The Latest Trend - "Fashion Mice"

Feel like going for a casual stroll? Is it time to shop for shoes? How about just a quick dash to your favorite StarBucks for a latte?  

Don't forget your

 "Fashion Mouse"

Shown here with "Jon-Jon", her most recent addition to her ever-growing stable of Fashion Mice, the lovely shoe maven, Nicole Moura, strolls along Bleaker Street in downtown Boston searching for just one more Aldo's.

 

Mrs. Moura, god-daughter of Sally "the Rat" Steponovich, is a well-known and frequent sight near the docks in BeanTown, USA.  Not satisfied with the "protection" offered by her godfather, Mrs. Moura prefers her own protect-o-mouse, part of the new line of Fashion Mice.

 

It's been said she usually travels with her favorite Fashion Mouse, "Missy" who was especially bred to sniff out and locate the elusive Aldo's shoe stores.  Unfortunately, "Missy" sprained her left-rear middle toe last week when she failed to negotiate the cobblestone walkway near the 'No-Name" restaurant while pulling her wagon loaded down with her mistresses purchases.

 

 

11 Things You Won't Learn In School

 

Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this! To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice.

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

1. Life is not fair - get used to it!
   
2. The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
   
3. You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
   
4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
   
5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.  Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
   
6. If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
   
7. Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
   
8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
   
9. Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
   
10. Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
    
11. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
    If you agree, pass it on.

If you can read this - Thank a teacher!

If you are reading it in English -

Thank a soldier!

Jeff Jarvis (Buzz Machine) Free Speech Segment

The war is over. No, not that war. I mean the war between mainstream media and bloggers.
It never really was a fight – because we are on the same side. We all want the truth:
When bloggers called Dan Rather on errors in 2004, he dismissed them as partisan operatives. But when bloggers recently exposed faked photos from Beirut, Reuters thanked them.
So we are making progress.

Together, professional and amateur journalists can gather and share more news than ever. Bloggers just forced two senators to admit they were secretly blocking a reform bill. And bloggers goaded Dell and Apple into recalling burning batteries. Dell, which once ignored bloggers, now blogs itself.

See, it doesn’t hurt. Bloggers are just people talking. We are your viewers, your voters, your customers, your neighbors.

Now that we, the people, are armed with our own printing presses, old media have nothing to fear and everything to gain – so long as they’re wise enough to trust us.

Trust us to be smart; if you can’t, then what’s the point of democracy?

Listen to us and what we truly care about – and that’s not endless Jon Benet.

And let us share your best reporting: The networks should be fighting to get the most stories watched on YouTube – for those are the stories that are part of our conversation….

Just because newspapers and networks are shrinking, that doesn’t mean journalism must whither. No, we have to expand the definition of news and change the role of the journalist from oracle on the mountaintop to member of our community.

We’re in this together.

O'Reilly's Crystal Ball

Donald Rumsfeld Out After the Votes Are Counted

Thursday , November 09, 2006

By Bill O'Reilly

The secretary of defense was the latest casualty of the Iraq war, which gravely wounded the Republican Party in Tuesday's vote. Let's take a look at it.

Talking Points believes most Americans revere the U.S. military. Most of us feel terrible when Americans are killed or wounded on the battlefield, but the Iraq situation isn't about ideology. Most Americans don't want to cut and run. They understand that would put America in great jeopardy.

But after three and a half years, Americans are still dying every day and many voters believe there's no strategy for victory in Iraq. Thus, Rumsfeld's resignation on Wednesday.

Of course, that came too late to help the Republicans, who find themselves in the minority on Capitol Hill. If visible progress had been made in Iraq, that never would have happened.

So that's where we are. And every poll showed that Americans wanted change in Iraq and that's why the Democrats won.

Now the unintended consequence of the power shift in D.C. is that some Democrats will try to impose a secular-progressive agenda on the country.

First, there will be an attempt to raise taxes — Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel will lead that.

Second, new speaker, Nancy Pelosi, will encourage investigations of the Bush administration, seeking to create a scandal which would help the Democrat presidential nominee in 2008.

But that could backfire on the Democrats as most Americans do not want Mr. Bush attacked. They want to see if the Democrats can do better. They do not want to see their government ripped apart in a time of war.

There is a struggle within the Democratic Party itself. Far-left zealots like Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean are stacked up against moderates like Joseph Lieberman and — dare I say it — Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton knows she can't win the presidency, which she desperately wants, by throwing in with the far left.

So here's what's going to happen in the next few years: President Bush will not get much done. He will veto any attempt to change his agenda, and Congress will not be able to override those vetoes. So there will be a stalemate and a chess game about the 2008 presidential votes.

Right now, the Democrats are in a good position. The country is giving them a chance to improve Iraq and the basic tone of politics in America. But if the Democrats try to destroy Mr. Bush or impose San Francisco values, the country will turn against them. There's no question in my mind.

And that's the Memo.

What Clinton Didn't Do...

 

What Clinton Didn't Do . . .
. . . .and when he didn't do it.

BY RICHARD MINITER, WSJ Opinion
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 12:01 a.m.
Bill Clinton's outburst on Fox News was something of a public service, launching a debate about the antiterror policies of his administration. This is important because every George W. Bush policy that arouses the ire of Democrats--the Patriot Act, extraordinary rendition, detention without trial, pre-emptive war--is a departure from his predecessor. Where policies overlap--air attacks on infrastructure, secret presidential orders to kill terrorists, intelligence sharing with allies, freezing bank accounts, using police to arrest terror suspects--there is little friction. The question, then, is whether America should return to Mr. Clinton's policies or soldier on with Mr. Bush's.

It is vital that this debate be honest, but so far this has not been the case. Both Mr. Clinton's outrage at Chris Wallace's questioning and the ABC docudrama "The Path to 9/11" are attempts to polarize the nation's memory. While this divisiveness may be good for Mr. Clinton's reputation, it is ultimately unhealthy for the country. What we need, instead, is a cold-eyed look at what works against terrorists and what does not. The policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations ought to be put to the same iron test.

With that in mind, let us examine Mr. Clinton's war on terror. Some 38 days after he was sworn in, al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center. He did not visit the twin towers that year, even though four days after the attack he was just across the Hudson River in New Jersey, talking about job training. He made no attempt to rally the public against terrorism. His only public speech on the bombing was a few paragraphs inserted into a radio address mostly devoted an economic stimulus package. Those stray paragraphs were limited to reassuring the public and thanking the rescuers, the kinds of things governors say after hurricanes. He did not even vow to bring the bombers to justice. Instead, he turned the first terrorist attack on American soil over to the FBI.

In his Fox interview, Mr. Clinton said "no one knew that al Qaeda existed" in October 1993, during the tragic events in Somalia. But his national security adviser, Tony Lake, told me that he first learned of bin Laden "sometime in 1993," when he was thought of as a terror financier. U.S. Army Capt. James Francis Yacone, a black hawk squadron commander in Somalia, later testified that radio intercepts of enemy mortar crews firing at Americans were in Arabic, not Somali, suggesting the work of bin Laden's agents (who spoke Arabic), not warlord Farah Aideed's men (who did not). CIA and DIA reports also placed al Qaeda operatives in Somalia at the time.

By the end of Mr. Clinton's first year, al Qaeda had apparently attacked twice. The attacks would continue for every one of the Clinton years.

• In 1994, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who would later plan the 9/11 attacks) launched "Operation Bojinka" to down 11 U.S. planes simultaneously over the Pacific. A sharp-eyed Filipina police officer foiled the plot. The sole American response: increased law-enforcement cooperation with the Philippines.

• In 1995, al Qaeda detonated a 220-pound car bomb outside the Office of Program Manager in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five Americans and wounding 60 more. The FBI was sent in.

• In 1996, al Qaeda bombed the barracks of American pilots patrolling the "no-fly zones" over Iraq, killing 19. Again, the FBI responded.

• In 1997, al Qaeda consolidated its position in Afghanistan and bin Laden repeatedly declared war on the U.S. In February, bin Laden told an Arab TV network: "If someone can kill an American soldier, it is better than wasting time on other matters." No response from the Clinton administration.

• In 1998, al Qaeda simultaneously bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224, including 12 U.S. diplomats. Mr. Clinton ordered cruise-missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan in response. Here Mr. Clinton's critics are wrong: The president was right to retaliate when America was attacked, irrespective of the Monica Lewinsky case.

Still, "Operation Infinite Reach" was weakened by Clintonian compromise. The State Department feared that Pakistan might spot the American missiles in its air space and misinterpret it as an Indian attack. So Mr. Clinton told Gen. Joe Ralston, vice chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, to notify Pakistan's army minutes before the Tomahawks passed over Pakistan. Given Pakistan's links to jihadis at the time, it is not surprising that bin Laden was tipped off, fleeing some 45 minutes before the missiles arrived.

• In 1999, the Clinton administration disrupted al Qaeda's Millennium plots, a series of bombings stretching from Amman to Los Angeles. This shining success was mostly the work of Richard Clarke, a NSC senior director who forced agencies to work together. But the Millennium approach was shortlived. Over Mr. Clarke's objections, policy reverted to the status quo.

• In January 2000, al Qaeda tried and failed to attack the U.S.S. The Sullivans off Yemen. (Their boat sank before they could reach their target.) But in October 2000, an al Qaeda bomb ripped a hole in the hull of the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding another 39.

When Mr. Clarke presented a plan to launch a massive cruise missile strike on al Qaeda and Taliban facilities in Afghanistan, the Clinton cabinet voted against it. After the meeting, a State Department counterterrorism official, Michael Sheehan, sought out Mr. Clarke. Both told me that they were stunned. Mr. Sheehan asked Mr. Clarke: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?"

There is much more to Mr. Clinton's record--how Predator drones, which spotted bin Laden three times in 1999 and 2000, were grounded by bureaucratic infighting; how a petty dispute with an Arizona senator stopped the CIA from hiring more Arabic translators. While it is easy to look back in hindsight and blame Bill Clinton, the full scale and nature of the terrorist threat was not widely appreciated until 9/11. Still: Bill Clinton did not fully grasp that he was at war. Nor did he intuit that war requires overcoming bureaucratic objections and a democracy's natural reluctance to use force. That is a hard lesson. But it is better to learn it from studying the Clinton years than reliving them.

Mr. Miniter, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is author of "Disinformation: 22 Media Myths that Undermine the War on Terror" (Regnery, 2005).

Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

We Are In Deep Doo-Doo

From Michelle Malkin:

Not a word about the 1,400-year-plus history of Islamic hostility to the West or Islamic imperialism from time immemorial or the Koran-inspired war on infidels--long, long before there was a United States and "pervasive anti-US sentiment."

Remember what I said yesterday?

If our intelligence agencies are laboring under the moonbat illusion that Muslim hatred of the infidel West didn't really start bubbling until the year 2003, we are really in deep, deep doo-doo.

Well, it appears we are, in fact, in deep doo-doo.

----------------------------------------------------------------

...and from Glenn Reynolds:

THE NIE HAS BEEN DECLASSIFIED: Go here for the "Key Judgments."

Bill First comments here. And John Podhoretz has a question for the NYT editors now that we know what the NIE actually says.

It's late but I'll add one more thought: While we should fire the leakers on general principles, we should probably also fire whoever wrote this -- for producing a meaningless document full of empty bureaucratic twaddle. If the jihadists win, they'll have more prestige! And they will probably use the internets! Do tell. Jesus Christ, if this is the quality of intelligence we're getting, no wonder we haven't won yet.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Yep, - we're in deeeeeeeep doo-doo!

"Exterminate All Who Are Not Muslim"

 

From AP source:

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum vowing to continue its holy war against the West. The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified.

The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as "the worshipper of the cross" saying "you and the West are doomed as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. ... We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword."

Islam forbids drinking alcohol and requires non-Muslims to pay a head tax to safeguard their lives if conquered by Muslims. They are exempt if they convert to Islam.

Hey CodePINK, why don't you'all get on a plane financed and piloted by John Kerry, and go over to the Middle East, and talk with these guys.  If you all went at the same time, they might listen to you!  I'm sure that once you tell your side, these nice guys will see the light and give the USA a pass.  Teach them about Christianity.

The Pope's Real Threat

By Captain Ed on War on Terror

Many people have written about the controversy over Pope Benedict's recent remarks at the University of Regensburg, where he quoted a medieval emperor about the barbarity of forced religious conversions. In a replay of the Prophet Cartoon madness, Muslims only escalated their rhetoric after the Vatican apologized for any offense the quotation may have given followers of Islam. Despite apologizing Wednesday for quoting Manuel II's words from 1391 (but not for its argument against violence in religion), Muslims burnt effigies of the Roman Catholic leader and staged demonstrations around the world:

Protesters took to the streets in a series of countries with large Muslim populations, including India and Iraq. The ruling party in Turkey likened Pope Benedict XVI to Hitler and Mussolini and accused him of reviving the mentality of the Crusades. In Kashmir, an effigy of the pontiff was burnt.

At Friday prayers in the Iranian capital, Teheran, a leading ayatollah described the Pope as "rude and weak-minded". Pakistan's parliament passed a motion condemning the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, criticised him hours after a grenade attack on a church in the Gaza Strip. ...

The head of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, said the remarks "aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world".

Similar comments were made in other Muslim capitals, raising fears of a repetition of the anger that followed the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper earlier this year.

All this has shown is that Muslims missed the point of the speech, and in fact have endeavored to fulfill Benedict's warnings rather than prove him wrong. If one reads the speech at Regensburg, the entire speech, one understands that the entire point was to reject violence in pursuing religion in any form, be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Bahai. The focal point of the speech was not the recounting of the debate between Manuel II and the unnamed Persian, but rather the rejection of reason and of God that violence brings (emphasis mine):

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

This is really the crux of the argument, which is that argument, debate, and rhetoric are absolutely essential in forming any kind of philosophy, including religious doctrine. The words of sacred text do not cover all situations in the world, and therefore development of a solid philosophical body of thought is critical to growth and wisdom. That requires the ability to challenge and to criticize without fear of retribution, a difficulty that most faiths struggle to overcome.

Islam, on the other hand, doesn't bother to try. Benedict never says this explicitly, but Islam's demands that all criticism be silenced turns doctrine into dictatorship, which rejects God on a very basic level. A central tenet of most religions is that humans lack the divine perfection to claim knowledge of the totality of the Divine wisdom. Islam practices a form of supremacy that insists on unquestioned obedience or at least silence of all criticism, especially from outsiders, and creates a violent reaction against it when it occurs.

Islam bullies people into silence, and then obedience. We saw this with the Prophet Cartoons, a series of editorial criticisms that pale into insignificance when seen against similar cartoons from the Muslim media regarding Christians and especially Jews. It is precisely this impulse about which Benedict warns can occur in any religion, but modern Muslims show that they are by far the widest purveyors of this impulse.

Unfortunately, the Muslims are not the only people who missed the point. The New York Times editorial board joins Muslims in demanding an apology and an end to criticism of Islam:

There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.” ...

Muslim leaders the world over have demanded apologies and threatened to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican, warning that the pope’s words dangerously reinforce a false and biased view of Islam. For many Muslims, holy war — jihad — is a spiritual struggle, and not a call to violence. And they denounce its perversion by extremists, who use jihad to justify murder and terrorism.

The Vatican issued a statement saying that Benedict meant no offense and in fact desired dialogue.

The Times missed the point, too. They aren't satisfied with the explanation offered by the Vatican. They want a "deep and persuasive apology" for Benedict's temerity in criticizing the use of violence and rejection of reason in religion, and specifically using a six-hundred-year-old quote that insulted people who regularly insult everyone else, including other Muslims. The Times counsels surrender to the threats and the violence.

Benedict opposes both. That's the real threat behind the Pope's speech, and don't think the radical Muslims don't understand it.

From CQ: Iraq War Forum: Opening Remarks

 

By Captain Ed on Iraq

As I announced earlier, I will take part in a Macalester College forum on the Iraq War this evening. I'm posting my opening remarks to the forum so that CQ readers who could not attend can read my speech and my arguments. I hope they inspire a healthy and rational debate here in the comments section. I'll let you know if they did the same at the forum.

The War In Iraq

Good evening, and thank you for your hospitality.

A few weeks ago, Grace Kelley e-mailed me asking if I knew anyone in the area that would defend the decision to invade Iraq for tonight’s forum. I think I surprised Grace when I volunteered to do it myself. She had been unable to get anyone to commit to speaking in this forum, and while I do not know the individual circumstances of those she approached before, I do know the heat and vitriol this topic sometimes inspires. I’m certain that some may have felt that this forum might generate too much of both to be useful in any rhetorical sense.

I feel differently. I do not believe that I will change minds here tonight, at least not about the topic at hand. I plan on offering my opinion on the war, honestly and forthrightly, and expect to be challenged on it. To me, the value of this forum comes not in the opportunity to “prove” myself right or to sway people from deeply-held beliefs. The value comes from meeting my fellow citizens and publicly airing our differences in a positive and rational manner so that we can make our choices freely and openly.

For this opportunity, I thank Democracy for America, my fellow panelists, and our moderator. I also thank the audience for their patience and forbearance, and at the least I hope to prove that all of us can disagree publicly without being disagreeable. At the very least, I’m hoping to emulate the scene from the movie “Patton” where George C. Scott says, “I thought I would stand here like this so you could see if I was really as big a son of a bitch as you think I am.”

So let me state some assumptions from which I’ve worked over the years that I have been writing on politics. People who oppose the war in Iraq are not unpatriotic. They are not cowards. The decision to invade Iraq was just that: a policy decision and a strategic wartime decision. It is possible to be on either side of that decision and still be a good American citizen. Vilifying those for disagreeing on this point in either direction does no one any good and only pollutes the political atmosphere.

Obviously, I do believe that invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein was the right decision at the time, and I still believe we are better off for that decision. My support comes from a strategic look at the war on terror and the challenge we faced in fighting it with Saddam still in power.

We have to keep the pressure on the terrorists and radicals in their region in order to keep them from setting the battle to their own advantage. Was Iraq the correct place in which to do this? I believe it was. I say this for these reasons: Saddam continued to make war on the United States during the twelve-year cease fire, and we needed to fight and end that war to have any success in the war on terror. We had tried to engage the entire global community in that effort for twelve years and the community as a whole abdicated their responsibilities.

Saddam Made War on the United States

It’s impossible to overemphasize this. We had 40,000 men and women tied down in and around Iraq at the time of 9/11 enforcing a cease-fire agreement that Saddam Hussein continually violated. His forces fired repeatedly at American and British aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones. They “lit up” our planes with fire control radars on almost a daily basis, in defiance of the agreement that kept us out of Baghdad in 1991. And while it happened years prior, let’s not forget the attempted assassination of George H. W. Bush during Clinton’s first term of office.

Each one of these constituted an act of war.

Our failure to respond in kind not only emboldened Saddam Hussein towards even greater defiance, it sent a message through the region that we would not fight back.

The International Community Failed To Stand Firm

One of the most common criticisms of the decision to go into Iraq is that it was made “unilaterally”. The complaint originates from the failure of the United Nations Security Council to authorize our use of force against Saddam Hussein and to end twelve years of defiance by his regime. We spent twelve years and one month enforcing sanctions against Iraq, a regimen that we later found had been undermined by the same nations that opposed enforcing the sixteen Security Council resolutions that had been issued during that period.

In the weeks before 9/11, nations such as France and Russia were actively petitioning the UN to remove the sanctions against Iraq. Prior to that, they and others had corrupted the UN program designed to allow aid to ordinary Iraqis, instead putting billions of dollars into Saddam’s pockets and reinforcing his grip on power. The international community sent a clear signal that they would do nothing about Saddam’s wars and genocides even when his actions violated a signed cease-fire agreement, and that the only issue that mattered to them was the money they could make on Iraq’s oil.

The Need To Engage The Enemy

The US needs to engage the terrorists in their backyard and not ours. We cannot allow them to construct set-piece attacks as they did throughout the 1990s because we have no completely effective way to defend against them. In a way, this parallels the frustration that Abraham Lincoln felt with his commanders during the Civil War. Too many of them, especially George McLelland, felt that they should hold their fire until the Union had a massive numerical superiority against the Confederacy. This allowed Robert E. Lee to dictate the terms of the war in the first two years, forcing the North to react rather than to define the battle for themselves. In the end, Lincoln picked Ulysses S Grant not just because Grant was a much better general than the rest, but because Grant understood that the Union had to fight Lee to win, and had to fight Lee on his own ground. Grant beat Lee because he used the Union’s superior economic forces and reserves to grind the Confederacy down to defeat.

One of the unfortunate lessons we taught the radical Islamists over the past thirty years has been the lack of fortitude in American resolve. We did nothing while Islamists captured our embassy in Teheran and held dozens of Americans hostage for 444 days. Ronald Reagan retreated from Beirut in 1983 after a Hezbollah attack killed over 200 Marines, and then he negotiated with their Iranian sponsors for the release of hostages in the late 1980s. When the road to Baghdad was wide open in 1991, George H.W. Bush let Saddam stay in power. We retreated from Somalia in 1993 and failed to respond to a series of provocations in that decade, starting with the World Trade Center attack and culminating in the attack on our military – the USS Cole.

We taught the terrorists that we would not fight for our interests and we would retreat when provoked. And Saddam Hussein’s continued defiance reinforced that lesson on a daily basis.

The Results Of The Decision

What have been the results of this decision? The United States has benefited in material ways which has made the nation and the region safer.

1. We deposed a genocidal dictator that had murdered at least 300,000 of his own people, in at least one case using chemical weapons to do so. He had twice gone to war with his neighbors in the past twenty years, invading our trading partner and ally and threatening our oil supply, which forced us to go to war to expel him from Kuwait. With the sanctions regime collapsing and his power more secure than ever, Saddam would have been free to attack American interests around the world as he often threatened to do.

2. Although it had happened a few years earlier, Saddam had attempted to assassinate George H. W. Bush after his term in office, an act of war in itself. Bill Clinton responded with a series of missile strikes while enforcing the sanctions and cease-fire agreements. Had Saddam been freed from his international obligations, he could have tried assassinating American politicians in the future, with potentially greater success. Ending his regime eliminated that possibility.

3. Libya surrendered its nuclear program as a result of the deposing of Saddam. Moammar Gaddafi told Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that he did not want to end up like Saddam Hussein, and reached agreement with the US and Britain within a month of Saddam’s capture to reveal and destroy its nuclear-weapons infrastructure. In doing so, we discovered that Libya had a more advanced program than previously thought, and also found more evidence of the AQ Khan nuclear-proliferation ring.

4. The presence of 140,000 American troops on Syria’s border had a demonstrable effect after the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005. When the Lebanese people demanded the expulsion of Syrian forces from their nation, the Syrians could easily have used their forces to quash the rebellion. Instead, they meekly withdrew without firing a shot, faced down by the US and France in a joint demand for withdrawal.

5. The same presence between Iran and Syria forces both terror-sponsoring nations to take into account our reaction to their actions. It places us in a strategic position to act in our defense or that of our allies if either nation decides to openly attack.

6. Fourteen million Iraqis have embraced the democratic process and elected the first representative democracy in the Arab world. If that democracy can survive, it will have the opportunity to transform the region.

Most of all, we have restored our reputation as a serious nation that will take action to defend itself and to transform the battlefield to our advantage. Terrorists understand that we will act to defend freedom and liberty and to pursue it in the heart of Islamist terrorism. On 9/11, they understandably questioned our resolve to prevail; they can no longer make that mistake. We took the steps necessary to end the long-running war with Iraq that kept Saddam in power and gave us a dangerous image as an impotent power in the region.

Again, I thank you for your time and hospitality. As long as we can meet in these forums and engage in spirited but rational debate, we know that American democracy and freedoms are secure indeed. Terrorists cannot take that away from us; only we can do that to ourselves.

"Please Stay In Your Seats"

 

(Picked up from the WEB)

Last week, while traveling to Chicago on business, I noticed a Marine sergeant traveling with a folded flag, but did not put two and two together.  After we boarded our flight, I turned to the sergeant, who'd been invited to sit in First Class (across from me), and inquired if he was heading home.

No, he responded.

Heading out I asked?

No. I'm escorting a soldier home.

Going to pick him up?

No. He is with me right now. He was killed in Iraq. I'm taking him home to his family.

The realization of what he had been asked to do hit me like a punch to the gut. It was an honor for him. He told me that, although he didn't know the soldier, he had delivered the news of his passing to the soldier's family and felt as if he knew them after many conversations in so few days. I turned back to him, extended my hand, and said, Thank you. Thank you for doing what you do so my family and I can do what we do.

Upon landing in Chicago the pilot stopped short of the gate and made the following announcement over the intercom.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to note that we have had the honor of having Sergeant Steeley of the United States Marine Corps join us on this flight. He is escorting a fallen comrade back home to his family. I ask that you please remain in your seats when we open the forward door to allow Sergeant Steeley to deplane and receive his fellow soldier. We will then turn off the seat belt sign."

Without a sound, all went as requested. I noticed the sergeant saluting the casket as it was brought off the plane, and his action made me realize that I am proud to be an American.

ABC - Altered By Clinton

I'm surprised that I'm mildly surprised that ABC caved. Shouldn't have bee any surprise at all. I'm NOT surprised that other than FOX, I'm hard pressed to find any HEADLINES, let alone the story.

...crap!

PowerLine wonders...

From PowerLine.com

Did the Dems Threaten ABC?

The Democrats have gone nuts over the ABC miniseries, The Path to 9/11. But it's a little hard to see why. Maybe it's because Disney and ABC have been reliably pro-Democrat in the past, so the Dems feel betrayed.

Looking at the big picture, though, it's a little hard to see what the Dems are complaining about. I haven't seen the miniseries, but I take it that it doesn't portray the Clinton administration as having taken very effective action against the growing threat from Islamic terrorists. What I don't understand is how the Democrats think they can rewrite history to challenge that characterization.

There is no doubt about the fact that the terrorist menace grew and became increasingly obvious during the Clinton administration. To note just a few highlights:

* January 25, 1993: Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fired an AK-47 into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia, killing two CIA employees.

* February 26, 1993: Islamic terrorists try to bring down the World Trade Center with car bombs. They failed to destroy the buildings, but killed 6 and injured over 1000 people.

* March 12, 1993: Car bombings in Mumbai, India leave 257 dead and 1,400 others injured.

* July 18, 1994: Bombing of Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 86 and wounds 300. The bombing is generally attributed to Hezbollah acting on behalf of Iran.

* July 19, 1994: Alas Chiricanas Flight 00901 is bombed, killing 21. Generally attributed to Hezbollah.

* July 26, 1994: The Israeli Embassy is attacked in London, and a Jewish charity is also car-bombed, wounding 20. The attacks are attributed to Hezbollah.

* December 11, 1994: A bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. It develops that Ramzi Yousef planted the bomb to test it for the larger terrorist attack he is planning.

* December 24, 1994: In a preview of September 11, Air France Flight 8969 is hijacked by Islamic terrorists who planned to crash the plane in Paris.

* January 6, 1995: Operation Bojinka, an Islamist plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean, is discovered on a laptop computer in a Manila, Philippines apartment by authorities after a fire occurred in the apartment. Noted terrorists including Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are involved in the plot.

* June 14-June 19, 1995: The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, in which 105 civilians and 25 Russian troops were killed following an attack by Chechan Islamists.

* July-October, 1995: Bombings in France by Islamic terrorists led by Khaled Kelkal kill eight and injure more than 100.

* November 13, 1995: Bombing of OPM-SANG building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia kills 7

* November 19, 1995: Bombing of Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan kills 19.

* January 1996: In Kizlyar, 350 Chechen Islamists took 3,000 hostages in a hospital. The attempt to free them killed 65 civilians and soldiers.

* February 25 - March 4, 1996: A series of four suicide bombings in Israel leave 60 dead and 284 wounded within 10 days.

* June 11, 1996: A bomb explodes on a train traveling on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line of the Moscow Metro, killing four and unjuring at least 12.

* June 25, 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing, carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian support. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed and 372 wounded.

* February 24, 1997: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from several countries. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".

* November 17, 1997: Massacre in Luxor, Egypt, in which Islamist gunmen attack tourists, killing 62 people.

* January 1998: Wandhama Massacre - 24 Kashmiri Pandits are massacred by Pakistan-backed Islamists in the city of Wandhama in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

* February 14, 1998: Bombings by Islamic Jihadi groups at an election rally in the Indian city of Coimbatore kill about 60 people.

* August 7, 1998: Al Qaeda bombs U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.

* August 31 - September 22, 1998: Russian apartment bombings kill about 300 people, leading Russia into Second Chechen War.

* December 1998: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb American and Israeli tourists in Jordan, and arrest 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.

* December 14, 1998: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States-Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.

* December 24, 1998: Indian Airlines Flight 814 from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi, India is hijacked by Islamic terrorists. One passenger is killed and some hostages are released. After negotiations between the Taliban and the Indian government, the last of the remaining hostages on board Flight 814 are released in exchange for release of 4 terrorists.

* January 2000: The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.

* August 8, 2000: A bomb exploded at an underpass in Pushkin Square in Moscow, killing 11 people and wounding more than 90.

* August 17, 2000: Two bombs exploded in a shopping center in Riga, Latvia, injuring 35 people.

* October 12, 2000: AL Qaeda bombs USS Cole with explosive-laden speedboat, killing 17 US sailors and wounding 40, off the port coast of Aden, Yemen.

Between 1993 and 2000, everyone who was paying any attention knew that the threat from Islamic terrorism was grave and getting worse. The catastrophic losses that occurred on Septimeber 11, 2001, could just as easily have happened in 1993, when the first plot to destroy the World Trade Center was carried off successfully, but the terrorists had miscalculated the effect of their explosives, or in 1995, when the plot to destroy eleven American airplanes in flight was thwarted by counter-intelligence work in the Philippines. What did the Clinton administration do in response to this grave threat? Essentially nothing. Worse, Clinton tried to sweep the problem under the rug, lest it disrupt the surface calm and prosperity for which he was eager to claim credit.

However Path to 9/11 portrays the Clinton administration, it can be no worse than the reality.

Now top Democrats have written a letter to ABC that can reasonably be read as a threat to pull the network's broadcast license if it shows Path to 9/11:

Presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law, to your shareholders, and to the nation.

The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest. Nowhere is this public interest obligation more apparent than in the duty of broadcasters to serve the civic needs of a democracy by promoting an open and accurate discussion of political ideas and events. ***

We urge you, after full consideration of the facts, to uphold your responsibilities as a respected member of American society and as a beneficiary of the free use of the public airwaves to cancel this factually inaccurate and deeply misguided program.

Blue Crab Boulevard calls this letter an "enormous miscalculation." Blog of the Week Riehl World View agrees that the Democrats will pay a political price for their heavy-handedness:

[T]he ramifications of the current move by Dems to pressure ABC are going to have consequences far beyond a docu-drama. Americans don't like people, especially politicians, messing with their TV. And the other big issue facing Republicans in the run up to the coming elections besides Iraq was firing up their base. I say was because the Dems have just saved the Republicans from having to go to the trouble.

The Democrats' shameless maneuvering now going on on behalf of Clinton brings back, not only the animus Republicans have always felt for Clinton, while drawing attention to their general weakness in foreign affairs, it also reminds everyone of the scandal ridden side show that was Democrat Clinton's presidency.

Well, one can always hope. But it's hard to think of an instance of bully-boy tactics by the Democrats causing them any serious problems.

UPDATE: ABC says that it is still making changes in the program, evidently in response to the Democrats' attacks, so we won't know how effective the Democrats' tactics have been until the program airs.

Michelle says, "It's NEVER Miller-Time!"

Michelle Malkin does a pretty good Hot-Air piece on the Miller Beer funding Illegal immigrants' protests.  Click here.

ABC's Gonna Cave...

ABC spokesman Jonathan Hogan defended the miniseries, telling the Post, it is a "dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and personal interviews."

"Many of the people who have expressed opinions about the film have yet to see it in its entirety or in its final broadcast form, " Hogan said. "We hope the viewers will watch the entire broadcast before forming their own opinion."

The Times reported that ABC was considering last-minute changes to the film.

“It is common practice to continue to make edits to strengthen a project right up to the broadcast date,” Hope Hartman, an ABC spokeswoman, told the Times.

 

Yep, they're gonna cave...  too bad - just when I thought ONE of the MSM guys was growing some stones...

...guess I won't waste the TiVo space after all...

Hey ABC! Have You'all Lost Your Minds?

Following my normal morning routine, I opened Drudge and read something about "ABC Terrorist Drama Stirs Controversy...."

No big deal I thought, hell, if Drudge overhears 2 folks discussing last night's 50-yard line call at the water fountain , it's a "controversy".

3rd line down, "Clinton demanding network 'pull the drama' if no changes..."

Hillary or Bill?  Does it matter?  Better click & follow...

Holy shit!  Bill's pissed at MSM!  O.k., Bills people are pissed, but they're using his name so that's just as good. 

...didn't go after bin Laden because he was getting blown by Monica in the oval office and couldn't be disturbed!!!!!!!!  Oh, alright, the "blowjobs in the oval office" thing was distracting him.

They probably should have kept quiet and bitched afterward.  Now, they're drawing more attention to it.  (I'm going to TiVo it just because of the controversy!)

Think ABC will pull it? Nah!  Think they'll edit it? Maybe, but probably not.

 

In any event - can this in any way help Hillary?  Jeez, I hope not!

...from "The Bullwinkle Blog"

Time Asks, I Answer.

Who Can Replace Kofi?

Tony Soprano. He’d steal less. He wouldn’t take any shit from anybody and a UN Resolution would be enforced, or else. They’d need a new sign though…

Invasion USA

 

 

Boycott over illegals: Dump Miller Beer
Groups say American brewery giant supports unlawful immigrants, amnesty

---

Posted: September 5, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Illegal crossing fence

American patriots first dumped tea over taxes; now it could be beer over lax immigration enforcement.

More than 100 groups are being organized to support a national boycott of Miller Brewing Co. and parent company SABMiller plc, because of what is viewed as the corporation's support for illegal immigrants and amnesty for them.

"The boycott message is simple. Miller Brewing Company supports illegal immigration by giving money to groups that support amnesty, marches, and benefits for illegal aliens," the announcement on Monday said. "Citizens are encouraged to 'Dump the beer! Dump the stock.'"

Consumers should avoid Miller Lite, ICE House, Miller Genuine Draft and Milwaukee's Best, according to organizers who have posted their documentation and petition plans at MillerBoycott.com.

"It is time for these large corporations that are using their financial influence to open America's borders to be punished!" said William Gheen, of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC. "It is time for the immigration enforcement movement to show these unscrupulous corporations what we can do when we all work together."

The coalition is pursuing the boycott under the auspices of the National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition, and will be headed up by Gheen and Jason Mrocheck of WeHireAliens.com and FIRE Coalition, officials said.

FIRE is the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement coalition.

"Miller Brewing Company is giving money to groups that support amnesty and citizenship for illegal aliens that have broken many of our laws," said Mrocheck. "The last thing we need is more illegal aliens driving drunk and killing American citizens."

The two lead organizations provide an online database of companies accused of hiring illegal aliens and encourage the securing of America's borders and enforcement of existing immigration laws.

Now their efforts are expanding, because, they said, of a report that shows 13 Americans are being killed by "uninsured drunk driving illegal aliens" each day.

The Chicago Tribune recently had reported Miller paid more than $30,000 for planning, materials and advertising for the "Immigrant Workers Justice Walk" over the holiday weekend.

Miller officials denied it.

"The money supported a recent convention on immigration issues in Chicago, which provided attendees with information on how to become legally naturalized citizens of the U.S.," said Miller spokesman Peter Marino.

Walk organizers said they wanted officials to pay attention to the "contributions of undocumented immigrants," and change laws so that all immigrants can be legalized.

Miller company officials could not be reached over the holiday weekend, but information from the ALIPAC website indicated the situation developed when a group of immigrant advocacy organizations in Chicago discovered the company contributed $2,000 to the political campaign of Sen. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.

One of the senator's projects has been HR4437, which calls for strengthening the anti-immigration laws of the United States, including a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The company, which also hired three ad agencies to work with its reach into the Hispanic population, then took out a one-page ad in a Chicago newspaper confirming that it opposes the "Anti-Immigration Legislation."

The Media War...cont.

From PowerLine

Aussie Andrew Bolt takes a look at "The holey ambulance -- the backside covering begins." Melanie Phillips meditates on "The media war against Israel." Michelle Malkin prescribes "No more ambulances for terror." And Secretary Rumsfeld also weighs in with "The will to win" (the Department of Defense has posted the complete text of the speech here):

[W]e find ourselves in a strange time:

* When a database search of America's leading newspapers turns up 10 times as many mentions of one soldier at Abu Ghraib who was punished for misconduct than mentions of Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the War on Terror.

* When a Newsweek senior editor disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our Armed Forces as a "mercenary army."

* When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein's crimes when he was in power so CNN could stay in Iraq.

* And when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay - which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans, and is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare - as "the gulag of our times."

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and lies and distortions being told about our troops and our country. This watchdog role is even more important today in a war that is to a great extent fought in the global media - to not allow the lies and the myths be repeated without question or challenge, so that at least the second and third draft of history will be more accurate than the quick first allegations.

Will somebody say "Indeed"?

Plame Out

fighting words: A wartime lexicon.

The ridiculous end to the scandal that distracted Washington.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006, at 1:02 PM ET

Richard Armitage
I had a feeling that I might slightly regret the title ("Case Closed") of my July 25 column on the Niger uranium story. I have now presented thousands of words of evidence and argument to the effect that, yes, the Saddam Hussein regime did send an important Iraqi nuclear diplomat to Niger in early 1999. And I have not so far received any rebuttal from any source on this crucial point of contention. But there was always another layer to the Joseph Wilson fantasy. Easy enough as it was to prove that he had completely missed the West African evidence that was staring him in the face, there remained the charge that his nonreport on a real threat had led to a government-sponsored vendetta against him and his wife, Valerie Plame.

In his July 12 column in the Washington Post, Robert Novak had already partly exposed this paranoid myth by stating plainly that nobody had leaked anything, or outed anyone, to him. On the contrary, it was he who approached sources within the administration and the CIA and not the other way around. But now we have the final word on who did disclose the name and occupation of Valerie Plame, and it turns out to be someone whose opposition to the Bush policy in Iraq has—like Robert Novak's—long been a byword in Washington. It is particularly satisfying that this admission comes from two of the journalists—Michael Isikoff and David Corn—who did the most to get the story wrong in the first place and the most to keep it going long beyond the span of its natural life.

As most of us have long suspected, the man who told Novak about Valerie Plame was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department and, with his boss, an assiduous underminer of the president's war policy. (His and Powell's—and George Tenet's—fingerprints are all over Bob Woodward's "insider" accounts of post-9/11 policy planning, which helps clear up another nonmystery: Woodward's revelation several months ago that he had known all along about the Wilson-Plame connection and considered it to be no big deal.) The Isikoff-Corn book, which is amusingly titled Hubris, solves this impossible problem of its authors' original "theory" by restating it in a passive voice:

---

---

The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and lawyers directly involved in the case, underscore one of the ironies of the Plame investigation: that the initial leak, seized on by administration critics as evidence of how far the White House was willing to go to smear an opponent, came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone.

In the stylistic world where disclosures are gleaned and ironies underscored, the nullity of the prose obscures the fact that any irony here is only at the authors' expense. It was Corn in particular who asserted—in a July 16, 2003, blog post credited with starting the entire distraction—that:

The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security.

After you have noted that the Niger uranium connection was in fact based on intelligence that has turned out to be sound, you may also note that this heated moral tone ("thuggish," "gang") is now quite absent from the story. It turns out that the person who put Valerie Plame's identity into circulation was a staunch foe of regime change in Iraq. Oh, that's all right, then. But you have to laugh at the way Corn now so neutrally describes his own initial delusion as one that was "seized on by administration critics."

What does emerge from Hubris is further confirmation of what we knew all along: the extraordinary venom of the interdepartmental rivalry that has characterized this administration. In particular, the bureaucracy at the State Department and the CIA appear to have used the indiscretion of Armitage to revenge themselves on the "neoconservatives" who had been advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein. Armitage identified himself to Colin Powell as Novak's source before the Fitzgerald inquiry had even been set on foot. The whole thing could—and should—have ended right there. But now read this and rub your eyes: William Howard Taft, the State Department's lawyer who had been told about Armitage (and who had passed on the name to the Justice Department)

also felt obligated to inform White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. But Powell and his aides feared the White House would then leak that Armitage had been Novak's source—possibly to embarrass State Department officials who had been unenthusiastic about Bush's Iraq policy. So Taft told Gonzales the bare minimum: that the State Department had passed some information about the case to Justice. He didn't mention Armitage. Taft asked if Gonzales wanted to know the details. The president's lawyer, playing the case by the book, said no, and Taft told him nothing more.

"[P]laying the case by the book" is, to phrase it mildly, not the way in which Isikoff and Corn customarily describe the conduct of the White House. In this instance, however, the evidence allows them no other choice. But there is more than one way in which a case can be played by the book. Under the terms of the appalling and unconstitutional Intelligence Identities Protection Act (see "A Nutty Little Law," my Slate column of July 26, 2005), the CIA can, in theory, "refer" any mention of itself to the Justice Department to see if the statute—denounced by The Nation and the New York Times when it was passed—has been broken. The bar here is quite high. Perhaps for that reason, Justice sat on the referral for two months after Novak's original column. But then, rather late in the day, at the end of September 2003, then-CIA Director George Tenet himself sent a letter demanding to know whether the law had been broken.

The answer to that question, as Patrick Fitzgerald has since determined, is "no." But there were plenty of senior people who had known that all along. And can one imagine anybody with a stronger motive to change the subject from CIA incompetence and to present a widely discredited agency as, instead, a victim, than Tenet himself? The man who kept the knowledge of the Minnesota flight schools to himself and who was facing every kind of investigation and obloquy finally saw a chance to change the subject. If there is any "irony" in the absurd and expensive and pointless brouhaha that followed, it is that he was abetted in this by so many who consider themselves "radical."

Plame

New

More on BIAS from Malkin's Blog

The media's open-borders bias

By Michelle Malkin   ·   August 28, 2006 02:43 PM

Tim Graham at MRC has just released an excellent study of mainstream media coverage of the pro-illegal alien demonstrations from March through May 2006. A few of the conclusions:

■ Advocates of opening a wider path to citizenship were almost twice as likely to speak in news stories as advocates of stricter immigration control. Advocates for amnesty and guest-worker programs drew 504 soundbites in the study period, compared to just 257 for tighter border control. (Sixty-nine soundbites were neutral). On the days of pro-illegal-alien rallies, their critics nearly disappeared from the screen. For instance, on the night of April 10, the soundbite count on the three evening newscasts and ABC’s Nightline was 43 to 2 in favor of the protesters. When the debate shifted to Capitol Hill in May, coverage grew more balanced.

■ While conservative labels were common, liberal labels were rarely or never used. In the study period, reporters referred to "conservatives" or "conservative" groups 89 times, most intensely during legislative debate in May, when President Bush was presented as having to "appease" his "conservative" base. NBC’s Matt Lauer even referred to Bush’s base as the "far right." By contrast, the "liberal" label was used only three times – all of them by ABC. CBS and NBC never used the word, even as hard-left protest organizers described the House bill on public radio as full of "horrendous and macabre clauses, fascist clauses."

■ While protests centered on underlining the vital role illegal aliens play in the American economy, the burdens of illegal immigration in added government costs or crime were barely covered. While the networks poured out their air time to the sympathetic stories of hard-working immigrant families, only six out of 320 stories mentioned studies that illegal aliens cost more to governments than they provide in tax dollars. Only six stories gave a mention to the problem of the cost or threat of criminal aliens.

■ The networks have not dropped the word "illegal" in favor of "undocumented" immigrants, although some reporters struggled to adopt clumsy liberal-preferred terminology. Groups like the National Association of Hispanic Journalists have urged their colleagues to never use the word "illegal," but the word was still more than five times more common than "undocumented." In 320 stories, there were 381 uses of the word "illegal," and 73 uses of "undocumented." But some reporters struggled to please: NBC’s Kevin Tibbles actually referred to protests by "those who critics call illegals."

The report concludes with recommendations for a more balanced picture in network news coverage of the immigration debate.

Hey, maybe someone could cover the Mexican flag melee in Maywood, Calif. Not. Holding. My. Breath.

Washington Times - Media Bias on Illegal Aliens is REAL!

Biased TV messages

TODAY'S EDITORIAL
August 29, 2006

Every time we think we have seen the worst in media bias, we come across studies like the Media Research Center's new report on the Big Three's immigration coverage. The center's director of media analysis, Tim Graham, confirms conservatives' worst fears about ABC, CBS and NBC, as they recklessly go about their efforts to depict an America that simply doesn't exist.
    Mr. Graham and analysts reviewed 309 immigration stories from March 24 to May 31, or roughly the period between the first major immigration rally and passage of the Senate's amnesty bill. The report found that in contrast to the networks' universal agreement that the rallies were historic and represented a "Vietnam-era" movement, collectively they mentioned just 16 nationwide polls that "might include the opinion of the non-protesters."
    Occasionally, the networks simply ignored polls that disagreed with their pro-illegal immigrant framework. For instance, CBS never cited its poll findings that 87 percent (April 6-9) or 89 percent (May 4-8) of Americans said that the problem of illegal immigration was "very serious" or "somewhat serious." NBC never cited its poll finding that 71 percent would be "more likely" to vote for a candidate "who favors tighter controls on illegal immigration." While touting a Time magazine poll showing 79 percent of Americans in favor of a guest-worker program, none of the Big Three mentioned the poll's finding that only 12 percent of respondents said the demonstrators made them more likely to endorse a guest-worker program, compared to 35 percent who said the protests made them more likely to favor laws to "make it crime" to enter or work in the country.
    During the study period, advocates of amnesty and guest-worker programs drew 504 soundbites on the network news shows, compared to just 257 for those arguing for tighter border security. On the night of one large demonstration on April 10, the count on all three networks was 43-2 in favor of the protesters. On the large May 1 nationwide rally, it was 62-8.
    When labeling groups and individuals, network reporters used the term "conservative" 89 times and "liberal" only three times. NBC never used "liberal" in its coverage, despite using "conservative" 45 times. On May 1, NBC's Nightly News quoted one Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a rally organizer, without noting her membership in International ANSWER, a Communist organization. Similarly, a March 24 ABC story identified Teodoro Maus as a "community leader" without telling viewers he was Mexico's consul general in Atlanta from 1998 to 2001.
    It's no wonder cable networks like Fox News and programs like CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" continue to attract viewers at the Big Three's expense. Congress especially should take the Media Research Center's report to heart and remember that network news is more like state-run TV in an authoritarian state than it's like objective news -- at least when it comes to reporting conservative opinion.

Casio unveils GPR-100, smallest GPS-enabled watch

By Darren Murph on wristwatch

Maybe there's some mass conspiracy to tackle an overweight epidemic among humans, or maybe folks these days are running just for the fun it, but regardless of the real agenda, Casio is cashing in on the statistically-driven-jogger craze by unveiling the GPR-100. Hailed as the "world's smallest GPS-enabled watch," the unit combines all the goodness found in your average wristwatch with the swank abilities of GPS in order to better analyze your exercise. Similar to other arm-dominating contraptions we've seen, this waterproof wristwatch syncs up with GPS satellites to calculate the time, speed, distance, pace, and averages of your run, while keeping track of your route should you deviate from the beaten path. You also get a "fully automatic" calendar, stopwatch, alarm, and even a backlight for those late night excursions. The biggest dig on this otherwise fanciful little timepiece is the battery life; the rechargeable LiOn apparently lasts just 2 hours in "normal operation," while legging out 4.3 hours in "low power mode." While this GPS watch will certainly attract less negative attention compared to earlier efforts, the compactness comes at a price -- at a whopping ¥54,000 ($476), you might be better off evading the GPR-100 entirely this September, and redirecting your energy (and cashflow) towards that tried and true Nike+iPod setup.

Hell Froze Over

Show-biz brigade takes a stand vs. Hezbollah, Hamas
By O’Ryan Johnson

Boston Herald
Thursday, August 17, 2006 - Updated: 01:16 AM EST
Hollywood heavyweights Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Rupert Murdoch and more than 80 other stars played against type and entered stage right yesterday with an ad condemning Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and terrorists everywhere.

    “We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” the full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times reads.

    Whatever will the crowd at Spago think?

    The undersigned also include La-la luminaries Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton of “Everyone Loves Raymond” and William Hurt.

    Directors Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Dick Donner and Sam Raimi also signed their names. Other Hollywood powerplayers who signed their John Hancocks included Sumner Redstone, the chairman of Paramount Pictures, and billionaire mogul Haim Saban.

    The move is a variation on the usual script in Tinseltown, where the political noise has been predominantly anti-Bush, anti-war on terrorism and anti-war in Iraq from high-profile stars such as George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

    But this alternate A-List appeared to steal some of President Bush’s “A” material with lines like: “If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die. We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs.”

Presenting false images

 

By Joel Mowbray

The Washington Times
Published August 16, 2006

---

 

When Reuters was forced to sever ties with free-lance photographer Adnan Hajj and remove more than 900 of his photos from its database earlier this month, long-whispered questions about the reliability of Arab stringers and freelancers came to the forefront.
    But while the widespread use of Arab locals in covering the Middle East raises many legitimate concerns, the Palestinian propaganda machine has enjoyed tremendous success over the years hoodwinking supposedly sophisticated Western journalists. And Hezbollah appears to have done the same over the past month.
    In short, almost nothing that is purported to happen in the Arab world can automatically be taken at face value. Not even if it's captured in a photo.
    Nowhere is the use of Arab "fixers" (as they are known) more common than in the Palestinian territories. And yet despite the extensive reliance on locals who presumably enjoy greater familiarity with the terrain and key players, negative press coverage of the Palestinian Authority or various Islamic terrorist organizations operating in the territories has long been scant.
    This void in coverage is not because such evidence does not exist. Palestinian Media Watch, a nonprofit that operates on a tight budget, has easily reported more on incitement and indoctrination by the Palestinian Authority, for example, than all Western media outlets combined.
    When it was discovered that Mr. Hajj had digitally manipulated his photos, at least one prominent Arab journalist was not surprised. "Sadly, things like this happen a lot, especially when your local fixers are openly affiliated and have a clear agenda," explains Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled Abu Toameh. He adds that some of the Arab stringers and freelancers contracted by Western media outlets are "people who see themselves as foot soldiers for the cause."
    Mr. Toameh is careful not to paint with too broad a brush, and he stresses that there are Arab journalists who do their best to get the story out. But the record is well-established that reporting certain truths in the Palestinian territories can result in intimidation or sometimes severe violence.
    After being arrested and detained for six days because he didn't give Yasser Arafat the desired coverage in the run-up to the 1996 election, Maher al-Alami, editor of Al Quds, the largest Palestinian newspaper in Jerusalem, said that "the Palestinian media follow [Yasser Arafat's] instructions out of fear."
    When an Associated Press cameraman filmed Palestinians in Nablus jubilantly rejoicing over the September 11 attacks, he "was summoned to a Palestinian Authority security office and told that the material must not be aired," according to the AP's own account. Threats from Islamic terrorists on Arafat's payroll quickly followed. One Palestinian cabinet officer even stated that the the Palestinian Authority could not "guarantee the life" of the cameraman if the footage was released.
    The Associated Press never officially released the footage.
    Even under the theory that Arab thugs and tyrants would be less likely to kill Western journalists because, well, the world would sadly care more about their deaths, relying solely on Western reporters instead is no panacea, either.
    Examples abound of Western reporters being duped or threatened. In April 2002, the Israeli military raided the Jenin refugee camp, a known terrorist breeding ground and safe haven. Palestinians immediately accused the Jewish state of systematically committing war crimes, and the buzzword soon tossed about by the Western press was "massacre."
    That no massacre actually occurred — not even the United Nations, the Palestinians' best friend, found any evidence to suggest one had — received only a fraction of the earlier, largely uncritical reporting. Ditto for the incident this June, when many family members died on a beach in northern Gaza. Originally covered as an Israeli shelling of innocent Palestinians, it turned out that Israel almost certainly played no role in the tragedy. The media mea culpa, though, was essentially mute.
    In a widely circulated photo taken last month and distributed by Agence France Press, two older, hijab-clad Lebanese women are wailing in front of caskets. Dozens of caskets, actually. The caskets were lined up against a wall, and numbers were spray-painted on the wall. Somehow, the women had wedged themselves into the narrow space between the coffins and the wall, and the numbers conveniently appeared directly behind them — guaranteed to be in any photo.
    The problems with the photo are obvious. Why would the women force their way into a crevice, when they could more easily face both the caskets and the wall? Quite simply, that shot wouldn't capture both the mourning faces and the numbers signifying the enormity of the tragedy. And on the topic of the numbers, the ones spray-painted on the wall were the kind used in the West, not in South Lebanon, thus erasing any doubt about the photo-op's intended audience.
    This photo, though, was not taken by an Arab freelancer or some hack Westerner. It was shot by award-winning photographer Marco Di Lauro, who won praise for his work with Marines in Iraq. The benign — and probably correct — interpretation is that he just wasn't suspicious enough.
    Yet given that thugs from Hezbollah, Hamas and Mr. Arafat's Fatah control almost everything in the most "newsworthy" areas of the Arab world, any scene or event encountered by Western media outlets must be viewed with supreme skepticism.
    But it's not as if this is news to the Western media. They know it. Yet pretend as if they don't. That's the real travesty.
Joel Mowbray occasionally writes for The Washington Times.

Robert Cox: Anti-partisan Lieberman may be on to something!

Robert Cox, The Examiner
Aug 15, 2006 4:00 AM

WASHINGTON - When I left New York last week for a family vacation in Southern California, Sen. Joe Lieberman had just lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut and was preparing for his first day as an independent candidate for higher office.

In his Tuesday night speech, Lieberman, both conceding defeat and launching a new campaign for the U.S. Senate, decried the “old politics of partisan polarization” and said, “I went into public service to find solutions, not to point fingers. To unite, not to divide.”

Lieberman went on to describe a political environment within his own party in that “Every disagreement is considered disloyal. And every opponent it is not just an opponent but is seen as evil.” He vowed to continue fighting for stronger national security and work with Democrats and Republicans to “build a better life for the people of Connecticut ... regardless of what the political consequences may be.” In staring into the abyss of an election loss, Lieberman may be on to something.

The following day on the other side of the country, I took my kids to the Shamu Show at SeaWorld San Diego, first stop on the 2006 Cox Family West Coast Summer Vacation Tour. Before the show began, August A. Busch IV, president of Anheuser-Busch, the company that owns SeaWorld, offered a video-taped salute to America’s heroes — a thanks to the men and women of the U.S. military and those of U.S. allies for defending freedom around the world.

I must have been refilling my bowl of chips during the most recent Super Bowl because I missed the ad where Anheuser-Busch announced that throughout 2006, members of the military and their families would be granted free entry at any one of Anheuser-Busch’s SeaWorld, Busch Gardens or Sesame Place parks.

As a New Yorker, where overt displays of patriotism are generally frowned upon, I was both a little uncomfortable with the video and curious as to the crowd’s reaction. I half expected to hear boos.

The show announcer then asked all those currently serving in the military to stand up. Hundreds of military families were in SeaWorld that day and during the 2 p.m. show, roughly 100 men and women, out of a crowd of more than 3,000, rose to their feet. The announcer then asked the crowd to show their appreciation and a long, loud and heartfelt applause followed.

Earlier that day, authorities in Britain announced they had broken up a planned terror attack aimed at blowing nine commercial aircraft out of the sky in a plot designed to kill thousands of people flying from England to the United States.

It was the whispered topic of discussion in the long lines queued up for SeaWorld’s most popular attractions. Looking out across Shamu Stadium at the families watching whales and their trainers do amazing tricks, it occurred to me that by planning an attack in August, the terrorists were clearly hoping to kill as many children as possible.

A few days later, as the Cox Family Tour moved north, we found ourselves at the Santa Monica Pier. As we looked north along the coast, we could see below us row upon row of white wooden crosses planted in the beach. Beside them was a row of a dozen coffin-sized boxes wrapped in American flags.

We watched from the pier above as the anti-war protestors, armed with clipboards approached beachgoers requesting their signature for what purpose I can only guess. Time and again, couples walking arm and arm, parents with families in tow and individuals strolling toward the surf, ignored them or waved them away. In the time we watched, we did not see a single person sign on to their cause.

This morning, at our not-so-swank hotel in the always-swanky Beverly Hills, a copy of the USA Today landed outside my room. I came across a letter to the editor from a man in British Columbia calling on Sen. Lieberman to withdraw from his Senate race so as not to divide the Democratic party and leave Ned Lamont a clear shot at his Senate seat. “Let’s hope Lieberman will see the error of running as an independent and allow a candidate who is against President Bush’s war to win,” he wrote.

I am not sure what it means when the largest daily newspaper in the United States, with “USA” in its name no less, needs to publish a letter from a Canadian calling on a sitting U.S. senator to deny Connecticut voters a say in who represents them in Congress.

But like I said, Lieberman may be on to something.

Robert Cox is a member of The Examiner’s Blog Board of Contributors, is president of the Media Bloggers Association and blogs at wordinedgewise.tv.

Examiner

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So, here's my wife!  Looking at me as we're about to embark on our 2nd Royal Carribean curise on our ship Rhapsody of the Seas!  Leaving fromGalveston, TX.

FOX does it too?

FOX does it too?

Okay, I have seen enough and I’d really like to hear from a journalist I trust and admire.  Maybe there’s a justification.  Maybe the rationale is there, just hiding behind a veil my eyes refuse to pierce.  Perhaps I simply can’t focus.  Regardless of the reason, I just plainly do not understand.  

I can look the other way when it’s MSM other than FOX.  I can even justify it when FOX is reprinting an AP or Reuters story.  But when FOX uses its own byline, I have to ask:

“Why is it O.K. to publicly report something that the officials-in-charge clearly do not want reported?”

Below, are 5 partial paragraphs excerpted from an article posted on the FOXNews.com website.  (All text enhancements are mine.)

British Officials Identify 19 Suspects in Mid-Air Terror Attack Plot
Friday, August 11, 2006
FOX News

The bombs were to be assembled on the aircraft, apparently with peroxide-based solution and everyday carry-on items such as a disposable camera or a music player, two American law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.  The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Britain asked that no information be released.  

Ok, then – If Britain (the country, not some individual, not an organization, not a political party, but the COUNTRY of Britain!) “…asked that no information be released.”  - Why did FOX print it?  Was it to declare that …”two American law enforcement officials…” didn’t feel compelled to abide by Britain’s wishes?  Or was it an indication that FOX News believes the AP should be outed?  Maybe, FOX thought since the AP had already revealed the information that it was now OK to keep spreading the word.  Was it one of those, …” the people have a right to know…” lines of bullshit the “other guys” like to hide behind?

The arrests were made in the eastern city of Lahore and in Karachi, the official said on condition of anonymity because he did not have the authority to speak formally on the issue.

If the “official” did not have the authority to speak, what gave you’all the knowledge that he even was an “official”?  So he was really an “un-official”?

A U.S. congressman briefed by intelligence officials, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said U.S. intelligence had intercepted terrorist chatter.

This one’s another justification as to why congress should NOT be briefed!  If the investigation was/is sensitive, why say anything?!!?!?  

The test run was designed to see whether the plotters would be able to smuggle the needed materials aboard the planes, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

We see this one so often that its now un-questioned.  Why do we accept the word of individuals who won’t identify themselves?  Where is any accountability?  Putting an identity to a statement does not guarantee truth, but it’s certainly a tad more reliable than an anonymous quote, isn’t it?

A British police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said the suspects were "homegrown," though it was not immediately clear if all were British citizens.

Was this one thrown in just to prove our congressmen aren’t the only ones who disregard the sensitivity of an undercover investigation into terrorism?





A whole new way to make us fear
(image placeholder)Posted by Clare Duffy, NBC News Producer (09:37 am ET, 08/10/06)
Editor's note: Clare was on her way to Burbank, Calif., from New York Thursday morning for a Nightly News assignment in Los Angeles. She writes this missive about her airport experience from her Blackberry Wireless Handheld.
Even in this post-9/11 world, the scene that greeted bleary-eyed travelers in the morning darkness at JFK International Airport was surreal: "No liquids or gels of any kind" read hastily printed signs taped to the check-in desks.
Those who noticed them hastily shoved mouthwash, toothpaste and sunblock into their luggage, but most did not, unaware of what was playing out at security. Air travel, an Ironman-worthy test of endurance on the best of days, today will stretch every passenger and airline worker to the limit. 
At the security line, the usual suspicious objects -- laptops, iPods, killer sneakers -- were all but forgotten as TSA workers shouted at people to throw away eyedrops, lotions, lip gloss, bottled water, anything at all.
One young woman chucked an entire Mario Badescu skincare kit into the trash, looking simultaneously bewildered, enraged and tearful. As a beauty product junkie myself, I felt her pain.  I made a show out of jettisoning a small tube of Neosporin so they might not take the half-full tube of $50 sunscreen in my bag. All the while, bits and pieces of the story were bruited about in a strange game of "telephone":  "I heard it was nuclear weapons!"
Epic screaming matches broke out over baby formula, with the dueling agendas of protective parents and those protecting us from terrorism locked in steely combat. The hapless woman who runs the day spa at the Jetblue terminal found herself and her stock the subject of intense scrutiny.  Who knew what lurked within the colorful jars of pomegranate face cream?
On board the plane now, a member of the flight crew is relating how even they were forced to throw away their lunches. There's no water on board, and we weren't allowed to bring any on board. This should be a fun six hours.
"The TSA, they don't know what they're doing," the crew member fumed to no one in particular.   
Someone knows what they're doing, though -- those who have found a whole new way to make us fear flying, and wonder about that mini tube of toothpaste in the bag of the guy in 35F.

Why did I hide my sunscreen?
(image placeholder)Posted by Clare Duffy, NBC News Producer (09:59 pm ET, 08/10/06)
It's been an eventful day -- both in the air and, it would seem, here in the blogosphere, as my morning observations have triggered some interesting responses. I can't address them all, but for those who believe I am whining or worse, helping the terrorists, a few thoughts. My experience at JFK transpired very early this morning, before much was known about the new luggage restrictions. The frustration I and many others witnessed at security grew out of the fact that by the time most people were apprised of the restriction, it was too late to put the problematic items in their checked luggage. As the morning wore on, it became far more efficient, and I'm guessing, there ceased to be battles over such things as baby formula. But that is indeed what was happening early this morning, as passengers and security officials alike got a grip on this new reality. And a note about your blogger -- I fly for work often, and understand and appreciate the work that goes into getting all of us where we need to go safely. But having had a piece of checked luggage stolen very recently, I'm also well aware of the many pitfalls of air travel. The thought of losing still more of my belongings at an airport was difficult to take, I realize perhaps not in the grand scheme of things, but nevertheless, that's why I tried to hide the sunscreen. In any case, this situation is our collective new reality.