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

Category: Media

  • Fox News has crossed over from obsessive to retarded

    I had hoped since the Casey Anthony verdict the other day, maybe we’d get to hear about the case less – just like I wrongly figured that after Michael Jackson died, I’d have to see less of his disfigured visage on TV. Well, Fox News now has a counter in the corner of the screen that tells me how many seconds until the verdict is read for Casey Anthony. Can we get a moment’s peace from this BS, please?

    I used to think Jeanine Pirro was kind of cute, in a little brown girl kind of way, now I’m so sick of seeing her face, I’m on the verge of vomiting. Surely there’s something else in the news that they can report.

  • Rethink Afghanistan; The Mayors are Revolting against the Afghan Wars.

    According to Rethink Afghanistan the United States Conference of Mayors is calling for a immediate ending to the Afghanistan War.

    “The United States Conference of Mayors calls on the U.S. Congress to bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy,” the resolution said, noting that the United States pays $126 billion a year to support the wars that have killed more than 6,000 U.S. troops.

    Yet I have to wonder what happened to the money from the stimulus bill. Because according to Rethink Afghanistan spending one Trillion dollars in one year was not enough.

    And here’s the big picture: “Local governments shed 28,000 jobs last month, the Department of Labor reported, and have lost 446,000 jobs since employment peaked in September 2008.”

    These wars are killing our people, they’re killing our economy and they’re killing our communities. They’re not worth the costs. They’ve got to end.

    Or perhaps it as more to do with what happened in shortly after September of 2008. Now what could that be?

    ADDED Sporkmaster: Oh and guess who have been helping behind the scenes.

  • The Palin email frenzy

    The Media Palin-hunting-expedition were fed 24,000 pages of email yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from several media outlets. So the journalistic numbnuts descended on Alaska yesterday. The Washington Post has farmed out their research to their readership to plow through the emails for dirt on the former governor. Thus far, they’ve only found stuff that most of us already knew;

    Palin felt passionately about issues of importance to her state, the documents show, and she waged battle with foes large and small. That included detractors on obscure government commissions as well as multinational conglomerates seeking access to Alaska’s vast oil and gas reserves. She twice refers to one major oil executive with a derogatory nickname and complains that phone calls with him did not go well.

    You know what? I’d have more respect for the Post and whoever else took part in that FOIA if they’d been this tenacious and inquisitive with Barack Obama during the campaign for the 2008 election. I don’t remember any major media outlet asking even the most basic of questions about his tenure in the Illinois State Legislature. No one was asking what qualified him to be President…and we’re paying for that lack of journalistic curiosity now. And Sarah Palin isn’t even a candidate for the 2012 election yet.

    I interpret this quixotic enterprise to be an indicator of how the Left, in general, and the Washington elitists, in particular, fear a Palin candidacy without the McCain albatross around her neck. I’m pretty sure that they know that Palin’s name next to Obama’s on the ballot is an easy choice for 2012.

  • That blithering idiot, Eugene Robinson

    Washington Post Pulitzer award-winning columnist Eugene Robinson, the guy who won the Pulitzer by faithfully cutting and pasting talking points from the Obama campaign for more than two years issues a warning today in his column entitled “A plan for Afghanistan: Declare victory — and leave“. Of course that’s not a plan and Robinson doesn’t really issue a warning…unless you realize that he doesn’t write anything that doesn’t jibe with the Obama Administration policy unless he clears it with them first.

    His deep and intellectual analysis ends with this line;

    The threat from Afghanistan is gone. Bring the troops home.

    Of course, he’s referring to the death of bin Laden and an out-of-power Taliban as the threat which is gone. Yes, bin Laden is gone for good and the Taliban is out of office, but will their absence be permanent? That’s tougher to answer, isn’t it?

    The weak-kneed Karzai government is making noise about “negotiating” with the Taliban for their reintegration into the Afghanistan government – does anyone honestly think that the group who throws acid in the faces of pre-teen girls for attending school will be content having only a small part in the daily lives of Afghans?

    Of course that’s a question that Robinson wants to avoid and as long as people like Robinson, who get their marching orders from the White House, make these kinds of noises, the Taliban and al Qaeda will continue fighting and hoping for the quick withdrawal of US forces from the region.

    You can bet your bottom dollar that Robinson wrote the piece today because the Obama Administration is testing the waters for an early and quick withdrawal.

  • That “Two Americas” crap again

    TSO sends us a link from USAToday by Gannet columnist Chuck Raasch which declares that “There are two Americas on Memorial Day“. It’s the same old crap that pops up every Memorial Day – a smaller portion of the population which has actually served in the military since we dumped the draft, so most Americans don’t appreciate the sacrifice of our troops.

    OK, lets’ use this blog’s audience as an example; all of you who have never served in the military raise your hand. See, look around at the hands…there are more of them than us on a military-oriented blog. So why are they here? Because they don’t understand, but they want to understand. About 8,000 people visit TAH every day, according to my server, many from other countries, but mostly Americans. Very few (about 8%) come from military or government networks, the rest are private citizens who want to learn about the military. That’s why there are milblogs.

    This I found most disturbing in Rasssch’s piece;

    The greatest scene in Saving Private Ryan is that moment when the aging soldier becomes emotionally overwhelmed in the cemetery above the Normandy beach, and his family gives him space before comforting him. The scene captured both the old veteran’s grief at the sacrifice of comrades and the awe and separation of the unknowing. Connecting those two worlds ought to be the goal of everyone on Memorial Day.

    Yeah, that’s one of my favorite scenes ever to come out of Hollywood;

    You can see that the family holds back, not out of being the “unknowing”, but because they understood all too well, the deeply personal moment. Who among us would have interfered with that moment?

    yes, there are people who will spend this weekend, barbecuing and shopping instead of at Memorial Day celebrations…but what American fighting person would deny them that choice? I mean, that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? And it says more about the individuals than it does about our country.

    Yes, I wish that every American would drop down on their knees in front of a soldier’s grave and tell that soldier how they hope that they have “earned what you all have done for me”. But that will never happen, nor do I expect it to happen. Neither should Raasch, who somehow thinks he’s better than most of the country because he writes for us about our buddy Jake Diliberto who will spend all day at Arlington with his bible praying for a solution to the war in Afghanistan that is against our national interests.

    I wonder what Raasch was doing the Memorial Day weekend when I attended EVERY event in Washington all weekend. I’m sure he didn’t go shopping and barbecue with his family. In fact, I wonder if that’s what he’s doing right now, because he thinks that his article somehow bought him some measure of absolution.

  • Willie Glenn “Bill” Floyd; Remembered with Stolen Valor

    Meet recently deceased Staff Sgt. Willie Glenn “Bill” Floyd. His obituary in the Times and Democrat was paid for by his family and recounts his military career;

    He enlisted in the United States Army, where he served two terms in Vietnam. He was a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, the Green Berets.

    Yes, everyone knows that the 82d Airborne Division is known as “The Green Berets”.

    Upon completion of his first tour of Vietnam, he attended Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College for criminal justice, after which he re-enlisted in the Army and served his second term in Vietnam. He received 27 medals and ribbons: Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Soldier’s Medal, Bronze Star Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Purple Heart, U.S. Nonmilitary Decorations, Good Conduct Medal, Service Medals (NDSM, AFEM, HSM, etc. in order earned), Armed Forces Reserve Medal, Army Reserve Components Achievement Medal, NCO Professional Development, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, Foreign Military Decorations and Service Medal and Vietnam Campaign Medal.

    After retiring from the Army after 21 years, he returned to Orangeburg to his family and was employed by Roper as a security officer, Ethyl Chemical Plant as a maintenance worker, Orangeburg County Detention Center as a correctional officer and Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College as a maintenance worker.

    I wonder how many staff sergeants with those decorations made it to 21 years. And what is a “U.S. Nonmilitary Decorations” and a “Foreign Military Decorations and Service Medal”. According to our buddy, Doug Sterner, Willie Glen doesn’t appear in any database as receiving any of those awards.

    In the picture, there’s no flash behind the SF device on his beret, I don’t recognize the branch on his collar or the flash behind his jump wings, but it doesn’t look like something that belongs in SF. If he was assigned to a support unit in the Special Forces, by the date, judging by his uniform (the poplin shirt), he should have had a “candy stripe” on the beret.

    So, our buddy, Doug Sterner, called the newspaper and told them that they published a phony bio. According to Doug, they were “downright rude” about it all, telling him that the family paid for the obituary and there would be no retraction.

    Nice journalistic integrity, there, bud. As long as someone ponies up the right amount of cash, they’ll print anything true or not. I guess we know how Alvin Greene won his party’s nomination in SC in the last election.

  • The media’s next RINO darling

    Conn Carrol, in the Washington Examiner, takes a look at who will replace John McCain in the upcoming election as the media’s hand-selected RINO candidate.

    So who will be 2012’s elite-media darling? There are three main candidates:

    Mitch Daniels: Much like McCain’s February 2000 attack on social conservatives, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels angered many social conservatives when he told the Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson that the next president would have to “call a truce on the so-called social issues.”

    And what social conservatives hate, the elite media love. The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, David Broder and Chris Cilliza have all since written columns urging Daniels to get in the race.

    Marcus’ is a classic, writing: “I hope Mitch Daniels runs for president. Let me go further: I hope he wins the Republican nomination. I can’t imagine voting for him.”

    You need to read the whole thing. The media has a history of backing GOP losers for candidates because, well, they’re Democrats for the large part. If we had believed those clowns in the 2000 election when they told us they’d vote for McCain (which they obviously wouldn’t do judging by the 2008 election) we’d have had Al Gore on 9-11 instead of a president who reacted properly.

    In fact, I still have people trying to convince me they would have voted for McCain in 2000…but never Bush. Well, who cares now, dingus? Bush didn’t need your vote, did he? I guess it’s their way of trying to convince me that they’re independent.

  • Woman charged in dragging death of Iraq veteran

    Parachutecutie sent us this tip about a woman in Colorado who dragged to death an Iraq veteran when she absconded with her vehicle as he was hooking it up to be towed for lacking plates and registration.

    From KKTV:

    Prosecutors showed a map outlining the route Farries took while allegedly dragging Allen Rose. The evidence showed that Rose was dragged, by his feet, over one and a half miles and that Farries continued to drive through neighborhoods and parking lots even after Rose was released from the cables. Rose’s body was discovered around Platte Ave and Babcock. Citizens tried to hold his head up and keep him alive.

    According to testimony, he was still conscious when officers arrived, but died later at a Colorado Springs hospital from his dragging injuries. Bichel said they discovered three of Rose’s identifications along the mile and a half stretch. The crime scene was covered with scuff and skid marks, and pools of blood. Bichel also said he reviewed surveillance video that shows Rose being dragged by Farries’ SUV from multiple cameras, locations and angles.

    The perp, Detra Farries, ignored pedestrians who tried to warn her as well as other motorists who honked their horns and flashed their lights. But she explains that her SUV was too loud for her to heed the warnings.

    Farries, 33, faces 11 charges, including manslaughter, vehicular homicide and hit-and-run.

    But I guess my concern is the lack of news coverage. It seems confined to Colorado and the UK. I can’t help but believe that if an Iraq veteran had dragged a black woman to death, it’d be splashed across the headlines from coast-to-coast.

    Detra Farries’ husband was recently sentenced to four years in prison for a 2008 hit-and-run. It must run in the family.