A CBS Story "Too Important to Ignore"

Michelle Malkin illustrates how the MSM and the academics in journalism attack the new media for the very sins committed daily by the drive-by media.

Alcohol and Ammo

A funny timewaster.

The Nation Institute Fellow Calls for Suppression of Speech by "the Radical Christian Right":

From the Volokh Conspiracy. You will not be surpised by the number of people who agree.

Whatever Hits the Fan is Never Evenly Distributed

A long essay. The money quote:

The generation of ‘68 thought that they had invented a new morality. But the biology that Ginny just wrote about can not be denied, and a lot of that biological imperative was captured in the traditional ways of doing things. My personal private morality is traditional Judeo-Christian. However, I do feel that there should be some room for experimentation, and I do not necessarily believe that my morals should be etched on society’s stone tablets, which is why I call myself a libertarian (small “l” deliberate). But I have a really bad feeling whenever reformers want to go to fast in changing mores that have developed over millennia. As Megan said elsewhere in the article I linked to above, if you don’t know why the fence was put there, you should not be allowed to knock it down.

War Coverage

From Power Line:

We've offered our impression that MSM coverage in Iraq differs markedly from normal war coverage. At one time, such coverge included reports about battles, territory lost and gained, and the like. Now, it tends to be only about death counts. And since the administration, afraid of comparisons to Vietnam, doesn't like to provide enemy death counts, the reporting is almost always adverse.

Today, however, AP reports that Iraqi troops attacked insurgents plotting to kill pilgrims (AP says "allegedly plotting") near Najaf, and that Iraqi officials estimated that approximatley 250 militants died in the ensuing daylong battle. In addition, 10 insurgents were captured, including one from Sudan. Iraqi forces, backed by the U.S., fought the battle, during which a U.S. helicopter was shot down and the two members of its crew were killed.

Yeah. I noticed that too. Most of the news coverage of the war shows our soldiers as targets for the enemy. "Bang, boom, another American or Iraqi killed: and that's the news from Iraq."

But that's what happens I guess when you hire the enemy to do the reporting for you.

John Kerry - International Pariah

See it live. It turns out that the Davos conference official tapes are editing Kerry's comments for "domestic" consumption.

And lo and behold, all of Kerry’s inflammatory statements have been edited out of his clip. They cut out Kerry’s “international pariah” statement, and his Kyoto Protocol stuff. They also cut out the bits about viewing the world through “an American lens.”

Looks like someone’s been trying to make sure they don’t have any Eason Jordan moments slipping out to the hoi polloi. (via LittleGreenFootballs)

Two rallies in Washington DC. One much larger than the other. Which gets the full page one treatment?

Two choices:

1. Thousands Protest Bush Policy

2. Abortion Foes to Renew Efforts

Go ahead, guess which one was larger (by far) and which one was splashed on page one?


Waiting....

I guess that was too easy.

The Myth that the US Supplied Saddam with Chemical Weapons

There is a myth out there, widely believed by the Left, that the US supplied Saddam with chemical weapons during his war with Iran.

At one website a poster named Alfie commented:

Sure we didn’t sell Saddam chemical weapons, Tom.

What do you think Rummy was dropping off for Saddam in the famous handshake photo?

The evidence he supplied was a

U.S. State Department memo to Lawrence Eagleburger (then Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs - the number three at State) dated November 22, 1982, entitled “Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons”. Alphie provided this memo with the intent of demonstrating that the U.S. government was aware of the Iraqi use of chemical weapons, a contention I think is supported by the memo.

The problem for Alfie is that the memo says exactly the opposite of what he contended. Read the entire post, but it is filled with language like this:

In keeping with our policy of seeking a halt to CW use wherever it occurs, we have been considering the most effective means to halt further Iraqi CW use including, as a first step, a direct approach to Iraq.

and this:

because it is a long-standing policy of the U.S. to oppose the use of lethal CW

and this:

Over many decades the U.S. has sought to deter the use of lethal and incapacitating CW when their use appeared to loom as a possibility. Iraq’s use of lethal or incapacitating CW could further undercut an important agreement observed by nearly all nations against chemical warfare.

What's puzzling is how people can take this memo and still believe that we supplied chemical weapons to Saddam.

Day by Day

The Geico Caveman Finally Jumps the Shark...

Funny.

Which is your favorite caveman commercial?

What the Well Dressed Radical Is Wearing; (or Power to the Terrorist!)

Radical Chic is wearing the kind of scarf worn by people who blow up women and children.



The Howard Dean as Terrorist look. Click on the link to read the article.

David Pryce-Jones on View

David Pryce-Jones is an European writer who pens a regular column for National Review Online.

Here are some gems:


Milestones for Humanity (On hanging Saddam)

Saintliness and Show (on the death of a charlatan)

What in the World Is Going on with Israel and Iran? (on persistent reports of Israel planning to bomb Iran)

He has been one of my favorite writers and thinkers for some time.

The AP and Boobs

Hot Air shows the AP's emphasis on sex as it gets into the internet and videoblogging.

Box Office Bombs

Guess the number of movies that have featured Arabs or Mid-Easterners as terrorists since 9/11.

The number, zero, zip, nada, none.

Who are the preferred terrorists of videoland? Here are the movies and the nationalities of the terrorists:


MOVIE
Die Hard (1988)
Die Hard 2(1990)
Under Siege (1992)
Speed (1994)
Die Hard 3 (1995)
Under Siege 2 (1995)
The Rock (1996)
Air Force One (1997)
The Peacekeeper (1997)
Speed 2 (1997)
Collateral Damage (2002)
The Sum of All Fears (2002)
xXx (2002) TERRORISTS
European
American
American
American
European
American
American
Russian
Eastern European
American
Colombian
Eastern European
Eastern European

Why does CAIR raise such a fuss when a television show dares to show Muslims as terrorists? No other group seems to mind when its members play the bad guys. Maybe it's because they can shrug it off as pure fiction. But for CAIR, it seems to hit a little too close to home.

If CAIR wants to stop Muslims from being stereotyped as terrorists, it shouldn't be worrying about American movies and television shows. It should be worrying about Muslim terrorists.


Belmont Club comments on this issue also:

And it would be well to remember, for those who rejoice in watching George Bush pay the penalty for his errors, that the Wheel may round on us too. That one day we may awake to world grown weary of our childhood. Alone in the movies. And the lawmen gone away.

Sgt. Mom wrote:

I think that basically, they're too afraid to actually make movies dealing with it all... I wrote about this in a memo to Hollywood in mid 2003:
"...since even mentioning the Religion of Peace ™ in connection with things like terrorism, mass-murder, and international plots for a new caliphate is a guarantee to bring CAIR and other fellow travelers seething and whining in your outer office… ohh, best not. Drag out those old villainous standby Nazis, or South American drug lords, even the odd far-right survivalist for your theatrical punch-up, secure in the knowledge that even if you piss off what few remains of them, at least they won’t be unleashing a fatwa on your lazy ass, or sending a suicide bomber into Mortens’. Just ignore the three large smoking holes in the ground; cover your eyes and pretend it away. Never happened, religion of peace, all about oil, la-la-lah, fingers in my ears, I can’t hear you.

Trying to Fix the AP: Go Right to the Top

One thing I've learned over the course of my 35 years, is that when you have a customer service issue and the lower level support staff won't help you, it helps to go to their supervisors to get a satisfactory resolution. So what do you do when the person blocking your attempted to remedy the situation is senior management?

You go straight to the Board of Directors.

Read the rest.

TURKEY'S SUICIDE

Ralph Peters:

-- IT'S hard to watch an old pal hit the skids, making one disastrous decision after another, throwing away a brilliant future. That's the position we're in with Turkey - a former ally bent on self-destruction.

A NATO member ideally positioned to serve as a bridge between the West and the Middle East, Turkey's secular constitution and economic progress should have made it an example for other regional states to emulate. Instead, Turkey has been aping the blighted regimes of the Arab world:

Read the rest.

But if you think that the march of Islamofascism is limited to Afghanistan and the Iraq is an unnecessary war, consider the problems with Turkey, observe the riots in France, the bombs in England, Spain and Bali, the insurgencies in Indonesia and the Philippines and you will realize that we are in world War 3. But many deny it.

Senator Jim “Copperhead” Webb

Letter from a military officer and Naval Academy Grad to Jim Webb:

Why did the new Democratic majority select Senator James Webb (D-VA) to give the Democratic response to the president’s State of the Union Address? Since when does this privilege fall to a freshman, even a freshman senator? It’s seems that despite the bad experience with nominating John Kerry to be their standard bearer in 2004, the Democrats have learned nothing. At least they recognize that they have a serious national security credibility problem but the leadership and the base simply cannot get beyond Vietnam. Hence, they asked a US Marine officer turned novelist, turned Navy Secretary, turned Democrat to present their--well, their opposition to all things Bush, because one certainly did not hear ANY tangible plans. Senator Webb is a graduate of my alma mater, the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He is a highly decorated Marine from Vietnam who unlike Senator Kerry actually and definitively earned his commendations for bravery and valor in combat. His novels have sold very well because he is a very talented writer. But on close inspection, something about Senator Webb is very disturbing. Perhaps it harkens all the way back to his midshipman days in Annapolis and a simple boxing match lost. You see, James Webb lost a boxing match to a man he clearly despises, Oliver North. Webb, as chronicled by Robert Timberg in his best-selling book, The Nightingale’s Song, was heavily favored to beat North in the Brigade boxing championships but lost. Timberg claims that Webb believed he was intentionally denied the title by poor preparation from his coach, or more accurately the boxing coach made sure Ollie was better prepared to beat him! Regardless, Webb believes he was wronged and today we can see this streak of vengeance in him. More on this later.

Read the whole thing.

"TimesLies": Neil Lewis of the Times - Get The Wax Out

How to lie if you have an agenda (from Eternity Road):

one of the subtlest of rhetorical deceptions is the presentation of a non-representative case as if it were the norm. This is often accomplished by an unjustified aggregation of cases. Consider Thomas Sowell's classic example:

Did you know that 13 million American wives have suffered murder, torture, demoralization or discomfort at the hands of left-handed husbands? It may be as rare among left-handers as among right-handers for a husband to murder or torture his wife, but if the marriages of southpaws are not pure, unbroken bliss, then their wives must have been at least momentarily discomforted by the usual marital misunderstandings. The number may be even larger than 13 million. Yet one could demonize a whole category of men with statistics showing definitional catastrophes. While this particular example is hypothetical, the pattern is all too real. Whether it is sexual harassment, child abuse, or innumerable other social ills, activists are able to generate alarming statistics by the simple process of listing attention-getting horrors at the beginning of a string of phenomena and listing last those marginal things which in fact supply the bulk of their statistics. [From The Vision Of The Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.]

So we have Neil Lewis of The NY Times publishing "TimesLies" by saying (via JustOneMinute):

She testified that both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were intensely interested in Ms. Wilson and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV

But it turns out that there was no intense interest in Mrs. Wilson. Click on the link and read the transcript.

Except for 10 or 20 seconds when you recollect you told Mr. Libby and VP Cheney about Wilson’s trip and his wife’s role, you had no other discussions with either of them about Mrs. Wilson?
“Not that I recall.”

At no time during the talking points discussion, did you mention Mrs. Wilson? No.

What we have here is the editorial desire of the Times to create the impression that the Wilsons - as a couple - were the focus of the Vice President's office; that Scooter Libby was as focused on Mrs. Wilson as he was on Mr. Wilson and his lies about his trip to Niger. And this is simply false. It is as false as conflating people who murder their wives with those that have harmless spats.

There is a term for it: TimesLies.

Fighting the Borg

From the Belmont Club:

Richard Landes at the Augean Stables describes the psychological death spiral of those who have been convinced that Resistance is Futile. It works like this. Since fighting only makes things worse one submits. And the more one submits the more Resistance is Futile

[snip]

The lever is there, for anyone who dares to pull it. So what is the way out? Fearless leadership; the steady compass of one who is not afraid to lose seats in Congress and reviled on every occasion; the rock-firm hand of a man who is not afraid to lose an election to do the right thing. But if it requires that kind of sacrifice then ... Resistance is futile.

Put Em Up, Or Shut Up

Rockefeller accuses Cheney of cooking the books to get us into war. Flopping Aces reminds us of a few things:

Let's see, Rockefeller was head of the Sen Intel Com (SSCI) before the vote on war in 2002. He had seen consistent intel on Iraq for years. He came out and was even more hawkish that W ever was. He said there was unmistakable evidence Saddam was making nukes. If there is ONE person who had access to all the intel, it was Rockefeller. As soon as the vote was over, he became a dove.

We know from the Rockefeller memo that he did his 180 just for purely political reasons. He sought to divide the nation at a time of war. Me, I see that as treason, or at least action warranting a censure. From 2003 forward he demanded investigations into the intel. 2004 came around, investigation showed there was no pressure, manipulation, creation, or misuse of intel. He demanded a comparison of the pre-war claims to post-war finds. He got it, and it showed people were just plain wrong-nothing more. Then he raved that W had pressured the then SSCI Chair to stall those investigations. He's still making that claim...problem is...now he's head of SSCI. If the Phase II version 3 investigation were politically held up as this liar claims, then it would effectively have been complete in 2006 when the Phase II version 1 and version 2 were released-or at least complete now.

So where is it Senator? If VP Cheney put pressure on the previous SSCI Chairman to not release the last phase of the investigations into pre-war intel, then why don't YOU release it? Your the head of the SSCI.

Read the rest.