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

Category: Media

  • A compliment from Bill Maher

    At about 1:55, Bill Maher tells Wolf Blitzer, in reference to the possibility that Sarah Palin would run for President that he wouldn’t put anything past “this stupid country”. He expands on that empty thought at about 4:55. Of course, the election of Barack Obama was an aberration. Just because we accidentally elected a smart guy doesn’t make us smart, he says. Then at about 7 minutes, he calls Michael Moore’s documentaries “brilliant”.

    I’m guessing he’s being contrary for effect. Anyone who calls Americans stupid and Michael Moore brilliant is just working too hard at being funny.

    To demonstrate how smart he is, Maher tells us that capitalism would be good if it wasn’t for profit motive. I guess that’s his idea of brilliant.

    You’d think Wolf Blitzer, who considers himself a journalist, would be embarrassed to be seen interviewing this clown.

  • Castro calls for more sacrifice from Cubans

    On Cuba’s Revolution Day, president Raoul Castro celebrated by telling Cubans that they need to be prepared for for more sacrifices. In a country where bicycles and horse-drawn carts are more often used than automobiles and where citizens make about $20/month, It’s difficult to imagine what more they might be able to sacrifice.

    Castro already has implored Cubans for more time as he implements “structural changes” to a struggling economy controlled more than 90 percent by the state. He also has said he’d be willing to meet with U.S. leaders over any issue — including the country’s political prisoners and human rights record.

    Of course, Al Jazeera doesn’t see Cuba the way the rest of us see it;

    The Cuba that Fidel Castro took over in 1959 was a grossly unequal place, arguably in a near feudal state.

    A small group of land-holding elite controlled most of the wealth. Illiteracy ran high, especially in rural areas, and health indicators were awful.

    Correcting all of this via a socialist economic model was Fidel Castro’s goal.

    In the ensuing decades, Castro’s governments did make huge strides.

    Cuba’s literacy rates are among the highest in the world. Some health indicators surpass those in developed countries. And Cuba today is a much more egalitarian place than it ever was.

    As significantly, Castro succeeded in consolidating what was already a strong strain of Cuban nationalism, dating back to the country’s independence struggle from Spain and US occupation at the beginning of the 20th century.

    Yeah, the US occupied Cuba – I’d suggest that the Al Jazeera “google” the Platt Amendment. The Platt Amendment was added to Congress’ declaration of war against Spain in Cuba declared that the US would limit their actions in Cuba to liberating the island from Spain and forbade that the US would occupy the nation.

    Don’t feel bad, though. I had to remind my Latin American History professor about the Platt Amendment during one of his tirades against US imperialism in Cuba, too.

  • Stupid Bush news

    The New York Times tries to make us believe that President Bush was tempted to send US troops into the streets to arrest the Lackawanna Six with this headline;

    bushnazi1

    Of course, according to the article, Darth Cheney advocated for the US of Federal troops to round up the terrorists. It was a proposal that was never acted upon. I wonder how many people know these discussions go on every day as every administration engages in legal navel-gazing. But now this’ll become the standard answer to everyone who asks themselves if they should vote for a Republican.

    Decades after Nixon ruminated over sending the IRS after his enemies, it is part of the “Evil Nixon” caricature the Left likes to put forward. Nixon never used the IRS against his enemies – he merely asked the question once. Bush never sent troops to take out the Lackawanna Six, but a year from now that’s not what the conspiracy nuts will be saying.

    Still, at least one high-level meeting was convened to debate the issue, at which several top Bush aides argued firmly against the proposal to use the military, advanced by Mr. Cheney, his legal adviser David S. Addington and some senior Defense Department officials.

    Among those in opposition were Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Michael Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.

    The discussions did not proceed far enough to put military units on alert.

    And yet, somehow, it’s news.

    Actually, it makes no sense to use US troops the way law enforcement these days are trained and equipped almost exactly like the military. The only feasible reason is to make a political statement. And I don’t think the American people want to hear that political statement.

    If it was the Obama Administration having this discussion (and who says they aren’t) The New York Times would be applauding him for keeping a cooler head. So where’s the applause for Bush making the right decision?

  • Priorities

    The real news in the country is that Obama’s health care planis floundering in Congress because no one wants to be responsible for destroying the economy and the health care system in the country. Obama and his favorability ratings are falling in the polls. But what does the Washington Post put on the front page of their fishwrap this morning?

    palin-poll

    I guess it’s hard to break old habits. While Palin was the vice presidential nominee last year, the Post and the media in general, thought it was more appropriate to compare Obama, the presidential nominee, to Palin rather than a more appropriate comparison to the Republican presidential nominee. In such a comparison, Obama fell short in experience and actual accomplishments, but against the Governor of Alaska, they thought Obama looked more competitive.

    So, while Obama’s favorability rating falls 12 percentage points, the Post finds this more newsworthy;

    Overall, the new poll found that 53 percent of Americans view Palin negatively and 40 percent see her in positive terms, her lowest level in Post-ABC polling since she first appeared on the national stage last summer as Sen. John McCain’s running mate.

    It’s clear that the Post senses an insurgency campaign from Alaska that threatens the status quo in Washington. Why else would a governor of a distant, remote state, who is leaving her office in a few days, garner more attention than a president who is losing his momentum?

  • 2 NJ mayors arrested, no discernible political affiliations

    According to Associated Press, two New Jersey mayors were among the 30 folks rounded up for corruption. I know, I’m shocked, too – corruption in NJ? Really? But what’s really surprising about the article, is that none of the people involved seem to belong to any political party.

    The mayors of two New Jersey cities and a current and former state legislator were among more than two dozen people arrested Thursday in a sweeping corruption investigation. Among about 30 people arrested Thursday were Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, former Jersey City Council President L. Harvey Smith and state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt. Van Pelt is accused of accepting $10,000 from a cooperating government witness posing as a developer who sought help in getting permits for a project in Ocean County. Smith, a former state Assemblyman and Jersey City mayoral candidate who served four years as the city’s council president, and several other current and former Jersey City public officials also are accused of accepting money to help the fake developer gain permits and approvals.

    It’s not like they didn’t have room to put the political party in the article – in the middle of the story they start talking about the FBI raiding a synagogue in NYC for trafficking in human kidneys.

    ADDED: Here’s longer version of the same article – it even lists the suspects and gives little bios on them. But no political party.

  • Health care confusion

    While Democrats are betting the farm on health care, the media seems a bit a confused. The Associated Press finds a poll that says Americans are “more confident” about their access to health care. Buried in the story is the story is this quote; “Researchers call the increase significant. While they say they’re not sure what accounts for it, they say it might be due to expectations that Washington will improve the health care system.” It also might be due to expectations that Obama will fail to get his brand of economy-killing heath care enacted.

    On the other hand, Fox News reports that “[a] new poll suggests public approval of the way President Barack Obama is handling health care reform is slipping.” That might be why Obama is taking his snake oil sales pitch to prime time again, says Reuters;

    U.S. President Barack Obama will plead his case for a broad healthcare overhaul in a prime-time news conference on Wednesday, with doubts growing about the plan even among his fellow Democrats and polls showing slipping public support.

    I got a sense of the desperation yesterday when the Obama team pleaded with me to help them;

    despiration

    I heard a clip on Fox News this morning of a conference callObama had with some netroot bloggers in which he had to admit that he’s not familiar all of the health care plan. I found the audio at HuffPo – it’s at about 17:15.

    But he’s going to ram it up our collective ass anyway.

    Michelle Malkin writes about Obamacare for illegal aliens.

    Speaker Pelosi had a press conference and dragged out some victims of the current system. Here’s a link to it while it lasts. When they put up the video, I’ll drag it over here.

  • We had an XO like that

    Ann Scott Tyson of the Washington Post is embedded with Marines in the Helmand region of Afghanistan. Today’s article is about shortages of stuff the Marines need. After reading these last few paragraphs, I was reminded of our XO who drove four days in a Bradley to get us cigarettes and pogue bait while we spent Easter screening for the Shi’ites;

    Earlier this week, Larosa decided to launch a one-man supply chain. Armed with orders from his men and a large plastic crate, he jumped on a helicopter to the nearest large base, Camp Leatherneck near the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. Once there, armed with $1,200 of his own money, he literally stripped the PX shelves of cigarettes and chewing tobacco.

    Larosa’s shopping spree irritated customers at Leatherneck, but, arriving back at the camp in Garmsir, he was greeted as a conquering hero.

    The LaRousa in the story is a Marine Gunnery Sergeant but the effect is the same. What was his name, COB6?

  • “Secret program” will disappoint BDS crowd

    The media and the Democrat Congress is having conniption fits because they think that the Evil Bush Administration (TM) had a secret program to kill terrorist leaders and they didn’t bother to tell Congress about it. The Wall Street Journal this morning will be disappointing the Bush Derangement Syndrome crowd with their article “CIA had secret Al Qaeda Plan“;

    Republicans on the panel say that the CIA effort didn’t advance to a point where Congress clearly should have been notified.

    So all it was is a plan – an idea. It was an attempt to comply with the president’s finding that we needed to take the war to the leaders of Al Qaeda.

    The official noted that Congress had long been briefed on the finding, and that the CIA effort wasn’t so much a program as “many ideas suggested over the course of years.” It hadn’t come close to fruition, he added.

    Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said little had been spent on the efforts — closer to $1 million than $50 million. “The idea for this kind of program was tossed around in fits and starts,” he said.

    Senior CIA leaders were briefed two or three times on the most recent iteration of the initiative, the last time in the spring of 2008. At that time, CIA brass said that the effort should be narrowed and that Congress should be briefed if the preparations reached a critical stage, a former senior intelligence official said.

    So part of the planning included briefing Congress when it came to the point that the plan was going to be implemented.

    Some officials who advocated the approach were seeking to build teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks, said another former intelligence official.

    “It was straight out of the movies,” one of the former intelligence officials said. “It was like: Let’s kill them all.”

    Movies? Isn’t life exactly like movies? What should be the message we send to terrorists who murder innocent people? “Let’s tickle them all?”

    The former official said he had been told that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney didn’t support such an operation. The effort appeared to die out after about six months, he said.

    Oh, no! Bush and Cheney didn’t support the operation? But that doesn’t fit the narrative! Look, fellas, if we’re going to have an evil plot against Congress, we’re going to need Bush and Cheney involved, otherwise, how will we ever be able to impeach them? Um, retroactively?

    If I was going to have an operation against the nation’s enemies and I needed to keep it secret, I wouldn’t tell the drama queen, leaky Democrats until the last possible moment either.