil." What does that mean? I'd guess it means: "Nation under Republican leader." After January 20 you may look forward to soothing balm being applied to a prostrate nation's wounds, and the fallen lifting their heads and blinking in surprise at a new dawn.

They are laying the groundwork to explain failure. If a "young and inexperienced" person faces a long list of monumentals, well, "what can anyone do?"

You can't call them Nazis...they have a clinic!

This piece by the "Public Editor" of the NYT, Separating the Terror and the Terrorists, is about the reluctance of the Times to use the word "terrorist."

The namby-pamby-ism is just amazin'. I could write a long thoughtful screed on why obvious terrorists are not called terrorists, but really all it takes is a sentence. The Times, and most of our lefty "journalists," are like the isolationists before WWII trying to write about Nazi Germany. If you tell the truth (then or now) you are lining up for war alongside the United States and the Jews.

....The issue comes up most often in connection with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and to the dismay of supporters of Israel--and sometimes supporters of the other side, denouncing Israeli military actions--The Times is sparing in its use of 'terrorist' when reporting on that complex struggle.

The reluctance carried over when the Mumbai attacks began. Graham Bowley, who was writing for a Times blog, The Lede, said, "I'm aware very much of the sensitivity around the word, so I knew they had to be 'attackers' " until the paper knew more. One of his editors, Andrea Kannapell, told me she was much more focused in the early hours on who the people were and what they were doing than on what to call them.

Readers like 'Bill' were having none of it, and as Jim Roberts, the editor of the Web site, read their comments, he began to think they had a point. 'Indiscriminately shooting civilians seems on its very face to be an act of terror,' he said. How, Roberts wondered, could you separate the act from the actor?

He conferred with Kannapell, Paul Winfield, the news editor, and Phil Corbett, Winfield's deputy. Winfield talked with Ian Fisher, a deputy foreign editor. 'Terrorist' became an acceptable term in the Mumbai story. 'We jointly decided we didn't need to be throwing the word around flagrantly, but we didn't need to run away from it, either,' Roberts said.

Ilsa and Lisa Klinghoffer, whose father, Leon, was shot and thrown from a cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1985, wrote a letter to the editor asking why The Times was referring to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the shadowy group that apparently orchestrated the Mumbai attacks, as a 'militant group.' "When people kill innocent civilians for political gain, they should be called 'terrorists,' " the sisters said.

Susan Chira, the foreign editor, said The Times may eventually put that label on Lashkar, but reporters are still trying to learn more about it. 'Our instinct is to proceed with caution, not rushing to label any group with the word terrorist before we have a deeper understanding of its full dimensions,' she said.

To the consternation of many, The Times does not call Hamas a terrorist organization, though it sponsors acts of terror against Israel. Hamas was elected to govern Gaza. It provides social services and operates charities, hospitals and clinics. Corbett said: 'You get to the question: Somebody works in a Hamas clinic — is that person a terrorist? We don't want to go there.' I think that is right.....

My advice to Lashkar-e-Taiba: open a clinic. That will give the Times cover for its appeasement.

Just another deception to be aware of...

Katherine Lopez on the oft-repeated myth that Saxby Chambliss ran a despicable commercial against Max Cleland. The myth is being brought up again because Palin is campaigning for Chambliss...

...Now, in Anchorage -- and no doubt all over MSNBC's talking-heads shows today -- the myth lives on. The ADN item accused: "In the best Karl Rove fashion, Chambliss the draft-evader attacked Cleland the war hero for being soft on terrorism. Distorting Cleland's votes about workplace rules for the new Homeland Security Department employees, Chambliss portrayed him as a tool of terrorists like Osama bin Laden."

Saxby Chambliss, of course, did not question Cleland's patriotism. He ran an ad that, yes, included images of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, as well as images of the American military. They were reminders we're at war. The ad attacked Cleland for voting 11 times against a homeland-security bill that would have freed the president from some union mandates in setting up the new department. Agree or disagree with the bill (which was co-sponsored by then-senator Zell Miller of Georgia, a Democrat), the non-union employee measure, or the establishment of the department itself (National Review wasn't a fan of the idea), but it was absolutely fair game for Chambliss to bring it up during the course of his campaign for Cleland's Senate seat.

As NR editor Rich Lowry has written of the incident, "If you can't criticize the Senate votes of a senator in a Senate race, what can you criticize?"...

The Africa thing was a hoax...

New York Times: A Fake Expert Named Martin Eisenstadt and a Phony Think Tank Fool Bloggers and the Mainstream News Media

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. 'Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,' Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn't exist. His blog does, but it's a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.....

Tim Blair is still catching "journalists" reporting the lie that President Bush posed with a plastic turkey in Iraq in 2003! Perhaps he can start a Palin/Africa watch too, since I'd guess a lot of people will find this "too good to check" even after it's been checked and debunked...

Hmmm. Perhaps I should bill myself as a "Fellow of the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy!" It has a nice sound. Maybe "Senior Fellow." Or perhaps "Visiting Scholar?" That's nice and slippery, hard to pin-down... What do you think?

A "propaganda arm of the left" going down in flames. Ha ha.

Thanks to AOG. A fascinating piece at Winds of Change, by Tim Oren, on the decline of the newspaper industry, The Newspaper Crash of 2009... And How You Can Help...

There are three reasons the newspaper industry is going down. Perhaps more quickly than we hoped... (Besides the obvious reason that who wants a pile of inky paper when you can read blogs?)

1. The subscription-based economic model is very attractive, but only assuming that the subscriber base is stable or growing. If it is shrinking, and the cost of acquiring new subscribers is growing, you still have the expenses of putting out the paper every day. It's not like a factory you can close until times get better.

2. The newspapers have heaps of debt. Often including billions spent to "aquire" subscribers by buying other papers. Now is not a good time to be trying to refinance.

And #3, my favorite...

...One of the reasons that churn is up for the newspapers is the political bias. I'm with Orson Scott Card on this. The industry has abdicated its social function to support a well-informed electorate, and become a propaganda arm of the left. In so doing, they have sullied their brands and lost the trust of their readers. The economic consequences of this default of their value proposition are now becoming apparent. The Internet and an economic crisis together would be bad enough, but the industry has only itself to blame for the egregious behavior on display for the last few years, and at its worst right now.

This is a blog, and I make no vacuous claims to freedom from bias. You can check everything said above from public records, but I do have a dog in this fight. These people deserve to lose, and if the newspaper industry crashes as a byproduct of the economic crunch, then it's a silver lining for a dark cloud. They have done their level best to trash the political system of my country, and I will dance on their grave when they go.

Is that clear enough?...

Amen, brother.

Only scrubs act like this...

CBS New anchor Katie Couric ordered staff to drop all references to "Governor" or "Gov." from her interview with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. When a staff member pointed out that in other venues, Couric and CBS News had referred to Governor Palin's opponent, Joe Biden, using his title of "Senator" or the abbreviation, Couric, according to a CBS News editorial aide, sought approval from CBS News management to drop the "Governor" reference during her broadcast interview with Palin that began on Wednesday night.

"It's not true," said another CBS News source. "We treat everyone the same."

But, in fact, that's not the case: as late as September 22, CBS News and Couric -- even on the CBS website -- used Biden's honorific. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of a Couric interview with "Sen." Biden:

Katie Couric: How is it preparing for the debates?

Sen. Joe Biden: Well, it's kind of hard to prepare because I don't know what she thinks. There's been no -- I don't know a lot about her, so I have to assume for purposes of the debate that she agrees with John on everything.

Now compare that the transcript of the "Palin" interview:

Couric: Why do you say that? Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama? Palin: He's got the track record of the leadership qualities and the pragmatism that's needed at a crisis time like this.

In fact, at no point during the broadcast interview does Couric refer to the GOP vice presidential nominee as "Governor."....

Various Palin interview tidbits...

And this is right on...

[link] ...Charles Gibson of ABC News was out for blood and inherently applied a double-standard compared with the kid gloves George Stephanopoulos used on Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois on Sunday night.

Gibson was out to embarrass Palin and expose her presumed ignorance from the word go. By contrast, when Obama referred to his "Muslim faith" on Sunday and did not correct himself, Stephanopoulos rushed in at once to help him and emphasize that the senator had really meant to say his Christian faith...

Well, the poor empty suit needs a lot of help. The whole Obama phenomenom is just a big improvization, without any underlying philosophy. He has no ballast.

This was interesting, but wrong I think...

Ross Douthat: Sarah the unready. Now that we've seen the entirety of the Palin-Gibson tete-a-tete, I concur with Rich Lowry and Rod Dreher. The most that can be said in her defense is that she kept her cool and avoided any brutal gaffes; other than that, she seemed about an inch deep on every issue outside her comfort zone.

Yes, the questions were tougher than the ones that a Tim Kaine or Tim Pawlenty probably would have been handed, but they were all questions that a vice-presidential nominee needs to be able to answer. And there's no way to look at her performance as anything save supporting evidence for the non-hysterical critique of her candidacy - that it's just too much, too soon - and a splash of cold water for those of us with high hopes for her future on the national stage.

Maybe. But I don't put a lot of emphasis on that kind of knowledge. Character, moral courage, intelligence, judgement, faith in America....all are more important than knowledge. George W. Bush was held up to ridicule for not knowing the name of the President of Pakistan. But when the moments of testing came, he made the right decisions (in my opinion, and I'm always happy to back my opinion up with facts and logic) while a lot of people with a lot more knowledge than he failed. And there was another V-P who was suddenly thrown into the Oval Office, who was widely considered a lightweight. But Harry Truman made (in my opinion) the right choices, while many of the wise were morally adrift.

....Watching her grasp for her talking points at times called to mind Spinal Tap ("But this one goes to 11!") This was especially clear when asked about Israel. See if you can pick out her talking point (emphasis mine):

GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

PALIN: Well, first, we are friends with Israel and I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security.

GIBSON: So if we wouldn't second guess it and they decided they needed to do it because Iran was an existential threat, we would cooperative or agree with that.

PALIN: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.

GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right.

PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.

Now we know why they've kept her away from the press for two weeks....

Actually, Palin is being very clever here. She's not just mindlessly repeating a talking point, she is evading a trap. The question is a trap. Either she looks like a warmonger, or she looks like she's not supporting Israel. Either way the press will gleefully trumpet her mis-step. That's why Gibson keeps pressing her. He knows exactly the sort of thing he needs to help his party. By repeating the same "second guess" line she shows clearly how he is badgering her despite having been given her answer. And it's a good line. It shows pretty clearly that we are on the side of the good guys, without being explicit about an attack. Thank you Sarah for being smarter than the horrid little creeps of the lefty press!

If you are not smart enough to earn a living, become a journalist.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) By Ed Stoddard and Yereth Rosen- Is Sarah Palin a friend or foe of big oil?

As governor of Alaska, she raised taxes on oil companies and clashed with them over a planned pipeline through her state.

But on the fundamental issues of drilling for oil and the environment, her positions look very much like those of the man she seeks to replace: Vice President Dick Cheney...

Personally I consider a comparison with Dick Cheney to be a big compliment. But this really shows desperation by the Media Wing of the DNC.

And stupidity! The world is not divided between "friends and foes of big oil." Oil companies are just businesses, with good points and bad points. The idea that they are reservoirs of mysterious evil, and that any sane person would be "foes" of them is the level of thinking of sociology professors at junior colleges. Or Reuters "journalists." Imagine someone dividing people into friends or foes of "big auto." Pretty stupid, right?

If you are Governor of Alaska, you very much want to have big oil working in your state, but you need to negotiate hard to get the best terms you can. That's what Palin did. She's neither friend nor foe of the oil industry, and I'm sure they don't consider her a friend or a foe. More like a tough but honest business partner. Alaska is in the oil business almost as much as they are. I'd trust any oil company employee over a Reuters hack.

We are nearing the end of eight years of the Bush Administration. I'll take this moment to say, "Thank you Mr Cheney. You are a patriot and a great public servant, and your life should be an inspiration to all real Americans. And the fact that you have attracted the ankle-biting hatred of the pit-Chihuahua's of the nihilist Left is just confirmation of this."

Animals...

AOG notes:

Check out this picture (via Just One Minute). It's a lone policeman, knocked to the ground by a group of thugs at the Republican National Convention with lots of media in the circle. Just count the cameras. How many of them do you think would intervene if the thugs started beating the cop bloody? Any? How many do you think would carefully capture any (however justified) retaliation by the cop or his buddies?

Well, amen to that, brother. For citizens to stand aside and snap pictures when an officer (or anybody) is attacked by criminals is despicable.

Actually, I think about 98% of everything that goes under the name of "protest" is just pure evil. Even such a meritorious cause as the Civil Rights Movement was a witch's-brew of things good and things toxic.

You know, I think I'll just post the photo, as an example of everything I despise:

The photo is credited to a creature named Robert Stolarik of (of course) the NYT. Well Mr Stolarik, you have earned my utmost contempt, along with with all the other fake-journalists in the picture. You do not deserve to live in this great country, if you can stand by cooly as a "disinterested" observer while a citizen is set upon by a mob of hoodlums.

And of course the bogus journalist isn't "disinterested" at all. He hopes that that officer will strike back, so he can snap a picture of "police brutality" and earn his Pulitzer, or some other badge of foulest dishonor and treason. And, as always, help get the Democrat elected. (And if criminals break into his house some night, why, then what will he do? He will...........call the cops! And expect them to risk their lives to protect him.)

Vetting...

Another thing that's making me smile right now are the Leftists who are, pathetically, suddenly talking about vetting...

Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant. McCain campaign claims he was aware of this before selecting Palin as his VP, despite evidence and rampant speculation that Palin was not seriously vetted. Governor Palin is a strong supporter of abstinence-only sex education.

Tom Eagleton lasted 18 days before withdrawing from the McGovern ticket in 1972. My money says Palin doesn't last that long.

Turns out, ooops, that Bristol's condition was not even a secret. Everybody in town knew. (Take a look at Nathan Thornburgh's good piece on Wasilla.) The local folks just happen to be decent Americans, and don't blab about people's private lives.

And of course Eagleton had had serious mental health issues, which is a very different sort of thing. But there's a more important point...

...We now know far more about Sarah Palin in just four days than we've learned about Barack Obama in 17 months. That is just sad. It's a pathetic reflection of the mainstream media's unwillingness to do their jobs for fear of finding stories that would hurt the candidate so many of them openly desire to win.

But periodically appearing to read teleprompters isn't vetting, not matter how many months a candidate has done it, and Obama's ability to perform in set-piece debates is both dubious—Hillary once famously took him apart—and irrelevant. Barack Obama really has never been fully vetted. He hasn't even come close...

One of the really cool things about being a conservative is that I don't have to live in fear of people finding out what I really am up to. I can just be open about it...

Actually, I'd guess that the sicko rumor-mongering about Trig Palin played into the hands of the campaign, and allowed them to get the news out early with an appearance of reluctance, and the sympathy of all decent-minded people. Ha ha.

We are in a pivotal time...

I'm very sleepy this morning, so I'm just having fun with a silly "journalist." Whose historical horizon seems to be measured in months...(Thanks to Orrin)

AP Essay: Why this campaign matters
By LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press Writer

....Stop.

Take note.

-This is an election at a pivotal time, a tenuous period in the United States and across the world. Tenuous! All might dissolve into wispy nothingness any minute...

Here, people struggle to fill their cars with gas, their tables with food, their children with knowledge. Oh, the struggles of the little people in the Bush Depression. They worry about job layoffs, home foreclosures and shrinking pensions - and they have reason to, given cheaper overseas labor, Why didn't we see it coming? a credit crisis and havoc on Wall Street Dow's up again, honey. Wildfires scorch the West, we's scorched! floods pound the Heartland Nevah before! and tropical storms slam the Gulf Coast. It's like the End Times. The scars of Hurricane Katrina linger. Only where Democrats are in control So do those of Sept. 11. Ditto

Elsewhere, the United States leads wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions fighting in the trenches There's chaos in Pakistan. Good; wake 'em up! Russian troops occupy tiny Georgia. next stop, Berlin! Iran test-fires missiles, while North Korea grudgingly begins nuclear disarmament. Grudginly! You're really scraping for tenuous stuff there, Liz. Al-Qaida and the Taliban plot in the shadows. To which we have chased them. Genocide consumes Darfur. Evil, but how exactly does that make things tenuous here? Poverty and disease blanket Africa. Unprecedented! Israelis and Palestinians struggle still. I'm feeling more tenuous every minute. China's influence grows, as does that of the rest of Asia. Asia! Who would have dreamed? The U.S. dollar trades near record lows.

Everywhere, a changing climate threatens irreparable harm to the environment, to animal species, frankly, to the world as we know it. Good point. Frankly, the possibility of global cooling is scary! Cures for cancer and other deadly diseases remain elusive. It's a pivotal election folks!...will we chose the right candidate....or will there be deadly diseases?

Somebody, somewhere, likes this guy a lot...

Pamela Geller has a fascinating piece in American Thinker about her research which has turned up huge numbers of clearly fraudulent campaign donations the Obama campaign is receiving from overseas. Such as half a million dollars from people who list themselves as "unemployed!" (I've pasted a few samples below the fold, for your entertainment.)

But what's equally interesting is the response of the "news" media. Which has been to ignore the facts about Obama, and gin up phony stories about...McCain! Gettin' nervous, guys?

If I were a Democrat, I'd be concerned and ashamed about this pile of stinking stuff. (But most of those who are capable of shame have already become Republicans.)

....Obama's overseas (foreign) contributors are making multiple small donations, ostensibly in their own names, over a period of a few days, some under maximum donation allowances, but others are aggregating in excess of the maximums when all added up. The countries and major cities from which contributions have been received France, Virgin Islands, Planegg, Vienna, Hague, Madrid, London, AE, IR, Geneva,Tokyo, Bangkok, Turin, Paris, Munich, Madrid, Roma, Zurich, Netherlands, Moscow, Ireland, Milan, Singapore, Bejing, Switzerland, Toronto, Vancouver, La Creche, Pak Chong, Dublin, Panama, Krabi, Berlin, Geneva, Buenos Aires, Prague, Nagoya, Budapest, Barcelona, Sweden, Taipei, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Zurich, Ragusa, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Uganda, Mumbia, Nagoya, Tunis, Zacatecas, St, Croix, Mississauga, Laval, Nadi, Behchoko, Ragusa, DUBIA, Lima, Copenhagen, Quaama, Jeddah, Kabul, Cairo, Nassau(not the county on Long Island,lol), Luxembourg (Auchi's stomping grounds), etc,etc,etc,

Half a million dollars had been donated from overseas by unidentified people "not employed".

Digging deeper, all sorts of very bizarre activity jumped at us. Dr and JJ continued to break it down and pull data from various sources. We found Rebecca Kurth contributed $3,137.38 to the Obama Campaign in 112 donations, including 34 separate donations recorded in one day,

How about this gibberish donor on the 30th of April in 2008.

A donor named Hbkjb, jkbkj

City: Jkbjnj Works for: Kuman Bank (doesn't exist)

Occupation: Balanon Jalalan Amount: $1,077.23

or the donor Doodad, The # of transactions = 1,044

The $ contributed = $10,780.00

This Doodad character works for FDGFDGF and occupation is DFGFDG

The more questions we answered the more questions we discovered.

Thousands of Obama's foreign donations ended in cents. The "cents" did not make sense. And we compared McCain donation documentss to Obama's. McCain's records are nothing like Obama's. McCain's are so clean. No cents, all even dollar amounts. But Obama's contained thousands of strange, odd amounts -- evidence of foreign contributors, since Americans living overseas would almost uniformly be able to contribute dollars. Still no media...

Besotted with the candidate...

Walter Shapiro:

...Five days after Edwards flat-lined on "Nightline," I am still embarrassed by how badly I misjudged him both in print and in my personal feelings.

Beginning with a trip to North Carolina in the spring of 2001 to scout this first-term Senate phenom, I chronicled his dogged pursuit of the presidency both as a newspaper columnist and for Salon, as well as making him (and Elizabeth) central figures in my book on the 2004 Democratic primary campaign. My wife (a magazine writer who developed her own friendship with Elizabeth) and I had several off-the-record dinners with the Edwardses, including an emotionally raw evening in Washington two weeks after the 9/11 attacks.

Without overstating these bonds, I naively believed that I knew Edwards as well as I understood anyone in the political center ring. Yet I never saw this sex scandal coming -- partly because I accepted the mythology that surrounded the Edwardses' marriage and partly because I assumed that any hint of a wandering eye would have come out during the 2004 campaign. But then Rielle Hunter and the National Enquirer brought us all into the real world...

What malarky. You were besotted with Edwards because he was (or was pretending to be) a liberal Democrat. And Edwards almost certainly paid flattering attention to the guy who was writing a book about his campaign. You dolt, Edwards and his wife almost certainly coldly planned how to woo you, and knew what your weaknesses are. That's what trial lawyers do with a jury. They study every scrap of information available on each juryman, and, like chameleons, tailor the message, and paint their very selves, to fit them. (I know about this stuff; my dear wife's on the other side, the good side, fighting scoundrels like Edwards every day.)

Everybody who retained any objectivity could see that he was a phony, and were not surprised by this. When a guy talks populism and green-ism while building the biggest mansion in the county, there's a 99% chance that he's a sham. When a guy spends minutes in front of a mirror fluffing his hairdo, there's a 99% chance that he will not resist the sexual temptations available to a celebrity.

And when you make millions as a trial lawyer, it means you are skilled at convincing people of things that just ain't so.

Most importantly, what you are comes out in your life. If you are real, then a presidential campaign will bring lots of stories to the surface, from people who were impressed with the candidate's actions long before they could be helpful in any campaign. If Edwards really cared about that poor little girl supposedly shivering because she could not afford a coat, he would have been spending time working with groups who help the poor. And doing so long ago, before it might gain him any advantage. (And if Shapiro were a real journalist he would have taken note that cheap coats are available at any thrift store, and that people just give old coats away by the ton. The story was always bogus.)

Of course every candidate has to be something of a fake, and present himself in a contrived way. But there should be some congruence between the campaign persona and the real man or woman. Bush wasn't faking his love of sports; he bought, with great difficulty, a team. He wasn't just pretending to be a Texan, he showed it by frequently escaping to the Texas summer heat, to the dismay of reporters. And there have been plenty of stories about him caring for the ordinary people far beyond what the photo-op required. (Read this, for instance.)

Update: Also, a candidate has an obligation to his party and his supporters. An obligation to campaign in the best way he can, so as not to waste the donations and energy that have been given to him. To not squander the belief that simple people have. Building a mansion while playing the populist card was a betrayal in this sense. He could have just waited a few years, but self-indulgence ruled. He was openly betraying millions of supporters, and that should have been a wake-up for poor Mr Shapiro.

Send the worms to the mud.

An Affair of Honor, by James Bowman

There is something screamingly funny about the media’s lecturing John McCain about the impropriety of his saying in New Hampshire last week that "This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." Joe Klein of Time wrote: "This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad." Sad? I’ll just bet he’s shedding tears about it. Likewise David Wright of ABC News, who said to Senator McCain in an interview: "But what you seem to be saying there is that it's all about personal ambition for him and not about what he honestly thinks is right for the country."

For the last five years and upwards, the media have been saying as scurrilous things or worse about President Bush, and routinely reporting without comment or challenge the words of his fiercest critics — who accuse him of "lying" in order to take the country to war in Iraq. In all that time, I cannot recall an occasion when a reporter came back at one of those critics with the suggestion that the president might have gone to war in good faith and therefore on behalf of "what he honestly thinks is right for the country."...

There is a special deep noxious level in Hell waiting for the nihilist worms who claimed that "Bush lied," when he was saying the very same things that all major Dem leaders said, and all the leaders of the major nations said, and all the intelligence services of the major nations said...

"When heroes arise"

Charlene recommends this piece by Andrew Klavan in OpinionJournal, What Bush and Batman Have in Common...

....There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell....

....Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don't always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.

The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.

When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve. As Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon says of the hated and hunted Batman, "He has to run away -- because we have to chase him."....

Well, she also recommends the film, but so does everybody else. She told me she thought it was the first film that really deals with the War on Terror. My guess is that it's the second; the first being the Lord of the Rings movies. I recollect John Rhys-Davies (Gimli) writing sardonically that Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) didn't even realize he was playing George W Bush...

"Arrested development and star-struck immaturity..."

VDH:

....What is fascinating about the tingly-leg press is that they are exhibiting the very symptoms of arrested development and star-struck immaturity that they always accuse America in toto of suffering. The usual critique of the elite media is that we are a nation of mindless followers, who go from one fad to another, and value looks, youth, and pizzazz over substance.

But the current spectacle suggests something worse — that the press who claims they know better and are more sophisticated are, in fact, far more infantile than most Americans, and essentially Access Hollywood, People Magazine, and the National Enquirer dressed up with network logos and NY-DC bylines.

After all, few conservatives ever said that Reagan made their leg tingle. Had a candidate Reagan (remember the fury at the contrived Michael Deaver photo-ops) or even Clinton (remember the irritation at the run-on speeches and habitually late/missed appointments) created his own seal, lobbied to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, or run a campaign tour overseas as if it were a Presidential summit (replete with Freudian slips about already being coronated President), or made Bush's nuclear gaffes seem minor in comparison, he would have been crucified by self-righteous haughty reporters. If one were to take Obama's recent deer-in-the-headlights comments, stutters, pauses, contortions, and false starts when asked about the surge, and put them into the mouth of Dan Quayle, well, case rested......

Just in case you haven't seen it, here's a funny video, "Obama Love," from the McCain campaign...

John who?

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned...[link]

Well, why not? He's obviously not newsworthy; nobody they know is voting for him...

Scum de la scum...

Scott at PowerLine notes:

...By my count via a Google News search, there is a grand total of three or four newspaper stories covering the largest reenlistment ceremony in the history of the American military... [I blogged that story here]

The news-media is on the other side in this war. I hate them. I smile every time I hear about lay-offs at newspapers, and the increasing marginalization of the "network news." They deserve it utterly. They all deserve to be eating in soup kitchens and sleeping in the streets. Traitors. Nihilists. Pie-crusts.

How to lie like a journalist #2338

Here's an interesting article on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's claim that terrorism has been defeated in his country.

But, slipped into the second half of the article is something that seems newsworthy enough for its own article: AP Exclusive: U.S. Removes Uranium From Iraq. It's about how Iraq is shipping Saddam's yellowcake Uranium to Canada, where a company has purchased it for peaceful use.

That's sneaky. And typical. Leftists really really need to downplay the simple fact that Saddam was indeed pursuing nuclear weapons, and had said openly that they were intended for use against Jews. This obvious truth puts those who opposed his overthrow in the same moral position as anyone who tried to prevent us from stopping Hitler from killing Jews.

But what I found especially interesting were the last two sentences, because they are an example of lying without saying anything that is factually untrue. A Satanic skill...

....And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.

Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger - and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims - led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.

Factually true but totally misleading. In fact, a sneaky dirty lie. You would never guess from reading this that the 9/11 Report showed that the "former U.S. ambassador" lied in that very article, and had previously told the CIA exactly the opposite; that he thought Saddam HAD tried to buy Yellowcake from Niger. You would never guess that that "wide-ranging probe" found that the leak was not in the White House, as had been eagerly hoped, but in the State Department, done by a person who was not friendly to the Administration.

You would never guess that huge numbers of leftists demonstrated that they were despicable frauds when their torrents of faux outrage over the unspeakable crime of "outing a CIA agent" evaporated the instant it was found that the culprit wasn't someone whose fall might hurt the Bush administration. It's also misleading because it is presented in the form of commonly-accepted background information that needn't be scrutinized.

And mostly it is a form of lie because it is deliberate smoke and mirrors to distract us from what we should be pondering. Which is that the Iraq Campaign is pretty much justified by the facts in this article: That a mad and violent dictator was stockpiling Yellowcake with plans to make nuclear weapons.

However, slipped into the second half of the article is something that seems newsworthy enough for its own article: AP Exclusive: U.S. Removes Uranium From Iraq. It's about how Iraq is shipping Saddam's yellowcake Uranium to Canada, where a company has purchased it for peaceful use...

...But what I found even more interesting were the last two sentences, because they are an example of lying without saying anything that is factually untrue. A Satanic skill...

What's missing from this picture....

From an AP story about the floods in the Mississippi Valley, Flood victims say FEMA is doing a heckuva job .....

...Nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina turned FEMA into a punchline, many homeowners, politicians and community leaders in the flood-stricken Midwest say that so far, the agency is doing a heckuva job _ and they mean it.

Up and down the Big Muddy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is being commended for responding quickly and surely....

What's missing? It's a long article about how well FEMA is doing, but no mention of.....President Bush. Surprise surprise.

Remember how our fake-leftists reacted to the (supposed) failures of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina? Remember how it "proved" that Bush was a failure as President? Remember the pitiful fake outrage: Bush....sniff....promised to...to..to... PROTECT US!....sniff sniff sob.

Jackasses. Of course none of those cowards are going to now give Bush any credit for a success.

When rotten people hate you, it's a sign that you are doing something right. (Of course if being hated by scoundrels is a sign of worthiness, then Bush is probably the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. But I don't want to go out on a limb here.)

Roger Kimball is going to stop playing in a rigged game...

Encounter Bids The New York York Times Farewell
BY ROGER KIMBALL | JUNE 23RD, 2008
Beginning today, June 23, 2008, Encounter Books will no longer send its books to The New York Times for review. Of course, the editors at the Times are welcome to trot down to their local book emporium or visit Amazon.com to purchase our books, but we won’t be sending gratis advance copies to them any longer.

“But wait,” you might be thinking, “I don’t recall the Times reviewing titles from Encounter Books.” Precisely! By and large, they don’t, at least in recent years. That’s part of the calculation: why bother to send them books that they studiously ignore?

In the last month, Encounter has had two titles on the extended New York Times best-seller list: Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor by Roy Spencer, and Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, by Andrew C. McCarthy. But that list is the only place you will find these books mentioned in the pages of The New York Times. We’ve also published other brisk-selling books that the Times has ignored—Guy Sorman’s Empire of Lies: The Truth About China in the Twenty-first Century, for example, or Philip F. Lawler’s Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture, or Bruce Thornton’s Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow Motion Suicide or Caroline Fourest’s Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, to name just a few recent titles.

Not, I hasten to add, that Encounter’s experience is unique. Consider, to take just one example, Mark Steyn’s book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, published in 2006 by Regnery. This is a brilliant book about one of the most pressing issues of our time—the threat of radical Islam and the West’s loss of cultural confidence. It perched for weeks on the Times’s bestseller list. But that was the only place in the Times you would see the book mentioned because the Times’s editors chose to ignore it.

In favor of what, you might ask? Well, there are reviews of books about people like Ron Jeremy, a porn star, and then there are reviews of books like Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. And let’s not forget Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America and The Surrender: The Beauty of Submission, a meditation on the joys of sodomy by a former ballerina, both of which got full reviews in the Times (actually, The Surrender got several notices). Not that the Times is monomaniacal. In the current issue of the Book Review, there is a review of a book by a University of California linguist that endeavors to explain “how the right wins and keeps power: by framing issues and controlling minds.” I knew there had to be some reason......

Good for Roger. How I despise The Paper Formerly Known As The Paper Of Record (to use Rand Simberg's appellation). Their collapse can't come fast enough for my taste. I read the statistics of their declining circulation and revenues, and smile, and think of the Far Side cartoon where some dinosaurs are sitting around chatting, and one is holding his hand out in puzzlement to catch a falling snowflake....

I want you to look at this picture and DESPAIR!...

This AP article, Everything Seemingly is Spinning Out of Control, is really too stupid to waste time on, but it's a sleepy afternoon. What really bugs me is what whores journalists are. If the editor asked this person he would write a similar piece on how hopeful and improving things are, and how confidence is strong. (And he will, once a Dem gets in the White House.)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. [Happened before, will happen again. Each time with more problems because more people build in flood-plains.] Polar bears are adrift. [And Antarctic ice is at a record maximum] Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. [Actually they are still high compared with just a few years ago] Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. [Yet we seem to afford them] Wars without end rage in Iraq, [What a moron. We are clearly winning in Iraq] and Afghanistan and against terrorism. [All wars are "without end"...until they end.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave. [Stupid remark. Alger's stories were about triumphing over adversity, not enjoying lotus-land. So how is alleged adversity going to make him spin?]

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance. [If this is the "thesis" of this essay, where's the evidence? The fact that we have problems is NOT evidence that we feel "powerlessness."]

The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order -- and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, ''Yes, we can.'' [This is completely illogical. A message of change and "Yes we can" is the opposite of a sense of hopelessness.]

Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003... [Actually I believe current polls show a majority of Americans happy about their own personal prospects.]

An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood.

..."It is pretty scary,'' said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about things, you have very little power to make it change.'' [This is evidence of.....of....what? Midwest Derangement Syndrome? Is "things are going to get better" supposed to mean no more tornados?]

Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone. [So? What's the point? You think earthquakes in China are a new thing?]

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire. [A "world gone haywire" measured from what baseline? What is the normal non-haywire steady-state? When did it happen?]

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge? [It's something that happens every few decades, clot-brain. You can look it up.]

This is too silly to keep on with. Let me just provide some actual evidence against the idea that floods in the Midwest are shocking novelties, and mean that our world is coming apart at the seams. This picture was taken May 11, when we were visiting our son Rob in Grand Forks, ND, for his graduation. He and I are standing level with the town around us, and least 20 feet above the level of the Red River, which you can see behind us. (For that 1997 flood I blame Clinton!)

Flood monument in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Curs...

Christopher Hitchens on Douglas Feith's War and Decision

....Bertrand Russell's principle of evidence against interest—if the pope has doubts about Jesus, his doubts are by definition more newsworthy than the next person's—doesn't really justify the ocean of coverage in which the talentless McClellan is currently so far out of his depth. For one thing, he doesn't supply anything that can really be called evidence. For another, having not noticed any "propaganda machine" at the time he was perspiring his way through his simple job, he has a clear mercenary interest in discovering one in retrospect.

If you want to read a serious book about the origins and consequences of the intervention in Iraq in 2003, you owe it to yourself to get hold of a copy of Douglas Feith's War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. As undersecretary of defense for policy, Feith was one of those most intimately involved in the argument about whether to and, if so, how to put an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein. His book contains notes made in real time at the National Security Council, a trove of declassified documentation, and a thoroughly well-organized catalog of sources and papers and memos. Feith has also done us the service of establishing a Web site where you can go and follow up all his sources and check them for yourself against his analysis and explanation. There is more of value in any chapter of this archive than in any of the ramblings of McClellan. As I write this on the first day of June, about a book that was published in the first week of April, the books pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe have not seen fit to give Feith a review. An article on his book, written by the excellent James Risen for the news pages of the New York Times, has not run. This all might seem less questionable if it were not for the still-ballooning acreage awarded to Scott McClellan...

Read it all.

What cowardly dogs liberals are. At least those who run those newspapers. They have heaped invective upon Douglas Feith, mentioned him thousands of times, and then, when he tells his side of the story, they do their best to make sure no one gets to hear it. They pretend he isn't "newsworthy." Scrubs.

A lull.......in the news coverage.

From the WaPo. Kudos to them for noticing, even if they are more than a year late...

The Iraqi Upturn: Don't look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war.

THERE'S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks -- which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. [Not odd at all. Predictable. The news media's side is losing, so there's a news blackout.] While Washington's [meaning trendy-leftoid Washington] attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have "never been closer to defeat than they are now." [The US and her allies traditionally keep fighting until we hit on a war-winning strategy. Then we WIN. The good guys, that is. So how can it be so surprising when we do it again?]

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained "special groups" that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. [They are "waging war against Americans." The Post has said it. So where are the anti-war activists? Where are the pacifists?] It is -- of course -- too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments -- and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the "this-war-is-lost" caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama....[Many people (those not blinded by hatred of Bush and America) were noticing a shift in the wind in EARLY 2007. So how stupid is it that the press is just now STARTING to wise up? And your brain-dead Dem politicians are still clueless? Do they all deserve to be fired? Yes.]

...Gen. David H. Petraeus signaled one adjustment in recent testimony to Congress, saying that he would probably recommend troop reductions in the fall going beyond the ongoing pullback of the five "surge" brigades deployed last year. [Let's all hold our breath waiting for the "anti-war" Left to thank him.] Gen. Petraeus pointed out that attacks in Iraq hit a four-year low in mid-May and that Iraqi forces were finally taking the lead in combat and on multiple fronts at once -- something that was inconceivable a year ago. As a result the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki now has "unparalleled" public support, as Gen. Petraeus put it, and U.S. casualties are dropping sharply....

...When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success. [Sullen silence, peevish carping, or re-writing history are the usual plan for lefties in these situations. See: Cold War, End of.]

Chilly outside?

Here's a nice summary of some of the reasons we possibly ought to be thinking about global cooling. It's hidden in a small-town paper, no surprise; the big media are not about to speculate outside their comfort-zone. Thanks to Alan Sullivan...

Eau-Claire Leader-Telegram:
The 2008 winter was the coldest in 40 years for the upper Midwest, Plains states and most of Canada. Minnesota newspapers report that this year's opening of the locks to Mississippi barge traffic, delayed by three weeks, was the latest since the modern waterway opened in 1940.

Eau Claire, where "old-fashioned winters" have been a thing of the past, recorded 43 days of below-zero temperatures, while folks down in Madison shoveled away at a 117-year record snowfall throughout the season, as did many in New England and Canada.

Rare snowfalls struck Buenos Aires, Capetown, and Sidney during their mid-year winter, while China continually battled blizzards. Even Baghdad experienced measurable snowfall.

Antarctic pack-ice far exceeded what Captain Cook saw on his 18th century voyage into the Southern Ocean. On the continent itself the miles-thick ice continues to accumulate despite peripheral melting along the Antarctic Peninsula and occasional calving of an ice block. At the opposite pole, flow-ice once again spans the entire Arctic Ocean, and by April it had extended into the Bering Strait, making up for the much heralded melt-back last summer.

From January 2007 through the end of January 2008, the average global temperature fell by nearly a degree Fahrenheit, based on data obtained by the MET Office in Great Britain and other international temperature monitoring networks....

There's also Argo which I wrote about here. Remember that AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) theory is mostly based on computer models. And the models agree that the oceans are earth's great (and stable) heat sink. Surface temperatures may go up and down in a confusing way, but warming should be clearly seen in deep ocean temperatures. Argo is one of the biggest scientific experiments ever. Argo was intended to clinch AGW theory. And now, funny thing, our brave and clear-sighted scientists and journalists don't mention Argo.

Oh, and then there are those Sunspots. Read on....

....Solar experts highlighted how sunspots, and associated magnetic storms on the Sun's surface, affect Earth's weather and climate. The previous (very strong) 11-year sunspot cycle, associated with the recent warmth, ended in 2007, after having peaked in 2002. The new cycle should have already begun, but hasn't yet.

In the absence of sunspots, solar flares are minimal. Flares eject massive streams of electrons and protons outward from the Sun. A portion of this stream, called the "solar wind", bathes our planet producing the aurora and interfering with communications. The solar wind, as it interacts with Earth's magnetic field, also protects us from the harmful effects of cosmic radiation.

During periods of weak solar activity - as at present - cosmic rays (high-energy protons originating in interstellar space) penetrate through the troposphere and ionize oxygen and nitrogen molecules. The ions become nucleating sites for water vapor that condenses into clouds. And when sunspots are at a minimum, more clouds form and correspondingly more sunlight is reflected back into space. The enhanced reflectance (albedo) cools the Earth. We all have experienced how quickly the temperature drops when the sun ducks behind a puffy white cloud on a warm, dry afternoon.

Past cool periods, identified with the late stages of the "Little Ice Age" and with the Maunder and Dalton climate minima, closely correlate with low sunspot numbers (astronomers have kept close tabs on sunspots since Galileo's time). Some solar-physicists are now saying if the current cycle doesn't begin to produce spots soon, we can expect a cool-down like the 19th-Century Dalton minimum - or worse. Decades-long cooling in the past brought crop failures to Europe from repeated summer frosts and restricted growing seasons.....

More BS from AP...

Nibras Kazimi deconstructs the AP story about Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issuing fatwas against the American "occupation." (Of course we are not really "occupiers," since we remain there at the invitation of Iraq's elected constitutional government.) It's worth reading the whole post.

Red Herring Fatwas
So what happens if the western media can’t spin or sensationalize events in Iraq when not much is happening? Why, they make it up!

The Associated Press put out a wire report yesterday hinting that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is about to declare jihad against the Americans. Whhhhhaaaaaat???....

....If we’ve learned anything from the recent events in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul—by the way, these are Iraq’s three largest population reservoirs—it should be that the reporters and commentators who are tasked to describe Iraq to American and western audiences are at worst dishonest and duplicious, at best some string puller’s chorus of useful idiots.

It is in this vein that this AP story is released; to distract from other things that could be reported in Iraq, such as how things are dramatically improving and how this war has been decisively won.....

....UPDATE: A source close to Sistani denied today (Arabic link) that the Grand Ayotallah's about to announce jihad, saying that Sistani believes that occupation (...in a general sense) must be resisted by peaceful, not military, means under a given set of circumstances.

Don't expect AP to release a retraction, though. Plus, don't expect the punditeers who feverishly linked to the AP fairytale to update their posts either.

That's you, Orrin...

We're the good guys. Of course we win...

Ralph Peters:

May 20, 2008 -- DO we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there?

If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.

Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.

You won't see that above the fold in The New York Times. And forget the Obama-intoxicated news networks - they've adopted his story line that the clock stopped back in 2003.....

...And Obama, the NYT, and al-Qaeda are the bad guys. They want America and the free people of Iraq to lose. They are on the other side.

Oh well. So what else is new...

"Tangential" issues...

Stephen Spruiell, at The Corner:

A bunch of liberal journalists have written an open letter to ABC to whine about its handling of Wednesday night's debate. "We're at a crucial moment in our country's history," they write. "Large majorities of our fellow Americans tell pollsters they're deeply worried about the country's direction... Tough, probing questions on these issues clearly serve the public interest... excessive emphasis on tangential 'character' issues do not."

The signers include at least seven contributors to The Nation, whose editors never saw anything "tangential" about George W. Bush's Air National Guard service and what that said about his character. A Google search of The Nation's website for stories on that topic yields 72 stories — none of which called on the media to stop focusing on such a tangential character issue...

Do I ever remember how self-rightous the press and the Left was about the issue of Bush's service—even while insisting that we should ignore a few hundred vets who wanted to raise the issue of Lt Kerry's service and character back then.

And in both cases it is the Democrat whose character really needs to be scrutinized, simply because neither of them have ever accomplished anything of note. We need to guess at what sort of leaders Obama or Kerry will be, because they've never led. Whereas Bush had run businesses, a baseball team, the State of Texas, and served a term as President. And McCain at least has his name on major legislation, and has been fighting over big issues in the public eye for decades. Not to mention being a very open person, who wears his heart on his sleeve.

And the "journalists" know this perfectly well. Their job is always to slip the Democrat past the electorate. And most of them think the same about small-town Pennsylvanians as Obama does. They are just wishing his character was more adept at faking being American.

The “Fighting rages” dodge...

Nibras Kazimi is still, it seems to me, making sense of Maliki's offensive in Iraq...

...For how can one not pity those miserable journalists as they scramble to find new narratives to define the last 48 hours in Iraq?

Not only has Maliki not backed down, but newly emboldened with wide political backing he’s begun to smash through Sadr City itself and is threatening to banish the Sadrists to a political Siberia. Muqtada al-Sadr, the guy the media has us thinking had won, has prostrated himself at the feet of Grand Ayotallah Sistani, promising Maliki that he would indeed demobilize his militia if the wise old men of Shi’ism would have it so. Gone are the millenarian certainties of taking orders from the Mahdi, the messiah. Gone is all that bluster of al-Sadr’s virile, confident ‘Outspoken hawza’ contrasted with Sistani’s supposedly feeble and retro ‘Silent hawza’. And he sends out his plea for clemency from Iran. FROM IRAN?!! From a place of chosen exile with which he had often derided the Hakims for seeking sanctuary and shelter there after Saddam has nearly eradicated their lineage. The place too, towards which his father’s confidants still point their accusing fingers for the murder that had befallen the old man and that of Muqtada’s two older, more worthy brothers.

Sadr surrendering his fate to Sistani and submissively muttering, “Do as you please, Sir.” Who would have imagined?

It is almost as baffling as Maliki’s abrupt transformation from an incompetent administrator into a wartime commander-in-chief!....

and...

...Well, it now seems that the rumor is official according to this press report (Arabic): Muqtada al-Sadr has cancelled his 'March of the Millions' anti-American demonstration set for tomorrow to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the liberation of Baghdad.

In retaliation for whimping out, Code Pink has formally revoked al-Sadr's membership and expelled him from its ranks. Furthermore, Barack Obama has withdrawn his offer of a cabinet post that he had offered to Muqtada. Going yet further, Nancy Pelosi has cast off her Mahdi Army bandanna. Dozens of western journalists were seen protesting the cancellation outside Sadr's HQ in Sadr City, angry over the time and effort they had lavished while pre-writing tomorrow's story and the waste of all those flashy headlines and headcounts that they won't get to use. Ha!....

I like this guy! And this for our fraudulent journalists, is perfect:

...Yes, you miserable souls: keep writing in that passive tense, that “Fighting rages” dodge. Never mind that Maliki and the Iraqi Army are actively picking a fight with the outlaws, a fight that the government is winning, and that’s the reason why the bullets are whooshing by...

There are times when fighting is supposed to "rage." Like, uh, when you are attacking somebody! That's good. That's a good sign. It's a war, you dolts. (I don't actually think that "war" is the correct term to describe the "Global War on Terror," but it will have to do until I think of a better one.)

Alternate views...

Nibras Kazimi is a Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute, who writes a weekly column on the Middle East for the New York Sun, and a monthly column for the Prospect Magazine (UK).

His blog is Talisman Gate, and he's been writing fascinating posts on what's been happening in Basra. I don't know enough to judge his accuracy, but he's a lot more convincing than what we've been getting from the Western media, and Western bloggers.

A sample: Monday, March 31, 2008 The ‘Intifada’ That Wasn’t

...The western media operating in Iraq regurgitated the Mahdi Army’s bravado as fact thereby serving as useful propaganda tools for the criminal cartels. I’d single out the New York Times, the Associated Press, McClatchy and CNN as the worst transgressors. Many journalists were positively orgasmic in anticipation of another ‘intifada’ or uprising to crease Bush’s message of hope and regeneration. But as the dust began to clear and the real scope of the battle was revealed, these journalists were reduced to alarmism of the “What if Martians decide to invade Basra too?” variety. Understandably, some of these journalists wanted the Iraq scene to heat up so that the public back in America would pay attention to Iraq and consequently to the careers of those reporting on Iraq for their once-glamorous war zone beat that was sure to land one a book deal a couple of years back had gone dull and dreary.

What then did these journalists do when they didn’t get their ‘intifada’? They couldn’t further imperil their careers by admitting that they were wrong—hell no!—so they’ve decided to brand Maliki and the Iraqi Army as the losers....

...Operation Cavalry Charge was a reality warp for all those who’ve internalized the rhetoric that Iraq is a failed state. Instead of being dismissed as a ‘Green Zone politician’, Maliki took his war cabinet to Basra and went all Untouchables on the Al Capones of Iraq’s oil-rich south; plenty of journalists and ‘experts’ simply could not grasp these dramatic changes to the political topography of Iraq.

Maliki won, pure and simple. The western media invented the narrative that Maliki was at war with the Sadrist movement, even though no such declaration was ever made. No one was interested in turning the Sadrists into martyrs when their stocks are sinking faster than Bear Stearns' anyway. Why turn the Sadrists into desperadoes with nothing to loose? Maliki’s approach is piece-meal: he’s taken out the intimidation factor that kept much of the Sadrist sway in place and he’s done that by showing them that they are no armed match for a better-disciplined, better-supplied Iraqi Army with plenty of stamina. The Sadrists are left with some political gains that they’ve accrued from joining the political process, such as government posts and lucrative contracts that they’d be loathe to part with and that’s their collateral for good behavior from now on....

Some other posts to read: The Great Green Zone Freak-Out of ‘08, and As the haze clears, and More Media Distortions...

strangest health story in many years?

Hugh Hewitt, on another recall of possibly-contaminated Heparin from China....

This remains the strangest health story in many years because it is so under-reported....

...The questions I have yet to see answered in a newspaper account (or anywhere for that matter):

Where and when did the 19 fatalities occur?

During what time frame did the "hundreds" of allergic reactions occur?

Are there possible long-term consequences from use of the adulterated heparin which patients have to be vigilant about?

Have all patients who received potentially contaminated heparin been informed?

Why are there still possibly-contaminated Heparin products on the market?

Either the 19 deaths and "hundreds" of allergic reaction numbers are inflated or conjecture, or this story has been terribly handled by MSM.

It's certainly odd how little we've heard of this.

My guess is that it's mostly political. There's no domestic political angle. If An American firm were at fault, this would be a big story. If Mr McCain owned stock in that company, it would be a HUGE story. (If Mr Obama were involved, it would be a story about "Republican smear tactics.")

But mostly I would guess it's a non-story because the media's instincts are always Tranzi. They don't want you to notice that there are certain differences between countries...since they are hoping to kind of merrrrrge things, under the supervision of elite post-nationalist bureaucrats. A group that would have considerable overlap with elite post-nationalist journalists.

Are we at the "willing suspension of disbelief" stage?

Alan Sullivan writes:

...Today BBC has a new datum from Antarctica. A section of ice shelf is breaking away. You have to read the article closely to find amid the language of alarm that the chunk is question is a small piece of a small shelf on the Palmer Peninsula — the one part of Antarctica that has been warming. The rest of the continent has been getting markedly colder for many years. This is not mentioned in the article. BBC provides no balance in climate coverage, only propaganda.

The “unprecedented warming” of the peninsula is probably a direct consequence of the continent chilling. With colder air over the great icecap, ocean storms round the perimeter get stronger. Those storms drive maritime winds over the north-jutting peninsula, causing a local warming. It has nothing to do with global climate, which is not warming, and has not been for nearly a decade. Curiously enough, BBC has offered readers no story on the startling data from the Argo buoy program, announced last week. It covered the launch of the system with green enthusiasm in 2000. Now not a word. Why? Because Argo finds no warming in the oceans, and zealots can abide no contradiction....

We are in an interesting situation here, where those following certain subject via the Internet are aware of a growing disconnect between what you "read in the paper" and what's actually happening on the ground. And the fascination is in wondering when "they" are going to be forced to acknowledge the new reality.

This is starting to feel a lot like Iraq in early 2007, when blogs started to pick up on stories about sheikhs in al Anbar turning against al Qaeda, and about the shift in our tactics to counter-insurgency. And our question became not: "who's going to win," but instead: "When are our lefties going to be forced to admit that their side has lost?"

I'm wondering if the "global warming" debate is approaching a point similar to when Hillary greeted Gen. Petraeus' report with her "willing suspension of disbelief" wise-crack. (McCain recently suggested it was high time she apologized to a great American. I kinda hope she gets the nomination just so McCain can rub her nose in it.)

This is sort of like watching a movie, where the characters have decided to explore the spooky mysterious old house How long will it be before something jumps out at them?... This is going to be fun.

Great Satan ascendent...

NYT:

...Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet.

Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic. Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism...

That's because their side is loosing. Have some sympathy!

It must be crushing to be a "journalist" these days, and see your hopes and dreams crumble into ashes. Half a decade they've invested in Saddam, in al Qaeda, in Kerry, in the Ba'athists, in Cindy Sheehan, in Moqtada al Sadr, in Iran.......only to see evil triumph, and George W Bush's mercenaries swaggering the streets of Baghdad, laughing and smiling and handing out candy to all those horrid little pickininnies...

Heartbreaking.

Reporters no more?

From an interesting piece in PJ Media on whether reporters are an endangered species...

...This middleman function, with reporters serving as mere links in a news supply chain, was never needed until fairly recently. Before the printing press was invented, we were all receivers and transmitters of news, spreading it by word-of-mouth. Soon after its invention, multitudes of mostly one-man print-shops, as a sideline, printed newspapers to supplement this word-of-mouth process. These printers wrote their own articles blending facts with opinion, much like bloggers do today. Others also contributed, often without receiving compensation or attribution — citizens, gossips, letter-writing “correspondents” from other towns, and similarly-operating foreign and domestic newspapers whose stories were simply lifted.

Since this is what news looked like at the time of the Founding Fathers, they gave no particular mandate to reporters, a function that did not even exist at the time. The “freedom of the press” they cited in the First Amendment was not about “the press,” but about everyone’s right to freely use a printing press to express their views without government interference, supplementing the free speech clause that allowed everyone to express their views orally.

The first full-time reporter in America did not appear until the 1820’s, after steam engines were integrated into printing presses. Suddenly, newspapers had to be run like businesses to achieve consistently high circulation levels to pay for equipment and keep newsstand prices low. Reporters provided the needed constant flow of consistently well-written articles....

The term "reporter" usually means a generalist. His job is, for the most part, to find the person who has specific knowledge, and pass that knowledge on to the public. He's a middleman. If he is covering a fire, he will talk to witnesses and firefighters, and boil down their knowledge into a story. And he is a generalist, because the next day he may be covering a royal wedding or a prize fight.

The Internet tends to destroy middlemen. (Or actually it's a more general trend of the Information Age. When I was young, maybe in the late 50's or early 60's, my father was transitioning his nursery business from selling plants to wholesalers, to selling direct to retail nurseries and flower shops. This was probably a matter of easier flows of information. Freeways and better phone service meant that salesmen could cover more ground, and work directly with a lot of small businesses. So goodbye local wholesaler.)

If there is a big fire, the witnesses can now put information directly into the hands of consumers, say by posting it in a blog. So who needs reporters?

But a reporter can also be himself the person who has specific knowledge. If he covers a special beat, then he may have understanding that most people don't. So he is more than a middleman, he is able to create valuable information on his own. Which doesn't necessarily mean he will be able to sell it in an age that has torrents of free information "deflating the currency."
(Thanks to Rand)

Their job--slipping the Democrat past the electorate....

You know, it's the press that bugs me, much more than Mr Obama or Ms Clinton. Those two (& McCain) are politicians, they are mostly acting like politicians do. Since I have never for a moment thought that Mr Obama was really a "uniter," or had gone beyond partisanship, I'm only occasionally able to become outraged. The news-media, on the other hand, I despise from year's end to year's end.

Tim Graham at NewsBusters:

....Up until the Brian Ross report, CBS was the only network to do the barest shadow of a report that could make Obama's campaign a little more difficult. Even Reynolds left out a few details. Farrakhan won the "Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award" to a man who "truly epitomized greatness" -- in 2007. Where were the media on that? Doesn't this divisive minister of Obama's cause a serious problem for a candidate who's been sold as a uniter, not a divider?

Why, this late in the primary season, are we still discovering that they haven’t asked any of the hard questions? We are starting to see the same disturbing pattern we saw with John Kerry in 2004. The media didn’t see its job as vetting John Kerry as he told everyone he was the bravest of war heroes. When the men who fought with him on the swift boats told a different story, the media tried to ignore them.

The media was saying "print the legend," and suggested that when opponents try to vet the Democrat, when they try to do the job a supine media blatantly failed to do, it was then the media’s job to vet the opponents and question their sincerity, not vet the Democrat.

The news media doesn’t see its job as informing the electorate. They see their job as getting the Democrat past the electorate.

The real story about the Swift Boat Vets was that they had to pay to communicate with the electorate. Because the "journalists" had never bothered to ask them what they thought about their old comrade. And we are so used to their bias that we hardly notice that a big news story was simply ignored by the news-gatherers....

Turning over a rotting log...

OBAMA'S JEREMIAD. By Investor's Business Daily:

Election 2008: Imagine the uproar if John McCain's pastor used the "N"-word and asked God to "damn" blacks. Yet Barack Obama's pastor condemns whites, and liberal pundits bite their lip.

This newspaper was the first to draw attention to Obama's hate-mongering preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, and his black segregationist church in Chicago. Our January 2007 editorial, "Obama's Real Faith," exposed their preaching of a militantly anti-white and socialist doctrine called the "Black Value System," triggering a major story in the Chicago Tribune, which led to other stories.

Now comes the leaking of recently videotaped sermons by Wright angrily condemning whites as racists and America as evil. If you close your eyes, you'd swear you were listening to the hateful rantings of uber-bigot Louis Farrakhan. Like the Nation of Islam minister, Wright feeds his 8,500-member flock, including Obama and his family, legends about whites keeping blacks down by getting them hooked on crack and then locking them up. He even claims whites invented AIDS to destroy blacks.

Obama is not immune to such myths. Until recently, when he was informed it wasn't true, he repeated a favorite Wright line that "we've got more black men in prison than there are in college."

"The government gives (black men) drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," Wright thundered in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Locked in a Jim Crow time warp, he claims America — which he affectionately calls "the US-KKK-A" — is "controlled by and run by rich white people." Never mind that institutionalized racism is a distant memory. Or that the most popular candidate in the country right now, according to some polls, is his top acolyte.

In 2006, Wright said from the pulpit: "Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. And. And-and! God! Has got! To be sick! Of this sh*t!"....

If Mr Obama has been sitting in the pew for twenty years listening to this foul lying stuff, he not only does not deserve to be President, he does not deserve to be welcomed into the company of decent people. And if Democrats are not anti-American racists, they will repudiate him. Ha ha...I won't hold my breath on that one.

Of course in one sense he wasn't sitting in a pew, since this is not religion. It's politics. Mr Wright's church has been "hollowed-out," its faith replaced by politics, just as much as the many mushy white churches that have replaced salvation through the Lord Jesus with "peace 'n justice 'n the UN Millennium Goals."

And of course this is a perfect example of how the news-media hurts Democrats by trying to help them. Maybe, just maybe, certain Democrat Primary voters would have wanted to know this stuff. Hmmm? D'you think? Too late now, suckers. Maybe you Dems should think about telling the press to just report the damn news honestly, instead of trying to mold the country with their superior elite wisdom.

"When mystery no longer counts for anything, then politics necessarily becomes the religion"
      --Pope Benedict XVI, Truth And Tolerance: Christian Belief And World Religions, p. 126

"work together in pursuit of shared goals "

Here's the News Report from those foul lying traitors honest patriots you see on TV...

March 13, 2008 2:44 PM

ABC News has requested and obtained a copy of the Pentagon study which shows Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaeda.

It's government report the White House didn't want you to read: yesterday the Pentagon canceled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's availability and didn't make the report available via email or online.

Based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion and thousands of hours of interrogations of former officials in Saddam's government now in US custody, the government report is the first official acknowledgment from the US military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to al Qaeda.....

And, here's the first paragraph of the Executive Summary of the actual report...(Thanks to Steven Hayes):

Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist-operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam's security organizations and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some way, a "de facto" link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime...(my emphasis)

That's all you need to know. Saddam's was a terror-supporting regime. We are engaged in a global struggle against terrorism. For that reason alone we were perfectly justified in taking out Iraq. In fact there was no need to ask permission of Congress, just as FDR needed no special permission to invade French Morocco, (or Iceland, for that matter). The President could have just picked up the phone and told Rumsfeld to do it. And informed the public after the fact.

Wars are to fight. In a war you attack your enemies. Duh.

It's jam to me, I must confess....

I must admit I'm taking a certain grim satisfaction in the way the NYT and the press are attacking John McCain with innuendo and zero facts. We conservatives have been gritting our teeth for so long watching a certain important Republican senator sucking-up to the Times and the news-media, who have been happy to pretend to like him as long as he attacks our president and his own party.

PowerLine writes:

.... the Times offered zero evidence of either the affair or the favors. That didn't bother the AP, though; if the Times "suggests" something, it's fit to print.

The AP next proceeds to place Cindy McCain in a long line of political wives whose husbands have been accused of sexual misdeeds: Larry Craig's wife Suzanne; Hillary Clinton; Dina McGreevy, whose husband publicly announced an affair with a gay lover; Carlita Kilpatrick, whose husband, the Mayor of Detroit, sent "sexually explicit text messages" to his top aide; Lee Hart, whose husband Gary frolicked with Donna Rice aboard the Monkey Business...you get the picture.

But wait! Those are all women whose husbands actually did something wrong. To put Cindy McCain in that group implies that the "rumor" that the Times "strongly suggested" might be true is actually a fact. I think that John and Cindy McCain belong in another group altogether: innocent people whose reputations have been slimed by irresponsible rags....

It's not only fun, it's going to be very interesting to watch how this works out, and how big John responds to his media pals turning on him. And it's also pleasing to think that McCain will be much harder for the Democrats to beat, since they will have much less ability to say that he's just part of the Bush administration, etc, after having reveled in him being the "maverick."

Lists of reasons...

Over the last few months serious bloggers and pundits have given us lists of reasons why conservatives oppose John McCain. But you would never haver guessed that there were such documents from listening to the mainstream media. Opposition to McCain was invariably portrayed as personal pique, or kooky right-wing extremism.

I caught a bit of Rush Limbaugh this morning, and he was quoting some media lefties who are coming up with........lists of reasons why conservatives oppose John McCain! Gee, I wonder why the shift?

"revenues declined 22.4%"

Charlene noticed this Bizzyblog post, about how the news media ignored or downplayed the fact that the two recent bombings in Baghdad we done using mentally retarded women. That's the sort of detail that might make almost anyone realize that surrendering to these monsters is madness. And realize also that al Qaeda is possibly scraping the bottom of the barrel for "single-use activists."

So of course the terrorist-allies in the news media slanted the story to “the new Baghdad feels a lot like the old Baghdad.”

The Bombings were not done to influence Iraqi opinion--it's long past obvious that the Iraqis are not going to be cowed by terror-bombings. Those women and children in the pet markets in Baghdad were killed for the New York Times. And CNN, and CBS, and the rest. They were killed BY our news-media, who have demonstrated a thousand times that they will spread the terrorist story-line. That they will reward al Qaeda for bloody slaughters.

Those poor people were slaughtered to give propaganda ammunition to our "anti-war" activists. They were killed for our "pacifists." They were killed for Barack and Hillary. They were killed for the Democrat Party. They were killed for Ron Paul. they were killed for the Quakers...

But there was a tiny crumb of comfort in the last line of the post:

...In totally related news, the New York Times Company (symbol NYT) reported Thursday that, though it turned a profit in its fourth quarter, December revenues declined a heart-stopping 22.4%.

"Hate-speech disguised as a public service"

Ralph Peters is excellently scathing today: The New Lepers: The Times' Trouble With Vets

...The purpose of Sunday's instantly notorious feature "alerting" the American people that our Iraq and Afghanistan vets are all potential murderers when they move in next door was to mark those defenders of freedom as "unclean" - as the new lepers who can't be trusted amid uninfected Americans.

In the more than six years since 9/11, the Times has never run a feature story half as long on any of the hundreds of heroes who've served our country - those who've won medals of honor, distinguished service crosses, Navy crosses, silver stars or bronze stars with a V device (for valor)...

...Pretending to pity tormented veterans (vets don't want our pity - they want our respect), the Times' feature was an artful example of hate-speech disguised as a public service.The image we all were supposed to take away from that story was of hopelessly damaged, victimized, infected human beings who've become outcasts from civilized society. The Times cast our vets as freaks from a slasher flick.The hard left's hatred of our military has deteriorated from a political stance into a pathology: The only good soldier is a dead soldier who can be wielded as a statistic (out of context again). Or a deserter who complains bitterly that he didn't join the Army to fight...

...So let me suggest the best-possible revenge on the veteran-trashing jerks at The New York Times: Instead of fleeing in terror the next time you see a veteran you know, just thank him or her for their service.

And let's save the leper's bells for dishonest journalists.

If you subscribe to the NYT, you are "embedded" with the Father of Lies

John at PowerLine demolishes that vile NYT story about how returning vets are committing murders....

...Now put yourself in the place of a newspaper editor. Suppose you are asked to evaluate whether your paper should run a long article on a nationwide epidemic of murders committed by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan--a crime wave that, your reporter suggests, constitutes a "cross-country trail of death and heartbreak." Suppose that the reporter who proposes to write the article says it will be a searing indictment of the U.S. military's inadequate attention to post-traumatic stress disorder. Suppose further that you are not a complete idiot.

Given that last assumption, I'm pretty sure your first question will be: "How does the murder rate among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan compare to the murder rate for young American men generally?" Remarkably, this is a question the New York Times did not think to ask. Or, if the Times asked the question and figured out the answer, the paper preferred not to report it...

The evidence presented clearly says that the murder rate among returning vets is much lower than the national average for their age group!

But watch, this lie will not go away. It will probably become part of folklore. Like the despicable lie that Vietnam vets were more likely to have psychological problems than average.

The sort of people who work for the New York Times hate this country, and hate our military. They hate both for exactly the same reason--because both represent the idea that there are things worth fighting for. Things that are bigger and more important than "me." For nihilists, this is poison.

Digging in the muck...

John at PowerLine takes the trouble to demolish the deranged NYT editorial I mentioned yesterday. A dirty job, but someone has to do it....

...What is really "twisted beyond recognition" is the Times' account of America's interrogation practices. What the paper describes is simply a fantasy. In fact, President Bush issued an executive order directing that all prisoners be treated humanely. Torture is illegal, and there is no evidence that any executive agency has authorized the use of torture. Waterboarding is the most intense interrogation method that has been authorized, with respect to as few as two high-level terrorists. While opinions differ, I think it is obvious that waterboarding is not torture. It does no physical harm, and is a technique that we have used to train pilots. The Times' reference to the role of doctors is dishonest. What doctors actually do was described in the paper's own news story:

[I]n the spring of 2002, ... the intelligence officers flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins Hospital to treat Abu Zubaydah, who had been shot three times during his capture in Pakistan.

In fact, as the Times itself reported, the CIA started videotaping interrogations in part to show how well the captured terrorists were being treated...

...Perhaps the editorial board has joined the countless millions of Americans who don't read the Times....

And John has the same opinion as my friend---this is a temper tantrum...

...In other words: Elect a Democrat in 2008, or we're going to stamp our feet and hold our breath until we turn blue!

One anticipates with fascinated horror how they will react to a President Romney....

One of our gals...

Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard Blog notes the top ten opinion pieces (by page views) of the WaPo for 2007. Who's number one?

Retreat Isn't an Option, By Liz Cheney, January 23, 2007

....We are at war. America faces an existential threat. This is not, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed, a "situation to be solved." It would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and say, as Sen. Barack Obama suggested at a Jan. 11 hearing, "Enough is enough." Wishing doesn't make it so. We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can't negotiate with them or "solve" their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later....

Liz is Dick and Lynne Cheney's daughter. that's her on the right in the picture. (And who's number two in the WaPo? A guy named Kristol.)

Temper tantrum...

A friend sends a link to this NYT Editorial, Looking at America...

This amounts to a fists-pounding-on-the-floor temper tantrum. My favorite theory is that Pinch found himself alone in the editorial room last night and got this thing out before “cooler” heads (Andy Rosenthal??) arrived. This could only happen on a Monday before a major Tuesday holiday. They are probably hoping no one reads it.

Lordy, what a pile of crap. I'm tempted to refute all their points with facts and logic, but it would serve no purpose—it's been done a thousand times already, by far better writers than I, without any effect on the deranged....

Good news is bad news for certain people....

Michelle Malkin writes in NRO...

There should be no question what the top story of the year was: America’s counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, the Democrats’ hapless efforts to sabotage it, and the Western mainstream media’s stubborn refusal to own up to military progress.

What happened in January defined the rest of the year. We rang in 2007 with vehement liberal opposition to the “surge” of 21,000 added U.S. troops and tactical changes to secure Baghdad. In the ensuing 12 months, Democrats tried and failed repeatedly to undermine this military strategy and starve the war of funding. Their poisonously partisan allies at MoveOn.org attempted to smear surge architect and patriot Gen. David Petraeus as a traitor. The New York Times and Associated Press fought tooth and nail to obscure the successes of the surge with their relentless “grim milestone” drumbeat. But by year’s end, with Shiites and Sunnis marching and praying together for peace, even anti-war Democrats and adversarial media outlets alike were forced to acknowledge that undeniable military progress and security improvements had been made....


....There’s a reason the magazine and newspaper editors are naming everything but the surge as their top story of the year. (Putin? The Virginia Tech massacre? Come on.) Good news in the war on terror is bad news for those rooting for failure. Far easier to play up casualties and sectarian strife, sensationalize accusations of atrocities, and demonize the men and women in uniform to indulge Bush Derangement Syndrome, as Washington Post staffer and NBC military analyst William Arkin did on Jan. 30 when he lambasted troops for enjoying “obscene amenities” and serving as a “mercenary” force...

Nothing shows what frauds and worms our peaceniks are, than their utter indifference to the enormous drop in casualty rates in Iraq, both military and civilian. That kind of peace they don't like one little bit. You can bet that if America had blundered somehow in Iraq, that would be the "story of the year."

An abu Ghraib gets 10,000 headlines. But the countless acts of courage and decency that are the daily routine of our forces in Iraq, and their many successes--those the poisonous reptiles of our press are not interested in. We would know almost nothing of them if it were not for the Internet.

(Thanks to Ed)

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh...

Quote, from Media Research Center's The Best Notable Quotables of 2007...

“You know, I wanted to sit on a jury once and I was taken off the jury. And the judge said to me, ‘Can, you know, can you tell the truth and be fair?’ And I said, ‘That’s what journalists do.’ And everybody in the courtroom laughed. It was the most hurtful moment I think I’ve ever had.”
      — Co-host Diane Sawyer joking on ABC’s Good Morning America July 12, following a report on how some people try to avoid serving on a jury.

If only they'd had some rotten fruit to pelt her with....

Media start asking why?...No time soon

From Vin Suprynowic, How many more will die in 'gun-free' zones before the media start asking why? (Thanks to InstaPundit)

...The second question? Mr. Lott, author of "Freedomnomics" and a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, put it very well in the Fox News column in question:

"A Google news search using the phrase 'Omaha Mall Shooting' finds an incredible 2,794 news stories worldwide" in the first 24 hours alone, Mr. Lott notes. "But ... none of the media coverage, at least by 10 a.m. (Dec. 6), mentioned this central fact: Yet another attack occurred in a gun-free zone.

"Surely, with all the reporters who appear at these crime scenes and seemingly interview virtually everyone there, why didn't one simply mention the signs that ban guns from the premises?" asks Mr. Lott, who posts the "No weapons allowed" sign from Salt Lake City's Trolley Square Mall (it's rule 10 at http://johnrlott.tripod.com/2007/02/proof-that-trolley-square-mall-in-utah.html )

"Oh come on, Vin," someone will protest at this point. "It wouldn't matter even if these places did allow people to carry guns. Hardly anyone goes armed, so how often would a plain old non-policeman with a gun really save lives?"

Pretty often, it turns out....

I bet that if your could examine the thought processes of the "journalists" who produced the 2,794 stories, not one of them would have consciously hidden an important fact. Rather, they have a certain mental picture of how the world works, and even if you had tapped them on the shoulder whilst they were writing the stories, and told them this important fact, they would not hear you. (Sort of like that Far Side cartoon, "What you say." "What your dog hears.")

And I would wager that not one of them could or would debate the issue. Even if you tied them to a chair and put a gun to their heads and said: "You've slanted a news story to fit your agenda. The penalty is death....unless you can support your position in debate using logic and facts." They couldn't do it to save their lives.

Reason 898 why I hate "the press"

I hate them, and I laugh with bitter pleasure each time I read of declining circulation for the nation's newspapers....

From NCR:

NEW YORK — When the Associated Press set out to investigate an apparent problem with sexual assault of children in public schools, the organization spared no expense. A congressionally mandated study by Hofstra University had already found school-based sexual abuse to be a big problem.

“It was one of our priorities for the year,” said John Affleck, editor of the AP’s national reporting team.

The result was a three-part series, available to editors throughout the country beginning Oct. 20, that revealed widespread and routine sexual assault of public school students throughout the country. The first story summarized: “Students in America’s schools are groped. They’re raped. They’re pursued, seduced and think they’re in love.”

The series told of an entrenched resistance to stopping abusers on the part of teachers, administrators and the National Education Association, a teacher’s union.

So why apparently have only a handful of newspapers nationwide run the series — in stark contrast to the avalanche of press received by the Catholic Church since 2002? Paul Colford, corporate communications director for the AP, said he was inundated with complaints from people wondering why their newspapers were not carrying the series...

And, a few figures for contrast...

...“The Boston Globe began publishing on Jan. 6, 2002, a series of reports regarding sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston,” Nussbaum wrote “In a flash, newspapers around the country began reprinting the Globe’s reports and developing their own. They published 728 stories in January; 1,095 in February, and 2,961 in March. By April, these papers were publishing a new story every nine minutes, 160 every day, 4,791 for the month. By year-end, American papers provided their readers over 21,000 stories of sexual abuse by Catholic priests.”

Boston Globe editors contacted by the Register claimed only vague knowledge of the AP series, and could not answer as to whether part of it ran in their paper....

"forms of artistic expression"

Fascinatin' stuff at PJ Media on fraudulant video from Palestinians, and how Western media are happy to help out with the fraud, and the Jew bashing...

...So when asked why he had inserted unconnected footage of an Israeli soldier firing a rifle into the Al Dura sequence in order to make it look like the Israelis had killed the boy in cold blood, an official of PA TV responded: These are forms of artistic expression, but all of this serves to convey the truth… We never forget our higher journalistic principles to which we are committed of relating the truth and nothing but the truth.When Talal abu Rahmah received an award for his footage of Muhammad al Dura in Morocco in 2001, he told a reporter, “I went into journalism to carry on the fight for my people.”

These remarks serve as an important prelude to considering the France2 rushes that will be shown in court in Paris on November 14 in the Enderlin France2 vs. Philippe Karsenty defamation case. These tapes were filmed by Talal abu Rahmah on September 30, 2000, and for seven years, Enderlin has claimed that the tapes prove him right and show the boy in such unbearable death throes that he cut them out of his report. But several experts who have seen the tapes (this author included) claim that the only scene of al Dura that Enderlin cut was the final scene where he seems alive and well; and still more disturbingly the rest of the rushes are filled with staged scenes. Indeed there seems to be a kind of “public secret” at work on the Arab “street”: people fake injury, others evacuate them hurriedly (and without stretchers) past Palestinian cameramen like Talal, who use Western video equipment to record these improvised scenes. Pallywood: the Palestinian movie industry.

Which brings us to a problem more complex than the fairly straightforward observation that Palestinian journalists play by a different set of rules in which this kind of manipulation of the “truth” is entirely legitimate. What do Western journalists do with these products of propaganda? Do they know these are fakes or are they fooled? Do they tell the cameramen working for them and using their equipment that filming such staged scenes is unethical and unacceptable? And if they do, why do cameramen who have worked for them for years – Talal worked for Enderlin for over a decade when he took these rushes – continue to film these scenes. And how often do our journalists run this staged footage as real news?

Here the evidence provided by the Al Dura affair suggests that, in some sense, journalists are “in” on the public secret. When representatives of France2 were confronted with the pervasive evidence of staging in Talal’s footage, they both responded the same way. “Oh, they always do that, it’s a cultural thing,” said Enderlin to me in Jerusalem. “Yes Monsieur, but, you know, it’s always like that,” said Didier Eppelbaum to Denis Jeambar, Daniel Leconte, and Luc Rosenzweig in Paris....

"forms of artistic expression..." The sick thing is that they LEARN this foul postmodernist crap from us. We TEACH THEM to be liars and murderers.

"forms of artistic expression"

Fascinatin' stuff at PJ Media on fraudulant video from Palestinians, and how Western media are happy to help out with the fraud, and the Jew bashing...

...So when asked why he had inserted unconnected footage of an Israeli soldier firing a rifle into the Al Dura sequence in order to make it look like the Israelis had killed the boy in cold blood, an official of PA TV responded: These are forms of artistic expression, but all of this serves to convey the truth… We never forget our higher journalistic principles to which we are committed of relating the truth and nothing but the truth.When Talal abu Rahmah received an award for his footage of Muhammad al Dura in Morocco in 2001, he told a reporter, “I went into journalism to carry on the fight for my people.”

These remarks serve as an important prelude to considering the France2 rushes that will be shown in court in Paris on November 14 in the Enderlin France2 vs. Philippe Karsenty defamation case. These tapes were filmed by Talal abu Rahmah on September 30, 2000, and for seven years, Enderlin has claimed that the tapes prove him right and show the boy in such unbearable death throes that he cut them out of his report. But several experts who have seen the tapes (this author included) claim that the only scene of al Dura that Enderlin cut was the final scene where he seems alive and well; and still more disturbingly the rest of the rushes are filled with staged scenes. Indeed there seems to be a kind of “public secret” at work on the Arab “street”: people fake injury, others evacuate them hurriedly (and without stretchers) past Palestinian cameramen like Talal, who use Western video equipment to record these improvised scenes. Pallywood: the Palestinian movie industry.

Which brings us to a problem more complex than the fairly straightforward observation that Palestinian journalists play by a different set of rules in which this kind of manipulation of the “truth” is entirely legitimate. What do Western journalists do with these products of propaganda? Do they know these are fakes or are they fooled? Do they tell the cameramen working for them and using their equipment that filming such staged scenes is unethical and unacceptable? And if they do, why do cameramen who have worked for them for years – Talal worked for Enderlin for over a decade when he took these rushes – continue to film these scenes. And how often do our journalists run this staged footage as real news?

Here the evidence provided by the Al Dura affair suggests that, in some sense, journalists are “in” on the public secret. When representatives of France2 were confronted with the pervasive evidence of staging in Talal’s footage, they both responded the same way. “Oh, they always do that, it’s a cultural thing,” said Enderlin to me in Jerusalem. “Yes Monsieur, but, you know, it’s always like that,” said Didier Eppelbaum to Denis Jeambar, Daniel Leconte, and Luc Rosenzweig in Paris....

"forms of artistic expression..." The sick thing is that they LEARN this foul postmodernist crap from us. We TEACH THEM to be liars and murderers.

"It's like watching two guys you really despise get into a barfight..."

You are, no doubt, familiar with the blog of Fake Steve Jobs... He's got a great rant on the "Hollywood writers."

.....Obtain a clue, people. You're sitting there fighting over residuals and terms of this and that when what you should be doing is leaving the system altogether and helping to build the next one. But you can't do that because you can't get off the heroin of network money. You're hooked to a lifestyle. For all your groovy talk and hip little soul patch beards, you're the most risk-averse people in the world. You're lifers. I mean, you belong to a fucking union! How fucked up and 20th century is that?

Listen, Hollywood TV writers. For fifty years you've had a nice little gig going for yourselves. You've unionized and set up all these stupid rules and you've created a closed-off little club and you've done all you could to keep other people out of the club so you could make ridiculous amounts of money just for pumping out piles of shit content. Now guess what? The Internet blows that up. The Internet is anarchy. There's no writers guild. There's no limit on the number of channels. The writers and actors and directors who've been shut out of your club are creating their own alternate universe. They don't want to be in your club. Worse yet for you, they don't want you in their club, either. They don't need you. They don't give a shit about what you do. They view you as a bunch old, fat, stupid, overpaid hacks. Which you are....

Poor Iraqi's suffer in Bush's War...

UN ReliefWeb:

....Taxi driver Ahmed Khalil Baqir used to station himself outside Baghdad's main morgue, waiting for grieving families who went there to claim their relatives’ dead bodies.

"I was totally dependent on them for my living," Baqir, a 44-year-old father of four, said." I never thought about picking up people in the street as I was being hired five to eight times a day by these families. But now it is a waste of time to wait there and these days I wait only for about three hours in the morning and I continue my work picking up passengers in the street.” (Thanks to Belmont Club)

You'd think this stuff would be news, wouldn't you?

...."Violence-related deaths in September dropped remarkably to levels not seen in more than a year as the number [of violence-related deaths] stood at 290 while in September 2006 the number was about 1,400," Adel Muhsin, the health ministry's inspector-general, told IRIN in a phone interview.

According to the ministry’s statistics, between January and the end of September 2007, the number of violent deaths involving civilian, police and military in all of Iraq was about 7,100, against 27,000 in the same period of 2006.

According to Muhsin, the average number of dead bodies sent to Baghdad’s main morgue just over a year ago was between 100 and 150 a day. Now, it is no more than 10 bodies a day, and about 50 percent of them are dying in normal circumstances.

There have been days this year when no dead bodies were sent to the morgue and this gave the morgue employees a chance to refurbish it, something they couldn't do in the past....

In the old days of the Soviet Union, airplane crashes were not reported. People knew that an Aeroflot plane had gone down when they read in Pravda stories about air crashes in the United States! We have a remarkably similar situation with our news-media today. If there's no news about Iraq, you can guess that the news is good. (And if a Congressman is indicted for corruption, and there's no mention of party affiliation, you know he's a Democrat.)

There's one subject that's never in "all the news that's fit to print"

Bruce Kesler:

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez’ speech and Q&A session at the Military Reporters & Editors convention has unleashed a whirl of major media coverage and commentary. (See Memeorandum, for examples.) All are focused on his criticism of the Bush administration for inadequate strategy and prosecution of the war.

However, neither the New York Times or Associated Press mention that over 40% of Sanchez’ speech severely took the major media to task. The Washington Post merely mentions it, and then underplays it at the end of its report, giving it 67 out of about 850 words in its coverage:....

What frauds...

At least they are honest about their dishonesty...

From NewsBusters.org, ‘Journalists’ Tell Howard Kurtz Why Good News from Iraq Shouldn’t Get Reported:

....KURTZ: Joining us now to put this into perspective, Robin Wright, who covers national security for The Washington Post. And CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr.

Robin Wright, should that decline in Iraq casualties have gotten more media attention?

ROBIN WRIGHT, THE WASHINGTON POST: Not necessarily. The fact is we're at the beginning of a trend -- and it's not even sure that it is a trend yet. There is also an enormous dispute over how to count the numbers. There are different kinds of deaths in Iraq.

There are combat deaths. There are sectarian deaths. And there are the deaths of criminal -- from criminal acts. There are also a lot of numbers that the U.S. frankly is not counting. For example, in southern Iraq, there is Shiite upon Shiite violence, which is not sectarian in the Shiite versus Sunni. And the U.S. also doesn't have much of a capability in the south.

So the numbers themselves are tricky. Long-term, General Odierno, who was in town this week, said he is looking for irreversible momentum, and that, after two months, has not yet been reached.

KURTZ: Barbara Starr, CNN did mostly quick reads by anchors of these numbers. There was a taped report on "LOU DOBBS TONIGHT." Do you think this story deserved more attention? We don't know whether it is a trend or not but those are intriguing numbers.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: But that's the problem, we don't know whether it is a trend about specifically the decline in the number of U.S. troops being killed in Iraq. This is not enduring progress. This is a very positive step on that potential road to progress.

KURTZ: But let's say that the figures had shown that casualties were going up for U.S. soldiers and going up for Iraqi civilians. I think that would have made some front pages.

STARR: Oh, I think inevitably it would have. I mean, that's certainly -- that, by any definition, is news. Look, nobody more than a Pentagon correspondent would like to stop reporting the number of deaths, interviewing grieving families, talking to soldiers who have lost their arms and their legs in the war. But, is this really enduring progress?

We've had five years of the Pentagon telling us there is progress, there is progress. Forgive me for being skeptical, I need to see a little bit more than one month before I get too excited about all of this....

It would be hopeless to try to argue with such people. We can only be thankful that the Internet routes around them...

Only Americans commit atrocities...

From Gateway Pundit..

From The New York Times October 6, 2007
Last year, when accounts of the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha by a group of marines came to light, it seemed that the Iraq war had produced its defining atrocity, just as the conflict in Vietnam had spawned the My Lai massacre a generation ago.

But on Thursday, a senior military investigator recommended dropping murder charges against the ranking enlisted marine accused in the 2005 killings, just as he had done earlier in the cases of two other marines charged in the case. The recommendation may well have ended prosecutors’ chances of winning any murder convictions in the killings of the apparently unarmed men, women and children.

That's The New York Times special way of saying "I'm sorry" for condemning the Haditha Marines to hell for the "apparent" cold-blooded murder of innocents before their trial even started.

And, isn't it interesting how The New York Times is still searching for an atrocity to define the War in Iraq?

An Al-Qaeda atrocity like the Yazidi bombings, the murder of a brave young Sunni Sheik, torture chamber drawings, or dismembering and booby-trapping dead soldier's bodies just won't do.

It must be an American atrocity...

That's exactly right. An American war, especially when led by Republicans, must be "defined" by an atrocity. It cannot be "defined" by unimportant trifles, like, say, millions of people risking their lives to vote in free elections. That's worthless to the "Democrats" at the NYT. And worthless to (most at least) of the tens-of-thousands who subscribe to the NYT, or the many local papers and stations who let the NYT decide what's "news." And of those incidents like blowing up hundreds of people in a marketplace were not an atrocities at all...because they weren't done by Americans.

This is a very minor blog I have here, and so I really don't have to be tactful and pussy-foot around. I'll just say what I think: If you subscribe to the New York times, it's about 95% likely that you are anti-American. You hate this nation. Of course you won't admit it, but if I had you hooked up to some sort of emotion-detector, and I said: "I believe that this is the freest and best country ever, and when she is attacked YOU owe her a DUTY of generous warm-hearted loyalty and service, even at the risk of your life," the dial would go right over to "Oh Yecchhh!"

Hey, New York Times animals, how about a "defining moment" of courage or virtue or self-sacrifice? Hmmm? There have been thousands of candidates, though a person would never know it from reading the Paper Formerly Known As The Paper Of Record. Or how about thinking for a moment (That's not politically correct, but I won't tell anyone) about the implications of how you've been lusting after a "defining (American) atrocity" since March of 2003, and you haven't found one yet! What could that possibly mean?

More of "No news is good news"

This from Investor's Business Daily:

That the media are no longer much interested in Iraq is a sure sign things are going well there. Instead, they're talking about the presidential campaign, or Burma, or global warming, or . . . whatever.

Why? Simply put, the news from Iraq has been quite positive, as Petraeus related in his report to Congress. Consider:

• On Monday came news that U.S. military deaths in Iraq fell to 64 in September, the fourth straight drop since peaking at 121 in May and driving the toll to a 14-month low.
• Civilian deaths also have plunged, dropping by more than half from August to 884. Remember just six months ago all the talk of an Iraqi "civil war"? That seems to be fading.
• The just-ended holy month of Ramadan in Iraq was accompanied by a 40% drop in violence, even though al-Qaida had vowed to step up attacks.
• Speaking of al-Qaida, the terrorist group appears to be on the run, and possibly on the verge of collapse — despite making Iraq the center of its war for global hegemony and a new world order based on precepts of fundamentalist Islam.....

They are Traitors. They are on the other side. The news media that is. Well, one of the pleasures of our time is enjoying the decline of the "press." Every month brings stories of falling circulation and declining revenues. Well deserved.

It is especially pleasant when I think of the frauds who weren't content to just be "reporters." Oh no, We are a "profession," not a trade. We are....Journalists! We go to a University to get an advanced degree in journalism, and thereby obtain mastery of a science that ordinary people can hardly understand, and should not be allowed to practice!

And we have, as befits a professsssionnn, ethics classes and "ethicists." Who occasionally tiptoe around the fact that journalism is about 95% liberal Democrat (and 90% trendy urbanite) and who could not report the news even-handedly if they tried, because they are not even interested in most of what makes up America. But the ethicists and "ombudsmen" never, to my knowledge, touch on the question of the duty an employee owes to his employer.

If I work for a company, I have a duty to the stockholders or owners to try to make that company profitable. If I worked for your company and I drove away your customers because they were not Republicans and I personally did not care for them, I would be stealing from you! I would be indulging a personal pleasure at your expense, just as much as if I took money from the till to buy ice cream. That's exactly what most "journalists" do.

Here's a good piece on the decline of, as Rand Simberg likes to put it, the Paper Formerly Know As The Paper Of Record,: Black and White and in the Red All Over...

....So, if the problem isn’t the global environment, the local environment, the labor environment, technology, the subscription model or regional conditions, perhaps it’s the newspaper. Could the problem be that the New York Times has a liberal bias? Perhaps. Circulation declines tend to support that idea. If I were an investor, I’d wonder whether general readers are nearly as interested in endless hyper-detailed reporting about Abu Grahib or the alleged Valerie Plame ‘outing’ as the editors seem to be. One wonders whether obsessing over such stories is the best way to separate Mr. and Mrs. America from their dollar and 25 cents Monday through Friday. Or a gusher of gushing praise over "Brokeback Mountain" the way to get four dollars from them every Sunday...

...The New York Times built its reputation by being America’s newspaper of record. If something big happened, it was in the Times. But that’s the Old New York Times. The new New York Times routinely ignores UN corruption stories and Democratic scandals far longer than other publications...

I feel an extra amount of venom for the NYT, because I grew up with the idea that they were the very acme and pinnacle of whatever it was that they were the acme and pinnacle of. It was all kind of vague, but the NYT was definitely tops, and was supposed to be looked upon with a special sort of reverence. In jr high and high school there were a couple of teachers I liked because they were bookish and intellectual (what a concept, an intellectual teacher!) and they always spoke highly of the Times.

The headline would be very different if their side had won...

This headline just struck me as coming from twisted thinking...

New York Times: Fighting Leads to Deaths in Southern Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 21 — About 40 Taliban fighters and at least four civilians have been killed in fierce clashes in southern Afghanistan, officials said today, while two NATO soldiers were killed in other attacks...(Thanks to Orrin)

So "fighting" does not normally lead to deaths? Is this analogous to "Teen Party Leads To Deaths"? Is it being implied that things have been bungled in some way? I suspect we are supposed to think: "Once those Americans invade a country, things go downhill and violence "appears."

And that word "fighters," what do they mean? Are these people combatants in a war? If so, they are committing war crimes, and have forfeited the right to certain niceties, like being taken prisoner rather than being shot out of hand. If they are NOT combatants, then they are terrorists. Which is it, NYT?

The headline ought to be: Taliban Attacks Thwarted; 40 Terrorists Killed by NATO Forces

Too bad they'll settle out of court...

Good post by Beldar on the Dan Rather suit..

...My glee is tempered by my realization that this case is almost certainly going to go away before it gets to any good stuff. But oh! it would be fun to watch CBS be forced to justify its putting of Rather out to pasture in a not-quite-firing by showing all of the grounds it had. Usually in a good juicy family court spat, you find yourself in sympathy with at least one litigant. But here's a case in which I can just cut loose and enjoy the misery and embarrassment of all concerned! (I continue to take pride in the high ranking of this post of mine from 2004 in search engine responses to the words "Dan Rather fired.")...

A scoundrel crew. How they deserve to be exposed! what a disgrace the whole episode was...I could go on at length if I had time.

The best of the jest right now is that Rather's lawyers are apparently part of the "reality-based community," and seem to be operating on the assumption that the forged documents were authentic! Hilarious.

Expanding ice caps...

John Hinderaker:

You've no doubt read about the shrinking ice cap at the North Pole, and the plight of the polar bears there. It's less likely that you've heard that in the meantime, the ice cap at the South Pole has been expanding, and just recently reached its largest extent since measurements began in 1979.

I compared Google News searches for "ice cap 'north pole'" and "ice cap 'south pole.'" The North Pole stories were all about the shrinking ice cap there as evidence of global warming. I couldn't find a single news story about the expanding ice cap at the South Pole. This strikes me as a pretty good illustration of how the conventional story line about Earth's climate drives news reporting...

Neither North nor South Poles are definitive evidence in themselves. Climate change would not be linear. But this is sure powerful evidence of what a bunch of frauds our news-media are.

The whole globo-warming debate is warped because a LOT of things are not being mentioned. Things that would cause the little people—you and me— to possibly fail to reach the conclusions deemed appropriate by our elite would-be masters. For instance, 99% of the Greenhouse Effect on Earth is caused by water vapor. And lucky we are that it is; we'd be pretty cold without it. We'd all be living in the "Antarctic."

Fact checking reveals no fact checking...

Pajamas Media: Army Checkmates The New Republic:

....PJM’s Bob Owens interviews Major John Cross, who led the U.S. Army’s investigation into Private Beauchamp’s shocking claims. Even more shocking is what Cross reveals below: Among other findings, there is no credible evidence that TNR [The New Republic] made any attempt at fact checking prior to publishing the articles. Furthermore, not one of the soldiers interviewed under oath in the investigation corroborated Beauchamp’s story....

Look, there's nothing too complicated here. The New Republic was, for many decades, the thoughtful responsible liberal mag. You could respect them even if you didn't agree with them. But that ecological niche doesn't exist any more. There just aren't many thoughtful responsible liberals these days. So TNR has to either die, or appeal to the moveon.org sickos. It's just business.

So the whole Oh-my-god-they've-been-caught-in-a-lie-they're-toast story line, seen in many conservative blogs, is absurd and anachronistic. They don't care that they've been caught in a lie, because they are not trying to appeal to people who give a damn about truth. The fact that they lied to smear the US military is a plus to the people they need as subscribers...

Too too rich!

from the Daily Mail...

If he didn't believe in karma before, Piers Morgan must surely do now.

The ex-newspaper editor, now a columnist for The Mail on Sunday's Live magazine, took great delight in making fun of President Bush for falling off a Segway - the two-wheeled, motorised, gyroscopically balanced scooter that, its makers promise, will never fall over.

His paper, the Daily Mirror, ran the headline in 2003: "You'd have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn't you Mr President." It added: "If anyone can make a pig's ear of riding a sophisticated, self-balancing machine like this, Dubya can." So, it seems, can Mr Morgan.

Scroll to the bottom of the page to watch our exclusive video of Piers's fall....

to as few as nine...

From Protein Wisdom:

....I cannot speak for everyone who supports the mission in Iraq, but I would submit that Beauchamp’s apparent fables and embellishments are not a “weak link” to be attacked, but simply an egregious example of the establishment media’s flawed coverage of the conflict. Accordingly, what follows is an over view of the establishment media coverage of the conflict in Iraq.

Though public opinion polls consistently show that Americans consider Iraq to be the most important issue facing the country, establishment media has slashed the resources and time devoted to Iraq. The number of embedded reporters plunged from somewhere between 570 and 750 when the invasion began in March 2003 to as few as nine by October 2006. The result was the rise of what journalists themselves call “hotel journalism” and “journalism by remote control.” Janet Reitman, reporting for Rolling Stone, described the state of the media in early 2004:

When I arrive in Baghdad in April, most American journalists are holed up in their rooms, reporting the war by remote: scanning the wires, working their cell phones, watching broadcasts of Al Jazeera. In many cases, they’ve been reduced to relying on sources available to anyone with an Internet connection… While Arabic and European media such as The Guardian and Le Monde manage to cover the war on the ground, American reporters seldom interview actual Iraqis. Instead, they talk to U.S. officials who are every bit as isolated as they are, or rely on local stringers and fixers, several of whom have been killed while working for Americans. “We live in a bubble,” grumbles one AP reporter. “If we know one percent of what’s going on in Iraq, we’re lucky.”

There are exceptions of course, though the number of establishment embeds shows they are literally exceptions. I do not discount the very real danger to Western journos in Iraq, though independent bloggers like Michael Yon, Bill Roggio, Bill Ardolino, and Michael J. Totten seem to have been able to embed outside Baghdad with nothing like the institutional support available to journalists from the establishment media… and that the number of such bloggers is growing. Moreover, I cannot ignore the consequences of “journalism by remote control.”

Noah D. Oppenheim, who visited Baghdad for MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” noted that “The consequence of this system is that, on television, the story in Iraq is no more than the sum of basic facts, like casualties, crashes, and official pronouncements.” The data back Oppenheim. The television airtime devoted to coverage of Iraq has plunged dramatically. Television networks devoted 4,162 minutes to Iraq in 2003, 3,053 minutes in 2004, 1,534 minutes in 2005 and 1,122 minutes in 2006. The amount of time and space devoted to Iraq coverage has continued to decline through the first half of 2007...

Bad news stories, especially the daily death tolls, consumed an ever-larger share of this dwindling coverage. In 2003, it consumed 38% of the networks’ Iraq newshole. In 2004 and 2005, it consumed 44%. In 2006, it rose to 56%....

One of the ironies of the situation is that the really interesting story is not the terrorist violence, which is repetitive, but the story of a democraic nation struggling to be born amidst frightful difficulties. Reading Michael Yon or the other independent bloggers in Iraq is especially fascinating because they put us in contact with ordinary Iraqis, good and bad.

If anyone who still believes that their TV is giving them the real Iraq is reading this post, read This as an example, one of many...

If your read the NYT or WaPo or LAT...

...you are drinking from poisoned wells. From Captain Ed:

Let's say we're at war, and we're waiting for some specific action to take place to show us that our efforts are succeeding. Add in that the war itself would be rather controversial and that our political class is split as to whether we will ever see that specific action take place. Imagine that Congress and the White House have scheduled a showdown in the next couple of weeks to determine how much longer we will wait for that development.

Now imagine that the specific action for which we've waited actually occurs. Where would you think that story appear in Washington's biggest newspaper? The front page, one might assume. Would you believe ... page 9?...

Unbelievable. And apparently the news was not even in the NYT or LAT!

The news of course, is the announcement of wide political agreement within Iraq's government for changes in the de-Baathification law. For our major "news"papers to ignore the story is a sign of desperation within the al Qaeda/Democrat alliance, and a really indicator of progress for the forces of freedom...

Update: And this certainly gives the lie to the claims of Leftists that they hate the Iraq Campaign BECAUSE it is not militarily winnable, or now, BECAUSE the Iraqi government can't make any political progress. Those are all lies.

They hate this campaign for the reason I explained here

How stupid can you be?

THE AUTONOMIST:

A caption to an AFP picture:

" An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her
house [emphasis added] following an early coalition forces raid in the
predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City."

The bullets in the picture have obviously not been fired!

What fascinates me is, should we add to the known fact that Political correctness lowers your effective IQ, the possibility that being a journalist lowers your effective IQ?

Of course if you are a "journalist" you hate America and want to show how horrid we are. But surely anyone who deals in news photos must have seen pictures of those little empty brass cylinders being ejected from firearms? Can even the most drugged-up of hippie pacifist morons imagine that the whole cartridge flies through the air? And can hit a house and remain shiny and un-dented?

Same lies over and over...

Michelle Malkin has a great round-up of "the toxic American disease known as Winter Soldier Syndrome."

The tale of Army Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the discredited “Baghdad Diarist” for the discredited New Republic magazine, is an old tale:

Self-aggrandizing soldier recounts war atrocities. Media outlets disseminate soldier’s tales uncritically. Military folks smell a rat and poke holes in tales too good (or rather, bad) to be true. Soldier’s ideological sponsors blame the messengers for exposing anti-war fraud.

Beauchamp belongs in the same ward as John F. Kerry, the original infectious agent of the toxic American disease known as Winter Soldier Syndrome. The ward is filling up....

Michelle has various others, with YouTube videos. There have been a lot of them. It's revealing to see them all listed together...

...Think Jimmy Massey, the unhinged Marine who falsely accused his unit of engaging in mass genocide against Iraqis...

...Think Jesse MacBeth and Micah Wright, anti-war Army Rangers who weren’t Army Rangers....

...Think Josh Lansdale, the anti-war Army medic who attacked former GOP Sen. Jim Talent by spinning a bogus health care tale swallowed whole by Dem Sen. Claire McCaskill, Gen. Wesley Clark and the far Left VoteVets.org crew....

..Think Amorita Randall, the NYTimes-championed former naval construction worker who told the Times magazine that she served in Iraq, was in a Humvee that blew up, and was raped twice while serving in the Navy–but, in fact, had never served in Iraq....

Good news is no news...

A good example, by Noel Sheppard, of how to dissect a bit of typical media bias. this one from—surprise—AP...

....In fact, in an article that, from the title, one would think would be about the declining death toll, and how things from a military standpoint might be improving in Iraq, the piece devoted seven of the first nine paragraphs, and more than 50 percent of the total print space, on political problems in the embattled nation.

And, when Salaheddin finally elaborated on the reduced death toll in July, it was curiously pessimistic....

—  —  —  —  —  —

....Hmmm. So, this was the lowest death toll since November, and since before the surge began. You couldn't find someone to quote who thought this was really good news, Sinan? Or that it was proof that the surge was working?

Oh. That's right. The surge wasn't even addressed in this piece. Instead, it was referred to as a "five-month-old security crackdown."

And, of course, Salaheddin nicely avoided any reference to President Bush having orchestrated this "five-month-old security crackdown" against the wishes of the left and their media minions.

I guess it's verboten at the AP to connect the president with good news in Iraq regardless of how much your article downplays it.....

"Five-month-old security crackdown." Sheeesh. Even if we had no other news about the shift in strategy and tactics labeled "the Surge," (which, by the way, started June 15) we would know it was working well just by the reluctance to name it. Sort of the opposite of news articles about politicians caught in wrong-doing: If the party affiliation is not mentioned, you know it's a Dem.

The 'Baghdad Diarist'?

Dean Barnett writes about how The New Republic's "Scott Thomas" has now revealed himself. Fascinating stuff. For one thing, he publishes a letter about himself in TNR, without a single answer to the specific criticisms that have been made!

That is like all the pro vs anti-war arguments of the last 6 years in a nutshell.

Also, the guy had a blog! Fool.

Also, Hugh notes that apparently TNR has a blog (who knew? Who cared?) and none of the "journalists" who post there are even mentioning the controversy! Ha ha ha.

There's lots more at Michell Malkin.

Update: When I started blogging, way back in 2001, I imagined that I was participating (in a very minor way) in a great debate. A debate between Left and Right, between pro and anti-war, between conservative and liberal. But it never happened! Debating leftists is like punching Jello. I thought there were two competing philosophies, but the big discovery I made is that there's nothing inside leftists. No core beliefs or ideas. Like Joyce Little put it, they are clothes with no emperor inside.

I predict that this "Scott Thomas" matter will never be cleanly resolved, that it will just fizzle out in vagueness and frustration, exactly like John Kerry's despicable Vietnam accusations. Defenders of our country and our military will continue to make factual and philosophical arguments, but it will be like trying to beat up a blob of Jello.

"gutless weasels possuming a ride"

I liked this bit of unalloyed scorn for some people who deserve it. Uncle Jimbo on the New Republic and their ilk...

...While the left makes noises that they think mean they support the troops, they don't really, and they do believe the dregs of society theory of military recruiting. Jon Carry didn't misspeak when he said those non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in his beloved cultural elite, will end up stuk in Irak. He was simply stating the common wisdom on the left, our troops are killers, sometimes under orders, sometimes just to satisfy their blood lust.

Well there is also a bit of assumed wisdom on our side as well. That is that most journalists are gutless weasels possuming a ride on the backs of better men and women than themselves. They are parasites whose sole function seems to be advancing a narrative of evil America, cause of all that is ill with this world. There is no problem they are unwilling to lay at the feet of greedy rapacious America, busy killing brown people all over the planet, and now even slaughtering Gaia herself. Damn us!

Well I for one am sick of it. I've had a bird's eye view of how our military operates and for an instrument of war it does one hell of a lot of good. Obviously it is a killing machine, but it is the most finely calibrated one ever deployed, and one that takes enormous steps to ensure that civilians are not harmed by it's actions. That alone distinguishes us from the rest of the world's armies. Look at the excremental record of UN "Peacekeepers" in comparison. The one thing the UN guarantees is a huge increase in child rape. Our forces on the other hand will likely be found giving vaccinations, digging wells or building schools. So Bite me Franklin Foer, not only are you a crap editor by even the low standards of journalism, but you are an ill-informed punk who allowed yourself and your rag to be used to smear a group of people who collectively and individually dwarf your moral and ethical stature. And as for Scott Thomas, I won't bother to do more than call you a liar and a remind you that eventually you will brag about this to someone and you will be unmasked. Just keep that in mind as you look over your shoulder for the rest of your miserable life. I sense some old school wall to wall counseling in your future troop.

Me, I'm predicting that "Scott Thomas" will never be unmasked, because he's a fiction, like a lot of "anonymous sources." Lefty journalists just make stuff up, and then they write, "Many are saying..." or "sources in the administration indicate...." Frauds.

We are at war. SOMEBODY is acting badly, and should be punished. Either we have some bad soldiers, or some traitor journalists. Mr Foer should be hauled in front of a Congressional committee and forced to up-chuck under penalty of perjury. It will never happen, alas.

fiskiting...

Once again, can't resist...

Bush's Cognitive Dissonance, By Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, Friday, July 20, 2007

One hopes the leader of the free world hasn't really, truly lost touch with objective reality. But one does have to wonder.

Last week, George W. Bush invited nine conservative pundits to the White House for what amounted to a pep talk, with the president providing the pep. Somehow I was left off the list -- must have been an oversight. But some columnists who attended have been writing about the meeting or describing it to colleagues, and their accounts are downright scary.

National Review's Kate O'Beirne, who joined the presidential chat in the Roosevelt Room, told me that the most striking thing was the president's incongruously sunny demeanor. Bush's approval ratings are well below freezing, the nation is sooooo finished with his foolish and tragic war, [Only if you think you and your lefty pals are "the nation"] many of his remaining allies in Congress have given notice that come September they plan to leave the Decider alone in his private Alamo -- and the president remains optimistic and upbeat. [It never enters your darkest dreams that Frodo might just toss the Ring into Mt Doom and then go home to Texas, content that he has done his duty, which is all any man can do. (You won't understand that, it's a Red State thing)]

Bush was "not at all weary or anguished" and in fact was "very energized," wrote Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report. He was "as confident and upbeat as ever," observed Rich Lowry of National Review. "Far from being beleaguered, Bush was assertive and good-humored," according to David Brooks of the New York Times. [It's so FUNNY, the way leftists keep expecting Bush to be "anguished," and then feeling BEWILDERED because he isn't! It's a subset of their bewilderment that the country is no longer what it was when their world-view gelled, somewhere around 1973. Guess what, I'm not "anguished either. I laugh at you, and spit upon your ideas.]

Excuse me? I guess he must be in an even better mood since the feckless Iraqi government announced its decision to take the whole month of August off while U.S. troops continue fighting and dying in Baghdad's 130-degree summer heat. [Uh, make that "fighting and winning." You have read the latest reports, haven't you Mr Robinson? The Iraqi parliament might as well take some time off and see how things develop.]

It's almost as if Bush were trying to apply the principles of cognitive therapy, the system psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck developed in the 1960s. Beck found that getting patients to banish negative thoughts and develop patterns of positive thinking was helpful in pulling them out of depression. However, Beck was trying to get the patients to see themselves and the world realistically, whereas Bush has left realism far behind. [Do we see transference here?]

"He says the most useful argument to make in support of his policy is to show what failure would mean," Barone wrote of the president and Iraq. "It would mean an ascendant radicalism, among both Shia and Sunni Muslims, and it would embolden sponsors of terrorism such as Iran. Al-Qaeda would be emboldened and would be able to recruit forces."

Excuse me again? This is what Bush believes would happen? Hasn't he noticed that these catastrophes have already befallen us? And that they are the direct consequence of his decision to invade and occupy Iraq? [No, they are a direct consequence of your Iranian and al Queda buddies PROVOKING radicalism and violence, because they are shit-scared of the possibility of a democracy in the heart of the Caliphate. As are you. When my enemies react with desperation, it probably means I'm doing something right.]

At a news conference last week, someone tried to point this out. Bush replied with such a bizarre version of history that I hope he was being cynical and doesn't really believe what he said: "Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That's why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course. . . . It was his decision to make."

Let's see, we have learned that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. That means Bush is claiming that Saddam Hussein "chose" the invasion -- and, ultimately, his own death -- by not showing us what he didn't have. [That is the simple truth. If the inspectors had had really free access, they would have found no WMD's and probably aborted the invasion. Of course it is likely that by then Saddam himself wasn't sure whether he had them or not! His generals thought Iraq did. And, to be precise, UN 1441 mandated that Iraq account for the weapons found in 1992, not show it had none. Funny how I've yet to see a single lefty mention that little fact.]

"Bush gives the impression that he is more steadfast on the war than many in his own administration and that, if need be, he'll be the last hawk standing," wrote Lowry. The president says the results of his recent troop escalation will be evaluated by Gen. David Petraeus, wrote Barone, and not by "the polls."

Translation: Everybody's out of step but me. [That's how great leaders are seen sometimes. But in fact he is in step with an enormous number of people. Wapo just doesn't want to admit we exist.]

One of the more unnerving reports out of the president's seminar with the pundits came from Brooks, who quoted Bush as saying: "It's more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn't exist."

It's bad enough that Osama bin Laden is still out there plotting bloody acts of terrorism, convinced that God wants him to slay the infidels. Now we know that the president of the United States believes God has chosen him to bring freedom to the world, that he refuses to acknowledge setbacks in his crusade and that he flat-out doesn't care what "the polls" -- meaning the American people -- might think. I'm having trouble seeing the bright side. I think I need cognitive therapy. [OK bigshot, why don't you take a poll of Americans and find out how many of us believe that freedom is a "gift of the Almighty?" Oh, and while you are at it, ask how many agree with the Washington Post, that life is meaningless, and there is no god, and that fighting for a better world is equivalent to terrorism?]

Signs of desperation...

I just noticed that Penraker has a long string of posts on how the WaPo is spinning the news from Iraq. See here, here, here, here, here, and here. They are really getting desperate!

An example is this one: Iraqi Military's Readiness Slips. Report Says That Since January, Fewer Units Can Operate Independently. They make a headline and a big deal about a slight drop in the number of units that are at Level One, glossing over the fact that if you are rapidly expanding your forces that is to be expected. It is not a bad sign. Officers, NCO's, specialists and equipment are being spread over much larger forces, so it takes time to catch up.

And more importantly, Level One is not important right now. (We've been through this crap before.) What's important is the number of units at Level Two, and that is steadily expanding. Level Two units can can operate independently except for American logistical and air support. And that's fine for our purposes at this point.

The deal, when the Senate unanimously confirmed General Petraeus, was that the results of the "surge in operations" (which only started 4 weeks ago) would be evaluated in September. Yet we are seeing a relentless drumbeat to declare it a failure right now. A curious thing! I'd say that leftists are getting very sweaty about what September might bring. Which makes me feel good.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch...

One of the maddening, infuriating things about contemporary life is that in most ways this country is majority conservative, and leaning towards majority Republican. And yet liberals sit smugly in many legacy enclaves and act as if their ideas were not only the majority view, but the only sensible and "normal" and "modern" view---so much so that they need never engage in principled debate. (Which they would lose.)

I live in one of those enclaves, which adds to my ire. And another enclave is the "mainstream media," (MSM) which is almost entirely liberal and Democrat, and usually covers conservative or "Red State" or Christian matters like anthropologists visiting the Cannibal Isles. (The emblem of this was the decision at the NYT a couple of years ago to assign a reporter—one reporter—to cover all conservative matters. He was of course a liberal.)

The New York Times is the central spider of the MSM, in a very literal way, since all the local papers and TV news stations key off of the NYT, which gets to frame the stories and often decides what is "news" and what is not. When you watch the TV news (except perhaps Fox) you might imagine that all those glossy people study what is happening in the world and decide what is important. Nuh uh. Mostly the decisions are made by the NYT, and the WaPo and the AP. And none of them will never DEBATE, they just take it as read that they are at the the center of opinion, and have the intrinsic right to decide what we will know.

So it is with the utmost pleasure and pure delight that I read in Michelle Malkin that the NYT's credit rating has been lowered—yet again—and is barely above the level of junk bonds!!! It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of pompous frauds. Go boys, lead your whole vile treasonous industry down into the bone yard!

S&P Lowers New York Times Ratings To BBB/A-3; Off Watch 2007-07-11 12:18 (New York)
Rationale
On July 11, 2007, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services lowered its long-term corporate credit and senior unsecured debt ratings on The New York Times Co., to ‘BBB’ from ‘BBB+’. The short-term corporate credit and commercial paper ratings on the company were also lowered, to ‘A-3′ from ‘A-2′. All ratings were removed from CreditWatch, where they were placed with negative implications on March 23, 2007, following the company’s announced plan to increase its dividend to shareholders. The rating outlook is negative....

Among the many reasons the NYT gang deserves to suffer is that the NYT is a business. With shareholders. The editors of the NYT have decided that their ideology is more important than anything else, including profits, and is worth excluding at least 60% of the population from their potential readership. But they don't OWN the paper! They have a duty, a responsibility to the owners to try to make a profit. They are in effect stealing from their shareholders.

Just asking...

This LA Times editorial brought out the mischief in me:

A FAVORITE Washington fantasy this summer is that clever U.S. diplomacy might somehow succeed in splitting Syria from its current patron, Iran. The dream is a bipartisan indulgence — and probably quixotic. Instead, the United States and its allies would do better to turn quickly to the urgent matter of preventing war between Syria and Israel. [Why? I'm not saying we shouldn't do so, but why, exactly?]

War fears have been fanned by a notable Syrian arms buildup. Damascus has purchased surface-to-surface missiles, antitank weapons and sophisticated air-defense systems. It is also believed to have received Iranian funds to pay Russia for missiles and a reported $1-billion purchase of five advanced MIG-31E fighter jets. [So you are saying we should prevent a war until Syria completes its arms build-up? To make things more "fair" perhaps?] Syria denies Israeli reports that it is rearming Hezbollah, whose weapons stores were depleted during its war with Israel last summer. But a recent report to the U.N. Security Council warned that poor security along the Syrian-Lebanese border allows arms smuggling to Hezbollah to continue. [No sensible person doubts that Syria is re-arming Hezbollah terrorists. So why, EXACTLY, is it in our interest to prevent them getting what they deserve?]

Even more ominously, Syria has hinted that if Israel continues to spurn its offers to restart peace talks on the return of the Golan Heights, perhaps a war to retake the Golan might be its only option. [This is backwards. It is only the threat of war that forces Israel to hold on to the Golan. Without it they are much more vulnerable to Syrian attack.] The Bush administration has been opposed to Israeli-Syrian peace talks, which it sees as undermining its campaign to isolate and punish Syria. Israelis are divided on the matter, but so far their government has opted not to pursue talks — perhaps using U.S. resistance as a convenient excuse. [Perhaps. perhaps not. You have yet to present the slightest shred of evidence that Syria is interested in peace. They are the war-mongers here.]

At last month's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Bush finally stepped aside and said Israel was free to conduct whatever negotiations it wished with Syria — but the U.S. would not take part. That lessens prospects for peace, because an Israeli-Syrian pact is unlikely without U.S. mediation, or at least Washington's blessing. U.S. attempts to isolate Damascus have failed, and Syria's economy boomed last year despite U.S. sanctions and a steady decline in oil production. Is it worth risking war merely to keep Israel from talking to its longtime enemy? [We are already IN a war. It's known as the Global War on Terror. Syria is our ENEMY. It is a terror-supporting state, and the enemy of all peace-loving people. So WHY should we care if they are thrashed by Israel? Which side are you on here, Mr LAT?]

Meanwhile, opportunities mount for miscalculation. Israel does not want to appear weak in the eyes of Syria, nor does it want Damascus to fear an Israeli attack. Syria might not want war either, but it has reason for paranoia given its provocative role in supporting the Fatah al Islam militants and Hezbollah in Lebanon. [And it's in our interests for these evils to continue? Why?] Beirut or Gaza might easily provide the spark for a disastrous new Middle East war, perhaps fought by proxies. [Why would it be "disastrous?" Just asking.]

Some analysts say Syria would not go to war against Israel without Iranian approval. But who wants to gamble on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's calculations of Iran's national interest? Diplomacy and deterrence [Sorry to throw a new concept at you, but deterrence is based on the threat of war. If you are afraid to go to war, you have little or no deterrence.] are a safer bet. [We are in a war on terror, and IRAN is the number-one terror supporting state. So WHY is it in our interest to prop-up their client, Syria? ]

x

No news is...

Charlene mentioned that there doesn't seem to be much news from Iraq in the "mainstream" news media these last couple of weeks. Good news is usually no news, when it comes to Iraq.

I imagine the "journalists" standing around their Teletype machines, crumpling the little sheets of paper in disgust, and muttering, "Whatsa matter with our guys? How hard can it be to blow up a mosque or a school, for pity's sake!"

Not reported...

I highly recommend a piece by Rod Dreher, The Godless Party: Media Bias & Blindness—And the Big Story They Missed

....Indeed, religion has become such a galvanizing issue for both parties that, say the authors, "the religious gap among white voters in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 presidential elections was more important than other demographic and social cleavages in the electorate; it was much larger than the gender gap and more significant than any combination of differences in education, income, occupation, age, marital status and regional groupings." The media have thoroughly reported the key role religious conservatives play in Republican Party politics; what they’ve ignored is the equally important role militant secularists play in setting the agenda of the Democratic Party—as the late pro-life Governor Bob Casey, denied a decent podium at the 1992 Democratic convention, could have attested.

The divide has become so stark that the authors have discerned a new kind of voter: the "anti-fundamentalist." According to the 2000 ANES data, the hatred of religious conservatives long apparent among Democratic convention delegates has found a home among a disproportionate number of Democratic voters. Twenty-five percent of white respondents in the ANES survey expressed serious hostility towards religious conservatives, as opposed to only one percent who felt this strongly against Jews, and 2.5 percent who disliked blacks and Catholics to a strong degree. (Ironically, these are people who say they "‘strongly agree’ that one should be tolerant of persons whose moral standards are different from one’s own.") Eighty percent of these voters picked Bill Clinton in 1996, with 70 percent choosing Al Gore in 2000. Conclude the authors, "One has to reach back to pre-New Deal America, when political divisions between Catholics and Protestants encapsulated local ethno-cultural cleavages over Prohibition, immigration, public education, and blue laws, to find a period when voting behavior was influenced by this degree of antipathy toward a religious group." If Al Smith were to return and run for president today, his enemies wouldn’t be yesterday’s rustic anti-Catholic bigots of the Bible Belt, but today’s urbane anti-Christian bigots of liberal coastal cities dubbed (by the Wall Street Journal ) the Porn Belt...

....But their most striking finding was the near total lack of editorial and news coverage devoted to the increased importance of secularists to the Democratic Party versus the role of traditionalists in the GOP. The numbers are mind-boggling: 43 stories on secularist Democrats, 682 stories on traditionalist Republicans. In 1992, the Times alone published nearly twice the number of stories about Evangelicals in the GOP than both papers did about secularists among the Democrats for the entire decade. The bias is even worse among television journalists, who filled the airwaves with stories about the "Religious Right" and the Republican Party, but who didn’t file a single story—not one—about the Secular Left’s relationship to the Democrats. But their most striking finding was the near total lack of editorial and news coverage devoted to the increased importance of secularists to the Democratic Party versus the role of traditionalists in the GOP. The numbers are mind-boggling: 43 stories on secularist Democrats, 682 stories on traditionalist Republicans. In 1992, the Times alone published nearly twice the number of stories about Evangelicals in the GOP than both papers did about secularists among the Democrats for the entire decade. The bias is even worse among television journalists, who filled the airwaves with stories about the "Religious Right" and the Republican Party, but who didn’t file a single story—not one—about the Secular Left’s relationship to the Democrats....

The numbers would seem to indicate a cover-up, but my guess is that it's mostly a matter of people in the news media considering secularism so normal, that they don't even see it. Sort of like the way you don't hear your own accent, and think you are just speaking "normally."

But I think there is a huge psychological cover-up going on, as liberals try to pretend that they are still the modern mainstream, and anyone who disagrees is kooky or primitive. And that psychology is a subject that utterly fascinates me...

Read smart...

You have no doubt heard by now about our major offensive in Baquba, the capitol of Diyala Province, which is where al Qaida has set up shop after they stimulated the production of local "antibodies" in al Anbar. I won't presume to discuss the combat—Do NOT miss Michaels Yon's latest dispatch. But I do know the lie of the land locally, and can say that this is bad news for the al Qaeda/Democrat/News-Media Alliance, and we can expect a vicious counter-attack.

I liked this post, by Confederate Yankee...

....Read that again, "Baquba alone might be as intense as Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah in late 2004."

The "Mahogany Ridge" media is tied up in the latest suicide bombing in Baghdad (simply look at the title, lede, and focus of the CNN article cited above as an example), and even those who chose to feature the Baquba assault clearly don't understand the magnitude of the just-joined battle.

Once reality slowly dawns on the media that they are misunderestimating the scope and scale of the assault, steel yourself for a rush of inaccuracies as they seek to get something, anything published, much of it based upon rumor, some of it based upon outright propaganda and lies.

We saw the same during and after Fallujah, when the U.S. military was accused of using napalm on civilians. We don't even have napalm.

The ignorati claimed that white phosphorus was a "chemical weapon," of a "poison gas" and ascribed horrible wounds to it. These claims turned out to be completely untrue.

There may also once again be claims that using .50-caliber machine guns and the cannons of Bradley IFVs and helicopter gunships against terrorist personnel somehow violates the Geneva Conventions. It doesn't.


We'll be hearing and seeing much more from Diyala Province, Baquba proper, and other areas surrounding Baghdad as full-scale surge operations seek to envelop and destroy al Qaeda.

Read smart....

Also, the phrase "We don't even have napalm" is disingenuous, since we do have similar incendiaries. But we didn't use any such in Falluja, and won't I'm sure in Baquba.

Candid...

An excerpt from the Press conference after the President's speech in Prague.

...Q. Can I go back to your democracy speech?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Did you like it?

Q I loved it.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Say that in your stories.

Q I'll say it anywhere. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: What did he say?

Q I'll say it anywhere.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. How about in print? (Laughter.)

Q Oh, well --

THE PRESIDENT: That may be taking it too far. (Laughter.)...

And of course that was taking it too far, since the major media of course do not report anything that makes the President look good. Unless maybe when he's cooperating with Teddy Kennedy. And they didn't in this case; the speech got little attention. (And the self-styled conservatives aren't interested either—They cover their ears and say immigrationimmigrationimmigration.)

Me, I think that those conservatives (including myself) who find the immigration bill toxic should still be supporting the President on many other issues. But that's not binary enough for most people. a lot of conservatives right now seem to me to resemble poor Andrew Sullivan, who couldn't just disagree on his one big issue, but yet stay constant on the other ones. Once he linked up with Dems on the gay marriage issue, he had to cobble-up reasons why everything Republicans were doing was wrong. even though he contradicted all his previous views and just made himself look like an idiot.

Beneath the surface...

VDH:

...Lebanon is engaged in a deadly war against Palestinian al Qaeda-affiliates, and has resorted to massive and inherently indiscriminate shelling of Palestinian camp hideouts in Beirut—in a manner far more savage than the CNN-BBC monitored Israeli responses. The old dictum remains: Arabs killing Arabs is apparently a different category of reportage, where rules of Western censure don’t apply...

It's always this way. Google "Black September." Arab countries have wreaked far more devastation and death on the Palestinians than Israel ever has. And this gets no criticism from our Western "liberals" and "pacifists" because they do not and never have cared about the Palestinians. For them the only war is the war for the soul of the West.

And the Jews and the Americans are always the enemy, because, both in symbol and in fact, we personify:

• Religious belief.
• Belief in two nations that are embodied ideas.
• Willingness to fight for those beliefs.
• Capitalism empowering ordinary people.
• Rejection of Old World elites.

In the real war, the war for the soul of the West, the good guys (no pussyfooting here) have a big disadvantage and a big advantage.

Our disadvantage is that we are hardly aware that we are at war. Most of us don't see news stories and immediately recognize them as the back-alley knife attacks they often are. Same with votes of the local school board, or tenure struggles at the State U., or the infiltration of ugly "art" into our churches and public spaces.

Our advantage is that the enemy is nihilism. It has nothing positive to offer. And it has to clothe its nakedness in scraps of belief, beliefs that it doesn't really believe in! So it is tangled in lies and contradictions. Especially, it clothes itself in the rags of Liberalism, and then is vulnerable as it flouts liberal ideals.

Which is why the Leftish crowd hates the Iraq Campaign, and in fact hated it before it even started. I suspect one of the most revealing moments of our time was in early 2002 when reporters were peppering the President with angry probing questions on Iraq, before the Administration had even raised the possibility! They knew! The Left has been calling every conservative a "fascist" for the last 70 or 80 years, and they knew that confronting a real fascist would expose them as frauds. Likewise with other liberal issues like humanitarianism, genocide, torture, oppression of minorities, anti-Semitism, and Human Rights. Saddam's Iraq was the real thing, and any real liberal would have to be in solidarity with George W Bush in fighting the monster. Exactly as much as if we were fighting against Hitler.

Perhaps history will place among the many accomplishments of President Bush a clarification. He has clarified that the great struggle is not between liberals and conservatives, but between nihilists and conservatives.

Agenda...

The NY Post has a good editorial (thanks for the tip, Frank), Gray Lady, Grim Agenda, excoriating the NYT for trying its best to downplay the Queens terror plot...

...Let's be clear here: The "paper of record" isn't guilty of merely poor news judgment. It's got an agenda.

Numerous newspapers understood the gravity of a plot against New York by terrorist upstarts from a seemingly unlikely part of the world - the Caribbean, just a few hours from U.S. shores. The Washington Post, for example, put the story on its front page Sunday.

Nor is the Times' coverage of this story a quirk: The paper has downplayed several other terror cases because the plotters were "merely" in the "talking" stage. Last month, after the Fort Dix Six case came to light, the paper ran a piece called "Informer's Role Draws Praise and Questions" - casting doubt on "the legitimacy of the investigations" because of the role of an FBI informer.

None of that should matter.

The point is, an unknown number of ruthless actors around the world - some in our backyard - continue to emerge and threaten the nation. No doubt the 9/11 plot also once seemed like something no one could pull off....

The NYT does have an agenda, and is savaging the truth to promote it. And this is a particularly sick thing because most local papers and TV stations take their lead from the Times.

The agenda, in its larger sense, is to return to the days when the NYT was the "flagship" of the liberal establishment. And to return to the glory-days of their youth, when they helped the Communists conquer South Vietnam. (They probably imagine that American defeat in Iraq would be similar, with the mass-murders etc. conveniently hidden behind an "iron curtain," so that the ice-hearted bastards of the Left don't need to take any responsibility. Me, I think the world has grown too small for that.)

They want all the nascent terror plots hidden, because they don't want us "little people" to be aroused. We have no interest in NYT editors being part of a "ruling class."

Another good read...

Along with Yon's piece you might want to read one by Rocco DiPippo in American Thinker: Hypocrisy has a Human Price on the Streets of Baghdad:

....There were other stunning differences between that trip, and the one I'd taken in December.

On the December trip I had seen abandoned shops and frightened people. On the latest one I saw many shops opened and people going about their business in what appeared to be a relaxed manner. On the first trip I saw cars and trucks in gas lines that stretched for miles. On the latest trip, though gas lines existed, they were far shorter, and looked about as long as those experienced by Americans at the height of the 1970s oil crisis. On the first trip I saw nothing but ruin: houses and other buildings in derelict condition, most appearing unfit for human habitation. On the latest trip I still saw many houses in poor condition, but I also saw homes being built, and a good number of existing houses and storefronts being repaired

As the miles clicked by and I viewed the passing scenes and the people in them, I realized I was seeing widespread signs of something I hadn't seen much of four months ago: I was seeing Hope. I saw that Iraqis had not yet given up on their lives or their country. I saw widespread evidence they are rebuilding both.

A simple thing is kindling that hope, and it is a thing being affected by the new security plan: the just imposition of basic law and order...

Of course it's hard to get the big picture from tiny slices seen by a few writers. Iraq is a big confusing place. That's why the gross failure of our mainstream media to cover the War on Terror honestly is such a terrible evil. And why the rise of the new media is so desperately important. Without it the Old Media can tell any lie, and ordinary Americans have no way to check. (Personally, I think President Bush should be asking Americans to sacrifice for the war effort---by investing time in reading blogs!) The classic example of such a lie was Walter Cronkite and the press telling the American people that the Tet Offensive was a defeat. In simple fact it was a huge victory for American and South Vietnamese forces, and the Viet Cong were never a significant factor in the war afterwards.

But the lie created a political defeat that ended in millions of deaths, and tens-of-mmilions of people being sold into communist slavery. And that's exactly what the the Left, the Democrat Party, the media and the "pacifists' are trying to do again.

Sheer lunacy...

Hugh Hewitt, on NBC's decision to publish the pictures and video sent to them by the Virginia Tech killer...

....I would have published --instantly-- the text of the killer's statement's for the public to read, but I would have denied the killer the instant video glorification he so obviously desired, an immortalization which other deranged killers of the future will almost certainly seek to emulate. NBC decided differently...

...Two days ago I shared a stage with NBC News president Steve Capus. Earlier today I commented on what I considered to be his cluelessness about the contempt in which MSM is held as well as my amazement at Capus' pride in MSM's Katrina coverage. Tonight I am dumbfounded by his --and his colleagues'-- decision-making in this matter. Instantly their decision to air the video and publish the pictures revolted vast numbers of ordinary Americans of all political opinions. (My sister-in-law, a very, very liberal individual, just said to me that "I don't recall ever hearing of anything so irresponsible.") I heard an outraged clinical psychiatrist from NYU University denouncing the decision in the harshest terms on Los Angeles radio station KNX.

The airing of the pictures and video is obviously a hurtful and destructive act, one that will prime many killing pumps in the years ahead, and one obviously made on the fly by individuals of almost no experience with or curiosity about the deranged mind. Would it have killed Capus et al to ask around a bit about what to do? Of course not, but their decision could indeed kill others down the road. They acted as their own guides, because that is the way the business works. In their very, very closed world, it made sense. To the vast majority of Americans it was an appalling, horrific decision, far worse than what Don Imus had to say last week...

It's pretty obvious that how people "act out" insanity is partly learned behavior. An Indonesian will likely go "Mataglap" and suddenly run down the street slashing people with a Kris. In other places such a thing never happens. He's learned that from his culture.

Our news media are teaching people that the way to go crazy is to get a gun and shoot a lot of people. (And to send a video to NBC, to give you a moment of crazy glory!!)

I remember when the news of Columbine broke, and I was unfortunately stuck in a place where I had to listen to the radio. And so I spent a couple of miserable hours while news idiots talked to each other, saying over and over and over, "We don't know what happened, but apparently there's been a shooting." It was like some crazy experiment in hypnotic conditioning. If I ever go nuts it is more likely, because of that, that I might shoot something up. (You Lefties can relax, I never watch television, so I'm probably the least likely to ever do such a thing. If I go mad there will barrages of blog-posts.)

Actually, there should by law be a news blackout on coverage of these things. that's so obvious it will never happen..

Dezinformatsia

One of the current lies is that the Iraqi Parliament Building is in the Green Zone. It's not. (Thanks to Michelle)

The purpose of the lie is, of course, to feed the story that our campaign in Iraq is a hopeless failure, and to thus cause it to become a failure. This is in itself a minor lie, but every one of them should be fought. Because they are all pieces of an overall strategy of causing American defeat, and electing Democrats.

(I don't mean that Left-leaning people are thinking this out clearly; they don't think. Rather, they are reenacting the lessons of their youth. especially the Big Lie that said that the Tet Offensive was an American defeat. (It was in fact a huge victory, from which the Viet Cong never recovered. All subsequent important fighting was against North Vietnamese regulars.)

But the lie caused America to lose heart and pull out of Vietnam, and so led to millions of deaths (which Leftists and pacifists cared not a whit about) and also led, along with Watergate, to huge Democrat gains in Congress (which is all Leftists and pacifists really care about: Political power.)

NOT a "civil war"

The blog Back Talk (thanks to Glenn Reynolds) has a lot of interesting graphs and figures on the "surge" and Iraq. Well worth looking at. Some conclusions:

...My latest analysis shows that there is good news and bad news from Iraq concerning the troop surge. The good news is that casualties in Baghdad have come down very substantially. The bad news is that casualties elsewhere in Iraq have increased substantially. And, no, it's not because the civil war spilled over to the rest of the country. It's because al Qaeda started targeting innocent Shiite civilians where it was easier to do so. And, no, such attackes do not represent "sectarian violence" between Shiites and Sunnis. Only Democratic Senators and Representatives and mainstream media reporters believe that nonsense. The violence expanded beyond Baghdad because Sunni al Qaeda jihadists are doing everything in their power to get Shiites to kill Sunnis. Civil war is al Qaeda's goal (because it suits their jihadist objectives), and that's how this differs from the civil war schema that Democrats and reporters simply cannot get out of their heads. ....

...It is not a civil war. Instead, it is al Qaeda fighting against the people of Iraq. Yes, the Sunni insurgents initially allied themselves with al Qaeda in their fight against the hated Americans, but even they are finally coming to realize that the civil war that al Qaeda is trying to provoke is not helpful to them in any way...

...I know how much liberals treasure the idea that this is just a civil war in Iraq, the very civil war they predicted would happen if George Bush launched his "misbegotten adventure" in Iraq. Because they predicted civil war, all information from Iraq is processed through that obsolete schema. That's why Democrats have adopted an eerie code of silence about al Qaeda in Iraq. In terms of their sacred schema, al Qaeda in Iraq does not compute, therefore it does not exist.

But it does exist, and it killed nearly 400 innocent Iraqis in the last two weeks alone....

Leftists, the press, Democrat politicians, are all in a conspiracy to present what's happening in Iraq as meaningless violence. In fact it is an orchestrated production. It's a show put on for American TV cameras, and to influence American elections and Congressional votes. and of course to cause freedom and democracy to fail in Iraq.

Another quote from the same post:

...Americans don't realize that we are in a fight with al Qaeda and their affiliated jihadists in Iraq. And they don't know because the media equates attacks by al Qaeda with the phrase "sectarian violence." Look at this MSNBC headline again:

Tal Afar bomb toll hits 152, deadliest of Iraq war
Tally arrives during week in which more than 500 died in sectarian violence

Wrong. More than 400 of those deaths were caused by al Qaeda, not because they are Sunnis who hate Shiites but because they want Shiites to start killing Sunnis. It is wrong to call that "sectarian violence," and doing so just reinforces the obsolete schema that governs the thinking of Democratic leaders and mainstream media reporters, all of whom are sure they see a civil war spontaneously erupting before their very eyes. What they are seeing instead is al Qaeda fighting against Iraq and, more to the point, against America. We either stay in Iraq and defeat them, or we leave on a timetable and lose to them. That's your choice, take your pick. There are no other choices.

Stopwatch time...

Michelle has an e-mail from someone at the SF Chronicle, which has mysteriously not yet reported on the scandal involving Senator Diane Feinstein, (SF resident, and former SF Mayor. And, most importantly, Democrat). The person said he "expects" that the Chron will be reporting on it.

Yeah, sure. I'll bet they report it like the big papers reported on the allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans. That is, they will ignore it as long as possible, and then report it as something that's "already been debunked."

So, do you think I should whip out the old stopwatch and time how fast all those people who made pompous denunciations of the Halliburton Corporation, will jump on what looks like REAL war-profiteering? Hmm? Hey, all you Halliburton bashers out there (I remember you, and you know who you are) here's your chance to show that you are honest....

Remember all the screaming about a couple of no-bid contracts given to a Haliburton subsidiary? Contracts which were, in fact, quite innocent, and were issued by career bureaucrats, not by the Bush Administration, and for perfectly respectable reasons? And similar to ones cut under the Clinton Administration? Well, now we seem to have a LOT of fishy-looking no-bid contracts, to DiFi's husband Richard C. Blum's corporations, while DiFi sat on the MILCON subcommittee that oversees the work.

So I'm expecting you lefties to show that you are honest, and give this the same treatment you gave Halliburton! (Ha ha, ain't I a comic!)

Respect

The dirty little animals of our "news media" are all over the "chocolate Jesus" story. They just love it.

Michelle reminds us of how the same bunch reacted to the cartoons of Mohammed. Including this quote, from CNN...

"CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam."

"CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of Prophet Mohammed because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself."

Weasels. Pie-crusts. Dhimmis. Nihilists. Democrats. I despise them all forever.

Please bomb us...

John at PowerLine writes, concerning the suicide bomber in Afghanistan (who of course never had the slightest chance of getting near the Vice President):

....Suicide bombing is a tactic favored by the weak. It was developed initially by the Palestinians--the ultimate in weakness--and then implemented by Iraqi insurgents, who have little ability to engage coalition forces in combat. The Taliban's adoption of the tactic is perhaps also born of weakness, but no doubt the perceived success of the Iraqi insurgents has also inspired the Taliban to imitate them.

The Taliban must be heartened by the reaction of many Americans to the ongoing violence in Iraq. The group's leadership may have inferred that it can drive the U.S. and its allies from Afghanistan, not only by killing American soldiers, but through the much easier expedient of using suicide bombers to murder Afghan civilians. If that's what the Taliban has in mind, the fact that the bomber got nowhere near Vice-President Cheney doesn't mean that he failed. On the contrary, the massive publicity being given to the attempt, and to the resulting deaths of a number of innocent Afghans, most likely means that the bombing achieved its objective. [My emphasis]

We are teaching the Taliban, and all the other crazies of the world, to do this. We tell them over and over again that this is a tactic that works. The purpose of suicide bombing is not military victory, but the creation of a climate of discouragement in the West. And, surprise, this is exactly the goal of our press, democrats, fake-pacifists and the whole nihilist Left.

The way to teach terrorists to be suicide bombers is to respond with publicity and public pronouncements of discouragement. We do thise every time.

The way to teach terrorists not to use suicide bombers is to respond with public defiance, and by doing just the opposite of what they want. Anyone who even suggests this is called a "warmonger," and "un-Christian."

Strange coincidence...

Dafydd has an interesting post on how most major papers phrased the recent activities in the Senate as "Republicans closing off debate on the war." In fact the Democrats were trying to end debate—that's what "cloture" means—and force a vote. (That's one lie, but also the papers have covered up the fact that there is opportunity to debate the war with every bill that comes up, and in fact war debate has been preempting almost all the other business of the Senate!)

...But if that is the case -- where did this amazing coincidence of terminology come from? The only other explanation that occurs to me is that editors at the other newspapers simply copied what the New York Times wrote, that the Republicans had "rejected an effort to force debate" on the Iraq war. I suspect they originally wrote their articles straight; but when they saw that artful bit of misdiction in "America's newspaper of record," the lower-tier editorial boards gushed, "What a great way to put it! Let's us do that as well."

I can't think of any other way that such a contorted and misleading phrasing, never before used, could appear on the same day in a half dozen major newspapers and probably dozens of minor ones....

Amazingly uninformative...

Dafydd has an interesting post on the many defeats suffered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the reluctance of our news media to report losses when it's their own side that's losing...

I read this New York Times story a few days ago, and something struck me as odd: we were told that 4,000 people died... but the Times was amazingly uninformative about who they were:

President Hamid Karzai offered peace talks with a resurgent Taliban after the bloodiest year since they were driven from power in 2001. More than 4,000 people, including about 170 foreign soldiers, died in fighting in 2006. Suicide bombings also rose sharply.

The phrase “4000 people” caught my eye. Did “people” include bad guys as well as innocent civilians? If so, how many?

What if a majority of those deaths were of Taliban terrorists? If so, then far from signalling a Taliban resurgence threatening Afghanistan's security (thus our own), it would mean their "surge" was as complete a failure as the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War...

Lots there worth reading...

but Republican children are creepy...

Mark Steyn is delightfully scathing about how the press is fawning over "Grandma Nancy," contrasted with how certain other public figures with children were treated...

...."Grandma With A Gavel'' was written by hard-headed reporter Ruth Marcus, scourge of Republican Justice Departments for many years, and this column reflected her notoriously sharp forensic skills:

''The images as California Democrat Nancy Pelosi took office last week were striking -- and stirring -- in their unfamiliarity. Pelosi, holding her infant grandson swaddled in a white receiving blanket, as she sat in the well of the House, awaiting her election. Pelosi, with the assurance of a mother experienced at dispensing cookies to impatient toddlers, giving each child his -- and her -- turn with the gavel. Pelosi raising her hand to take the oath as her grandson, at her side, fiddled with grandma's papers.''...

....But don't Republicans have families, too? Yes, but let's face it, they creep you out, don't they? If you have the misfortune to be nominated by the Bush administration, your kids get headlines like ''An Image A Little Too Carefully Coordinated.'' That was the Washington Post's Style Section on Chief Justice John Roberts' moppets: They didn't care for ''the 1950s-style tableaux vivant,'' or the ''freshly scrubbed and adorable'' look from ''a Currier & Ives landscape''; they sniffed at the ''seersucker suit with short pants'' of ''towheaded Jack'' and his sister's ''blond pageboy''; they didn't even like the name ''Jack.''....(Thanks to Betsy N)

I certainly remember the Roberts announcement. Steyn's phrase, "but let's face it, they creep you out, don't they?" captures the reaction of the press to those cute Republican children perfectly.

But the grotesque dishonesty of the Gasping Media is a good thing in many ways. It keeps us wily and tough. They are not really doing Granny a favor, because she, like everyone, is going to make mistakes. And if she believes the WaPo and the NYT and the network news, she will be cocooned like so many other Democrats. She won't be pulled up sharp on her missteps, until an election comes along with rude surprises.

And press bias is psychologically a good thing for us conservatives. We can't take our ideas for granted, like so many liberals do. And we don't get hot and bothered if someone wants to debate with us--we are mentally debating the world all the time...

This sure stimulates my ire...

Here's a piece in the Washington Post by David Ignatius, about how our troops are spending Christmas. I thank him for giving America's heroes a little attention, but really, the mere idea of thanking a journalist for paying attention to our soldiers in wartime is INSANE. Have you ever looked at old magazines or newspapers from during WWII? Old copies of LIFE? They were stuffed with stories and pictures of our men and women in uniform. Or read a collection of Ernie Pyle's work? That's what Americans do.

And this particular bit from Ignatius' article is just SICK...

....This holiday season, America is struggling through a searing national debate about Iraq. The horror of the war feels immediate, even to people who've never been near Baghdad, but less so the humanity of the thousands of American soldiers who are serving there. That's part of the Iraq disconnect: The war dominates our political life, but the men and women in the midst of it often are nearly invisible. We see them in thumbnail photos in group obituaries but not as real, living people.

If you read soldiers' blogs, and I've looked at several dozen over the past few days, you see a recurring anger that the media aren't telling their story. So I'll let a few of the military bloggers speak for themselves.... [Thanks to Penraker]

Let's take that quote again, with a bit of venting....

....This holiday season, America is struggling through a searing national debate about Iraq. [Cliché—debate is no more intense now than six months ago. And mainly that's how the press wants to FRAME the story. THEY want to undermine America, and they project this onto the country and claim there's a "searing debate."] The horror of the war feels immediate, [Because that's all that gets reported] even to people who've never been near Baghdad, but less so the humanity of the thousands of American soldiers who are serving there. [And you are going to tell us WHY this is? Or is this something that "just happens," like the weather?] That's part of the Iraq disconnect: The war dominates our political life, but the men and women in the midst of it often are nearly invisible. [They are invisible because you foul TRAITORS in the "news" media have deliberately made it them invisible.] We see them in thumbnail photos in group obituaries but not as real, living people. [Oooooh. Speak for yourself, toad. If I ran the circus, you'd see them as real people, all right. Because the whole slimy lot of you fake-journalists would be rounded up at gunpoint and EMBEDDED. And if you did a good job cleaning latrines, you might, after six months or a year be allowed to go out with the troops and do some reporting. You don't know what reporting is, but our average soldier or Marine is more intelligent and clear-thinking than you, and I'm sure they could teach you.]

If you read soldiers' blogs, and I've looked at several dozen over the past few days, you see a recurring anger that the media aren't telling their story. [You noticed this only 3 or 4 years after I did. I'm SO impressed, chomsky.] So I'll let a few of the military bloggers speak for themselves. [They've been speaking for themselves, and bloggers have been listening, for YEARS now. You are late to the party, you condescending jackass. You should get down on your knees and thank these people. They go out daily with guns looking for fights with crazed killers—monsters who would love to kill YOU. Before you start throwing your elite-media crumbs to the peasants, you might think a bit about a guy named Danny Pearl.]

Back to the ridiculous for a moment...

Hugh writes:

....What the paper's [the Boston Globe] staff doesn't seem to understand is the incredible lift they are giving the Romney campaign. There is no surer signal to the GOP base of a candidate's conservative principles, competence and electability than an early and sustained attempt to damage him by the MSM [mainstream media]. One of the reasons that Senator McCain is viewed with such distrust by the Republican base is the fawning coverage he receives from the Beltway-Manahttan media elites. One of the reasons Rudy Giuliani has credibility with base despite his views on abortions rights etc is that the MSM clearly fears him. Negative MSM coverage of Republican candidates is like a divining stick pointing towards those Republicans the Democratic Party fears the most.....

If McCain is nominated I'll vote for him, but still consider him puke-worthy. For this and other reasons. I can imagine he's enough of an egotistical fool to imagine that the Gasping Media will still fawn on him once he's running against a Democrat. If that situation happens one looks forward with a certain schadenfreude to his bewilderment when they turn on him like the animals they are.

For The Glorious 7th Of December...

From Strategypage, how the headlines might read if today's fake-journalists were covering WWII. (Thanks to Rand)

NAVY, WHITE HOUSE LIED ABOUT BATTLESHIPS
5, Not 2, Sunk at Pearl Harbor

HUNDREDS OF SAILORS STILL TRAPPED UNDERWATER
Victims' Families: Pearl Rescue Efforts "Disgraceful"

FDR DUMPS MACARTHUR FOR CHURCHILL
"Writing Off" Philippines, Sources Say

SECRET PAYMENT TO MACARTHUR
$500,000 from Manila Bigwigs

MIDWAY VICTORY DUE TO BROKEN JAP CODES
The Chicago Tribune did actually print this story. Fortunately, the Japanese didn't see it. Tribune owner Robert McCormick was sternly told never to let this happen again, and it never did.

FDR PLANS NORTH AFRICA INVASION
Critics Charge "Stunt" To Help Dems in '42 Elections

NORMANDY "IDEAL" INVASION SITE
Military Experts Agree This Is Where We'll Land....

...WHISTLEBLOWER REVEALS SUPERBOMB PLANS
Catholic Bishops Condemn Secret "Manhattan Project"

IKE ENRAGED
Monty to Be Fired in SHAEF Meltdown
British papers which did report, inaccurately, tensions between Ike and Monty, were stepped on hard by the British government.

"NO DEFENSE" AGAINST KAMIKAZES
Experts: Suicide Tactics May Be War-Winner – Fleet Demoralized

IWO JIMA FLAG RAISING "STAGED"
Bond Drive Collapses After Controversy

BURN BABY BURN
B-29 Crews Laugh, Take Photos as Thousands of Children Die

ATOM BOMB DROPPED TO COW SOVIETS
Sources Say Hiroshima Strike Had No Military Purpose

More lies to help the other side...(Or, Sweden down the Memory Hole)

From PowerLine:

The top headline on Yahoo News reads: "Gates Says U.S. Losing Iraq War." Here is the screen shot; click to enlarge:

Only that's not what Gates said. The Associated Press story that Yahoo News links to carries the milder headline, "Gates says U.S. is not winning Iraq war." And if you read the story, you find that what Gates actually said is that "he believes the United States is neither winning nor losing, 'at this point.'"

The "not winning" theme is likely to dominate news coverage; the New York Times headlines, "At Hearing, Gates Says U.S. Not Winning War in Iraq." Here, too, if you keep reading you find that Gates said "the United States is not losing the war either."...

Question: does the Old media want us to lose the Iraq Campaign?

Short answer: Yes. But they imagine losing will be like losing was in Vietnam. That is, a big moment of triumph for Democrats and for the NYT, with all those millions who get murdered and imprisoned safely off-stage, where the American people can't see them.

(Bear with me my brethren for covering ground I've been over before, but I'm right in the middle of this nootziness. I'm confronted with it every day. I'm in a city where 83% of the population thought that John Kerry—poster boy of 70's fossilization—was a good choice for President! I've got to vent a bit.)

To the Left, every war is Vietnam. And I'm not talking about a metaphor or something. More like a dementia. They really believe it. Remember how two of the most splendid lightning-victories in our history—the overthrow of the Taliban and the 3-week blitzkrieg through Iraq—were both labeled as quagmires! Within mere days!

It's lunacy, and also part of a larger lunacy—the derangement involved in trying to preserve a world-view that gelled around 1973. Preserve it even though the world has in fact changed drastically, and that world-view no longer corresponds with reality. Mark Steyn caught the outlook perfectly, as the idea that everything is going to become like Sweden. Younger people may find this hard to grasp, but trust me, I was there. It was a commonplace in the 60's and 70's that the Swedes, and other Euro-socialists, had figured it all out, and it was only a matter of time before us primitivo Americans would shed our coarse old ideas and move Swedenwards, as "progressive" types already had.

And we humans always want to display our inner selves in our outward appearance. Back then the emblem was to drive a Volvo or a Saab (plus guilt-free sex, wearing clogs and eating Blix).

But funny thing, the Symbolic Volvo has been traded in for a symbolic Prius. Yet the change has not been publicly remarked upon, at least not that I've heard. No Leftist admits to dumping Sweden down the Memory Hole, sort of like the memory of an old girl-friend from ones college days. Sweden has obviously failed as a model to emulate, but nobody's talking about it. That has to be extracting a psychological toll. It is massive denial.

What does Jane Liberal think, as she drives around in the tired rusty Volvo station wagon she can't afford to trade in for a Prius? I can't even imagine what she thinks, I doubt it's thinking at all. Just crazy anger, and BUSH is to blame!

Important info---pass it on

That big story about the people being burned alive in Iraq, while Iraqi troops stood by?

IT'S A TOTAL FABRICATION!

IT'S A LIE!

It's a clear and blatant lie fabricated by our country's enemies, and propagated by our internal enemies and traitors in the news media.

LINK (if you have trouble with that link, as I did, go to FloppingAces' main blog page and scroll down to 11-25, at 8:54)

Thanks to Lorie Byrd

Now they tell us...

Our friend Frank sent this NYT editorial, writing: "See 7th Paragraph. Amazing what a difference responsibility makes. They are covering their asses. ..."

The Democrats will not be able to savor their victory for long. Americans are waiting to hear if they have any good ideas for how to get out of Iraq without creating even wider chaos and terrorism. [NOW you let us know that you know that your party has no policy. AFTER you pull out all the stops to get them into office]

Criticizing President Bush’s gross mismanagement of the war was a winning electoral strategy. But criticism will not extricate the United States from this mess, nor will it persuade voters that the Democrats are ready to take back the White House.

Let us be clear. The responsibility for all that has gone wrong lies squarely with Mr. Bush. [Likewise with what's gone RIGHT---too bad there's a news black-out on that part] Even with control of the Congress, the Democrats’ role in changing things will be hortatory. And while we too are eager to hear the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group — better known as the (James) Baker commission — it should be the start, and not the end, of a bipartisan discussion on Iraq strategy. The Democrats need to be ready to play a full role. [Gee, maybe they should start a think-tank! I've only said about a thousand times that Dems have no policy. Nor principles, nor values. Nor morality, nor honesty.]

Under Republican control, Congress has exercised virtually no oversight of the administration’s misconduct of the war, and the new Democratic leadership is eager to hold extensive hearings. The public deserves a full accounting (backed by subpoenas, if necessary) of how prewar intelligence was cooked, why American troops were sent to war without adequate armor, and where billions of dollars in reconstruction aid disappeared to. [Who needs hearings, you've obviously convicted already.]

The Democrats will also need to look forward — and quickly. So far they have shared slogans, but no real policy. [So Random Jottings was right all along? Thanks, I appreciate you admitting it!] During the campaign, their most common call was for a “phased redeployment” — a euphemism for withdrawal — of American troops starting before the end of this year.

Threatening to pull out may be the only way to get cooperation from Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, who is thwarting even the most limited American efforts to disarm militias and set timetables for genuine political compromise on the most fundamental issues, like protecting minority rights and fairly apportioning the country’s oil wealth. [Threatening to pull out also tells the bad guys that their political/media strategy has worked and that they would be fools to compromise, or let to up on the killing.]

Unless America’s exit plans are coupled with a more serious effort to build up Iraq’s security forces and mediate its sectarian divisions, a phased withdrawal will only hasten Iraq’s descent into civil war — while placing American soldiers who remain behind in even greater danger. We also fear that Iraqis will have no interest in anything but retribution, until they see that security and rebuilding are possible. For that reason we have suggested one last push to stabilize Baghdad. That would require at least a temporary increase in American and Iraqi troops on Baghdad streets. [So, now that the election is over the NYT favors doing the sort of stuff the Bush Administration has been doing all along! But "more serious," of course, in some unspecified ways. Vile.]

We are skeptical of calls, by some Democrats, to divide the country into three ethnically based regions. Most Iraqis — except for the Kurds — show little enthusiasm for the idea. And while there has been horrific ethnic cleansing, it hasn’t yet got to the point that boundaries could be drawn without driving many more people from their homes. [Skeptical, eh. But not a word of your skepticism did we hear until your party got into power.]

Such ideas deserve a full discussion, something the United States has not had since its troops first rolled into Iraq. [Bullshit. We've been wrangling about Iraq since at least early 2002. But perhaps the NYT itself has not "discussed" Iraq? Perhaps they've been intimidate by people wrapped in flags, and have kept mum? I should look in their archives and find out.] We are not sure that any shift in strategy can contain the disaster. But we are sure that even a few weeks more of drift and confusion will guarantee more chaos and suffering once American troops leave. Voters gave the Democrats the floor — and are now waiting to hear what they have to say. [Insanity. The NYT sees nothing wrong with (Democrats) getting elected and THEN telling the voters what they stand for.]

I can just see the miasma lifting

Annoying Old Guy writes:

...many of the nation's problems, domestic and foreign, will be solved in the next few months as far as Old Media is concerned. The economy will blossom, foreigners will like the USA better, Congress will do more, better. The impeachment proceedings and investigations won’t be petty politics but a necessary clean up of the government. The general miasma that depressed the nation will lift. It will be a subtle but pervasive effect, lasting until at least Nov 2008...

And the rising real estate prices that hurt the middle class (along with the falling real estate prices that hurt the middle class) will turn around and become signs of cheer and cause for hope! Both of them. Probably simultaneously.

And, even better, the descent of the nation into fascism will be slowed or stopped! Children will sleep safely, knowing that Cheney's blackshirts won't break down the door and haul mommy and mommy off to the re-education camp....

I already knew Bush didn't lie, but...

...It's nice to have it confirmed by the NYT (I'm sure you've already seen this stuff, but it's fun to post)

Dean Barnett:

....In its semi-annual November surprise, the New York Times “reveals” that the Bush administration put documents on the web that showed that Iraq was quite far along in its quest for nuclear weapons. Naturally, that’s not the focus of the story. The focus of the story is the cursed incompetence of the Bush administration, the Republican Party, and even right-wing media-types (like me!) who wanted the documents released.

But the takeaway from the story for normal people won’t be that conservatives both inside and outside the administration are all a bunch of blithering incompetents. Besides, Andrew Sullivan’s vote had already been pretty much sewed up. The “news” in the story is how far along Saddam was in his bid to acquire the ultimate WMD. While that’s an old story to many of us, it’s heartening to see the Times splash it all over this morning’s front page and in so doing refresh the nation’s memory regarding the most disputed causus belli of the current war....

And of course having the NYT, of all organizations, admit that leaking stuff might be harmful...delicious...

biases and preconceptions...

I find the biases and preconceptions in this Washington Times piece fascinating...

BAGHDAD -- In the face of relentless violence, political chaos, economic uncertainty and nightly curfews, Iraq's maternity wards are experiencing an unlikely baby boom.

Despite the obstacles, the birthrate in Iraq actually has increased since the U.S.-led invasion 43 months ago, according to the country's Health Ministry. The rate of births in the country has jumped from 29 births per 1,000 people in 2003 to 37 per 1,000 last year, according to government figures.

In neighboring Iran, the birthrate is half that -- 21 per 1,000 population, while the average birthrate in the Middle East is 25, according to the World Bank. The birthrate in the United States is about 14 births per 1,000 people, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....

Some preconceptions...

1. That people in Iraq see their situation the same way western MSM writers do.
2. That a level of violent deaths roughly comparable to American urban slums is something that people can't "get used to," and just carry on their lives during.
3. That Saddam's Iraq had economic certainty.
4. That people respond to times of sporadic violence by postponing children.
5. That the situation in Iraq constitutes "political chaos."

I'd say:

1. They probably don't, as witness the fact that several million refugees have returned to Iraq. Plus all those new babies.
2. There have been lots of cases in history where people became accustomed to levels of violence and uncertainty much greater than Iraq's. And would routinely slip out to buy groceries when the firing died down, or when mortar fire moved to the next block. I've read stuff like that about Beirut.
3. Among other things, the Ba'athists played games with the value of the currency, and people would be stuck with devalued dinars, while insiders made a killing. More importantly, true economic security—this will be incomprehensible to statists—comes with the marketplace. Things of value have value because people will pay for them, and free markets maximize this salability.
4. The normal human response to dangerous times is to have more children, so as not to have all one's eggs of happiness in one basket. I suspect the author is a "Blue-Stater" who assumes that people respond to anything by postponing children.
5. Just silly. Wishful thinking. Or maybe just sloppy writing

smears, one more little item...

Apparently last year Robin Williams did a comedy routine mocking Rush Limbaugh for his pain-killer addiction, and laughing at the thought of him going into therapy.

Then, a week or two later, Williams announces that HE is going into therapy for his drinking problem. And asks for privacy! (And gets it! From the same news media that's now pretending outrage (at the false charge) that Rush mocked Michael J. Fox.)

Liberals are nothing but horrid little children.

Underdogs lashed by the acid tongue of George W Bush...

I didn't mention the ridiculous excuse-making by Mr Calame of the NYT, because everybody else was doing so. But our friend Frank prodded me, and really, it's just irresistable...

...What kept me from seeing these matters more clearly earlier in what admittedly was a close call? I fear I allowed the vicious criticism of The Times by the Bush administration to trigger my instinctive affinity for the underdog and enduring faith in a free press —...

What constitutes "vicious criticism" to a leftist? It's saying, "You are wrong." That's hitting below the belt. (And if one says, "You are VERY wrong?" "Hate-mongering!")

What babies.

"not the harbinger of disaster that the Times and WaPo would have us believe..."

This is worth reading...

Yesterday, we noted that the MSM (along with their fellow travelers in the intel community), had apparently "cherry-picked" information from a recent National Intelligence Estimate, making their case that the Bush Administration's War on Terror had actually made the problem worse. In closing, we observed that if the NIE was that biased, it represented a grave disservice to both the community and the nation.

Thankfully, the actual NIE is not the harbinger of disaster that the Times and WaPo would have us believe. According to members of the intel community who have seen the document, the NIE is actually fair and balanced (to coin a phrase), noting both successes and failures in the War on Terror--and identifying potential points of failure for the jihadists. The quotes printed below--taken directly from the document and provided to this blogger--provide "the other side" of the estimate, and its more balanced assessment of where we stand in the War on Terror (comments in italics are mine)....(Thanks to PowerLine)

Philosophically, by the way, I think that the fact that mistakes have been made is good. A good sign. This War on Terror is a new thing, and the only way to learn how to fight it is is to jump in and try, and make lots of "mistakes." And the only way to avoid making mistakes is inactivity. Clintonism.

Actually, I am oversimplifying. You need to "jump in and try things," but within the context of a correct basic understanding of what it is you are trying to do. You need to have a compass heading to follow, before you start thrashing through the sticker patch.

I support the Administration in the War not because I think they don't make mistakes, but because I agree with their compass heading. And the contempt I feel for President Bush's liberal opponents is huge, not because I think they would necessarily make more "mistakes" if they were in charge, but because they have no compass.

They have never made a philosophical case for a different Grand Strategy. Without that, to continually oppose and hinder our elected leadership means they are not a "loyal opposition." They are just treasonous ankle-biters.

Pay back....

Associated Press.BAGHDAD, Iraq A leader of Ansar al-Sunnah, a group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq that responsible for kidnappings and beheadings, has been captured by Iraqi and U.S. forces, the prime minister's office said Saturday.

Muntasir Hamoud Ileiwi al-Jubouri and two of his aides were arrested in Muqdadiyah, 90 kilometers (56 miles) northeast of Baghdad late Friday, Brig. Qassim al-Mussawi, spokesman for the General Command of the Armed Forces, told The Associated Press....

...The Sunni militant group has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide attacks, the August 2004 execution of 12 Nepalese hostages and a December 2004 explosion at a U.S. military mess hall in Mosul that killed 22 people. Believed to have been an offshoot of another group, Ansar Al-Islam....(Thanks to Dean)

Good news of course. Lots of thoughts come to mind (all of which you've heard before.) One of the reasons for the Iraq Campaign was to make Iraq an ally in the War on Terror. Well, we can see that. My guess is that most people of the Islamic world are our allies, but just haven't realized it yet. They don't want to be ruled by Talibs, or by brutes like Saddam. But it will take them a while to realize it.

And we notice once again terrorists being called "militants" by their fawning pals in our vile press, may Allah the Merciful and Compassionate pull the beards from their cheeks.

And this by the way is revenge. This is vengeance against murderers and war criminals, and we can and should enjoy it. Celebrate it. Hey, you Democrats out there, let's hear how pleased and proud you are that you country and its ally have won a victory!
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Well, maybe tomorrow we will hear from them.

and one from Polish Radio...

Pajamas Media:

Given the tsunami of news coming out of Iraq in the papers and on television, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the media organizations of the world must have a battalion or more of reporters assigned to cover the war. But if you guessed “one or two battalions,” you’d be far off the mark. If you guessed “several squads” you’d still be wrong....

....If you guessed 9 reporters, you guessed right.
Here’s the chart (CLICK HERE TO VIEW) showing who the nine embedded reporters were covering all of Iraq on 9/19/2006. You’ll see that of those 9 reporters, 3 were from the Armed Forces’ Stars & Stripes, 1 from AFN (Armed Force Network), 1 from the Charlotte Observer, 1 from the BBC, 1 from the AP, 1 from RAI, and 1 from Polish Radio. All the rest of the “coverage” of the Iraq war on that day came from reporters hunkered down in the hotels and other locations under the rubric “Baghdad News Bureaus.”...

Being embedded is VERY dangerous. Not especially physically dangerous, but something much worse--dangerous to the lefty world-views and hate-America Bobo prejudices of the reporters.

"winning a big talent contest, but your parents weren’t there to see...."

Callimachus at Winds of Change has an excellent interview with a woman who spent several years working in Iraq, for a company that oversees the contractors who are working on the many reconstruction projects. It's fascinating stuff, and I recommend it.

She's bitter about how our press so-called covered the stories...

...The press missed something vital about Iraq, and as a result the American and world public never really understood. Nobody ever got it. Iraq wasn’t just another city in the US or in Europe.

And as a result US and European citizens can share no connection to and no pride whatsoever in what those of us in Iraq have accomplished. You can’t feel it, because you’ve never seen it. And those of us who have experienced it have few ways to convey it to you so you can relate to it and share it with us. There’s a pretty hollow feeling that comes with that. It’s like being a sixteen year old and winning a big talent contest, but your parents weren’t there to see....

And I'm bitter too. I've been following the scraps of these stories that surface, and knowing all along there's a lot more going on...

....Most of us took our risks because we had to to complete our jobs. Others did so because we sincerely believed in what we were doing. For many if not most, we ultimately did so for both reasons. So it is difficult for us to watch or read much of what is reported here in the States. It is even harder to watch that same media mention their own "bravery and dedication" on those rare occasions when reporters would actually leave the safety of their burrows and venture out in clean flak jackets to cover some well-secured scene.

This didn’t go completely unnoticed by others who mentioned it on returning to the States. The media’s excuse has been that they are prime targets for armed thugs that routinely look for westerners to kidnap or kill. These people do exist and they are truly deadly. But far more contractors or Iraqi and third-nation workers employed by them have been killed, wounded, kidnapped, or raped, than journalists.

More international aid workers have been killed, wounded, or kidnapped, than journalists. More Iraqi doctors, police, government workers, social aid workers, teachers, government leaders, lawyers, businessmen and religious leaders have been individually targeted, killed, wounded, raped, or kidnapped than journalists. So as it works out, journalists aren't as high up on the hit list as they claim to be. But that hasn't moved them to go out and actually do their jobs, nor has it stopped them from trumpeting their own bravery, dedication, and ... uhhh ... integrity. ...

The news producers are only interested in the reconstruction projects if there's a hint that Halliburton has screwed up, and then only so they can tell lies about the Vice-President. Same for lefty-bloggers and left-politicians. The toads are not worthy to clean the boots of the brave men and women who serve our country around the globe in the messy dangerous work that actually accomplishes things and helps people.

Zombie's got the goods...

Here's an amazing, world-class blog post, documenting a faked "Israeli attack" on a Lebanese ambulance.

A totally bogus story, which was reported by our vile Western "news" media as truth. Go take a look...

Update: Zombie, by the way, might more be called a "web photo-journalist" than a blogger. Remember this? and this

Harbingers...

A friend writes, about Tom Friedman,

Tom threw in the towel today on Iraq. Since he is almost always wrong (zigs when he should zag), this must be a bottom.

Sounds right to me. My question is, has Johnny Apple of the NYT declared Lebanon to be a "quagmire?" I shall be very worried about our friends, until that portent of victory appears...

And also, I've been meaning to link to this post by Rand, which calls Israel....

THE OTHER LONE-STAR STATE!

More on perverting the language...

I blogged recently about the latest sneaky trick of the news media to cover up the fact that their terrorist symbiotes are ...terrorists. Harold Sutton was good enough to do a bit of Googling and show us who is using "activists" to describe filthy murderers...

3 Palestinian Resistance Fighters, 3 Israeli Soldiers Killed in
...Al-Jazeerah.info, GA - Jun 25, 2006
... least 70 Palestinian anti-occupation activists were extra-judicially ... government to invite a Palestinian retaliation ... in a daring attack, three Palestinians were ...

GOT ANOTHER BIG AL QAEDA FISH
FrontPage magazine.com, CA - Jun 21, 2006 ... arrested more than 500 Islamist activists since late ... days ago that killed seven Palestinian civilians...

Israeli attack follows Hamas rocket firings
International Herald Tribune, France - Jun 11, 2006
... Palestinians' Hamas party, after Hamas activists fired a ... Since last year's truce, Palestinian militants from ... in that strike, and three were wounded, Hamas's ...

Israeli Airstrike Kills 2 Hamas Militants
Forbes - Jun 11, 2006... The attack came after Hamas activists fired a ... were killed in that strike, and three were wounded, Hamas ... whether Hamas' takeover of the Palestinian Authority in ...

Israeli Airstrike Kills 2 Hamas Militants
WRAL.com, NC - Jun 11, 2006
... ruling Hamas party, after Hamas activists fired a ... killed in that strike, and three were wounded, Hamas ... whether Hamas' takeover of the Palestinian Authority in ...

Israel Fires Missiles at Militants in Gaza
ABC News - Jun 11, 2006... ruling Hamas party, after Hamas activists fired a ... Three other militants were wounded in the attack on a ... The Israeli army said Palestinian militants fired about ...

Fatah Militia Raises Tensions With Hamas
CBS News - Jun 3, 2006... Another 3,000 Fatah activists are training in Gaza in ... to 165,000 civil servants over the past three months. ... to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside ...        

We feel the public has a right to know...

Thanks to Frank for sending this...


They are concerned, of course, about the dangerous erosion of civil liberties that may follow from such a lawless unilateral power-grab by intolerant jingo-istic nationalists who wrap themselves in the flag and stifle dissent...

Primary document

Treasury Secretary Snow's letter to Mr Keller of the NYT is reproduced here. It is worth reading. Especially, it crushingly, with many details, refutes Keller's claim that Administration efforts to prevent publication were "half-hearted."

That claim is clearly, though Snow is too polite to say it, a filthy liberal lie.

Thanks to Wretchard.

unwarranted surveillance

An excerpt, from JunkYardBlog...

NY Times: U.S. Soldier spying on bin Laden
NY Times Special Report, By B. Arnold

WAZIRISTAN—An American soldier, clinging to a cliff face littered with broken shale and animal bones in Waziristan, northwest Pakistan, is currently engaging in direct, unwarranted surveillance of Osama bin Laden, confidential sources have revealed to the New York Times.

The soldier’s conduct raises questions about the Bush administration’s policy of covert surveillance and intelligence gathering in support of his “War on Terror”. Constitutional experts are “troubled” by this and similar unwarranted searches that are designed to gather information on terrorists, but may reveal private information about American citizens instead.

“If there was an American citizen down there sunbathing in that Waziristan village next door to where bin Laden is conferring with his top lieutenants, then the Defense Department would now be passing around her photos,” said Cass Sunstein, a law professor.

Mr. bin Laden, who could not be reached for this interview, is a Saudi-born spiritual leader who, some say, was connected with the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The attack killed nearly 3000 people, many of them women and minorities. He is currently meeting with twelve lieutenants to discuss a worldwide spiritual initiative set to take place in Jakarta, Addis Ababa, Melbourne, and Houston, Texas on July 11th.

Observing the heavily guarded meeting from about fifty yards away is Lt. Thomas “Turk” Dobrovsky, of Houston. Crouched in a camouflaged “ghillie suit”, Dobrovsky adjusted a concealed antenna in an effort to record snatches of Arabic conversation in the mud meeting hall below. He is partially concealed by a rock outcropping, the one with the two scraggly bushes, but is awkwardly positioned and unable to defend himself. A burst of AK fire or an RPG from the guards below could kill him easily.....

x

The go-to guy...

If you are interested in the NYT perfidy, HH is the guy to read. Amazin' fellow, he's not only a writer and blogger and a successful radio host, he also teaches Con Law....

...It seems increasingly clar that Keller/McManus et al are close to ignorant of the constitutional rules at work here. They have confused the deep suspicion of prior restraint in our constitutional framework with an exemption from the laws governing the disclosure of secrets. It is not a difficult distinction to grasp, but the press lords refuse to acknowledge it, and instead hope to confuse the public on the subject, even in the course of softball interviews...

Liberals are ALL ignorant about this stuff. They snivel on and on about our "Constitutional rights," but they have not a clue what they are. You can cite the actual case law until you are blue in the face, and you will not make the slightest dent in a liberal brain. In the old theological term, they have "invincible ignorance" (bolstered by smug self-satisfaction).

It's just as much murder as putting a bullet in someone's head..

The chairman of the House homeland security committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace suspected terrorists.

Representative Peter King cited the New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that said the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records...

..."We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press....[Link. Thanks to PowerLine]

Thank God somebody in government has the guts to say the obvious, that when someone openly violates the law, they should be prosecuted. Unfortunately he's in the wrong Branch.

And the really uggle thing is, that in the latest NYT-LAT atrocity, about the financial surveillance, they themselves admit that the program is effective and legal. (And, though they didn't mention it, was only concerned with institutional transfers, not your bank account or mine.) There was not even the coloration of any valid civil liberties concerns. Frauds.

By aiding terrorists, the NYT is killing people just as much as if they went out and gunned them down.

And yet again...

They've done it again. Classified information leaked from within our government, and released by the NYT, to support the terror war against the Free World.

The traditional remedy in wartime was to hang people like them. Since that would be "barbarous" (unless done by terrorists, in which case it's OK with liberals and peaceniks) I will advocate life imprisonment.

Another ill deed...

From an article by Jack Kelly.

...A disturbing anecdote from Col. McMaster illustrates why. His 3rd ACR broke the insurgents' hold of the city of Tal Afar last September in an operation which generated these effusive words of praise from the town's mayor:

"To the lion hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets...(you are) not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism."

Time magazine had a reporter and a photographer embedded with the 3rd ACR. When the battle was over, they filed a lengthy story and nearly 100 photographs.
"When the issue came out, the guts had been edited out of the reporter's story and none of the photographs he submitted were used," said the admiral, quoting Col. McMaster. "When the reporter questioned why his story was eviscerated, his editors...responded that the story and pictures were 'too heroic.'"...(thanks to Dave Price)

Too heroic! TOO HEROIC! Our troops were heroic, they were generously lauded as heroes by Iraqis, and to our press this is a bad thing. Something that has to be excised from the story.

This is just a little weblog, and so I don't have to be mealy-mouthed and polite and say the press is "biased." They are not biased, they hate America. They are leftists, and like all leftists, they hate this country. They usually try to disguise it in various ways, sometimes even from themselves, but it's always true.

You think I'm exaggerating? Find a leftist and read them the letter from the mayor of Tall' Afar (I blogged it here.) You won't find a single one that is not made uncomfortable, at the least, by that letter--watch 'em wrinkle the lip, and twitch. Or by the idea of an article in which American troops are presented as simply heroic and good, with no countervailing negatives added on for "balance."

The bastards have done it again..

The NYT has, once again, decided to uncover a classified program used to fight terrorists, because they feel they are the real government of the United States, and know better than mere elected officials what should be done...

...The Bush administration has made no secret of its campaign to disrupt terrorist financing, and President Bush, Treasury officials and others have spoken publicly about those efforts. Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said: "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."...

It just makes me want to cry, the passivity of the Bush Administration in the face of blatant treason.

And the "threat to civil liberties" argument the Times is making is utter crap. We hear it over and over again from leftists, but it is total BS.

In every major war this country has fought, there have been massive infringements of civil liberties. And every single time we have ended those restrictions as soon as the danger passed. Wilson shut down hundreds of newspapers. Did that become some sort of common thing? Obviously not! And tossed Conscientious Objectors into prison. Did that become a trend?

FDR flung a hundred thousand people into camps on vague suspicions. Did that become the norm? Obviously not. Now is a time when internment would actually be good policy (not of that many people, but certain terror-preaching imams for sure) but we can't even think of it due to our reaction from the first time.

And the argument that this war is different, because it could go on indefinitely, with no clear end, is also stupidity. The Cold War started with HUAC hearings, blacklists, and loyalty oaths. And even though it dragged on for another 40 years (and if leftists and realists had had their way would be going on still) those restrictions were soon dropped, because it became clear they were not needed. And the argument that we will be too stupid distinguish a fuzzy ending is especially stupid. That's what we have human beings for--you know, thinking, judging. That's what we do, that machines can't do.

And there is a process by which we make these corrections. The process is called "elections." The people running things today can be a bunch of outsiders after the next election. And the old critics and outsiders will now be running things. And our tradition, our American tradition, was for both parties to respect the needs of national security above their political interests. (The grand example of this was Governor Dewey's voluntarily giving up his plan to focus his presidential campaign on Pearl Harbor, when he was apprised that this might reveal our breaking of Japanese cyphers.)

The NYT'ers have no love for elections. Their views gelled back in the days when their party--Big Government Liberalism--was elected every time whether the candidates were Democrat or Republican. A time when a conservative such as Barry Goldwater was considered a joke, and had no chance of being president. And at a time when the NYT was consider the "flagship of Eastern Establishment liberalism." I remember those days, I was there. The NYT used to be a quasi-governmental institution, and it thinks it still is...

And while I'm furious that Bush has not clamped down on those filthy traitors, I do take satisfaction from the way he has made it obvious that he doesn't care what they think, and has not the slightest intention of currying their favor, or even reading their lefty rag.

50 to zip...

From an article by Cap Weinberger and Wynton Hall...

...Case in point: the New York Times and their love affair with the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. To date, the New York Times has devoted over 50 front page articles to the story! Currently, not a single individual chronicled in our book, Home of the Brave: Honoring the Unsung Heroes in the War on Terror, - some of the most highly decorated members of the United States military - has received a front-page story devoted to his or her valorous actions. Even when Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the best the New York Times could muster was a story buried on page 13. A nation that ignores or worse attacks its heroes erodes and disparages its own ethos...

The NYT has no interest in our ethos. America's, that is. They hate this country, because it elects Republicans and is a living breathing refutation of the statism they represent.

They should have just read R.J...

Science works overtime to learn stuff that any ordinary person can just see...

More ink equals more blood, claim two economists who say that newspaper coverage of terrorist incidents leads directly to more attacks.

It's a macabre example of win-win in what economists call a "common-interest game," say Bruno S. Frey of the University of Zurich and Dominic Rohner of Cambridge University.

"Both the media and terrorists benefit from terrorist incidents," their study contends. Terrorists get free publicity for themselves and their cause. The media, meanwhile, make money "as reports of terror attacks increase newspaper sales and the number of television viewers."....

Actually, I think that more than a few newspapers could be sold with items of good news, packaged as something exciting and new. But maybe I just have too high of expectations of human nature (and too low for the news industry).

Common understanding...wrong.

Excellent summary in OpinionJournal, on the case law and constitutionality of the news media's claim that they can, with impunity, under cover of the First Amendment, betray our country by publishing classified information. They can't. Period.

There's also another matter covered, of interest to bloggers...

....The second extraordinary claim made by Mr. Keller that needs to be addressed is the notion that the First Amendment's Freedom of the Press creates a special preserve for the institutionalized press, as opposed to ordinary citizens. Although this is a common understanding among reporters and newspaper editors, it is wrong. The Freedom of the Press was designed to protect the published word of all citizens, not just an institutionalized fourth estate. As one of the anti-federalist opponents of ratification of a constitution that did not include a bill of rights noted, the liberty of the press insures that "the people have the right of expressing and publishing their sentiments upon every public measure . . . . "

James Madison's initial proposal for the First Amendment clearly expressed this common understanding, guaranteeing the right of the people "to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments." Roger Sherman's own proposal a month later mirrored Madison's: "The people have certain natural rights which are retained by them when they enter into society, Such are the rights . . . of Speaking, writing and publishing their Sentiments with decency and freedom . . . . Of these rights therefore they Shall not be deprived by the government of the united States." These formulations were drawn from the amendments proposed by several of the state ratifying conventions, and lest their be any doubt that "freedom of the press" was synonymous with the right of the people generally to speak, write, and publish their sentiments, the Pennsylvania proponents of a Bill of Rights made that amply clear: "That the people have a right to the freedom of speech, of writing, and of publishing their sentiments, therefore (emphasis added), the freedom of the press shall not be restrained by any law of the United States."

As my Claremont Institute colleague Thomas West has noted, what is protected is not just the right to use a printing press or to go into the newspaper business, but the right of every citizen to publish, to make and distribute copies of words and/or pictures communicating his or her sentiments to the public. The founders would never have accepted the view that the freedom of the press is limited to members of a particular industry called "the press" or "the media."....

If I ran the circus, Mr K and his colleagues would be treated to sabbaticals, to give them some time for reflection, aided by soft tropic breezes, warm sunshine, three squares a day, and respectful servants who put on gloves before touching any Korans.

Publishing ones ideas, by the way, always requires some expenditure of money. If you are not allowed to pay to get your thought before the public, then you are in effect being forbidden to publish. The legislation know as 'Campaign Finance Reform" is as clearly unconstitutional as anything can be. But you already knew that.

Come to think, we never did find Lucy...

As you are probably already aware, the Haditha story is starting to get some interesting critical scrutiny. A good piece to read is: Haditha: Is McGirk the New Mary Mapes?

....The sum and substance of this thumbnail sketch on the Haditha claims is that it follows so closely the template for the TANG and Plame stories. Take a reporter with an anti-Administration agenda, an interested group (think of the Mashhadanis as the VIPS in the Plame case or Burkett and Lucy Ramirez in the TANG case) and a story too good to be checked and circumstances where the people attacked are limited in what they can quickly respond to and you get a story which smells to me like it will soon be unraveled.

This time, I’m betting the consequences to the press which rushed to judgment will be more disastrous than it was to Dan Rather. I surely hope so....

Me too. Oh Please please please. Even if the Marines are guilty, the actions of our press (with a few honorable exceptions) have been utterly foul and treasonous. They have already convicted, and are already gloating about how this will help put their party into power. And even worse, they are hungry to convict America, and ever eager to minimize the crimes of terrorists and Islamists. They are on the other side.

It makes me want to just spit with fury to see how eager they are to defame our troops, who have acted with more restraint and care than probably any army in history, and suffered many deaths by being careful not to harm civilians. Our guys in WWII would have flattened Haditha with hardly a moment's hesitation. Called in the artillery, or gone in behind tanks, tossing dynamite into basements.

Lafayette Baker, come back, come back, come back. Your country needs you.

Update: TIME is issuing retractions on various details of their big "scoop." The retractions, of course, are buried where no one is likely to see them...except that, these days, there are these things called "weblogs"...Too bad, suckers.

The unreported story...

The incident at Haditha is still being investigated. If the marines did murder civilians, it was a terrible thing, and they should and will be punished.

But the press and the anti-American Left is already drooling over the story, and has already convicted, and is already telling lies. (See this by Hugh Hewitt, where he interviews Gen Bahms, whose words were misrepresented by the WaPo.)

But incidents like this, or Abu Ghraib, or My Lai, always have another story that they cast like a shadow, a sort of anti-story. And that story is NEVER REPORTED.

There are two parts to the unreported story.

One is that the tactics of the Viet Cong, or the "insurgents" in Iraq, are intended to provoke atrocities. The My Lai Massacre story is still being told--my son learned about it in school--but it's never mentioned that the Viet Cong routinely used civilians to cover their attacks, and routinely pretended to be civilians. These are war crimes, they were committed daily, but get no attention from the sort of people who are eager to find American war crimes. And the explicit intention of these war crimes, taught by the Soviets, was to provoke attacks on civilians.

Similarly, there is very little mention of the terrorists in Iraq or Afghanistan using schools and mosques and civilian crowds for their attacks. It is virtually unreported that Abu Ghraib prison was under frequent mortar and rocket attack by the terrorists, and at the same time we were humiliating some prisoners, they were killing and maiming them by the hundreds! Kinda spoils the artistic effect of the story to put in those extraneous details...

Second, the other part of the unreported story is that, for every My Lai (or Haditha, or Abu Ghraib) there were tens of thousands of My Lais that didn't happen. Daily incidents that didn't result in any massacres. Another tiresome detail best left out, so as not to spoil ones Pulitzer possibilities.

And you know what's going to make me really furious, if this works out the way these things have in the past? Not the blatant Left who will be crowing and high-fiving over this, but the hypocritical Left, who will pretend to be "heartbroken," and to be "devastated" that the "American they love could have fallen so low," and "our military's honor be so besmirched." Foul liars. They never show the slightest interest in the (infinitely greater numbers of) good deeds our soldiers do, so they have not the slightest right to pretend that they care.

Oh, and Third. It occurs to me that there is another part to the unreported story. The tactics of our enemies (and similarly the enemies of Israel, or Britain or Australia) testify to the simple fact that we are the good guys. They only work because we care. We would never try to provoke the terrorists into massacring civilians--why bother, they do it voluntarily all the time, and the press and the Left don't care about those civilians anyway.

This whole story is based on the fact that we are the good guys, and the Left and the press is allied with our enemies to use this against us.

Correction: The interview with General Bahms was by Mary Katherine Ham. She co-blogs at Hugh Hewitt's blog.

Should have 'fessed up long ago...

From USA Today:

....Mounting research shows employees are cautiously optimistic as salary freezes thaw and companies play tug-of-war over skilled job candidates.

Workers reported high confidence in their job security, with more than 80% predicting little or no chance they could lose their jobs in the coming year, according to a May survey of 1,000 full-time employees by Philadelphia-based Right Management.

That's a big jump from six months ago, when nearly a quarter of employees said they might leave their jobs....

Leftist obfuscators have been amazingly successful in covering up the superb condition of our economy, and the success of the Bush tax cuts. BUT, reality creeps in, and the hilarious thing is that their holding back the truth means that, for many people, the good news will be new and fresh just in time for the 2006 elections!

If they had been honest, the strong economy would be old news by now...

Triumph!

Washington Post: Iraqi Parliament Approves New Cabinet: May 20--Iraq's parliament swore in its full-term prime minister and his cabinet Saturday, a political milestone U.S. leaders hope will allow a new government to begin solving the country's problems and lead to the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops...

This is a splendid moment folks! As has happened many times in the past few years, the nay-sayers have been proved wrong, and George W Bush and his supporters have been vindicated. And the people of Iraq have once again repudiated the sneering democracy-hating leftists who said, wishfully, that their hopes of freedom were doomed.

<obligatory disclaimer>Of course Iraq will hit many rough patches in the years to come, and might even fail </obligatory disclaimer> But I predict that Iraq will continue to justify our faith,and there will be more moments like this to look forward to.

And it is also easy to predict that our despicable America-hating news media will continue to underplay any American triumph, especially if it might help Republicans. If you think I'm exaggerating, just read the article. One sentence of good news, "balanced" by the entire rest of the article being filled with any bad news that they could scrape up, with almost no positive information about the new Government. They've done their duty for their bosses at the DNC.

Even the one picture that accompanies the article is not of the new Prime Minister, but of a funeral some some guy in the Al-Mahdi Army, killed by police (Good for them).

And even that one sentence is stupidly snarky and negative. "a political milestone U.S. leaders hope will allow a new government to begin solving the country's problems" What crap. the Iraqis have already made enormous strides in solving their problems. Read this, if you doubt me.

Oh well, the annoyance is a small matter compared to knowing that I'm on the winning side, and the terrorist/news-media/Democrat Alliance is losing.

Who are the owners, and what do they think?

I've been wondering why we haven't seen more things like this:

Morgan Stanley Investment Management said Tuesday it withheld votes for the Times' director nominees because it believes the company's board and management have become unaccountable to shareholders.

The firm, which says it owns more than 5% of the Times' Class A stock, called for the elimination of the dual-stock structure that leaves control of the board with minority shareholders led by the founding Sulzberger family. The Times and a number of other big media outfits have left voting control in the hands of founders, under the rationale that long-term owners look after the long-term interests of the business rather than chasing short-term profit. But Morgan Stanley said the company has failed to keep up its end of the bargain..(Thanks to Michelle Malkin).

What was the bargain? The Sulzberger family sold shares of their company to the public. Their duty, as managers, is to act in the interests of those owners. By treating the Times as their own little political toy, they are guilty of fraud..

....Morgan Stanley added that it believes that "other long-term institutional shareholders have also withheld their votes for the company's Class A director nominees." The Times couldn't immediately be reached for comment....

Couldn't be reached for comment? Maybe The Times is out of the office today...How indignant those clowns would be if some Republican "couldn't be reached for comment."

...New York Times Co. stock has dropped 52% since its peak in June 2002, Morgan Stanley says. But "despite significant underperformance, management's total compensation is substantial and has increased considerably over this period," Morgan Stanley says....

I'll bet the NYT has run articles or editorials criticizing various big businesses for giving management fat raises even as profits are falling. I'd also guess the Sulzbergers don't think of themselves as capitalists, but more like caretakers of a shrine or church...

um, uh, did I miss anything?

I don't think there is anything to get upset about because Justice Ginsburg fell asleep during a complex oral argument. The case will probably be judged on the briefs; oral arguments are usually supererogatory at the Supreme Ct level.

But boy, do I remember how the lefty farts and the media howled with non-stop scorn and derision when SI Hayakawa fell asleep at some meeting. Which was nothing compared to the shrieks when Reagan was not awakened during the Gulf of Sidra incursion. Art Buchwald titled a whole book While Reagan Slept.

(Actually, Reagan was showing good leadership. The operation was carefully planned, and went exactly according to plan. There would have been no point in the President hovering over it a la LBJ. Real leaders give people responsibility, and then let them act.)

They wanted to believe it was real...

Good article in the NY Post by Michael Fumento, on politicized scientific journals...

...Some journal editors are completely unabashed about their chicanery. In 2004, The Lancet released ahead of publication and right before the 2004 U.S. presidential election an outrageous report claiming 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed since the U.S. invasion. Yet other calculations showed a range of 15,000 to 24,000 — and even Osama bin Laden claimed just "over 15,000."

No matter, the Lancet's editor took the opportunity to blast "democratic imperialism" and said "the evidence we publish today must change heads as well as pierce hearts."

Even Science's awful stem-cell embarrassment wasn't purely a matter of fraud. I have written repeatedly on how both Science and Nature have turned themselves into cheerleaders for any supposed advance in ES cell science, while opening their pages to laughable attacks on what many see as both medically and ethically superior — namely adult stem cells.

Perhaps the best explanation for why the Korean paper slipped by is that the editors so desperately wanted to believe it was real that they missed all the warning signs of fraud....

They are desperate. Their Leftish world is crumbling away, and the lies become ever more shrill and forced. If the dike crumbles at embryonic stem cells or global warming, the floodwaters will rush in....

Then and now...

Just in case there's somebody who still reads the "mainstream" media, and thinks it is just trying to report the news, here's a comparison of coverage of the Cheney hunting accident and the suicide of Vince Foster.

(With a bonus: comparison of the Clintonistas now castigating Bush/Cheney for being "secretive," with their actions when they scoured Foster's office of all evidence before authorities could examine it. And no, I'm not proposing any Vince Foster conspiracy theories. Just noting that the idea that this Administration is especially secretive is preposterous.)

(Thanks to Betsy Newmark)

Old school gent...

I caught part of Harry Whttington's statement on the radio as I was driving around this morning. What a classy guy. A gentleman. I bet the Democrat dweeblings of the press don't even realize he was pouring 0000-grade scorn on them when he thanked them for their prayers and good wishes!

But that was last year...

Just, you know, for your info...The New York Press, the paper that refused to offend religious sensibilities by publishing the Danish cartoons, and had their editors resign? Well, Amy Welborn has not forgotten another, um, religiously themed piece they did...

Title: THE 52 FUNNIEST THINGS ABOUT THE UPCOMING DEATH OF THE POPE.

It is poignant...

Richard John Neuhaus must be a truly saintly guy, to be so forbearing in the face of this sort of ignorance...

...With notable exceptions, reporters are people of good will working hard to write a story that will please their editors. It is true that they are not always the sharpest knives in the drawer. These days most of them have gone to journalism school, or j-school, as it is called. In intellectual rankings at universities, journalism is just a notch above education, which is, unfortunately, at the bottom.

An eager young thing with a national paper was interviewing me about yet another instance of political corruption. “Is this something new?” she asked. “No,” I said, “it’s been around ever since that unfortunate afternoon in the garden.” There was a long pause and then she asked, “What garden was that?” It was touching.

What prompts me to mention this today is that I’m just off the phone with a reporter from the same national paper. He’s doing a story on Pope Benedict’s new encyclical. In the course of discussing the pontificate, I referred to the pope as the bishop of Rome. “That raises an interesting point,” he said. “Is it unusual that this pope is also the bishop of Rome?” He obviously thought he was on to a new angle. Once again, I tried to be gentle. Toward the end of our talk, he said with manifest sincerity, “My job is not only to get the story right but to explain what it means.” Ah yes, he is just the fellow to explain what this pontificate and the encyclical really mean. It is poignant...

Reminds me of an employee I had, back when I owned a bookstore. A customer asked if we had a copy of Moby Dick, and he said, "who wrote it?"

As a Word Note, it used to be common among Protestants to refer to the Pope merely as "the Bishop of Rome," implying that the papacy was just a "popish" fraud. The Book of Common Prayer once included the charming prayer: From the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities, good Lord deliver us. (Cranmer's Liturgy 1544, removed from BCP 1599)

Focused on job losses, not gains...

Here's an interesting piece on how our news media present a distorted employment picture (Thanks to Betsy N):

The Free Market Project (FMP) report, Hit Job, is the result of a detailed analysis of job and employment coverage by all three broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC. The study examined 151 stories on the 2005 evening news shows to assess how they had reported on both job losses and gains during a year of strong employment growth...

..."More than 4.6 million jobs have been added since May 2003 -- 31 straight months of positive job growth," Gainor added. "Unemployment dropped down to 4.9 percent, lower than the average of all three recent decades."....

You would never know it from watching TV "news."

...-- Job losses, not gains: The networks focused on job losses in slightly more than half the reports (76 out of 151). Just 35 percent of the stories addressed job gains (53 out of 151). In one typical report, Jim Acosta of the "CBS Evening News" left his viewers with a memorable image of the 8,700 job cuts at General Motors in his Nov. 21 story: "Just three days before Thanksgiving, GM is carving up its work force like a Butterball turkey."

-- Government spending promoted: Two of the big Washington stories -- the transportation bill and cutbacks at military bases -- showed how hypocritical the media were. The $284 billion transportation bill was filled with pork but created thousands of new jobs that news reports barely mentioned. However, when military bases were cut to save $48 billion over 20 years, the news shows did more than three times as many stories bemoaning the job losses...

This is particularly egregious. Base closures have almost always created more jobs than they destroyed. And the base-closing program is in fact a triumph by the US political system, where, as with all governments, it is almost impossible to end established government programs. I suspect the news people are trying to fool themselves as much as the public; they are clinging to Lefty zero-sum economic ideas.

-- 283,000 jobs ignored: Initial unemployment reports were later revised, but the networks ignored those revisions. In 2005, most of those changes involved the addition of jobs, so network news ignored nearly 300,000 jobs in all of the stories, except those few that included cumulative totals...

Economic reports are routinely revised, as more data come in. And routinely ignored by the media, if the revisions make Republicans look good. I remember the same thing in the Reagan years. (Or rather, I learned the same thing after the Reagan years, just reading this and that. There was no easily accessible Internet back then, so you had to stumble on the right article...

--CBS the worst: By embracing the highest percentage of job-loss stories and the lowest percentage of stories about job gains, CBS presented a skewed picture of employment.

Reporter Trish Regan's July 20 broadcast on the "CBS Evening News" was one of the year's worst, according to FMP. After airing a quote from Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan about "sustained economic growth," Regan allegedly undermined it. "But his sunny forecast isn't being felt on the factory floor -- Kodak cutting up to 10,000; Hewlett-Packard 14,500 layoffs -- or on the streets, where reality trumps forecasts."

Regan had opened her segment with the following: "Twenty-five thousand layoffs and more on the way. I'm Trish Regan with why the jobs picture is looking very 'pink' these days."...

Most new jobs are created by new and small companies. Job cuts, especially the big ones, tend to be in mature industries, where companies compete by becoming more efficient, or where they are being battered by economic change. If General Motors lays off 10,000 people, and a thousand small companies add ten people each, guess which makes a dramatic news story? Or which is even visible without poring over dry statistics?

Also, lay-offs can be a sign of economic strength. Boeing can hire 20,000 people at a busy time because it knows it can lay them off if they need to. European companies are always very reluctant to hire anybody, because of laws that "protect" workers from being fired by ogre capitalists. That "protection" is a disaster to the many people who would like to become workers, but can't find jobs. (And those "protections" are what liberals would like to have here. Voting Democrat is voting against workers.)

al Qaeda's Algerian affiliate...

One additional item to add to the previous post, another reason they aren't going to report the story:

...The three Algerians arrested in Italy were members of the GSPC, al Qaeda's Algerian affiliate. Thanks to Steve Hayes's reporting, we now know that large numbers of GSPC members - specifically - were trained in Iraq prior to the war. Coincidentally, the GSPC is now one of Europe's most major problems. Plots involving the GSPC have been uncovered in Spain, France, and Italy. Additional members have been arrested in Germany...(Thanks to PowerLine)

I'm sure you are all aware that we are now discovering that Saddam's support and training of terrorists was far more extensive than we guessed. (If you don't know, read here.)

Leftists/Democrats/pacifists/news-media don't want you to know this. Because this is just one more reason, among many, why President Bush was correct to make the Iraq Campaign the centerpiece of the War on Terror. And why the frauds and hypocrites who are sabotaging their country in time of war should be driven out of public life.

If a tree falls in the forest, and the NSA hears it...

Here's more on the terror-plot you didn't hear about [Emphasis mine. Thanks to PowerLine]

AINA: The mainstream U.S. media outlets have failed to report a major terrorist plot against the U.S. - because it would tend to support President Bush's use of NSA domestic surveillance, according to media watchdog groups.

News of a planned attack masterminded by three Algerians operating out of Italy was widely reported outside the U.S., but went virtually unreported in the American media.

Italian authorities recently announced that they had used wiretaps to uncover the conspiracy to conduct a series of major attacks inside the U.S....

....The arrests were a major coup for Italian anti-terror forces, and the story was carried in most major newspapers from Europe to China.

"U.S. terror attacks foiled," read the headline in England's Sunday Times. In France, a headline from Agence France Presse proclaimed, "Three Algerians arrested in Italy over plot targeting U.S."

Curiously, what was deemed worthy of a worldwide media blitz abroad was virtually ignored by the U.S. media, and conservative media watchdog groups are saying that is no accident.

"My impression is that the major media want to use the NSA story to try and impeach the president," says Cliff Kincaid, editor of the Accuracy in Media Report published by the grassroots Accuracy in Media organization.

"If you remind people that terrorists actually are planning to kill us, that tends to support the case made by President Bush. They will ignore any issue that shows that this kind of [wiretapping] tactic can work in the war on terror."...

Think about this. How many newspapers would be sold if the headline was TERROR PLOT AGAINST U.S.! Or how many people would tune into the network news if the teaser was "New 9/11 plot may have been foiled." The news media are in the business of selling news, but here they have refused to sell their product. Because that would have also helped the President. That's pure partisanship.

The media can publish whatever they want to publish (though if I were a stockholder, I'd feel like I'd been robbed by my employees). But I would say that they have forfeited any right to any special status as "guardians of the public," or "watchdogs," or "protectors of whistle-blowers."

Low-lifes on trial...

Michelle Malkin has posted pictures of the defendants in the trial that just started, who are accused of slashing the tires of 20 Republican Campaign vehicles. don't expect to see much in the news about it.

Can you JUST IMAGINE how press and lefties would be going berserk if these low-lifes were accused of attacking Democrats!

Imagine the the bloviating, the POMPOSITY! "Democracy is dead," "Workers and minorities have been 'disenfranchised,'" America is fast becoming a police state..."first they came for the campaign vans..."

And the worst: "The America we all once knew (sniff) and loved (sniff) is (choke) GONE!"

"a bid to outdo"

Nick Danger at Redstate:

...You would think that the arrest of terrorists planning to "outdo 9/11" would warrant some news coverage in the United States, but that's not what the editors at your Ministry of Truth decided...

...If you're a regular reader of Turkish Press or Geo in Pakistan, you already know that on December 23,

Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday.

The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11, 2001 strikes by Al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed some 2,700 people, Pisanu said.

But if you have been relying on the U.S. media to warn you about things like this, you haven't heard anything about it....

Obviously, if we knew that terrorists were planning to "outdo 9/11," the resulting panics would leave millions of us little Lemmings trampled or crushed, and anyone wearing a turban would be instantly lynched...and even worse, we would be likely to support the extremist Bush Administration, and let that crazed right-winger Judge Alito onto the Court...

They can't help themselves...

AJ Strata notes another Washington Post article revealing information, from "current and former senior administration officials," about just how we collect data on terrorists. In this case, they don't even contend that anything illegal is happening...they just...well, Strata's title for his post says it all: The Media Cannot Stop Itself From Helping Our Enemies.

But he does have a suggestion of how we might fight back:

...A while ago someone suggested a way for ‘We The People’ to fight back as these treasonous liberals expose us to attack. The idea was to bring a class action law suit against the media outlets who recklessly expose our defense mechanisms to our enemies.

We don’t need to win, as much as get millions and millions of people signing up against the New York Times, Washington Post, the reporters themselves. In my opinion these companies are impairing my civil rights by exposing me and my familiy to terrorist acts. I have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the partisan actions of these leakers is putting all of this at risk.

These are not whistleblowers. Their motivations are purely partisan politics.

Time for us to remind everyone the power is in the people. So if anyone knows how to start a law suit against these people please let us all know...

There is no hope of these people reforming or changing. They are stuck in 1973 (In General Honore's immortal phrase, stuck on stupid) and to admit error now would would be to admit their whole lives have been wasted on foolishness. They can't be changed, but they can be punished. My preference would be to give them a little time for reflection in a certain Caribbean resort I've heard of. But tangling them up in lawsuits would not be bad.

adjectives...

Here's a snarky little piece that tries to make news out of the fact that Bush's core staff is very loyal and has almost no turnover.

I amuse myself by imagining the descriptive terminology that would be used if Bill Clinton had had similar subordinates...loyalty, modesty. selflessness, duty, collegiality, harmony, good management, band-of-brothers, sticking to one's post....I bet we'd hear them all.

Since it's Bush, the terms used are things like out-of-touch, group-think, "surrounded by people who agree with him..."

And of course: "...inside a bubble that isolates him from smart dissent, healthy competition, fresh ideas and bad news."

At least the news is good news....

The WaPo continues its attack on our country, with more anonymous sources leaking what is surely classified information. Lafayette Baker, where are you when we need you!!! At least the news is good news, with the administration so far refusing to truckle to the leftists...

Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor
Anti-Terror Effort Continues to Grow, By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, December 30, 2005; Page A01

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.

The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved....

It's a WAR we are in, for Pete's sake, and if the enemy won't come out of the shadows and fight, obviously we have to go in after him....

..."The executive branch will not pull back unless it has to," said a former Justice Department lawyer involved in the initial discussions on executive power. "Because if it pulls back unilaterally and another attack occurs, it will get blamed."...

That's right. I would have some sympathy with those, including the WaPo, who are attacking the administration if they said, "Let the blame for any future attacks be upon us." But no, if we are attacked the filthy hypocrites will snivel, "BUSH promised to protect us!"

...Refining what constitutes an assassination was just one of many legal interpretations made by Bush administration lawyers. Time and again, the administration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpret old ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under the congressional reforms beginning in the 1970s, according to these officials and seven lawyers who once worked on these matters....

1970's. There's the kicker. The Decade God Forgot. Think back, brothers and sisters. Think back to hordes of new Congressmen swept in on the Watergate tide. (There was even one 26 year-old Congressman still living with his mother.) Think back to the millions of South Vietnamese being betrayed (after we had won the war and withdrawn our troops) into Communist tyranny, concentration camps, murder and flight. Think back to Jimmy Carter refusing to use force when our citizens were kidnapped by Islamist loons. These were not only America-hating spasms of weakness, they were America-hating acts that led directly to the war we are in now. (And perhaps you think I am flinging epithets like "America-hating" thoughtlessly. Not so. That is exactly how those people think (and I'm "embedded," I know). If you press them on their views, you will always hear a narrative where America blunders across the globe like a thousand-mile-high golem, and our enemies mostly evaporate. They will say "We supported Pinochet," as if that was done out of mere wickedness, and not as an alternative to their guys, like Castro. As an alternative to communist conquest and an impoverished totalitarian police-state.

Those laws of the 1970's were created on the premise that America is evil. And unfortunately, those same people are still around, and still hold that view. And they lie and dissemble ceaselessly, and say, "Of course we support the troops." Or "How dare you question my patriotism." Or "We're not socialists liberals, we're 'Progressives.'" Or "We're just trying to protect our civil liberties." Blah blah blah. All lies.

Oh, and one more thing. The same people who think America is evil going back at least to Cain, ALSO, whenever America (with a Republican in the WH) actually tries to DO something, will claim that the innocent and idealistic country they used to know is NOW being corrupted and transformed...

It's OK to lie if you're saving the Earth...

NewsBusters has a piece I found funny (and pathetic) about the Today Show accompanying a piece on drilling in ANWR with pictures of lovely snow-capped peaks. Trouble is, the area of proposed drilling is an ugly featureless coastal plain. ANWR has 19 million acres, most of which no one is even suggesting be touched.. And the flat coastal area is 1.5 million acres, of which only 2,000 can be disturbed under the current bill!

If the public could actually see ANWR, perhaps from orbit, and then have pointed out to them the tiny boring smidgeon to be drilled in, they would laugh the environmentalist wackos to scorn. Hence the pretty pictures.

It was just harmless garden-variety thiodiglycol...

I bet you don't see this on the TV news...

The TIMES: A DUTCH businessman was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to 15 years in prison yesterday for helping Saddam Hussein to acquire the chemical weapons that he used to kill thousands of Kurdish civilians in the Iran-Iraq war....

....Prosecutors accused Van Anraat of delivering more than 1,000 tonnes of thiodiglycol. It can be used to make mustard gas, which causes horrific burns to the lungs and eyes and is often fatal.

He was also accused of importing chemicals to make nerve agents. The prosecution said that the lethal cargo was shipped from America via Belgium and Jordan to Iraq. He also imported other shipments from Japan via Italy.

Van Anraat was first arrested in 1989 in Italy on a US warrant. He then fled to Baghdad where he lived for 14 years under an assumed name. After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 he made his way back to the Netherlands, where he was arrested a year ago....

So Saddam harbored this guy for 14 years. Uh huh. Probably the kind-hearted Iraqi leader was protecting him from persecution by lying Americans with their paranoid fantasies of imaginary chemical weapons...(Thanks to Captain Ed).

Why is it suddenly controversial now?

On the whole subject of NSA intercepts, you should be reading PowerLine. It's certainly looking like the President's right to monitor foreign calls is a constitutional one, overriding FISA. And, as I noted previously, Democrat Presidents have been doing much more extensive surveillance, without any objection from our guardian saints of the NYT. From John at PowerLine:

...Has any administration ever backed the position now urged by the Times? It doesn't appear so. Matt Drudge points out that the Clinton administration engaged in warrantless wiretapping. Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick wrote that the President "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." That is an accurate summary of the holding of every federal court decision that has addressed the issue.

On May 23, 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order that said, "Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order."

The Clinton-era "Echelon" electronic surveillance program went far beyond anything now under discussion, and became controversial precisely because of its extraordinary scope. A transcript of a 60 Minutes program on Echelon is available here. But the basic concept that the President could order warrantless searches for national security purposes wasn't controversial during the Carter administration or the Clinton administration. Why is it suddenly controversial now?...

Why oh why oh why? Because they are on the other side (in both the war and politics) and would gladly hinder our war efforts to help put Dems back in power. Scoundrels.

Oh how I hope the administration takes off the gloves and starts prosecuting these slimeballs. The hypocrites howled that the Plame leak should be investigated, and it was. Now the NYT has openly said that their story contains classified information from anonymous "sources." a clear violation of the law! I hope the Justice Department is demanding the names of the leakers right now, and preparing to lock up reporters AND editors if it is not forthcoming.

Echelon...

Lying leftists have been presenting the Bush NSA eavesdropping as some sort of shocking innovation. Not so...

NewsMax...During the 1990's under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon....

....In February 2000, for instance, CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:

"If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency." NSA computers, said Kroft, "capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world."

Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told "60 Minutes" that the agency was monitoring "everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs."...

Somehow it's OK if a Democrat President monitors millions of calls. But if a Republicans monitors hundreds of calls from numbers known to be associated with terrorists, HE'S SPYING ON AMERICANS!!!!

And there's this:

In 2000, former Clinton CIA director James Woolsey set off a firestorm of protest in Europe when he told the French newspaper Le Figaro that he was ordered by Clinton in 1993 to transform Echelon into a tool for gathering economic intelligence.

"We have a triple and limited objective," the former intelligence chief told the French paper. "To look out for companies which are breaking US or UN sanctions; to trace 'dual' technologies, i.e., for civil and military use, and to track corruption in international business...

...In his comments to Le Figaro, Woolsey defended the program, declaring flatly: "Spying on Europe is justified."

"I can tell you that five years ago, several European countries were giving substantial bribes to export business more easily. I hope that's no longer the case."

During hearings in 2000 on the surveillance flap, Woolsey told Congress that in 1993 alone, U.S. firms obtained contracts worth $6.5 billion with the help of timely intelligence information....

Nothing wrong with this folks, 'cause these are the good guys, not fascist Republicans....

A lie is born...

We can actually watch, like a scientific experiment, as an urban legend is deliberately created. President Bush answered this question yesterday:

Q Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.

THE PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.

The lying news media instantly changed this to 30,000 civilians! You can see examples at Mudville Gazette and Michelle Malkin and DogPundit. The American immune system is also active, and people are already fighting back---apparently the SF Chron has changed its headline.

So who will win? My guess is that the figure of 30,000 civilians will still be repeated by America-haters when we are all old and gray...The liars of the so-called anti-war movement are still repeating the debunked figure of 100,000 civilian dead in Iraq.

An additional irony is that, in left-lingo, the terrorist who shreds a bunch of children in Iraq is an "insurgent," entitled to be treated as a POW (instead of being hanged as a murderer). But if he's killed, for purposes of statistics he's a "civilian," and presumed dead only because of America imperialism.

In fact, a lot of the dead in Iraq are people who, as they say in Texas, needed killin'. And we killed them and that's GOOD, and a fact to be proud of.

Meltdown?

Here's an example of a Reuters "news" article that's even more biased than usual: Cheney visits Iraq amid calls for US pullout. I clicked on the link because I thought it was an article about Vice President Cheney's visit to Iraq. But there's only one sentence about Cheney, and then it's all innuendo and quotes from anyone and everyone who dislikes the election and Americans...

The timing IS suspicious...

NewsBusters is not liking the timing here...(Thanks to Jim Miller)

....It was the MSM's worst nightmare-in-the-making: the prospect of a day, maybe more, of nothing but jubilant Iraqis waving those damn purple fingers, some of them no doubt soppily shouting "thank you, Mr. Bush!" Ugh. Can't let that happen.

Don't worry, MSM: the New York Times, with a nice assist from the Washington Post, have got your back.

The Times has admitted that, in response to a administration request, it had been holding the story on alleged US spying on Al-Qaida-linked phone numbers in the US for a year...

...So when do the Times and the WaPo choose to break it? Why, today of course, just in time to rain on the Iraqi election good-news parade....

If they loved their country, or even had a few shreds of warmth and sweetness left in their hearts, they would have been happy, having waited a year, to wait one more day so as not to detract from a splendid American triumph. Especially a triumph so unselfish in its nature, centered on having other people grow and become stronger and more free...

PS: My son tells me that CNN.com's leading story was: "Cold grips northern US."

President George W. Bush stands with out-of-country Iraqi voters Thursday in the Oval Office of the White House. The President told the media later, "I was struck by how joyous they were to be able to vote for a government -- a permanent government under a new constitution." (White House photo by Paul Morse) Thanks to Gateway Pundit.

Known as "the Butcher"

Cori Dauber points to this fascinating story, which the "mainstream" media apparently don't consider "news." Only Fox reported it...

FoxNews BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi citizens turned over a high-ranking Al Qaeda member known as "the Butcher" to U.S. forces in Ramadi Friday a military statement said.

Amir Khalaf Fanus was No. 3 on the 28th Infantry Division's High Value Individual list for Ramadi, wanted for murder and kidnapping in connection with his affiliation with Al Qaeda in Iraq.

"He is the highest ranking Al Qaeda in Iraq member to be turned into Iraqi and U.S. officials by local citizens," Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool said in a statement released from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi. "His capture is another indication that the local citizens tire of the insurgents' presence within their community."

According to Pool, Iraqi and U.S. Forces "have witnessed increasing signs of citizens fighting the terrorists within Ramadi as the Dec. 15 National Elections draw nearer."

He said that another 1,200 Iraqi Security Force soldiers were recently stationed in Ramadi, while 1,100 Iraqi special police commandos and a mechanized Iraqi army company had moved into the city.

What's grimly amusing, as always, is that the Gasping Media [one of the Iraqi bloggers came up with that term...I love it..] think they are helping Democrats by protecting us from good news from Iraq. In fact they are setting the Dems up for richly-deserved defeats in '06 and '08. Republicans are already creating ads featuring nothing but clips of Democrat leaders expressing their defeatist hate-America views. With a white flag for decoration. Ha ha. To see them is to know them...and feel utter contempt.

Curious omission

Spc. Phil Van Treuren notes a teensy weensy little omission from the NYT story on the bombing at the hospital in Mahmudiya Iraq. The NYT mentions that a US convoy was near, but not that the Americans were handing out candy to children, while others in their group were inspecting the hospital for refurbishment.

This is precisely the sort of dishonesty I was writing about in my earlier post Bizarro World law. The NYT is encouraging terrorist acts by attempting to shield the terrorists from the revulsion that they deserve. And this dishonesty is in the service of their domestic political ends; the pretense of caring about Iraq is a sham.

We are all "Document Experts"

Via PowerLine, I see that "Buckhead," the person who first noticed that the Dan Rather memos were fabrications, has come forward with his name, and with a very interesting (if you like such things) account of how he came to be extremely aware of typography, which made the forgery obvious. (He points out that millions of other people have the same knowledge, and that someone else would have caught it in minutes if he hadn't.) He is disgusted that Mary Mapes is now selling a book and appearing on TV peddling the same damn forgeries, and the same shit-stupid lies about the President...Go here, then click on "Explanation and Comment:"

...In any case, the other side objected to the brief on the grounds that it did not comply with the local court rule specifying that there could be no more than 10 printed characters per inch - a rule of which I was not aware at the time. I filed a brief in response to the objection. Trust me, the prospect of losing a contingency case over a font rule when you have invested years of work in the case will galvanize your attention on the subject of fonts. A pdf scan of a certified copy of that brief is available here at the link above to "1999 Brief." Compare what I said about typewriters, monospaced fonts and proportionally spaced fonts in the brief filed in 1999 with what I said in post # 47, on 9/8/04. I knew what I knew a long time ago, and the brief proves it definitively. So long, conspiracy theory...

We are ALL experts in some sort of document. There is some type of paperwork we handle so frequently that a crude forgery would be blatantly obvious to us. "Document examiners" are widely knowledgeable, but every one of us is more knowledgeable than them on something. For instance, even without the typographic problems, the fabrications were obvious to those familiar with 1970's Air Force documents. The military services are very fussy about the layout, abbreviations, punctuation etc of their paperwork. And each service is different. The use of Army stylistic details in a supposed Air National Guard memo is as conclusive as the typography. Especially since the forger-presumptive had served in the National Guard.

And Col. Killian's family were experts. They knew he never created such things, and that he didn't even know how to type.

I myself am a "document expert" of sorts, because I've tried to reproduce old decorative writing with a graphics program. It's hugely difficult, even just trying to manipulate scanned artwork a little. The different technologies yield a different look. Pixels want to line up neatly, and trying to recreate the slight irregularities of hand-drawn lines (or typewriter key hitting ribbon and paper) is maddening. I even created a font--there are programs that let you do that. (I discovered that I just didn't have the time to do the job right. Designing fonts is a very painstaking process. Alas, when I was young I had heaps of time but no computer. Now the reverse is true).

So anyway, when I saw how the Microsoft Word version lined up perfectly with the supposed typewritten one, I knew the odds against that being an accident were probably greater than the number of protons in the universe.

Headline fatigue...

As you probably know, Stephen den Beste is back, doing some blogging at Red State.Org. This is a good point to keep in mind

Stephen Green writes about how the press is the "arm of decision" in the current war. Given the nature of terrorist campaigns, that's definitely true, and in some ways it's clear that our decision makers haven't really dealt with this aspect of the war as well as they probably should have.

But for the terrorists and Islamists, there's a distinct drawback in this kind of war: headline fatigue. Even given that the western press tends to be more sympathetic to the terrorists than to western governments in the war, an ongoing campaign of car bombings in Iraq eventually becomes boring and gets consigned to the rear pages of the newspaper.

That means that the terrorists have to come up with increasingly spectacular escapades in order to maintain the attention of the western press. A couple of years ago the new innovation was video decapitations, but eventually the novelty wore off.

But the other side of the coin of headline fatigue is revulsion. Increasingly spectacular escapades become increasingly vile atrocities. They get the headlines, alright, but repel more people than they attract. This week's bombing in Amman is a good example of that; the reaction to it in Jordan was universally extremely negative on the "Arab Street" and al Qaeda's apparent anonymous-public spokesmen (online) found themselves trying to do spin and damage control...

Also, press, Democrats and "anti-war" activists are allies of al Qaeda, but they are not reliable allies. They could turn their coats at any moment; they only wish to harm Bush and the Republicans. Who knows, even the "pacifists" could turn against slaughter, if the political winds start to blow that way...

Will the lies live on?

Via Matthew Hoy, an interesting story on the press and the Massey affair, Why did the press swallow Massey's stories?...

Media outlets throughout the world have reported Jimmy Massey's claims of war crimes, frequently without ever seeking to verify them.

For instance, no one ever called any of the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's battalion to ask him or her about his claims.

The Associated Press, which serves more than 8,500 newspaper, radio and television stations worldwide, wrote three stories about Massey, including an interview with him in October about his new book.

But none of the AP reporters ever called Ravi Nessman, an Associated Press reporter who was embedded with Massey's unit. Nessman wrote more than 30 stories about the unit from the beginning of the war until April 15, after Baghdad had fallen.

Jack Stokes, a spokesman for the AP, said he didn't know why the reporters didn't talk to Nessman, nor could he explain why the AP ran stories without seeking a response from the Marine Corps. The organization also refused to allow Nessman to be interviewed for this story....

Some of the news media have issued corrections, some haven't. Why the original failures? Well, do you ever notice the press making mistakes that FAVOR Bush or Republicans?

What I wonder (without being willing to go into the swamps to find out) is whether the lefty/anti-war/pacifist bloggers are issuing corrections? Or whether the lies will live on and on and on?

a distinct and disturbing pattern of behavior...

A reader sends:

Unfortunately (or perhaps a blessing) the NYT op-ed pages are now by subscription only, so there is no easy way to link. But get a load of this claim they make for the Federal indictment. [link]

Supporters of Mr. Libby, known as Scooter, have attempted to describe the Wilson case as, at worse, a matter of casual gossip by Washington insiders about the wife of a man in the news. But the indictment does not describe a situation in which people accidentally outed someone they did not know was a covert officer. It describes a distinct and disturbing pattern of behavior among very high-ranking officials, including Mr. Libby and Vice President Dick Cheney, who knew that they were dealing with a covert officer and used their access to classified information in a public relations campaign over the rapidly disintegrating justifications for war with Iraq.

This is totally false. Here is the Fitzgerald quote:

Q: Did Libby know whether Valerie Wilson's identity was covert?
A: ...We have not made any allegation that Libby knowingly/intentionally outed a covert agent.

Actually, we do have a "a distinct and disturbing pattern of behavior among very high-ranking officials." But they are officials at the CIA and the major newsmedia, who collaborate closely in leaking and publishing classified information in order to undercut the elected government of the US. Or in Wilson's case, leaking lies that were the exact opposite of classified info! I bet this Times story never got around to mentioning that we now know that Wilson was a total liar, and that we know from the 9/11 Report that he reported to the CIA that Iraq probably did try to buy Uranium from Niger. The exact opposite of what Wilson wrote in his famous NYT Op-Ed, which is a large part of the "Bush lied" lie.

The CIA and the NYT are on the other side, in the war we are in. The are engaged in a campaign of disinformation and leaks of classified information, to undercut and sabotage our country in time of war. The word for that is treason..

Godspeed...

I just made a teensy little donation to Bill Rogio, and would strongly urge you to do the same...

Reading his blog, The Fourth Rail, has been the only way to see the fight in Iraq as a whole picture, and not just occasional unconnected scraps of information. The so-called major news media have failed utterly to do this. (It's easy to see why. The big picture shows their side is losing. Just noting where al Qa'im and Qusaybah [or Husaybah] are on the map clearly indicates that the situation for the NYT Coalition is dire.) He has been performing a major public service.

Now Bill has an opportunity to go to Iraq himself, as a reporter. And that takes a lot of dough. But it's the chance of a lifetime, and I only wish it were me going. I'll go there vicariously through him...

"Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark..."

Just in case you thought I was "over the top" when I suggested that Left was "going to party" when the Iraq death toll reached 2,000, you should check out all the candid photos taken by Zombie and houston.indymedia. Such smiles.

And Michelle Malkin has the goods on an NYT 2,000-deaths story, including a quote from the last letter of a Marine corporal. He sounds like another poor grunt who is sad to have to die meaninglessly in bushhitler's Mekong Delta.....except the NYT cut out the rest of the paragraph, which reads:

I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark."

The NYT is on the other side.

And check out this, from Israpundit. The NYT did something that's almost unheard of--they criticized a Palestinian!!. But someone behind the Kremlin walls quickly deleted the item...

They are on the other side.

I read the papers, I know all that's happening...

Daniel McKivergan posts:

The speech delivered yesterday by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, got a lot of press attention. But while all these reports highlighted the negative remarks he made about the Bush White House, they didn't mention Wilkerson's other seemingly newsworthy comments...

Well you see, there's the news what's fit to print, and the news what's not.

News has a purpose. Have you ever encountered the bios or memoirs of journalists, and--I don't mean old-timers, you understand, but Baby-Boom or later--and they say why they went to journalism school? They always say that they went to journalism school--old timers didn't even go to J school, they just went out and started reporting things--they always say that they wanted to make the world a better place!

And to do that, you can't report all the news. Some of it is bad, harmful. The little people don't understand that, and it's important to spare them information that might cause bad thoughts. It's such a problem, that the same sort of people who drink tap water and drive Fords can also vote. The harm they do is enormous; just look around at what a mess the world has become since 1980.

But journalists can make a difference. They can edit the world, so it becomes comprehensible, a coherent narrative, pruned of extraneous misinformation and...well, look at me, I'm just rambling on and on. You folks don't need this, you are part of the intelligentsia. You can just click on the link and see what it was obviously necessary to edit out of the news reports...

Latest madness..

Dafydd writes on the latest craziness in the crazy "indictment" of Tom DeLay:

...I wanted to link to an article about this latest Keystone Kops escapade, but amazingly enough, at this point, I cannot find a single article about this absurdity -- not even on FoxNews.com. Since they actually had video of the incident as it unfolded and discussion with the attorneys right after they came out of the courthouse, I would find it hard to believe it never occurred; but in the mad world of the MSM, even being caught on videotape doesn't mean something really exists: it only exists when one of the media news managers decides it exists. Perhaps I hallucinated the entire thing.

Here we have a story that even the MSM agrees is important: the indictment of the second most powerful man in the House of Representatives. And five years after Ronnie Earle began hounding DeLay, three years after the alleged crime of "money laundering" occurred, at least a year after the D.A.'s office began investigating this particular transaction, and eleven days after obtaining the new, improved indictment from the third grand jury to investigate, we discover that the District Attorney's office doesn't even have the critical piece of evidence that underpins their entire case.

But evidently, that's just not news.

Sad to say, except for those of you who watched Brit Hume last night, "you read it here first."

What makes me grit my teeth is that, to millions of people, it will be a "fact" that Republicans are corrupt, with the phony political indictment of the House Majority Leader as leading "evidence" of rottenness. A lie our vile "press" is happy to spread.

Envelope please...

Wretchard says, with tongue-in-cheek, something true...

....It is tempting to thank all those who have made this [the "insurgency's" being led to use brutal tactics that are now backfiring on them] possible, beginning with those who believed that playing up the insurgency's gruesome work on the front pages would project the 'helplessness' of America and contrast it's impotence with the puissance of Abu Musab Zarqawis 'freedom fighters'. Mention should go to everyone who argued that 'insurgent losses did not matter'; that body counts were irrelevant when following the development of an insurgency.

Finally, a special award should be given to everyone who ignored the buildup of Iraqi forces and the establishment of an Iraqi State as being futile and beyond the wit and capability of the US; who believed even recently that only 1 of 3 Iraqi battalions in existence were fighting the insurgency, when in fact there were 100. Perhaps the downside of the insurgency's 'media-combined arms' campaign was that it not only fooled some of the public, but it misled themselves as well....

It's pleasing to note how our enemies make the same mistake over and over. It's been pointed out that the media's "cocooning" of Democrats actually hurts them, by keeping them ignorant of how election campaigns are really going. And while the terrorists have gained enormous advantages by their symbiosis with Western media and "activists," they are also "cocooned," and suffer from not being told the truth.

I suspect we are moving towards a tipping point, when it suddenly becomes obvious that we are winning in Iraq, and the Democrats and the Gasping Media have been telling us a bunch of lies. It will be very educational. I doubt however that most people will be sophisticated enough to realize that the media, Democrats and the "anti-war" activists have been encouraging the terrorists to slaughter civilians, rewarding their evil deeds.

But it's true. So keep in mind, if you see a "reporter" or a "peace activist," that you are probably seeing someone with the blood of little children dripping from their hands.

No bully-pulpit...

John at PowerLine writes:

...I haven't seen a report on how many people watched Bush's speech; in fact, I'm only assuming that it was broadcast by someone. My guess is that very few either saw it or will read it in its entirety. Instead, the overwhelming majority depend on what they read about Bush's speech in the newspapers or hear on television news reports. Those articles and reports, with hardly any exceptions, will be carefully framed to minimize the speech's impact.

People used to talk about the Presidency as a "bully pulpit," but I think one lesson of the Bush years is that the President's ability to communicate effectively with the American people, outside of the context of an election campaign, is limited. The real "bully pulpit" belongs to the mainstream press, which is just about unanimously devoted to undermining the President's effort to communicate with, and thereby lead, the American people.

That's the problem with the complaint by various war-supporters that the President should be doing more to build support for the war. He's just given a major speech, an excellent speech well worth reading, but our domestic Ba'athists have an almost complete block on the word getting out. I don't watch TV, but I hear the radio news now and then, and I can imagine the microscopic sound-bite to which this important speech was reduced...

But be comforted. The Saddam-supporting Bush-haters have once again picked a loser. We are WINNING. The terrorists and their Western supporters are LOSING. Those who follow the war via the Internet (including in a minor war Random Jottings) have access to the truth. Pieces like Michael Yon's, that I recently blogged about, are not only telling a different story than the lying news-media, they are full of fascinating clues. For instance they way the Americans can tease Colonel Eid...Or the way a relieving unit is able to take over the area without any hesitation.

And sooner or later the fact that we are winning will sink in with the public, and the lying critics will be discredited.

The Paper Formerly Called The Paper Of Record...

I'm to busy to really blog, but here's something I liked. Dean writes, on the NYT:

....Their opinion columnists, with one or two brave exceptions, are shallow idiots. Their science reporting is steeped in political correctness. The old-school PC spin on every story involving weighty public matters is laughable. The way they treat red state America as a sort of bizarre alien specimen is painful. Their war reporting is hopelessly stuck in the Vietnam era. Indeed, what does it say about them that to get a positive story published on our troops' postive efforts and accomplishments in Iraq, someone at the Times had to sneak it into the sports section?

It all to me points to something rotton to the core of what we've come to call liberalism today. I'm not ashamed of the world liberal, it's not a dirty word and I'm proud to apply it to myself in many, many contexts. But the broad political movement known as "liberalism," epitomized by the worldview common to the New York Times, has become paint-by-numbers, predictable, kneejerk, pompous, and shallow. The great liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill once said of the conservatives of his day that they were people who didn't have ideas so much as irritable mental gestures that vaguely sought to resemble ideas. I can think of no better description than the worldview epitomized by the folks running the ship at the New York Times.....

The absurdity that liberalism and the the NYT has become is encapsulated in the fact that they recently appointed a reporter to "cover" conservatives. What a joke! This is a conservative country with a conservative President, and they belatedly decide that one person might be spared to take notice of the phenomenon? And of course they didn't actually hire a conservative to report on conservatives; no, that would be just too too extreme. Sort of like chosing a Samoan to study the Samoans, instead of Margaret Mead.

Lying by omission...

You should take a look at this fascinating photo essay.

The SF Chronicle ran a picture from an anti-war rally, showing a teenage girl.

Blogger Zombietime happened to take a picture of the same girl about the same time. But his picture had much more, and he is able to zoom out, and out, and out, and show the context that the Chron left out...

...The San Francisco Chronicle featured the original photograph on its front page in order to convey a positive message about the rally -- perhaps that even politically aware teenagers were inspired to show up and rally for peace, sporting the message, "People of Color say 'No to War!'" And that served the Chronicle's agenda.

But this simple analysis reveals the very subtle but insidious type of bias that occurs in the media all the time. The Chronicle did not print an inaccuracy, nor did it doctor a photograph to misrepresent the facts. Instead, the Chronicle committed the sin of omission: it told you the truth, but it didn't tell you the whole truth.

Because the whole truth -- that the girl was part of a group of naive teenagers recruited by Communist activists to wear terrorist-style bandannas and carry Palestinian flags and obscene placards -- is disturbing, and doesn't conform to the narrative that the Chronicle is trying to promote. By presenting the photo out of context, and only showing the one image that suits its purpose, the Chronicle is intentionally manipulating the reader's impression of the rally, and the rally's intent.

Such tactics -- in the no-man's-land between ethical and unethical -- are commonplace in the media, and have been for decades. It is only now, with the advent of citizen journalism, that we can at last begin to see the whole story and realize that the public has been manipulated like this all along...

The sad thing is that the people at the Chron probably don't even understand that they are telling lies. They have a certain ideology, and anything that fits in with it is "the truth."

Thanks to Rand.

We three monkeys...

Apparently the Afghan election didn't get much coverage in the media. Surprise, surprise.

What a disgrace. One of the amazing stories of our times, but I guess it's not "news," because it isn't a violent fiasco. And mostly, because it doesn't make the President and our military look bad.

Once again the Administration's policies have been rewarded with success. You "liberals" can wall yourselves off and pretend it isn't happening. But I suspect the message seeps into your unconscious minds somehow. And that's why you seem so unhappy and act so crazy.

Time's up...

Beldar points out (thanks to Rand) that the one-year Statute of Limitations is almost up, and it is time for Senator Kerry to sue the authors of Unfit for Command for defamation, or lose his chance. Since the book is full of "scurrilous lies" that have "already been debunked," what could the Senator be waiting for? Perhaps the fact that he was forced to retract one of his own lies might cause a certain embarrassment in the courtroom...

Actually, I don't blame the Senator for hoping the issue will just go away. Any politician would do the same, especially since the various accusations have not been "debunked. But I'm still filled with deep disgust for the way the Old Media automatically appointed itself part of the Kerry Campaign, and instantly went to work to try to hide the story.

Matthew Hoy recently wrote:

...The story that really turned me against the Times was the paper's hatchet job on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth last year. For weeks, the Times ignored their very existence and the impact it was having on Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign. Just when the silence reached deafening proportions, the paper ran a 100+ column inch story, complete with charts detailing the vast conspiracy behind the Swift Boat Vets. The Times smeared these men who had served their country through innuendo. It wasn't until the very end of the story -- somewhere around inch 120 -- that the Times bothered to report that at least one of the Swift Boat Vets charges, that Kerry had not spent Christmas in Cambodia in 1968, was true and that Kerry had disavowed that 35+ year old story. Of course, when deciding where to trim their story for an easier-to-handle abridged version for their news service subscribers, the truth of one of the Swift Boat Vets' charges was left on the cutting room floor.

The Times is a once-great newspaper and it would require a sea-change to return it to its former place of respect and admiration. The abandonment of a committment to truth (or at least accuracy) on the editorial pages, is a sign that this turnaround won't be happening anytime soon.

On a lighter note: If anyone from any other newspaper is interested in hiring me to write for their editorial pages, then drop me a line and we can talk....

Liars alert...

The Media Wing of the Democrat Party is reporting widely that the Shaw Group, a major corporate client of Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the FEMA, has received a big FEMA contract!

Quelle scandale!

Of course they don't bother to report one teensy weensy little fact...

...The Shaw Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, is headed by Jim Bernhard, the current chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. Bernhard worked tirelessly for Democrat Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's runoff campaign and served as co-chair of her transition team. Another Shaw executive was Blanco's campaign manager. Bernhard is back-scratching chums with Blanco, whom he has lent/offered the Shaw Group's corporate jets to on numerous occasions...[Find the details here, at Michelle Malkin]

Let's climb in the What If machine...

Politicalities points out, what I hadn't realized...

Because I don't watch television...

There is a news blackout on the fact that the Red Cross was blocked from bringing food to the Superdome!

He's asking bloggers to put on pressure to get this story covered. (Well, my pressure-added is probably negligable, but who knows?)

He has a great open letter...give it a read...

...Why aren't you screaming this from the rooftops? I know why. Because the mayor who so failed his people, the governor who thwarted the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, the chief of police who rewarded his troops with Vegas vacations after they engaged in mass desertion and in some cases joined the looters... these people are all Democrats. That's the reason.

Don't try to deny it. Let's climb in the What If machine and ponder Hurricane LaTonya bearing down on the city of Jacksonville, Florida in a slightly different reality.

Jacksonville sits on Florida's Atlantic coast, just south of Georgia, and has thus far been spared major hurricanes, which means it's due. It's the most populous city in Florida and the 13th most populous city in the United States, about 60% larger than New Orleans. Its mayor is Republican John Peyton, its chief of police is probable Republican Donald R. Cook, and of course the governor of Florida is Republican Jeb Bush [1]. Duval County voted for Bush over Kerry by 16%.....

Media scum...

I borrowed this chart from Jim Miller on Politics.

Point is, the Media Wing of the Democrat Party not only fails to report good news from the War on Terror, they actively work to create the bad news. When they gleefully report the new enlistments are running below target ("Our military is imploding, Bush's fault") they don't mention that they are bending every effort to create that problem. One way: In olden times, America's heros were held up to young people as models...as heroes!

We have as many heroes now as then, but the lefty worms won't tell people their stories.

Who's Paul Smith? Can you tell me? It's a name we all should know......

Miller took the data from the September issue of the American Enterprise magazine, and they got it from a Lexis/Nexis search.

Cropped...

Just take a look at this, to see how images in the news are "improved," so they tell the desired story....

Thanks to Patum Peperium.