Compare and contrast

Jennifer Locke, was on assignment with a camera crew to cover the entertainment angle of the event. When Sen. John McCain walked by, the assistant said, “I voted for you in the primary, you’re going to win.”

McCain was overheard saying to her, “You’re not supposed to reveal that.” Locke apparently continued to explain that she is the daughter of a Vietnam veteran.

Insiders who were at the event were surprised and shocked to hear the disclosure, which was recorded on videotape. A Fox News insider called it “journalistically unacceptable.” An FNC spokesperson would not comment on the personnel matter but did confirm Locke is no longer with the company, where she’d worked for a couple of years.

This is a quote from the link above, in case you didn’t notice.

From Cynics Party

A commenter at media bistro calls Fox “biased” for firing this young lady. How you can compare Chris Matthews KEEPING HIS JOB after talking about how he got hot in his nether regions over Obama and kept his job, and Fox firing the young lady for having a dad who’s a Vietnam Veteran, I’ll never know.

Too bad. Rather had talks with CNN, ABC, and NBC in 2006 about possible employment after his departure from CBS, but they refused to hire him because he brought “too much baggage.”
-
Newsbusters

So he’s suing CBS for the forged document scandal that put him in this position? I haven’t read the court docs, but it might be good for a laugh.

The fact is, he DOES have an ongoing lawsuit against CBS.

Michelle Malkin by way of Tel-Chai Nation

Philly Daily News:

The mastermind of the Port Richmond bank robbery was Howard Cain, who was fatally shot by police Saturday while fleeing in a minivan minutes after he fired a once-banned high-powered Chinese assault rifle, killing Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, police say.

Cain apparently realized he couldn’t hold up a bank where he was known, so he and Floyd donned Muslim women’s clothes - a hijab covering their heads; long dresses, called an abaya; and face veils, called nik-ab - to prevent detection, the source said.

Warner, of Westminster Street near 54th, wore a dreadlock wig and dust mask, the source added. Then, the trio marched into the bank, and Sgt. Liczbinski responded to the bank robbery alarm at 11:26 a.m.

The trio hopped in a blue Jeep Liberty. Hearing flash information about the Jeep, Liczbinski chased the vehicle, which stopped twice before hitting a pole. Cain jumped out and fired the high-powered SKS assault rifle five times at the officer, hitting his left trunk and leaving him in a pool of blood, at Schiller and Almond streets, police said.

Liczbinski’s car had one bullet hole on the driver’s side door.

I’ll be commenting on this later, but Fareed NuMan, an “Islamic researcher” claimed “They couldn’t be practicing Muslims, no way. The Quran forbids a man to imitate a woman.” More apologetics from a liar, since there are many documented cases of muslims dressing up as women in order to escape.

Men disguised as Muslim women rob bank from 2007 (Reuters)

Red Mosque leader captured while trying to escape … in a burqa from 2007 (Hot Air)

The Niqab and Burqa as Security Threats, November, 2006 (Daniel Pipes)

Attacking a church: Two assailants in burqas threw a grenade among worshippers at a Christmas Day service on in the village of Chianwala, northwest of Lahore, killing three and wounding thirteen. (December 25, 2002)

Burqa’ed commandos capture burqa’ed Al-Qaeda fugitive: On the plus side, a group of Pakistani commandoes disguised itself as women to wait out a ranking Al-Qaeda operative, Abu Faraj al-Libbi. And why were they in burqas? Tim McGirk of Time explains: “U.S. and Pakistani intelligence had received a tip that a suspected al-Qaeda operative would be traveling to [the town of] Mardan disguised as a burqa-clad woman. Because any plainclothesmen seen grabbing a woman would attract a hostile mob, the commandos had donned female garb and accosted the suspect as his motorcycle crossed a graveyard.” (May. 8, 2005)

Afghan suicide bombers hides under burqa: Five Afghan soldiers were killed and four wounded when a suicide bomber, whom the police think was a Taliban member, disguised himself as a woman and sat in the backseat of a car, then set off a bomb hidden under his burqa at an army checkpoint in Khost province of eastern Afghanistan. According to Mohammed Ayub, the regional police chief, “The bomber probably wanted to go into Khost city for a suicide attack there, but panicked and blew himself up when the soldiers started checking.” (February 2, 2006)

Al-Qaeda leadership in Iraq: Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, eluded Western forces over a three-year period through wiliness. In the description of Bill Powell and Scott MacLeod of Time, “al-Zarqawi was a maddeningly elusive target—a master of disguise who could pass as a woman in a burqa one day, an Iraqi policeman the next.” (June 11, 2006)

Palestinian gunmen escape Israeli forces in Gaza: The IDF suspected that Palestinian gunmen dressed up as women to escape a 19-hour standoff with the IDF that tried to dislodge them from a mosque where they were hiding.

Etcetera, Etcetera.

At Victor Davis Hansen’s website, by Bruce Thornton, is a review on Peter Schweitzer’s Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, (Doubleday, 2005, 272 pp.).

Interestingly enough, I received a forwarded email that held similar content.

Naom Chomsky, called capitalism a

“‘grotesque catastrophe’ and a doctrine ‘crafted to induce hopelessness, resignation, and despair.’” Yet Chomsky is “himself a shrew capitalist, worth millions, with money in the dreaded and evil stock market, and at least one tax haven to cut down on those pesky inheritance taxes that he says are so important.” Apostles of economic redistribution via the income tax like Chomsky are very clever at making sure that somebody else’s nickel will fund their utopian schemes. Chomsky has set up an irrevocable trust to shelter his money, with his tax attorney and his daughter as trustees.

The examples continue in the email regarding Schweitzer’s book:

Michael Moore denounces oil and defense contractors as war profiteers. He also claims to have no stock portfolio, yet he owns shares in Halliburton, Boeing, and Honeywell and does his postproduction work in Canada to avoid paying union wages in the United States.

Ted Kennedy’s closets are chock full of hypocrisy. For example, Schweizer reveals how Ted and the Kennedy clan have protected their assets from estate taxes – as Kennedy fights to keep this tax on other Americans! Kennedy also has fought an environmental program near his Cape Cod home.

Noam Chomsky opposes the very concept of private property and calls the Pentagon “the worst institution in human history,” yet he and his wife have made millions of dollars in contract work for the Department of Defense and own two luxurious homes.

Barbra Streisand prides herself as an environmental activist, yet she owns shares in a notorious strip-mining company.

Hillary Clinton supports the right of thirteen-year-old girls to have abortions without parental consent, yet she forbade thirteen-year-old Chelsea to pierce her ears and enrolled her in a school that would not distribute condoms to minors.

Nancy Pelosi received the 2002 Cesar Chavez Award from the United Farm Workers, yet she and her husband own a Napa Valley vineyard that uses nonunion labor.

Schweizer’s conclusion is simple: liberalism in the end forces its adherents to become hypocrites. They adopt one pose in public, but when it comes to what matters most in their own lives-their property, their privacy, and their children-they jettison their liberal principles and embrace conservative ones. Schweizer thus exposes the contradiction at the core of liberalism: if these ideas don’t work for the very individuals who promote them, how can they work for the rest of us?

Black & White On the Grey Matters 3 (Gay marriage / abortion

This guy is kind of funny, but don’t watch if you’re offended by extreme language. If you can get past that, he has some good points.

From see-dubya over at Michelle Malkin’s.

Interview With Carol Platt Liebau About Her Book, Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!) at Rightwing News.

The earth is cooling; climate scientists have known it for at least the past 7 years.

More here.

From a commenter at Error Theory:

It has been over nine years now and atmospheric carbon dioxide level has continued to increase but temperature has gone down. Apparently no one did any real research before or they would have discovered that 440 mya the planet plunged into the Andean-Saharan ice age when atmospheric carbon dioxide was over ten times the present level.

It’s no wonder moonbats are blaming insanity on global warming:

“Psychosocial illnesses are a part of the various health issues associated with climate change,” Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Deputy Regional Director, WHO, said.

The World Health Organization, is a tentacle of the UN, one of the world’s leading promoters of the global warming myth. First, it should come as little surprise that the eco religionists would have mental problems, as it requires some serious mental acrobatics to buy into it. Some are so determined to prop this myth, they don’t care about the facts. My complaints about global warming are 1) the fact that CO2 appears in the atmosphere AFTER warming, not before, so in a logical world of reason, it couldn’t possibly be the cause of warming, anyway, and 2) that carbon dioxide is a naturally produced fertilizer that is used in agriculture for increased crop yields. Very little of man’s contribution goes into the atmosphere, so the call to restrict fossil fuel production is a load of hogwash based on modern day mythology rather than science. Sounding the alarm about a nonexistent threat in order to promote more governmental restrictions is simply in sane.

Van Helsing:

Considering that it hasn’t gotten any warmer since 1998, moonbats may soon have to confess that there unfortunately is no global warming, manmade or otherwise. But they’ll have a ready excuse for years of telling lies about the weather: global warming baked their brains, causing them to have delusions that there is such a thing as global warming.

But as many have surmised already, Global warming alarmists knew cooling was coming, were hoping to secure restrictions on economic activity first.

Let’s hope that common sense prevails, and soon.

The New York Times’ coverage of Basra is written under Qais Mizher’s byline, using Qais Mizher’s “experience as a captain in the Iraqi Army before the 2003 invasion and essentially a war correspondent since then…” as reasoning to consider him an ‘expert’, I suppose.

Richard Miniter:

Got that? The New York Times reporter was an officer in Saddam’s army. Nice. By the way, officers were not drafted (that’s how the enlisted ranks were filled). Officers had to be selected and regularly vetted for loyalty and effectiveness. So Saddam decided that he could trust our intrepid correspondent and so did the New York Times.

Makes you wonder: Would the Times have hired former Nazi officers to cover the three-year insurgency against the American presence in Germany in the late 1940s? Even if they spoke the language, knew the countryside well and said they “never really believed” in that evil ideology?

And is it smart to send an Iraqi Army captain from the Saddam era to cover the actions of the new Iraqi army? Are they likely to welcome him? Is likely to view them fairly?

It depends on what you mean by ‘fair’.

Newsbusters

Van Helsing

Google is jumping on the global warming bandwagon with its support of ‘Earth Hour’.

Earth Hour Coverage Should be grounded

…all four big global temperature tracking outlets, including Britain’s Hadley Centre, now say global temperatures over the past year have dropped sharply.

NASA adds that the oceans have also cooled for the past few years.

But it doesn’t stop them from ‘raising awareness’ to the global warming lie, now does it.?

(AP) The Marine Corps on Friday dropped charges and gave full immunity to a serviceman who was accused of involuntary manslaughter in a squad’s killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha in 2005.

The case against Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, 26, of Edmond, Okla., was dropped as jury selection was about to begin for his court-martial.

The government has been seeking Tatum’s testimony against the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich of Meriden, Conn.

This whole thing is disgusting, considering who was behind it to begin with. Our military should not pay attention to terrorist-loving journalists like Tim McGirk…in addition to the terrorists who feed him propaganda stories.

In sum, the way this has turned out has been a disappointment, I’m sure (to the enemies of America)…but the media continues to spin it for them…and the families continue to pay a heavy price in lawyers fees, etc…which is NOT something someone should have to do for doing his job.
Haditha Charges against Tatum dropped

The government says Wuterich and another Marine shot five men at the scene and the squad leader then ordered his men to clear homes with grenades and gunfire, killing unarmed civilians. Wuterich faces nine counts of voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and obstruction of justice. There is no date set for Wuterich’s court-martial.

Wuterich’s civilian defense attorney, Neal Puckett, contended that the Tatum dismissal showed the government has a poor case against his client.

”I think it’s a further demonstration of how weak the government’s case has become. Of the four Marines who fired weapons that day only one still faces charges,” Puckett said.

Four enlisted Marines were initially charged with murder and four officers were charged with failing to investigate the deaths. Over time the case has shrunk, including removal of all murder charges. Tatum was the third enlisted Marine to have all charges dismissed.Only two officers remain charged.

The highest-ranking defendant is Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani of Rangley, Colo., commander of the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment at the time of the Nov. 19, 2005, Haditha killings. Chessani, accused of dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order, has said he didn’t order a formal investigation because he believed the deaths resulted from lawful combat.

[Haditha Marines still need your help! Click here now.]

From Debbie Schlussel, on a tip from cmarie.

It’s Obama doing an impression of Denzel Washington doing an impression of Malcolm X….

Just an example of what you’ll see over there. Cool stuff.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, A Blog For All, WayWard Fundamentalist Christian, 123beta, Right Truth, Shadowscope, Oblogatory Anecdotes, Leaning Straight Up, Big Dog’s Weblog, Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, Pursuing Holiness, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Nuke Gingrich, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Celebrity Smack, Wolf Pangloss, Dumb Ox Daily News, , Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

That’s the buzz, anyway.

Where is Azzam the American?

From MSNBC:

U.S. intelligence officials have heard the same rumors, but tell NBC News that they have no information to suggest Gadahn is dead. They specifically deny that Gadahn was killed in the same Predator missile attack that killed al-Qaida’s #4, Abu Laith al-Libi, last week near the town of Mir Ali in Pakistan’s North Waziristan province. Gadahn was visiting Mir Ali at the time, according to a local man who describes himself as a friend of Gadahn’s.

Jihadist sources on the Pakistan side of the border are telling local journalists they are worried. One who described himself as a “very close friend” of Gadahn said the 28-year-old California native had until recently been spending most of his time in the populated areas of South Waziristan, near the towns of Wana, Azam Warsak and Shahkai.

The same friend said Gadahn had left for North Waziristan a week before the Predator attack in Mir Ali, where he was supposed to attend “an important meeting”. The friend said that, after the Predator attack on January 31, they lost “all contact” with Gadahn.

“All our friends are worried about him but so far we could not make any contact with him. We had sent two of our friends to Mir Ali to locate him and provide us with details about him,” the supposed friend explained.

He added that other militants who traveled with Gadahn also were missing.

The self-described friend said Gadahn and his comrades may have decided to remain silent due to security reasons, or perhaps Gadahn was killed in the attack.

It’s just a rumor, and I’ve seen it at other websites. Apparently the jihadis are ‘worried sick’ about him.

This video was put together by Rep. DeMint’s people.

And it was sent to me by the American Family Association.

You may not be aware of the situation in Berkeley, California. The mainstream media has not been reporting on it. Here is the situation. The Berkeley City Council has told the Marine Recruiting Office to get out of Berkeley.

Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has put together a video that shows you explicitly what the City Council members of Berkeley said about our Marines and the effort to force the recruiters to leave the city. They include comments from the Mayor who says that the Marines “don’t belong here in Berkeley.”

These people aren’t just against the war, they are against our soldiers who are fighting and dying in that war.

The video also includes rebuttal by veterans of this nation who are outraged by the conduct of this city council. I hope you will send the letter and forward it to friends and family. The letters will go straight to the Mayor and City Council members.

It’s an AFA Action alert, so it’s asking people to do something.

Read the letter from Debbie Lee, whose son was killed in action.

Read the statement from U.S. Senators DeMint, Cornyn, Vitter, Coburn, Inhofe, and Chambliss.

TAKE ACTION

* Click here to send the e-mail to the Mayor and City Council members.
* Please forward this to family and friends.

hoooeeeEEE! This story is just beginning to get out to the American people…and I can tell you right now…when it gets to enough families of current serving marines and former serving military folks, those self-loathing leftists are going to be in for a big surprise.

Here’s a link to Sign The Petition Against Berkeley’s Anti-Military Actions! (At Move America Forward) -mentioned in the video.

REMINDER:
Protest Against Berkeley City Council!!
When: Tuesday, February 12th from 5:00 AM until the City Council meets that evening at 7:00 PM
Where: Berkeley City Council Chambers
Address: 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley, CA

CLICK HERE for MAP

*** Also… If you can, please join our patriots for the “picketing” of the City Council Chambers. They will be out there at 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way beginning at 5:00 AM for the morning news. They will have a presence throughout the day – the next newscasts are at 12:00 Noon, so it’ll be good to have a visible presence there during that period, as well.

Keep that pressure on and pass on the news…!

Support the Semper Fi Act of 2008:

Bill Stops Berkeley Earmarks and Transfers Funds to Marine Corps

OK & TX U.S. Senators Introduce Semper Fi Act of 2008.

Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senators James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-Oklahoma), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and David Vitter (R-Louisiana) introduced the Semper Fi Act of 2008. The bill would rescind over $2 million in hidden earmarks for Berkeley, California in the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill, and transfer the funds to the Marine Corps. U.S. Congressman John Campbell (R-California) is introducing a companion bill in the House of Representatives. […]

One earmark provides $243,000 in taxpayer dollars for the organization Chez Panisse to create gourmet organic school lunches in the Berkeley School District. Chez Panisse is dedicated to “environmental harmony” and their menu features “Comté cheese soufflé with mâche salad,” “Meyer lemon éclairs with huckleberry coulis,” and “Chicory salad with creamy anchovy vinaigrette and olive toast.”

Another earmark would spend $975,000 in taxpayer dollars for the University of California in Berkeley Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service, to create a new endowment and cataloging the papers of Congressman Robert Matsui. U.C. Berkeley currently already has a $3.5 billion endowment.

Rock’n'roll!!!!

Sample letter to your representatives supporting the Semper Fi Act is at the United Conservatives of Virginia - where wingtips fear to tread!

Let’s go ahead and have some Peace– through superior firepower!

Mel has most of this post up at her blog, but I can’t find a permalink! Thanks for calling me a Milmom and Superblogger, LOL!

We are in it to win it!

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Midnight Sun, Right Truth, DragonLady’s World, Shadowscope, A Newt One- BIG THURSDAY GUEST!, , Leaning Straight Up, Adeline and Hazel, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, Pirate’s Cove, Celebrity Smack, , The Pink Flamingo, A Newt One, Dumb Ox Daily News, Stageleft, Right Voices, Right Pundits, A Blog For All, The Random Yak, 123beta, A Newt One- Shared News!, Big Dog’s Weblog, Phastidio.net, , Conservative Cat, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Faultline USA, Nuke Gingrich, Allie is Wired, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Wolf Pangloss, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Talk it up! We’re IN IT TO WIN IT

This is a great article at The Signal, and I heartily agree - from what little I know of Afghanistan - through the eyes of those who’ve been there -and watched Americans and ISAF sacrifice so much just to watch Karzai lining his pockets with money, the Taliban’s resurgence with his help, and the American government turn our backs on our former allies that helped us win the 2001/2002 war.

War is hell. For those enduring that hell, death, finality, and looming danger are the ingredients of everyday life. Sometimes, we forget that. Other times, we forget that that hell has been, at times, the crucible in which the liberties that we cherish have been formed. Yet at no time can we forget that sending troops into battle is a president’s most burdensome decision. Consequently, he better get it right. Lives and futures depend on it.

On Christmas Eve, I talked to someone who understands whether the hell and the cause in Iraq are tenable. He has served two tours of duty in Iraq, totaling 14 months. He served as the forward air controller, coordinating strategic air strikes, during his second tour. His current rank is E6 Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps. He is no stranger to military service; his father is a decorated Navy captain who served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during president Clinton’s first term.

My conversation with him revealed a first-hand account of the successes and failures of Operation Iraqi Freedom and their consequences for the Iraqi people.

Read the rest. The surge is working.

On a tip from redhatlady

I guess there isn’t enough bad news on the War in Iraq lately with the success of the surge and all.

AFP: Something Old is New Again

Meatbrain thinks the surge is not working, but we can pretty much dismiss his idiocy with a block of salt.

If it bleeds it ledes, which is what we’ve been complaining about since the beginning, even when there was no war. The MSM and others-hate to report good news, it’s just a fact. It’s as if good news out of Iraq doesn’t exist. But that’s the attitude of someone who’s a) never been to Iraq b) never read Iraq the Model and c) never heard an Iraqi talk about what this has all meant to future generations of Iraqis.

“If it bleeds, it ledes”

And as Dymphna put it here,

The opposite aphorism might be “if it’s important but no frenzied groups rampage, or no one dies or sets things on fire or slanders prominent politicians, bury it.”

FNC’s O’Reilly Highlights MRC Study: As Iraq Improves, Coverage Falls

U.S. casualties and violence are way down from six months ago. Then, citing the MRC’s numbers with a chart displaying them on screen, he observed how now “there is far less carnage in Iraq and far less reporting about the war. Since the surge began, Iraq war stories on the nightly news programs have dropped from 178 a month to 68 in November. Those stats were compiled by the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center and you can read the report online at mrc.org.” (Volume 12, from December 7th)

A December 4 CyberAlert Special provided the text of the study by MRC Research Director Rich Noyes.

The key finding:

….MRC researchers examined all 354 Iraq war stories that aired on the big three evening newscasts from September 1 through November 30, including weekends. That figure includes 234 field reports, plus 120 short headline items read by the news anchor.

Vanishing War. Back in September, as reporters voiced skepticism of General Petraeus’ progress report, the networks aired a total of 178 Iraq stories, or just under two per network per night. About one-fourth of those stories (42) were filed from Iraq itself, with most of the rest originating in Washington.

In October, TV’s war news fell by about 40 percent, to 108 stories, with the number of reports filed from Iraq itself falling to just 20, or less than one-fifth of all Iraq stories. By November, the networks aired a mere 68 stories, with only eleven (16%) actually from the war zone itself….

END of Excerpt

For the December 4 report in full, “Good News = Less News on Iraq War; MRC Study: As Surge Succeeds and Casualty Rates Fall, ABC, CBS and NBC Lose Interest In Iraq War,” go to: www.mediaresearch.org

For the PDF, which matches the hard copy: www.mediaresearch.org

Investor’s Business Daily on Thursday published an op-ed by Rich Noyes summarizing his findings. To read “Television Networks Fade to Black as the U.S. Surge Succeeds in Iraq,” go to: www.ibdeditorials.com

A transcript of O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” at the top of the December 6 edition of The O’Reilly Factor on FNC:

O’REILLY: Getting the truth about Iraq. That is the subject of this evening’s Talking Points Memo. With things getting much better in Iraq, voters now must decide how big an issue this will be next year? Do you pull out of there if you’re winning? Naturally, when the USA was stalemated in that theater many people said enough, it’s not worth it, and the Republicans lost both the House and the Senate. But now the surge has improved security. American casualties are down a whopping 71 percent since May and al Qaeda in Iraq has been badly damaged. Again, do we pull out if there’s a chance Iraq can become a stable, anti-terror nation? Some will say yes, get out of there. But many, perhaps most, might take a second look, and that second look might be bad for the Democrats who generally oppose the war.

Enter the media. Last June I told you that some TV news organizations were showing carnage in Iraq with no context. If it blew up, it made the nightly news.

O’REILLY, JUNE 14: Now, as everyone knows al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people to fight the jihad — Osama bin Laden has stated that in writing. So blowing things up, and hopefully getting the carnage on TV, is what the terrorists want.

O’REILLY, BACK ON THURSDAY NIGHT: Now I was criticized by people like Washington Post TV writer Howard Kurtz for saying that, but it was true. Carnage without context was the rule of the day and it helped the terrorists. Six months later, there is far less carnage in Iraq and far less reporting about the war. Since the surge began, Iraq war stories on the nightly news programs have dropped from 178 a month to 68 in November. Those stats were compiled by the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center and you can read the report online at mrc.org.

This is proof that bad news in Iraq is promoted by American news agencies while good news is largely ignored. But why? Talking Points believes that most of the American media despise President Bush and will ignore anything that puts him in a positive light. I could be wrong about that, but the evidence is overwhelming I’m not. Also, it is my opinion that most of the media wants a Democrat elected next time around and any good news from Iraq might not advance that cause. There is no question that Iraq remains a troubling issue — the government there is inefficient and corruption is everywhere. If we could go back in a time machine and do it again, I firmly believe we could have found a better way to remove Saddam Hussein. But honesty in reporting is vital to a free society and we’re not getting that in America. We’re seeing a partisan press promoting ideology, not fairly covering the news. That is the truth and the proof is the current reporting on Iraq.

– Brent Baker
—————————————————

We see things in the news mainly when there’s a carbomb a day, no matter if people are hurt or not. They use the carbomb-a-day scenario to segway into harping on more bad news, even if it’s manufactured. It’s part of the anti-war propaganda campaign. But it’s more than that. We hear oftentimes when something went wrong for the Bush administration, and seldom about the ‘wins’. When the government loses a case in court, when Marines are on trial for trumped up charges from known terrorists, or dubious mysterious ‘humanitarian’ NGOs, etc, it’s trumpeted loudly by proud leftists with extreme cases of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome).

That’s why I think this piece at Human Events Online is important. This war, as the Bush Administration’s tenure comes to an end, is still our nation’s war, despite the fact the regular American hasn’t felt any ramifications or personal hardship because of it. It would be better if they were more tuned in to what’s going on, rather than wishing it would go away and focusing on other things. I know several people like that - unwilling to face any unpleasantness in their lives, and interestingly enough, they’re anti-war folks. They’re not willing to delve into things too deeply, and seem to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. It’s frightening to me that there are so many people like that in the world today.

This isn’t the case so much in the blogosphere, though. So I’m hoping we can take this article to heart and start harping on the GOOD things. Read Iraq the Model, Muslims Against Sharia, Amil Imani, FaithFreedom.org, Confederate Yankee, Mike’s America, The Jawa Report, Move America Forward and others who are in favor of fighting terrorism - because it’s not going to ‘go away’ because it’s unpleasant. They will use and exploit our fear, if we let them. They’re already using our multicultural liberalism and tendency toward ‘political correctness.’

In the past few weeks there has noticeable lack of reporting about the success of our forces in Iraq. The silence had been deafening. When the success of the surge was in doubt, newspapers, news shows and the internet treated us to a daily onslaught of reports on casualties, bombings and IED attacks. But now that the surge is clearly seen as working, few seem to be talking about it.

And that can make it fail.

And that’s what hysterical leftists are striving for…aiding and abetting our terrorist enemies, the democrats have someone working on their 2008 campaign who is connected to Al Qaeda. Obama’s cousin, Raila Odinga in Kenya, is behind the bloodbath because he thinks HE won - regardless of what happened at the polls. This is the typical ‘Bush stole the election’ technique - and is typical of communists who are not getting their way.

We have to make sure people see through this anti-war propaganda campaign and the 60’s radicals who are still there protesting as if it’s 40 years ago.

In a war that most experts and our enemies agree is informational in nature, communicating battlefield success is critical to shoring up U.S. public opinion and political will and thus convincing our enemies that they are fighting a war that they cannot win.

That’s why we should be propping successes and watching websites like the one that Gateway Pundit refers to quite often, Multi National Force - Iraq.

Iraq Attacks Down to 2-year Low (February 2, 2008)

See this: SHARE THE STORY.

Share the Story is a new program designed to connect U.S. military personnel with organizations and groups in their hometowns and across the country that want to hear an individual’s unique perspective on our country’s efforts in Iraq.

Service Members who are currently serving in Iraq and will be returning to the U.S. on leave or rotating back to the states have an excellent opportunity to share their story with people who want to hear it. Organizations and groups with a genuine interest in their country’s mission and an individual’s experience in Iraq have an excellent opportunity to hear that story.

Fill out the appropriate form and our outreach team will assist in making the connection between Service Member and group.

As much as possible, let’s help them share the positive things…and stand up against the tendency of the media-and others like Code Pink- to lede with what bleeds and blame America first.

From Reuters.

At first I thought this headline was a joke or a satire. I imagined a dandelion or a sunflower spitting seeds at cows in a field that were deemed unfit mothers. Feminist cows who decided not to have little cows so they could pursue their careers or something.

And when I got into the article it was still hard to tell what it was, because they were talking about waterboarding cows and making them get up to walk to the slaughterhouse.

I’ve heard about how they treat chickens…so this isn’t coming as much of a surprise…from a PETA-like perspective.

Except for the fact that we’re being TOLD that we’re eating healthy beef…and now it’s coming out that we’re probably eating tainted sick beef from sick cows …which leads me to believe that there’s probably some of that mad cow disease out there and the government is - as usual - lying to us.

Oh wait, this is for elderly people, needy families and school lunches! Well, it’s probably okay then.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Humane Society said on Wednesday a California slaughterhouse was using a range of torture including waterboarding to prod unfit animals into the slaughterhouse so they could be processed into food that may have ultimately ended up in school lunch programs.

That’s a weird sentence.

The Humane Society displayed a video from its own undercover investigation that it said showed abuse by workers at the Hallmark Meat Packing Co of Chino, California. However, the name of the plant was not visible in the video.

The video showed workers kicking cows, ramming them with forklift blades, applying electric shocks and even using a hose to simulate the feeling of drowning so the animals would revive long enough to pass federal inspection.

What kind of inspection is that? Do they keep the inspectors in a closed office with no windows until the cow stumbles to its feet, or is the ‘inspector’ helping? I can’t figure out how this works.

“The attempt was to make them so distressed and to cause them so much suffering that these animals would get up and walk into the slaughterhouse,” Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, told reporters, [sic]

With the way greens feel about animals, it’s just hard to tell what’s going on here.

This is one of the weirdest damned articles I’ve ever read.

He said the plant’s use of injured and sick cows was not an isolated incident in the United States and he called on the USDA to tighten regulations regarding the ban on processing of “downer” cows.

Give us more government! Government is our savior!

SHEESH.

Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, third world county, Right Truth, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Big Dog’s Weblog, A Newt One, Conservative Cat, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

From Ezra’s blog

This morning (yesterday-the 29th) I was interviewed on the “Mancow” show out of Chicago. It’s the second-highest-rated morning show in American radio. When I was on hold waiting for my interview, I listened to the show for a few minutes. I’ve never heard radio like that before, ever — extremely fast paced; fun; musical; smart; interactive; hilarious. It was like a mix between Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern and Rick Dees. I loved listening to it, and wish he was on air in Canada, too. You can catch my clip here.

I love Mancow.

Previous, here. Update:

KABUL: The death sentence handed down to a reporter in Afghanistan has prompted the United Nations and several press freedom organisations to call on the Afghan government to intervene in the case.

Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, 23, a journalist for the daily Janan-e-Naw, and a student of Balkh University, was detained in October for downloading from the Internet and distributing to classmates an article written by an Iranian scholar that contained anti-Islamic sentiments.

The article allegedly questioned why men are allowed to have four spouses in Islam while women are denied the same right.

On Tuesday Kambakhsh was presented before a court of three judges in northern Mazar-e-Sharif and handed the death penalty in a closed session without any legal counsel.

The Afghan Independent Journalists Association was outraged that no lawyer, journalist, or human rights representatives were permitted entry to the court during Kambakhsh’s trail.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on Thursday issued a statement saying the case is a “possible misuse of the judicial process” that does not “serve the cause of justice.”…

So he is both a journalist and a student. That’s NDS’s court, as Jack Idema said here in comments. The NDS doesn’t hold open court hearings - or provide the defendant an opportunity to have a lawyer represent them. It’s like the Soviet KGB.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which has offices in Kabul, believe the real intent by the court is to intimidate Kambakhsh’s older brother, Ibrahimi, who recently published an article implicating an Afghan legislator in a series of killings and kidnappings.

The Afghanistan Foreign Press Association, Afghan Association Blog Writer demanded the sentence be immediately overturned by President Hamid Karzai in the interests of freedom of expression.

The Afghan chapter of the South Asian Free Media Association said the court ruling was “unjust, unconstitutional and against Islamic, national and international norms.”

Oh, I don’t know…it seems to be following a script that we’ve seen playing out elsewhere - like in Egypt and Iran.

The ministry of information and culture released a letter saying that Kambakhsh was not a journalist and his case has nothing to do with the media. The statement also said the court’s decision to hand a death sentence on blasphemy charges was not final and the case would be handled “very carefully.”

The ministry of information and culture seems to be disseminating propaganda like Iraq’s old Information Minister.