This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Media

  • Another Day, Another Genuine Hero Ignored by The Media

    1LT Walter B. Jackson, became, last Friday only the seventh soldier in the past 32 years to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

    Lt. Jackson’s citation in part reads: 

    “Upon regaining consciousness after being shot, second lieutenant alternated between returning fire and administering first aid to the Soldier. Second Lt. Jackson was hit again with machine gun fire as he helped carry his wounded comrade to safety, but he never faltered in his aid. Although his own severe wounds required immediate evacuation and surgical care, 2nd Lt. Jackson refused medical assistance until his wounded comrade could be treated. Second Lt. Jackson’s selfless courage under extreme enemy fire was essential to saving another Soldier’s life and is in keeping with the finest traditions of military service…”

    Despite how much the MSM claims to support the troops, they are AGAIN scooped by the bloggers.

    Lieutenant Jackson has all my respect and admiration.

  • Rosie O’Donnell May Join MSNBC–Kooks Watch TV Too…

    The NY Times reports that Rosie O’Donnell is in talks and may soon have her own primetime show on MSNBC. Apparently MSNBC wants to be known as the network of the kook fringe.

    Her show would replace “Live with Dan Abrams,” a relatively low-rated program that only recently replaced “Scarborough Country,” which was also little-watched.

    Little watched? That ought to be the motto of the network…
    Inside Cable News shows they don’t do well in the ratings at all…
    549k is hardly challenging to Fox News’ 1.4 MILLION viewers…
    As a matter of fact the vaunted NY Times has another
     article only one day after the first, touting O’Donnell, that claims bashing the Bush admin helps MSNBC’s ratings, well… something had to, although is appealing to the likes of Kos readers and DUmmies really that great a victory? Is “We Cater to Kooks” their new rallying cry? I guess it is, and that is pretty sad when you think about it.
    —UPDATE—
    The fat one announces on her blog, in her typical illiterate fashion, that opening her big mouth blew the deal with MSNBC. I’m of two minds on this one, I want to point at the big ole Kook and laugh, but, at the same time, it would have been fun to watch her drag MSNBC (farther) down.

  • Liberty City Seven “On Path to Jihad”

    The Liberty City Seven, who are they you ask? The seven black converts to Islam from Florida who the media assured us were no threat, just “Foolish kids with pipe dreams” who couldn’t possibly blow up the buildings they wanted to.
    A government witness and noted terrorism expert testified that all seven are in the jihad phase of Islamic radicalization: (pre-radicalization, self-identification, indoctrination, and jihadization) have organized themselves as if they are a military organization, with a definite hierarchy and leadership. Is it that the Bush admin is paranoid? No, there actually are terrorists out there, the media just chooses not to tell us about them, thinking the daily foibles of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan so much more important to report.

    Miami Herald Story

  • Old Camoflage for The New Republic

    Yesterday I mentioned in passing Glenn Greenwald’s piece claiming that the Army is making The New Republic look bad (in the Baghdad Diarist blog event), instead of admitting that TNR’s editors were doing a damn fine job of accomplishing that all on their own. Greenwald claimed that the US military is now part of the Vast Rightwing BushCheneyHaliburtonMcHitler Conspiracy to discredit the Left’s media.

    Well, apparently, Greenwald got a response from a Public Affairs Officer in Iraq (h/t Patterico’s Pontifications). But the senior serving sockpuppet at Salon couldn’t just post a response to the Lieutenant Colonel, nope. He had to prove how much he knows about tracing emails to prove to his readers he’s able to answer questions that no one asked. Complete with Updates Zero through Seven. But my main concern is the tiny little part where Greenwald actually addressed the content of the email rather than the physical source of the email;

    Everyone can decide for themselves if that sounds more like an apolitical, professional military officer or an overwrought right-wing blogger throwing around all sorts of angry, politically charged invective. Whatever else is true, it is rather odd that this was the sort of rhetoric Col. Boylan chose to invoke in service of his apparent goal of proving that there is nothing politicized about the U.S. military in Iraq.

    I guess the little fella, Greenwald, didn’t like the fact that someone with opposing opinions bothered to email the intellectually vacant, emotion-driven Greenwald and screw up his weekend. The “angry and politically charged invective” was in response to Greenwald’s own angry and poltically charged invective. Should the LTC have written you – no probably not. But he did so take your medicine and stop acting like such a two-bit transvestite hooker.

    I remember hunkering down in the sand a decade ago waiting for the angry and politically charged invective to subside and give me permission to return fire, so I know where the LTC is coming from. It’s damn awful frustrating to not be able to tell the idiots in the media to stop their whining – and then of course, Greenwald whines even more when he’s called a whiner.

    Here’s a little fact you may have missed, Glenn, the Left (and, of course you – whatever your political persuasion is this week) has not been a friend to the military since…well, ever. Lyndon Johnson hamstrung them and fed them piecemeal into a meat grinder, when Nixon actually tried to win the war, the Left whined about “illegal” wars, Jimmy Carter stripped our training and resources budget so badly that we couldn’t get seven functioning helicopters into Tehran when he decided we had a purpose and Bill Clinton stripped the military of personnel and equipment then trumpeted that he’d created the smallest government since Roosevelt.

    Since this war started, the military has been called murderers, rapists, Koran-down-the-toilet-flushers, gestapo prison camp guards, and more recently, thanks to The National Review, puppy murderers, grave robbers, insensitive jerks and sexual perverts. All by the media - and all names and adjectives that have been proven false.

    And then along comes Glenn Greenwald and calls the military part of the Republican political machine. In all of the years – 20 of them – that I served, not once was I ever told by a superior how to cast my vote – in fact, I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 when I was a Specialist 4th Grade (that’s like a senior private, in case you’re wondering). I voted absentee ballot from my cot in Fort Kobbe in the Canal Zone. I regretted it within weeks after he took office – but my first vote was for a Democrat.

    It was the Democrats that made me Republican – not the military. In fact, it’s the media and the Democrats who continue to make the military Republicans. Is it right? Is it the way our founders intended? Nope, probably not – but if anyone can take the blame for the way it’s turning out – it’s you blivet-heads in the media that created a polticized military. So stop complaining about it and do something constructive. Send money to Soldiers’ Angels…anything except what you’re doing would be just fine.

    UPDATE: The Dread Pundit Bluto has the full text of the email from LTC Boylan, and after reading the whole thing, instead of just the parts Glennie thought we needed, I take back my statement that the LTC shouldn’t have written to Greenwald. The parts of the good LTC’s email that Greenwald selected for us to read were entirely without context. Surprise.

  • A point of honor

    Last night I got an email from Confederate Yankee who has often been running point on the Beauchamp/The New Republic story for the entire blogoshere. He asked me to support a boycott he was starting against The New Republic. Of course I said I would, then I fell asleep waiting for the Redskins to score. But I’m refreshed this morning and so so here’s the gist of the plan from CY;

    We know that TNR allowed all three of Scott Beauchamp’s stories to be published without being competently fact-checked, if fact-checked at all.

    We know that the editors of TNR, led by Franklin Foer, lied when they said that the stories had been competently fact-checked, we know they deceived their readers and misled at least one civilian expert in an attempt to create a whitewash of an investigation.

    […]

    We know The New Republic attempted to stonewall their way through obvious, blatant, and grievous breaches of journalistic ethics. In so doing, they have attacked the service, integrity, and honor of an entire company of American soldiers serving in a combat zone to avoid taking responsibility for their own editorial and ethical failures.

    Alfred A. Knopf Allstate Amazon.com American Gas Station
    American Petroleum Institute Astro Zeneca (current issue) Auto Alliance Bearing Point
    Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (current issue) BP (current issue) Chevron (current issue) CNN
    FLAME (current issue) Federal Express The Financial Times Focus Features
    Ford Motor Company Freddie Mac GM Grove Atlantic
    HBO Harvard University Press History Channel Hoover Institution (current issue)
    MetLife Microsoft Mortage Bankers Nuclear Energy Institute
    The New School New York Times Novartis Palgrave Macmillan (current issue)  
    Simon & Shuster John Templeton Foundation (current issue) University of Chicago Press University Press of Kansas (current issue)
    U.S. Telecom Visa (current issue) The Wall Street Journal Warner Brothers
    Warner Brothers Home Video W.W. Norton Wyeth Laboratories Yale University Press (current issue)

    I’d ask U.S. military veterans, military families, active duty personnel, and the vast majority of Americans who support our servicemen and women to call these companies, institutions and agencies to pull their advertising from TNR, effective immediately.

    […]

    We cannot force The New Republic to behave honorably, but we can make their dishonesty come at a price.

    I’m 100% behind this – Beauchamp has at least decided to rehabilitate himself, on the other hand, TNR hasn’t shown the least bit of remorse for their skullduggery.

    Blackfive‘s The Wolf and Chickenhawk Express are on board.

  • Google and MoveOn.org collusion to squelch Betray-us debate

    Robert Cox of the Washington Examiner raises new questions about the relationship between Google and MoveOn.org;

    Internal documents obtained by The Examiner shine new light on MoveOn.org’s “General Betray Us” ad and raise fresh questions about the far-left advocacy group’s misleading statements on the issue and its relationship with Google, a major donor to its political action committee.

    The documents show how MoveOn.org used dubious claims of trademark infringement and threats of litigation to silence critics of its recent controversial full-page ad in The New York Times attacking Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, which appeared the day he was testifying before Congress on the war effort. Among those critics was Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is seeking a third term.

    The controversial full-page ad in The New York Times attacking Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq.

    After The Examiner exclusively reported Oct. 11 that Google had banned four anti-MoveOn.org ads placed by the Collins campaign, Google and MoveOn.org each sought to portray the ban as unrelated to the Petraeus ad controversy. The documents obtained by The Examiner, however, show a direct link between the two events.

    The Examiner also provides a timeline of events which makes the whole story a little easier to understand.

    Michelle Malkin wrote extensively about this a few weeks ago.  I’m strictly a “Yahoo” guy – always have been and always will be. And this demonstrates why.

  • Clashes in Venezuela (Updated Oct 24)

     

    Photo from AP via Yahoo News

    Scroll for Updates

    I just got an email from Kate about new riots in Venezuela and sure enough…from CNN;

    Thousands of university students scuffled with police and government supporters during a protest Tuesday against constitutional reforms that would let President Hugo Chavez run for re-election indefinitely.

    Police tossed tear gas canisters into the crowd of opposition students after bottle-throwing clashes broke out with a smaller group of pro-Chavez demonstrators near the National Assembly. Journalists estimated there were about 20,000 protesters, but pro-Chavez lawmakers said there were far fewer.

    The students said they fear civil liberties would be severely weakened under the constitutional changes.

    The story from Kate sounds much more dramatic in Spanish, though. It’s not very surprising – Chavez has been acting a fool. Julia and Daniel have been writing about Chavez’ proposed constutional reforms for months now.

    Just last week end, Chavez jacked up the price of alcohol and tobacco to affect consumption (CNN);

    The price of sin rose Monday in Venezuela where President Hugo Chavez is on a campaign to make Venezuelans cut back on drinking and smoking.

    “Everyone’s shocked,” said Leonora Marino, owner of Bodegon Marino in Valencia, Venezuela, west of Caracas.

    On Monday evening, she was still changing the prices in her store as her customers looked on and complained, she told a reporter.

    Alcohol is now 10 percent more expensive; cigarettes are 20 percent pricier.

    It’s all part of Chavez’ attempt to recreate Che Guevara’s “New Socialist Man” ideal;

    Oh, Hugo. The latest news from Venezuela borders on comical, if it didn’t sound like it was dredged up from the playbook of a failed team from last century. President Chavez is pushing a moral crusade to instill the principles of Che Guevara’s “New Socialist Man” on the Venezuelan population. Chavez wants to heavily limit whiskey imports, raise taxes on tobacco products, and encourage people to not “douse foods with too much hot sauce, exercise regularly, eat low-cholesterol foods, respect speed limits,” or have too much cosmetic surgery.

    Despite Chavez’ dietary restrictions on the Venezuelans, The Devil’s Excrement reports drastic food shortages in Caracas;

    —Datanalisis polls supermarkets and markets and find that many products are not even available in half of them. The most absent? Milk, present in only 25% of them.

    —The Government holds a Megamercal, a huge market where you can get controlled products and people show up at six in the morning to see if they can get some milk. According to pro-Government newspaper Ultimas Noticias (by subscription) people were complaining that they show up at 6 AM and have to stand in line until noon, because there are lines both outside and inside the market. At the end, when you finally get to the head of the line you can buy a limited amount of stuff: one kilo of milk, 2 kilos of sugar and two chickens.

    Daniel from Venezuela News and Views says Chavez blames it on the media.

    So, what is the government explanation? Both Chavez and his minister for Mercal, Rafael Oropeza, yet another military who has no idea on how to milk a cow, say that it is a paid for gigantic media conspiracy, to create panic in the population and make people buy more milk than what they need (you can hoard fresh milk?). What is wrong in this picture? Here are the arguments advanced by the government and the OBVIOUS reply that any journalist should confront the nincompoop uttering them:

    Among the reasons the government gives are global warming affecting milk production and the fact that the poor are drinking more milk thanks to Chavez’ social programs. It must be riot to live there.

    The governmental electoral commission “requested” media outlets to suspend broadcasting propaganda against Constitutional reforms;

    The National Electoral Council (CNE, under its Spanish acronym) issued a formal request for private and public TV stations and for the Ministry of Information and Communication (MINCI, under its Spanish acronym) to stop broadcasting messages that seemed to be intended to campaign for a “yes” or a “no” vote over the constitutional reform proposed by President Hugo Chávez and currently being discussed at the National Assembly.

    While government agencies are busy stroking the poor;

    Venezuela’s Minister of Finance Rodrigo Cabezas, presenting the national fiscal budget for 2008 to the Venezuelan National Assembly, announced increased government spending for 2008 including more money for social programs and increased income from non-oil sectors. Also, according to Cabezas, 2008 will be the fifth consecutive year of economic growth for the country.

    UPDATED: Kate wrote more, posted a YouTube video and Daniel from Venezuela News and Views has more photos and videos and details from yesterday’s clash. The Devil’s Excrement describes moments that no one else but Chavez could call “democratic;

    To make matters even worse, the pro-Chavez groups blocking the way included a couple of Deputies of the National Assembly, demonstrating that democracy is not alive and well in Venezuela. As the representatives of the students went into the Capitol building, only the pro-Chavez media was allowed in and even more remarkably a group of pro-Chavez “students” who had nothing to do with the march were also allowed in. Deputy Calixto Ortega won the day in terms of shame, when he said he did not understand why these students required “special” treatment, since the reform has been discussed extensively (!!!) and the students were getting “too much coverage” from the press. I guess the right to express yourself has now become a “special right” in Venezuela.

    The Catholic News Agency reports that Chavez announced more reforms for next year;

    The Venezuelan president said he was also preparing what he called a “2008 Revolution Plan,” which he said would be “a revolution within the revolution.”

    The revolution would begin with the approval of the constitutional reforms,” Chavez said, “but I am not going to give any preview of the 2008 Revolution, which will be a deepening of the revolution,” he reiterated.

    One might wonder how deep he plans to bury Venezuela.

  • Another Day, Another FALSE accusation by the left

    Randi Rhodes wasn’t attacked by rabid republican meanies after all:
    The NY Daily News has the story
    Air America host Randi Rhodes wasn’t mugged

    BY DAVID HINCKLEY and TINA MOORE
    DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
    Tuesday, October 16th 2007, 12:28 PM
    There’s no truth to the rumors that Air America host Randi Rhodes (above) was mugged near 39th St. and Park Ave. Sunday night. She is scheduled to return to the air on Thursday.

    There’s no truth to the rumors that Air America host Randi Rhodes (above) was mugged near 39th St. and Park Ave. Sunday night. She is scheduled to return to the air on Thursday.

    Air America radio host Randi Rhodes is temporarily off the air, but claims she was brutally attacked near her Manhattan apartment are bogus, her lawyer and a police source said today.

    Fellow host Jon Elliott claimed on the liberal radio network that Rhodes had been mugged while walking her dog, Simon, on Sunday night. Elliot, who said Rhodes lost several teeth in the attack, waxed about a possible conspiracy.

    “Is this an attempt by the right-wing, hate machine to silence one of our own?” he asked on the air, according to Talking Radio, a blog. “Are we threatening them? Are they afraid that we’re winning? Are they trying to silence intimidate us?”

    A police source said Rhodes never filed a report and never claimed to be the victim of a mugging. Cops from Manhattan’s 17th Precinct called her attorney, who told them Rhodes was not a victim of a crime, the source said.

    Rhodes’ lawyer told the Daily News she was injured in a fall while walking her dog. He said she’s not sure what happened, and only knows that she fell down and is in a lot of pain. The lawyer said Rhodes expects to be back on the air Thursday. He stressed there is no indication she was targeted or that she was the victim of a “hate crime.”

    I guess it wasn’t her turn to “Speak truth to power…”
    Its sad she isn’t an illegal alien, then she’d be: Faking the muggings Americans won’t…

    Jonn added: Robin at Chickenhawk Express asks (with tongue planted firmly in her cheek) “But one thing we need to ask…. Where was Rove? Where was Cheney and his shotgun? Where was President Bush? And where the heck was Barney the dog?” Michele Malkin comes clean and admits (tongue planted firmly in her cheek, as well) “It was my fault!”