The viciousness of the left

As a criticism, it's petty, but, then, the Left depends more on sheer hatred to energize them than any concern with fairness, or even, grace. Ken Reich has had a lot to say about departing Los Angeles Times editorial editor Michael Kinsley, none of it good. He reserves the best for Kinsley's departure.

He didn't answer his phone or answer many of his e-mails.

Presumably, those are emails from Ken and emails from his fellow Leftists.

The other criticisms are equally petty. The one that really counts though is the "was an ersatz rather than a real liberal." Real liberal, meaning, raving left-of-Lenin, a good example of which is to advocate this bizarre idea.

Pakis[t]an independence should be cancelled by the United Nations Security Council and that country placed under a UN Trusteeship until such time as training camps for terrorists be closed in that country.

That's Ken's idea. But, then, Ken Reich thinks Judith Miller is a political prisoner.

My crystal ball

I think it is a safe prediction that third union defects from US labour confederation isn't because the AFL-CIO is too conservative and we can expect a lot of labor agitation.

Useless United Nations

Doesn't this say all about the uselessness of that arbiter of Human Rights, the United Nations?

Eleven years after the genocide, Rwanda is still struggling to emerge from the 100-day spasm of killings by extremists from the Hutu majority who typically targeted their Tutsi neighbours and in some cases relatives.

The alleged main leaders of the genocide are being tried by the UN war crimes tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania. The court was set up in 1994 to judge crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity but so far has only convicted about 12 people.

Meanwhile, how many Khmer Rouge have been brought to justice? Well, none. From the Guardian, May 2, 2005.

A tribunal to prosecute members of Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge regime for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people is to be established, after eight years of negotiations over legal and financial conditions.

And how many stories has the MSM published to push the United Nations to actually do something? Hard to tell without access to Lexis-Nexis, but it certainly isn't on the MSM yearly monthly weekly daily agenda like anti-Bush, anti-war stories are. On the other hand, I am just postive those eight years were spent negotiating who would pay for the U.N. staff.

The Hate Brotherhood

British blogger Melanie Phillips on the Guardian and the firing of Dilipazier Aslam points to gross ignorance and disarray at the Guardian as an executive has resigned. Without knowing his name, she made this observation.

Whatever may or may not have been known about Aslam's membership of HuT -- and several intriguing questions about this whole affair are still unanswered -- it remains the case that someone subscribing to its wholly unacceptable platform could find a berth at the Guardian which was perfectly comfortable about publishing his views. And that was because they fitted into its own general view of the world. The horror when it discovered that these views emanated from a HuT member was undoubtedly genuine, because they are genuinely horrified by HuT. And what that surely tells us is that the Guardian really doesn't grasp that its view of the world is as extreme and unacceptable as it is.

Melanie Phillips calls him an "executive" but Scott Burgess of The Daily Ablution, the blogger who broke the original story, also broke the story of the resignation. But it wasn't some nameless executive. It was Albert Scardino, the Guardian's executive editor for news. The Guardian claims that the resignationwas unconnected to the Aslam affair.

Albert Scardino, is transatlantic trash, a former New York Times press columnist and media advser to Bill Clinton and is record as printing a Charlie Brooker column calling for the assassination of president Bush.

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

Albert Scardino and Charlie Brooker fit right in at the Guardian and so did Dilipazier Aslam. Call them The Hate Brotherhood.

Arthur Teele and the Miami Herald

Blithering idiots. The Miami Herald editorial on Arthur Teele includes this bizarre observation.

Mr. Teele's death extinguishes the light of a champion advocate for the people, especially those of Miami-Dade's less fortunate communities in Overtown, Liberty City, Little Haiti, Homestead and others. In his most recent positions as Miami Commissioner and head of the Community Redevelopment Agency, he fought to renovate blighted areas of Overtown and other communities. Mr. Teele's work with that agency became the focal point of corruption allegations against him, but no fair assessment of the man can be made without considering the contributions he made since he arrived here in 1983.

[bolding mine-ed] In other words, he was a crook but those were just allegations. The important thing is all the hundreds of millions he brought to transportation projects in Miami, and if his district is *still* one of the poorest in the state, well, hell, he was still a great representative cause we got our share of the boom.

This is the life they so endearingly recall, which includes some wonderful revelations.

Teele also had business associates with deep ties to the regime of deposed Haitian president Jean-Claude ''Baby Doc'' Duvalier. As recently as last year, Teele acknowledged that he owed $325,000 to businessman Claude Auguste Douyon, who was personal secretary to Duvalier. Douyon, who opened a Coral Gables art gallery after resettling in South Florida, provided Applied Electrical with operating capital, according to Teele.

That's mighty good pay for a secretary.

Teele may have been a Republican, but he was a black and he was crooked, the last two of which in the eyes of the Miami Herald is all that counts. It is, of course, the politics of race masking corruption.

And Teele's replacement isn't a lot better. The New Times has an imaginary interview because Jeffrey Allen won't give an interview.

Mr. Allen, could you explain what happened in 1996, when the Florida Supreme Court granted the Florida Bar an injunction against you for improperly soliciting business from the families of victims of the ValuJet crash? Also, if you can, please explain why the Georgia Supreme Court denied you the right to take the Georgia Bar exam in 2002.

Miami vice, apparently, includes the antics of their media and their politicians.

Pakistan closes madrassas to foreigners

General Musharraf, president of Pakistan, ordered all foreign students out of the madrassas. Some 1400 are currently attending religious schools in Pakistan. They are, according to the BBC, ordered to leave the country.

Of course, Musharraf has been a helpful participant in the war on terror which is why, no doubt, lefties like Ken Reich would like to "revoke the independence of Pakistan" and turn the country over to the U.N. to administer as a trusteeship.

IRA terrorists by any other name

A little late to acknowledge the fact that the IRA was a murderous terrorist organization

Weren't these the people that Bill Clinton and Tony Blair let out of jail by the hundreds?

Wasn't this the organization that Clinton and Blair pressured into a joint government with their victims?

And isn't this the organization that trained Columbian terrorists on new bombmaking techniques, the same terrorists who were convicted then fled to Cuba?

The same terrorist organization that is still shielding the IRA members who beat and stabbed a man but offered to kill the miscreants?

The one that the BBC and the Independent and the Guardian never, ever refer to as (shhhhh) t-e-r-r-o-r-i-s-t-s.

Arthur Fede and the New York Times

Sanctimony at the New York Times has gone to hilarious extremes as they report the firing of reporter Jim DeFede for having (illegally) taped a conversation with Arthur Teele, the Miami commissioner who was facing criminal charges (see Poliscum) and killed himself in the lobby of the Miami Herald.

You really have to search hard for the high ground on this one, and the New York Times does the ethical toe stretch.

The newspaper's management is staunchly defending its action, and Mr. DeFede's dismissal is making waves as a stark example of the extreme measures by newspapers to appear beyond ethical reproach.

To understand the deviousness of the Times you have to understand that the Miami Herald has shielded crooked politicians for decades and it was an open secret that Arthur Teele was not quite, as they say, kosher. The black politician was popular with his constituents, so much so that when he died, the Knight Ridder newspaper sent a sort of sympathy card to their readers, lest they think the Miami Herald had anything to do with his suicide. The Herald had not, mind you, printed any part of the story that caused his last phone call to DeFede. Another newspaper had the courage to do that. The Miami Herald might have hinted at Teele's shady dealings, but they don't deal dirt on dirty politicians in Miami unless it gets too outlandish - like when the elected mayor was a drug dealer. They real reason they fired DeFede because he brought the body home, literally and figuratively. Now they will have to explain the contents of that last 25-minute phone call that DeFede taped and explain why they never printed the story.

In the murky politics of Miami, Arthur Fede was a Republican, but he was just another crook shielded by just another newspaper. In the murky canyons of New York, the New York Times continues to politicize another story that makes miscreats look better and clouds the facts so the public can't draw the conclusions they ought to.

THEN AND NOW Of course, things were different when a Florida couple illegally taped a telephone conversation between Newt Gingrich and other Republicans and gave that tape to Jim McDermott (D-Oregon) so he could hand it over to the New York Times to print. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) sued McDermott and won. As the judge ordered McDermott to pay $60,000 and legal costs that could reach $545,000, he had harsh words for McDermott.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan said McDermott's "willful and knowing misconduct rises to the level of malice in this case."

At the time of the leak, McDermott was the ranking Democrat on the Ethics Commission. Alice and John Martin, the Democrat operatives who taped the conversation tried hard to sound like innocents. The couple were, according to CNN, "Democrats and active in the National Education Association." That story has conveniently died.

UPDATE: More apologies from a Miami Herald journo. And, amazingly, this editorial by the Herald.

Self-flagallatory culture

Mick Hume, writing in the Times of London on why asylum-seekers despise the country that helps them.

... from the moment they arrive here, asylum-seekers are told that Britain is a racist hellhole that deserves what it gets. And they first receive that message not from some fringe Islamic preacher, but from the heart of our self-flagellatory culture. Those bombing suspects came to a society that seems intent on denying that there is anything good about living here. Britain gave them schooling. But what exactly would they would have been taught?

Think of the miserabilist images of society that we are all subjected to these days. Britain is portrayed as institutionally racist and increasingly Islamophobic at home and abroad, a darkly degenerate place full of violent drunks and drug addicts, disrespectful "hoodies" and child abusers, pregnant teenagers and sexually transmitted diseases, whose people believe in nothing except football and getting fat in front of the television.

That self-flagallatory culture is the media message view both in the U.K. and our own MSM who, like the British media, benefit greatly from that self-condemnation. Not, mind you, that they are condemning themselves. It's the rest of us who are homophobes, bigots, racists, and morons. This condemnation automatically bestows moral superiority much like the self-congratulatory audience of a Jerry Springer show. Finally! someone to look down on. There is absolutely nothing these Liberal/Leftists like about Western culture, except, well, other Liberal/Leftists who are fond of furry animals, are against tax breaks, and think anyone who disagrees with them are nazis.

Mick Hume on the culpits.

Add to this poisonous cocktail the message instilled in asylum-seekers by many semi-official agencies: Britain is hostile; this is not your home; people here hate you; your human rights are being abused. It is not hard to see how all of this could encourage some losers to develop a sense of estrangement and eventually hatred. Tony Blair wants to crack down on extremist Islamist bookshops and preachers. He might start by asking where they get the ideas for their sermons about our corrupted society.

A good place to start is at The Guardian, the Independent, the BBC, and every Human Rights organization that has beaten their way to a microphone in the last ten years. (Of course most don't have to put that much effort into it. Usually the MSM here and in Britain simply phone them for the mandatory response to everything from public policy to every human tragedy the Left can benefit from.)

And while you are at it, add to that every social service agency that is well-stocked with radicalized university prats who share that contempt for their country and you have a whole anti-western industry. And, just in case those anti-western haters aren't fiscally successful, why there's always Leftwing funding through the Ford Foundation. Or George Soros. Or some malcontent Saudi royal baggage who is simply tired of waiting for his place in the royal line to advance. And they can always count on the haters in the MSM to cheer them on and give them free space.

What would PETA be without a MSM to carry their lunatic message? What, you might ask, would terrorism be without MSM soft pedaling their murderous outrages?

Encouraging

I find this this encouraging.

And this and this.

Another extradition.

This, however, makes you wonder if we are losing the battle with the reason.

Germany's high court Friday ruled that it is libellous to call a public figure a "Gypsy Jew" in print, saying the term is offensive to both Jews and Gypsies and conjures up the spectre of Nazi atrocities against both groups.

Something, no human rights group would protest.

The court said the term, used in print by former right-wing Republican Party official Hermann Josef Reichertz, was libellous inflammatory Nazi jargon. Under post-war German law, use of Nazi slogans or catchwords is banned except for historical or theatrical purposes.

Make sure to read to the bottom to find the laugh line.

The IRA and the BBC

Another one you can chalk up to president Bush and our worldwide War on Terror: "IRA says armed campaign is over" The BBC notes their murdering rampage armed campaign, the BBC elaborates.

During the Northern Ireland Troubles, the IRA murdered about 1,800 civilians and members of the security forces.

Described as a "paramilitary group" and "a republican organization," "republicans," or the "Provisional IRA," and promising an end to the "armed campaign," the BBC does not once call them terrorists, unlike the U.S.

A White House statement said the words must now be followed by actions and acknowledged there would be scepticism, particularly among victims and their families.

"They will want to be certain that this terrorism and criminality are indeed things of the past," the statement said. The statement added that it understood from the IRA communique that "the IRA and its members will no longer have any contact with any foreign paramilitary and terrorist organisations".

When you admit that they murdered about 1800 civilians and members of the security forces and can't bring yourself to call them terrorists, the BBC has no business calling itself a news organization.

Maybe it's just me, but I see it as a sign that the IRA terrorists know they can no longer hide behind media self-censorship to shield them.

UPDATE: It appears that the IRA, now that they are disbanding, are no longer heroes to the Toronto Sun either. But, at least, the Sun calls their acts terrorism.

Good news

The United States Senate approved, by a 98-0 vote, a provision that would continue the hosting of Boy Scout events as part of bill setting Defense Department policy for next year.

Bill Frist sponsored the provision.

The provision adopted Tuesday says Boy Scouts should be treated the same as other national youth organizations

Frist said it "removes any doubt that federal agencies may welcome Scouts to hold meetings, go camping on federal property or hold scouting events and public forums" on government property.

Frist had tried to get the provision through the Senate before the end of the session, but Senate Democrats refused to go along. It took the tragic death of four scout leaders to shame them into it. Whether it will pass without alteration in the Fall is something we should watch.

Abortion is big business in the U.K.

Some abortion statistics from the U.K.

abortions in England and Wales rose from 181,600 to 185,400 last year, a figure that pro-life groups described as "staggering".

Even worse,

A total of 1,034 girls under the age of 15 had abortions last year; 877 were aged 14 and 157 were under 14. Thirty-two per cent of women having abortions have had at least one before.

A director of Student LifeNet was "astonished."

She must not be watching the BBC programs. If you have watched any BBC America previews and opted for the remote to change the channel, you know what I am talking about. Sex, gore, tastelessness, sex, infidelity, slimey crime drama, sex, adultery, sex.

The U.K. doesn't need to worry about home grown terrorists killing them off.

Cable News Race

From DrudgeReport 2005
FLASH: 'GRETA' TOP OF CABLE NEWS RACE
NITE OF TUES, JULY 27, 2005

FOXNEWS GRETA 2,997,000 [VIEWERS]
FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,705,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY/COMES 2,415,000
CNN LARRY KING 765,000
CNNHN NANCY GRACE 752,000
CNN PAULA ZAHN 623,000
CNN AARON BROWN 577,000
MSNBC SCARBOROUGH 462,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 318,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 192,000
MSNBC TUCKER 178,000

Michael Kinsley

If you want to know why journo-types hate Michael Kinsley's role at the Los Angeles Times, read LAWeekly's view.

1. He's East-Coast centric, as was editor John Carroll. (Carroll's replacement is from the New York Times, but that's, ah, different.)

2. Kinsley is giving up his downtown "pied-á-terre in Bunker Hill Towers." LAWeekly resents that it was a 10 minute walk from the paper, but "inevitably he drove. "That small revelation only served to underscore how little actual contact he’s had with his unadopted city." (As if every LA Times staffer walked to work. Bunker Towers to the Times-Mirror building runs right through some of the most depressed and dangerous landscape in the city.)

3. Kinsley gave the scoop of his leaving to LAT's "arch-rival" the New York Times. (The relationship is more like sycophant.)

4. He ran two pages of Sunday Opinion to cartoons about the mayor's race when "space could have been devoted to insightful analysis." (As if the LATs has ever engaged in insightful analysis of the city's politics, or even, for that matter, the open corruption.)

5. "Carroll also overlooked that Los Angeles has long been ground zero for the progressive movement. It probably never occurred to him that he’d disappoint this constituency by hiring Kinsley." (We are getting closer to the core here.)

An example is that recent Kinsley-penned LAT commentary downplaying the significance of the so-called Downing Street Memo concerning the timing of the decision to go to war with Iraq and the Bush administration’s distortion of the related WMD intelligence.

He had the arrogance and audacity not just to pooh-pooh the memo’s contents but also to poke fun at the progressive movement [bolding mine-ed] for pumping up the volume surrounding it. “I don’t buy the fuss. Nevertheless, I am enjoying it, as an encouraging sign of the left’s revival. Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes ideological self-confidence,” Kinsley ridiculed.

How dare he?

6. He argued publicly with Susan Estrich and won and made the leftwing Estrich look like a fool.

7. "Kinsley took the contrarian view that Judy Miller shouldn’t protect her sources." (You know, the "sources" who told her it was o.k. to testify, that is, if you believe or wanna believe it was Karl Rove.)

There you have the reasons that really boil down to one - he wasn't Left enough for them.

David Warren essay

David Warren on the London terrorist attacks. ESSAYS ON OUR TIMES

I seldom share with readers my private theories about what is going on, backstage, among the terrorists. But since I'm absurdly confident of this one, I shall make an exception. I think three of the four bombers of July 7th were set up. The 30-year-old, who was the cell leader, told the younger ones they were merely delivering explosives, secretively, to the "real" bombers. But their satchels had been rigged with timers, and aren't they surprised to find themselves in hell. It is why the follow-on bombers are now so skittish.

Read the whole thing.

Canadian aid group takes sides

Canadian NGOs (Non-government organizations, the lucrative relief/aid/grief industry) are refusing to go to Afghanistan and are taking sides.

Canada's NGOs, which have traditionally worked in partnership with CIDA for development work overseas, are balking at the idea of being allied, or perceived to be allied, with armed troops, who are quite clearly on the side of the Afghan central government and opposed to the Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents.

Not too surprising actually. Some 100 NGOs depend upon CIDA for handouts. CIDA (Canadian Council for International Co-operation) is a Canadian federal agency that administers 80% of Canada's foreign aid budget. CIDA has a bizarre set of goals, and these are not alphabetical. They are as they appear on the first page of their web site.

Generally the 10 broad themes of In Common, but over the past two to three years, the specific themes have been globalization, corporate social responsibility, debt, and aid.
The 10 broad themes of In Common are:
Promoting Sustainable Development
Upholding Human Rights
Creating an Equitable Global Economic Order
Achieving Gender Equity
Improving the Lives of Children
Building Peace
Promoting Global Food Security
Promoting Individual and Corporate Social Responsibility
Reinvesting in Canada's Foreign Aid Program
Creating New Opportunities for Citizen Participation

Citizen participation is, naturally, bottom of the list. No surprise there. But even CIDA surely has better sense than admitting "Gender Equity" is more important than the "Lives of Children." But, maybe not, the Liberal party never seems to mind the U.N. aid worker exploitation of children. And they, unlike the media, have no problem acknowledging their interwining interests.

Does our organization collaborate with other organizations (including the media) in its public engagement activities?
Yes

Even their Millenium Project goals rates reducing child mortality beneath gender equity.

We can only cheer their decision to stay out of Afghanistan. That country has it's share of problems already without self-important, money-grubbing lefties distorting their recovery.

Cable News Race

From DRUDGE REPORT 2005
FLASH: CABLE NEWS RACE
NITE OF MON, JULY 25, 2005

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,594,000 [VIEWERS]
FOXNEWS GRETA 2,534,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY/COLMES 2,275,000
CNN LARRY KING 1,533,000
CNNHN NANCY GRACE 797,000
CNN AARON BROWN 564,000
CNN ZAHN 513,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 331,000
MSNBC SCARBOROUGH 326,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 233,000
MSNBC TUCKER 153,000

It is encouraging to know that the vast vast vast majority of the public think Chris Matthews is a slimeball, not worth watching.

Fruitless dig by Rove-ing reporters?

Even a member of the MSM can get it right sometimes.

Rove-aphobia is one of those summer stories that Washington cooks up when there's nothing else to do. You could go on vacation for two weeks and never even miss it or care about it when you get home.

Meanwhile, a lot of the press is trying to lynch someone without evidence. Rove, loathed by the left for masterminding the Bush defeat of John Kerry, is accused of leaking the name of a double-secret CIA agent to get even with the spy's husband, who had criticized Bush in a New York Times op-ed column.

Except that she was no undercover agent when the leak occurred. 'Jane Bond' and her husband were so Maxwell Smart 'secret,' they posed for Vanity Fair celebrity photos. And it looks like Rove never revealed her name. He only offered a helpful tip to a Time magazine reporter - who repaid the favor by trashing Rove. Classy guy.

The story is more tangled than a plate of linguini, but under the clam sauce, it's all overcooked.
Bush is scorched in the New York Times three times a day. We're supposed to believe Rove risked jail and disgrace to get even for one lame op-ed?

When they thought they had Rove up a tree, the Democrats and their media pack were baying for blood. But when reporters became a target of the special prosecutor, the scandal hounds rolled over and played dead.

Read it all. He has more to say, including why he doesn't support a shield law for the media and won't sign a petition on behalf of Judith Miller.

There's got to be a lesson here somewhere. Russia's Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment

Sob story journalism

It's actually more than sob story journalism when the Guardian offers up "A very ordinary journey to death" ("Guardian writers trace the life and last minutes of Jean Charles de Menezes") and six other stories in the same vein. But it is below the scroll to find "Police fear fifth bomber at large."

Admittedly the Guardian's target audience is twenty-somethings. Who else would actually read Polly Toynbee without laughing outloud? And it is pandering to their audience to gain sympathy for the "victim". Victimology is very big with the Left, except if you are a Rwandan or maybe a non-muslim Sudanese, or a necklaced South African, or a victim of Mad Robert Marxist Mugabe, or a Russian school child, or a dissident Cuban, or a non-Sunni Iraqi, or anyone who actually is a victim of leftwing politics. It does, however, tell you that the Guardian is groping for something, anything, to plant themselves firmly against rationality. Again. Even Ken Livingstone has some common sense.

Drawing lines in the dirt

Melanie Phillips on the firing of Dilpazier Aslam by the Guardian. Great read.

So Aslam was not fired because the Guardian thought -- as it said in its statement -- that his membership of Hizb ut Tahrir was "incompatible with his continued employment by the company". It had been perfectly happy, it seems, for its trainee to be a member of this organisation -- as long as no-one else knew about it. It was only when this fact became known that he was fired -- presumably to avoid further embarrassment.

AND, she ends,

So who were the ‘several colleagues and some senior editors’ who did know and yet chose to do nothing about it? What price the Guardian's anti-fascist credentials, when it is happy to be in bed with an anti-Jewish organisation that promotes religious fascism -- at least until this relationship is exposed? And what does this tell us about the Guardian and the role it is playing at a time of national emergency?

It is good for us to remind ourselves that this is a time of national emergency. We are at war. And the MSM, including the Leftwing Guardian are hiring our enemies to bolster their contempt for us.

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom was even blunter, on "Why Rhethoric Matters:"

Here’s the thing: I am not blaming “the Left” en masse. But I am blaming those who are actively out to make political hay out of whatever the latest manufactured, ginned up outrage. And I think it’s time we started to forcefully push back against a political and media culture that is at least tangentially responsible for creating terrorists and their sympathizers based on false premises.

Read the whole thing.

Justice Roberts

Michael Barone wrote to Powerline about John Roberts and had this observation:

I recall reading that in his first years at the Supreme Court Souter delegated the selection of his clerks to Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School. With predictable results: liberal clerks, liberal opinions.

And this conclusion:

This is not a guy who is going to come out the way I would like in every case. But it does seem to be a guy who will come out the way he would like in every case -- and is not going to be buffaloed by Professor Tribe's hand-picked law clerks any more than he is buffaloed by Professor Tribe.

Barone has a great proposal.

Groupthink

Ken Reich (takeingbackthetimes.blogspot.com) used to be a reporter for the Lenin-loving, left-hugging Los Angeles Times. Can you spot his MSM groupthink training in this? [Speaking of Matthew Cooper, "Cooper even has an article on what he told the Grand Jury, when he should have told the Grand Jury nothing.]

He says Rove gave him permission to discuss their conversation. This can't be so, because Rove stands to lose his job, and he has been utterly unwilling to confirm his complicity in all this.

I think, therefore, it is.

SUV rampage continues

The media campaign against SUVs continues in Cincinnati.
Headline: SUV Runs Over Pedestrian After Colliding With Car

The wanton carnage continues: SUV Crashes Into Apartment Building

It's an NBC station that partners with Hearst-Argyle, NBC, CNN.com and MSNBC.

And the SUV war seems to be spreading to Detroit as well, complete with photographs of the SUV in question. However, it appears the vehicle was exhonerated when the victim's boyfriend was arrested. Thanks NBC.

Sir Ian Blair

My respect for Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has raised considerably. Here

"'They have to be that because there is no point in shooting at someone's chest because that is where the bomb is likely to be,' he said.

'There is no point in shooting anywhere else if they fall down and detonate it.

'It is drawn from experience from other countries, including Sri Lanka. The only way to deal with this is to shoot to the head.'

"The policy had been 'reviewed and reviewed' for many months and was a national one, not just for London, he said.

'I think we are quite comfortable the policy is right but these are fantastically difficult times,' Sir Ian said.

'We have to take this tragedy, deeply regret it and move on to the main investigation which is proceeding at an extraordinary pace.'

Multiculturalism Death Watch continues

Mark Steyn on being "Mugged by Reality notes the new attitudes toward multiculturalism and nails the irrationality..

That's the great thing about multiculturalism: it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures - like, say, the capital of Bhutan or the principal exports of Malaysia, the sort of stuff the old imperialist wallahs used to be well up on. Instead, it just involves feeling warm and fluffy, making bliss out of ignorance.

Indeed.

A small win

The FEC ruled against the Democrat National Committee that had contended that Sinclair Broadcasting had violated federal election laws by broadcasting "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" before the 2004 presidential election.

The DNC filed the FEC complaint on Oct. 12, contending that showing the film would be an illegal in-kind contribution to President Bush's campaign. Kerry's campaign asked that each station carrying the program give a similar amount of time to Kerry supporters.

After shareholders complained such a broadcast could hurt their investment in the company, Sinclair announced that only segments of the documentary would be shown during a program examining the use of such documentaries to influence elections. The program aired Oct. 22 on 40 Sinclair stations.

The AP story carried in most newspapers quoted Commissioner Ellen Weintraub. The AP chose not to quote Commissioners David M. Mason and Bradley A. Smith who found the respondent Sinclair had the same press exemption accorded the MSM. Of course that is probably because Mason and Smith are both Clinton appointees and it doesn't portend well that broadcasters have the same privileges as, well, CBS.

Media connivance PT 4

Dissidents were arrested in custody after a May meeting in Cuba, but the BBC has their own interpretation of the arrests involuntary detentions.

The Cuban government has not confirmed the arrests. Cuba's long-standing position is that dissidents are not representative of public opinion, but rather mercenaries in the pay of the US.

And then there is:

This clampdown might be linked to that meeting, but it also comes at a time when there are some signs of general discontent in Cuba.

Weeks of extended power cuts, worsened by the after effects of Hurricane Dennis, have tested the patience of many Cubans.

They're just grumpy. They'll get over it. Stephen Gibbs, BBC says so.

Media connivance PT 3

It's hard to understand how the Cleveland Plain Dealer can justify compromising an FBI investigation into corruption in Cleveland by revealing three sealed FBI documents and calling their stories "investigations." There were dozens of confidential FBI documents in the San Diego corruption investigation into two city councilmen who were subsequently convicted, but none of those documents was leaked to the media. If they were, they were not used by the media to try to derail an investigation or subsequent conviction.

As much as the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Editor & Publisher want to pretend it is protecting their sources, it's about collusion.

The source of one of the documents is the criminal defense attorney for Joe Jones, a former city councilman involved in a bribery case, according to the New York Times. Jerome Emoff has some very interesting clients he has represented. You could make the case that every criminal has a right to an attorney, and attorneys don't always sympathize with their clients. But when one of the clients is a former city councilman under indictment and the FBI report is testimony relevant to corruption in Cleveland, you can make your own judgement.

Having access to LexisNexus, no doubt the Cleveland Plain Dealer knew EXACTLY who Emoff was. The question ought to be why the Cleveland Plain Dealer was on such good terms with such scum.

Observation

I am willing to bet that had the Islamic terrorists not detonated several bombs and killed nearly a hundred in Sharm el-Sheikh, the MSM would have had a field day with "British Police Deliberately Kill Innocent, Unarmed, Immigrant Man." Or maybe it's just that the Guardian is short of a diversity-mandated terrorism advocate.

What is the world coming to?

Things we thought we would never see:

When Red Ken Livingstone defends the police.

The mayor of London defended the police action on Friday.
'If you are dealing with someone who might be a suicide bomber, if they remain conscious, they could trigger plastic explosives or whatever device is on them,' Ken Livingstone said. 'Therefore, overwhelmingly in these circumstances, it is going to be a shoot-to-kill policy.'"

Europe cracking down on hate preachers
With varying degrees of commitment, of course.

Michael Jackson's father's birthday party in Berlin a flop
Sorta. The main thing is that the Jackson glamour for Germans is tarnished, despite those assiduously courted demented fans who get an all-expense paid trip to the U.S. to cheer for an accused pedophile. Really, do you begin to see German mafia all over this??

Thomas Friedman quoting the Wall Street Journal

Iqra [an Islamic bookstore in Leeds] not only sold hatemongering Islamist literature, but, according to The Wall Street Journal, was "the sole distributor of Islamgames, a U.S.-based company that makes video games. The video games feature apocalyptic battles between defenders of Islam and opponents. One game, Ummah Defense I, has the world 'finally united under the Banner of Islam' in 2114, until a revolt by disbelievers. The player's goal is to seek out and destroy the disbelievers."

Oh wait. It doesn't take him long to find moral equivalence to terrorist training materials and a graffiti message written by a distraught Jewish settler whose home was confiscated. I knew it was too good to be true.

Guardian fires Islamic radical (one of em anyway)

As part of its diversity program, the leftwing Guardian hired Dilpazier Aslam as a trainee. As it turned out, he was a member of Hibz ut-Tahrir. The Guardian was forced to acknowledge, that group is

(quoting a Home Office briefing notes) "radical, but to date non-violent Islamist group."

The [Home Office] note says of the organisation that it is "an independent political party that is active in many countries across the world. HT's activities centre on intellectual reasoning, logic arguments and political lobbying. The party adheres to the Islamic sharia law in all aspects of its work."

The note adds: "It probably has a few hundred members in the UK. Its ultimate aim is the establishment of an Islamic state (Caliphate), according to HT via non-violent means. It holds anti-semitic, anti-western and homophobic views. [bolding mine]

Different countries and organisations take varying views of the Hizb ut-Tahrir. It is banned in Russia, Germany and Holland. In this country the National Union of Students has barred Hizb ut-Tahrir from its unions, claiming the group is "responsible for supporting terrorism and publishing material that incites racial hatred".

The Guardian left it to a their news blog site to announce he had been terminated. They did not acknowledge in the notice of his termination that it was bloggers who discovered and reported the terrorist wannabe. The only acknowledgement is an unsigned staff article that appeared raving about how Aslam was "targeted by Rightwing bloggers from the U.S."

Ed Driscoll here.
More background here.

Sheeze

Ken Reich (takebackthetimes.blogspot.com) has been forced to watch FOX news in Alaska. He has some advice.

It would be better, honestly, if Fox were more middle of the road.

Better for Liberals who have gone so far left that they actually advocate revoking Pakistan's independence and giving the country to the U.N. to administer, I guess. Better for former journalists who are so far left that Michael Kinsey is not Liberal enough and Judith Miller is a "political prisoner".

Multiculturalism death watch continues

France may order language tests for migrants. (Without the Guardian charging "RACISM".) here

CJR blog

If anyone had any doubts that the Columbia Journalism Review is Left, then their Blog report on Hitchens and Condolezza Rice will dispel the carefully crafted image that they are impartial.

Hitchens' "seemingly unconditional support for the war in Iraq and the Bush administration" surprises CJR. They had no objection, however, when he was a dependable leftie: (their description) ". . . really, hasn't Hitchens always been something of a verbose blowhard -- albeit formerly with a socialist, slightly Trotskyite bent? He's just switched sides."

Yeah, and they loved him when he was. And what does that say about CJR's leanings? But their criticism of Condolezza Rice really nails their agenda. (scroll down)

You know what the real beauty of the internet is? The Lefties who have been supported and shielded from public view by an obliging MSM are now highly visible. THEY don't have the same need as the MSM to hide their leftwing sympathies and support. Or their ineptness. It's like reading a college newspaper without a faculty advisor to supply the maturity.

A muslim civil war and selective outrage

A Spiegel interview with author Ian McEwan provides this insight:

SPIEGEL: But isn't the West providing the best advertisement for terrorist recruiters by being in Iraq and killing Islamic civilians, torturing Muslim prisoners a la Abu Ghraib and spreading pictures of the deeds around the world?

MCEWAN: I don't think terror needs a breeding ground. I don't buy the arguments in the Iraq war. What keeps getting forgotten here is that the people committing massacres in Iraq right now belong to al-Qaida. We're witnessing a civil war that's taking place in Islam. The most breathtaking statement was the one of al-Qaida claiming responsibility for the London bombings saying it was in return for the massacre in Iraq. But the massacres in Iraq now are being conducted by al-Qaida against Muslims. I also think it's extraordinary the way in which we get morally selective in our outrages. When there was a rumor that someone at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the lavatory, the pages in The Guardian almost caught fire with outrage, but only months before the Taliban had set fire to a mosque and destroyed 300 ancient Korans.

European hypocrisy

Coming late to the party.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy promised Friday to step up surveillance of radical Islamic clerics following the wave of failed bomb attacks in London.

When the radical imams were aiming their suicide bombers toward Israel, it was okay.

MSM connivance PT 2

The MSM campaign to prolong the war on terror and cripple the U.S./British/Australian efforts have been successful in radicalizing muslim youth. A relative of a London homocide bomber had this to say about his cousin's ambition to beome a "holy warrior" cousin.

Mr Saleem supported his cousin’s bombing at Aldgate station which killed seven people, saying: “Whatever he has done, if he has done it, then he has done right.” He recalled how Tanweer argued with family and friends about the need for violent retaliation over US abuse of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

Abuse that never happened except in the imagination of our MSM.

MSM connivance PT 1 - Zimbabwe

Nine churches were raided, with between 50 and 100 people arrested in each. They were moved to a transit camp. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, their homes burned, as they are driven to the countryside. Pol Pot?

It's Robert Mugabe, the Marxist leader of Zimabwe. Internationally, the Human Rights organizations have gathered together, outraged that another forced displacement of citizens into areas where they cannot even sustain life.

That last sentence is a lie. I made it up. Because no Human Rights groups have come forward to complain. No newspaper has accepted the challenge to confront this inhumanity. No MSM campaign to bring this outrage to the world has materialized. Mugabe is a Marxist. Therefore, anything he does is beyond reproach. Like Fidel Castro, the communist, who recently threw 87 dissidents in jail, the non-event in media eyes does not absolve the MSM from complicity.

Search google today and find that bowler Shane Bone is looking forward to a match in Zimbabwe next month. Or there is the UN Zimbabwe envoy who will issue a report on Friday. And a brief report at ABC news online that is produced here in its entirety.

Zimbabwe police throw homeless out of churches
Police in Zimbabwe have conducted a series of night raids on churches in the city of Bulawayo, evicting people who were being given shelter after losing their homes in the Government's eviction campaign.

Dressed in riot gear and carrying batons, police are said to have forcibly removed hundreds of people sheltering on church grounds.

They were put on trucks and taken to a government transit camp outside the city.

Church leaders have described the actions against those who have lost their homes in the Government's two-month forced eviction campaign as cruel, nasty and unbelievable.

Earlier this week a pastor was thrown out of a government transit camp, which is now said to be off limits to church representatives.

South African church leaders have criticised the Government's so-called clean-up campaign and have just launched the Operation Hope for Zimbabwe appeal for funds for emergency supplies.

THAT's what I mean about MSM complicity. No major stories at the Independent. No major story at the Guardian. And at the Canadian Globe and Mail site, the story was 2/3rds of the way down the page.

These are the Keepers of Human Rights. Human rights for some, only not leftwing victims.

UPDATE (Friday, June 22nd) The U.N. has reported on the violence in Zimbabwe. Full text here. Money quote:

"Criticism, while fully justified, is not enough. We have a duty to help those in need. In keeping with the recommendations of my envoy, the United Nations will urgently seek agreement with the Government of Zimbabwe to mobilize immediate humanitarian assistance on the scale that is required to avert further suffering. I urge the international community to respond generously to this call.

Make sure to make the checks payable to United Nations Graft and Corruption Fund.

More media idiocy

Year after year, the Liberal loons in the MSM crab about what Republicans do, despise anything that anyone tries to do in the world, except their beloved Leftwing activists. They ignore every act of violence against Israel, write fawning stories about Fidel Castro and Yassir Arafat. They decry a war in Iraq that topped Saddam Hussein and his two nutcase sons. But, boy, let someone touch them and they are "angry and humiliated" when they are forcefully shown the door as Adrea Mitchell was in a Sudan new conference.

Part of a press pack following Condolezza Rice, the idiot Mitchell thought she could ask insulting questions of the Sudanese president, completely forgetting that uncomfortable reality that while she is accorded extradordinary freedom in the U.S., she's just another hack anywhere else in the world.

It's yet another intrusion on American foreign policy by our own very foreign MSM. Condolezza Rice was there to look for a diplomatic solution. Had it been Colin Powell with whom Mitchell agreed, the NBC reporter would have gladly followed the guidelines that said they were allowed in but not to ask questions. Apparently, the attitude emboldened her. The fact that she probably destroyed any opportunity to find a peaceful solution just at a time when the U.S. is beginning to exert more pressure on Sudan, is immaterial. When the story involves a reporter, the report is the story.

The Decline and Fall of Journalists

NYT writer on the unpopularity of journalists in movies.The Decline and Fall of Journalists on Film

A Gallup poll released last month showed that public confidence in journalism had reached a new low, with television news and newspapers receiving the same dismal number. Only 28 percent of those polled said they had a great deal of confidence in those media.

What a surprise.

Liberal journalist goes bonkers

Ken Reich (www.takebackthetimes.blogspot.com) is in full rant this morning, boldly defending journalism where no sane writer would go. Again. This time, against David Broder. David Broder Shows His Conservative Bias, Joins Kinsley In Selling Out Press Freedoms and Judy Miller

I'm afraid David Broder and Matt Cooper would not have been with George Washington when he crossed the Delaware, but home writing that the American colonists were making mistakes in the fight against the British.

Get it? They're unAmerican because they don't toe the Journo line. (Historical note: Leftists are most savage against other Leftists whose thinking is viewed as dangerously independent and might threaten to scatter the party line.)

Reich works himself right up to a thunderous and unintentionally hilarious indignation.

Lord Nelson, at Trafalgar, told sailors under his command: "England Expects Every Man Will Do His Duty." The duty of American journalists today is to defend Judy Miller and assail Judge Thomas Hogan, who is violating his oath to defend the U.S. Constitution.

Wow. George Washington and Lord Nelson in one rant. I am impressed as hell.

Multiculturalism death watch

Multiculturalism under a death watch.

In hindsight, the British should have seen it coming long ago. It is almost 20 years since Salman Rushdie first published The Satanic Verses, an event that brought into full public glare the undercurrents of zealotry at work among some of Britain's Muslims.

In a land where, two centuries earlier, Voltaire had sought calm refuge from the religious bigotry of Europe, Rushdie was accused of blasphemy by Islamists and a fatwa was issued by the mullahs in Iran.

This was an affront to every precept of Western liberal thinking.

Rushdie was subsequently forced into hiding, protected by British secret security services. In 1991, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses was stabbed to death. In 1993, the Norwegian publisher of the book suffered gunshot wounds.

Was anyone prosecuted for inciting violence against Rushdie and his publishers? No. Governments reacted with forbearance. This was not only wrong in principle, but it gave a lot of people the wrong idea about the willingness of Western societies to defend their core values.

Not Western societies. Liberal governments. Liberal thinkers. And the only reason liberals may rethink multiculturalism is because they can no longer ignore what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. warned them about more than a dozen years ago. And that's only because they can no longer get away with selling out their country and their country's core values for political gain.

In the end, the proof of the poverty of values of Liberalism were the London terrorist attacks. No accomodation with oil, no indifference to muslim extremism that has racked Africa as hundreds of thousands of Africans died as radical Islam waged war against moderation, no open borders to accept dissaffected muslim youth to ease pressures at home, no policy of neglect to assimilate made a difference. It all turned out exactly how Schlesinger predicted. With so much advance warning from so preeminent a Liberal, did they expect anything else? Indeed, the question might be: Did they want anything else?

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens can write. He's a fairly lucid thinker most of the time, but too erratic for my peace of mind. As a dedicated man of the Left, he will tell you that he's a socialist with all that implies. Nevertheless, he becomes piqued at times and that's when his writing is delicious whether or not you agree with him. His boozy writing reflects his uneven moral stances. When he writes about who to blame in the Plame Blame Game, you follow the lead and read and enjoy the skewering of Joe Wilson. The fact that he skewers the CIA, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, reporters who disagree with him on the War on Terror, Time magazine, and anyone else he disagrees with, doesn't make it any less entertaining to read. It's why boozy writers have always been quirky, and good reading. It's an unpredictability factor better suited to fiction than politics.

He reminds me of the Lars cartoon of the penguin colony with a solo voice singing, "I just wanna be me." As for Joe Wilson and the Plame Blame Game, it's Joe Wilson and the anti-regime change CIA.

Thus, and to begin with, Joseph Wilson comes before us as a man whose word is effectively worthless. What do you do, if you work for the Bush administration, when a man of such quality is being lionized by an anti-war press? Well, you can fold your tent and let them print the legend. Or you can say that the word of a mediocre political malcontent who is at a loose end, and who is picking up side work from a wife who works at the anti-regime-change CIA, may not be as "objective" as it looks. I dare say that more than one supporter of regime change took this option. I would certainly have done so as a reporter if I had known.

The CIA got everything wrong before 9/11, and thereafter. It was conditioned by its own culture to see no evil. It regularly leaked—see any of Bob Woodward's narratives—against the administration. Now it, and its partisans and publicity-famished husband-and-wife teams, want to imprison or depose people who leak back at it.

As usual with Hitchens, the dots don't quite connect. In this case, the special prosecutor was insisted upon by the Left in the Democrat party to prolong the story. The anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-American media urged the CIA leaks and Joe Wilson's loudmouth barrage and hyped a book timed for release before the election. Now, however, caught by their own participation, they are out of wiggle room and are left screaming loudy, desperate to score damage on the administration that called their bluff.

It isn't Karl Rove who should be subjected to the full press anal exam. It's the MSM who deserve the scrutiny.

German court releases another terrorist suspect

This can't be good for the European Union. A German federal constitutional court has refused to hand over a Syrian-born German businessman wanted by Spain as a suspected Al-Qaeda financier who provided logistical and financial support for the terrorist organization. He was released on a few hours later.

The German courts have not been enthusastic in prosecuting suspected muslim terrorists. Perhaps it is just residual sympathy for the 1960s counterculture terrorism that roiled Germany, invoked by a generation of home grown terrorists now comfortably esconced in government and the courts. Or it could be the oil connections are just too valuable to offend while Germany struggles to pay full price for oil that only a few years ago Saddam shipped via the illegal Syrian lines at discount prices that made for better economic times, helping, as one suspects it did, to bring the Red-Green coalition to power. Whatever the cause, Germany has been an unreliable partner to the United States in the war against terror. But they are even less helpful to the rest of the EU.

R.I.P. Gen. William Westmoreland

Retired Gen. William Westmoreland died at age 91. His legacy was clouded by the media. Even in death his obituaries carry on the misinformation. Did he or did he not win his libel case against CBS?

AFP version.

The general sued CBS for libel, asking damages of 120 million dollars and testifying that he told Johnson that it would take another three to five years to win the war.

Westmoreland dropped the suit after four months, saying, "I consider that I have won. I'm going to try to fade away."

His compensation was a statement by CBS saying it respected the general's service and "never intended to assert and does not believe that General Westmoreland was unpatriotic or disloyal ..."

AP version.

In 1982, he filed a $120 million lawsuit against CBS over a documentary "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception," which implied he had deceived President Johnson and the public about enemy troop strength in Vietnam.

At the time, Westmoreland said the question "is not about whether the war in Vietnam was right or wrong, but whether in our land a television network can rob an honorable man of his reputation."

After an 18-week trial in New York, the case was settled shortly before it was to go to the jury.

CBS News merely rewrites the AP feed.

He was a good man. An honorable man, slandered and libeled by the MSM. The shallowness of their heroes becomes clear every day.

More teacher trash

Yet another teacher is charged with having sex with students. In this case, it is Marc Horton, a junior high school teacher at Garside Middle School, Las Vegas, NV. The scope of the problem comes from an earlier story. [bolding mine]

Horton's arrest puts him among a handful of teachers or workers at the school district who've been arrested for sexual misconduct. Three recent cases have already gone to court

This past February a judge sentenced former substitute teacher and ex-UNLV basketball player Cornelius "Corky" Ausbourne to 2 to 5 years in prison for having sex with two middle school students.

In January, former Chaparral High School teacher Kenneth Stacy pleaded guilty to having sex with a 17-year-old student. He's spending 180 days in jail and will be eligible to get out June 21.

In 2004, a judge sentenced Coronado High School custodian Nephye Acevedo Villatoro to 3 years probation for open and gross lewdness. He lured a 14-year-old girl into his car and exposed himself.

There isn't a day in any week you can't find a story about a teacher and sex with students. I ought to know. For five weeks one year, I collected news stories about a problem that is so pervasive that it's called "Passing the trash." moving teachers who are in trouble to another school, away from their accusers.

With their access to Lexis-Nexis, the news media could connect these dots as well.

If they wanted to.

Media Relevance

Succint article on Joe Wilson's credibility. None.

Which brings us back to the fundamental problem faced by the “get Rove” crowd: they need Wilson to be credible. He’s not. That’s all Rove was pointing out to Cooper—and only after the Time reporter asked him about it. Who again is the one with the credibility problem?

Some nice details in the story. Someone pointed out a few days ago that the entire story was a pressure tactic to try to squeeze the Bush administration. There is little truth to the MSM contentions. Drudge today notes that the MSM contended there was no crime in revealing Plame's name. So, then, what is the problem? The problem is that they have to cover themselves for having promoted Joe Wilson. The MSM was hoping to derail the administration, push the story that Bush lied deliberately about Iraq trying to obtain uranium. Iraq did try. Wilson confirmed it. So where is the story? It's a just media bluster trying to get the Bush administration to back down on the war, on the special investigation, on their attitude toward the press, any number of things. What it really is about is media credibility. And lack of relevance.

Again.

Why we call it the La La Times

PATTERICO efficiently skewers the Los Angeles Times for altering a story. It's deliciously documented. A must read.

MEANWHILE, Ken Reich, former LA Times reporter, (His own breathless third person description of himself: "He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Darthmouth College in 1960....") has a blog. He warns Time magazine editor-in-chief Pearlstein of the his error of his ways. "His obituary will have this high," Reich intones. "He might as well resign now, because he has achieved everything he will in journalism.?" For the crime of? -- not supporting Judith Miller against the "Fascist Novak." I kid you not. "Fascist Novak." He uses the term twice in two different articles. (Historical note of interest - all confirmed Lefties are prone to call opponents Fascists. It is the last totalitarianism they opposed and only because the Spanish fascist totalitarians were fighting their beloved Communist totalitarians.)

That's nothing compared to his reaction to the London terrorist attacks, folks. I think perhaps covering those earthquakes and volcanoes off and on for 25 years might have distorted his vision of reality because it's the only way to explain his hysterical rants on the Plame Blame case and why he thinks Judith Miller is a political prisoner and Judge Hogan is becoming "another Molotov, another Beris, and [a]nother of those cursed individuals who stand against freedom." Mind you, Judge Hogan stands against freedom, but Ken Reich wants to strip Pakistan of its independence and turn them over to the U.N. Go figure.

Disgusting

I don't know whether to laugh outloud or just make sounds of disgust at the Seattle man who died after having sex with a horse at a farm that police report is notorious in internet chat rooms for offering the, ah, service.

Reportedly, the man's relatives were surprised when he had purchased a thoroughbred stallion earlier this year. The police found videotapes of the encounters. You really have to wonder at the sanity of such people, but then, maybe not, Seattle is a tolerant place, mostly liberal loons.

Now if some lawyer would just volunteer to sue the dead man's estate on behalf of the horse, I would rethink my opinion of the legal profession.

You'll never see video on our MSM

Bastile day violence in Paris.

Clashes between youths and police in the suburbs of Paris saw police use shoulder-held grenade launchers. One police officer was injured and taken to hospital

Shoulder-held grenade launchers. Not exactly the image of the cultural wonderland of France envisioned by most Liberals and all Lefties.

Kind of reminds you of that picture of Janet Reno's storm troopers holding a military weapon in the faces of man and a small boy trying to hide in a closet.

For a laugh

It's kumbaya leftism in London.

MSM extremism

I love the headline on this Guardian story. "Muslims have 'extra responsibility' to fight extremism" Odd, isn't it, that Muslim leaders should call upon their followers to do more to "root out extremism" but the MSM should be exempt from such moral responsibility?

The BBC doesn't even refer to the terrorists as "terrorists" and story after story at the Guardian refers to them as "bombers" and "suicide bombers" but not as terrorists. That's because terrorism isn't an act of war. It is a savagery practiced on innocent civilians. And our MSM have not been particularly helpful in curbing the violence. In the same issue, an article by Salma Yoqoob, leader of the racist Respect party (George Galloway's party created just for him after Labour kicked him out) that lays the blame for the terrorist attacks bombings on Blair's foreign policy. The word "terrorist" doesn't appear once in his article.

And this is the contribution of our MSM to the violence. By not denouncing terrorism, by not calling it what it is -- a savage attack on civilization and a cowardly one at that - they are tacitly encouraging the martyrdom of radical muslims. They know it. Imagine the reaction had they refused to acknowledge the dastardly evil of Nazi Germany and the equally evil collaborators in Vichy France. But it isn't hard to imagine is it? Because to this day, leftwing publications (most of our MSM qualifies for this tag) only denounce Western, specifically, American values. To this day, they do not denounce the Marxist terrorists in Peru. From the Council on Foreign Relations site:

What types of attacks do they commit?
In the 1980s and early 1990s, vicious terrorist attacks were daily occurrences across Peru. Shining Path and Tupac Amaru were notorious for indiscriminate bombings, assassinations, brutal killings, kidnappings, bank robberies, and attacks on Western embassies and businesses. The human and economic toll was devastating, and Peruvians have a particular dread of terrorism to this day. Human rights groups estimate that more than 30,000 people have died since the rebels took up arms two decades ago.

That is nothing compared to the four decades old war against people in Columbia by FARC most recently helped by the IRA to build better bombs. The three IRA terrorists are now comfortably living in Cuba.

Do you hear any MSM denounciation of the murderous ideology of Marxism practiced by Robert Mugabe?? Do you hear condemnation of Hamas, the Palestinian terrrorist group? You don't, for the simple reason that most of the MSM doesn't think of them as terrorists. They are, as the New York Times referred to Yassir Arafat, "romantic revolutionaries." Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of victims in Algeria and Morocco, the Sudan and Zimbabwe. Tell that to the victims of the Marxist nutcase Pol Pot led Khmer Rouge. Tell that to Columbians who have lived through forty years and 200,000 lives lost in what is euphemistically called a "civil war." (Although how it can be considered such when Cuba and the Soviet Union have supplied the money and arms for the terrrorists for decades, I don't know.)

So, when you think of the War on Terrorism, include the MSM on the other side. To them, it's just dead people, like the barely noticed cringing Sudanese in Darfur, succumbing daily to vicious assaults, international MSM indifference, and UN apathy. Like the 800,000 dead in Rhwanda, they are dying in silence. It's the same deafening silence that shielded the Gulag for decades. Shielded by the exact same people.

Oh yeah.. Take back the Times

Ken Reich of Takebackthetimes.blogspot.com worked for the Los Angeles Times for 39 years and writes about himself in the third person in his profile. "He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1960 and received an M.A. in political science from UC Berkeley in 1962. " etc. He is worried that the LAT is moving somewhat rightward. I guess so, compared to Reich's views.

On Judith Miller as a political prisoner.

Judge Hogan wants promotion to a higher court. Instead, he appears to on the road to becoming another Molotov, another Beris, and [a]nother of those cursed individuals who stand against freedom.

On terrorists in Britain.

Also, I believe Pakisan independence should be cancelled by the United Nations Security Council and that country placed under a UN Trusteeship until such time as training camps for terrorists be closed in that country.

See how the Left thinks? The very people who have destroyed the credibility of the press want more freedom for the press even while they advocate revoking Pakistani independence willy nilly, replacing the government that is cooperating in the war on terrorism with the corrupt United Nations that helped keep Saddam in power for years while he brutalized his people. The same United Nations that stood by while 800,000 died in Rwanda and today hedge around in the Sudan while hundreds of thousands die. Judge Hogan is "squalid" and Bob Novak is a "fascist". Judith Miller, however, is heroic.

This is why political correctness and mindthink have replaced independent thinking and rational discourse on the college campus, encouraged as they have been by our leftwing media and their incredibly mediocre reporters. You also see why Los Angeles is a third world city with a third world newspaper like the Los Angeles Times.

War on Children

A murdering car bomber killed 27, mostly children, in Baghdad today. As a throw-away line, the report notes:

The incident was similar to a triple car bomb attack near a US convoy in September last year in which 41 people were killed, 34 of them children.

This would be a devastating indictment of the tactics of terrorists if the media supported this war. But these aren't terrorists. They are bombers. Freedom fighters. Insurgents. You can search the entire article at the Guardian, however, and not find the word "terrorist" once. Not once.

Another media credibility hit

The Wall Street Journal injects some sanity in the Get Karl Rove media campaign.

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real 'whistleblower' in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

What the media will not look at in any detail is their participation in Joe Wilson's attempt to discredit the administration.

The media feeding frenzy is also discredited by Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News.

In case the media missed it, their credibility is suffering badly, at home and internationally. Not that it will stop em.

Sexing up a story

A Muslim was "beaten to death" in Nottingham. To the Guardian, there's some doubt for the reason.

Nottinghamshire police described the incident as racially aggravated, not as Islamophobic, angering Muslim groups and surprising some senior officers.

The real story ought to be whether the Guardian is sexing up the story, as several paragraphs down there is this somewhat less incendiary description of what happened.

According to several sources, the man had gone to a shop around 4.30pm on Sunday to buy cigarettes, and the youths had asked him to hand them over.

When he refused they shouted that he was Taliban, a reference to the hardline Muslim government that ran Afghanistan and harboured al-Qaida terrorists.

The man was punched and fell to the ground and later died in hospital.

MSM political party

What a surprise to find out that Matthew Cooper from Time magazine is connected.

He had become one of the magazine's White House correspondents only the month before the conversation and is married to a prominent Democratic strategist, Mandy Grunwald.

Moral ties

These are moral ties attached to US AIDS money, according to the Guardian

"Charities seeking federal funding for anti-Aids programmes abroad will have to sign a form expressing opposition to prostitution and sex trafficking. They will also have to inform aid recipients of condom failure rates.

Sounds onerous, doesn't it?

Screw em

It was inevitable that the Left would leap to claim the bombings were due to Britain's warmongering in Iraq help in liberating millions of Iraqis from a meglomaniac. Entirely predictable since even to this day the Lefties at the New York Times and leftwing academia and the rest of our left, liberal, lazy media has yet to soundly condemn Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin, or find any fault with liberation theology communism. Today Robert Mugabe is a maniacal nutcase systematically starving his own countrymen, destroying the economy, and intidimidating enemies in the same fashion as his fellow Marxist Pol Pot. And today the MSM is notoriously silent.

Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about Abu Ghraib, but only hundreds about 87 dissidents in Cuba who are jailed for speaking outloud. In China, human rights violations are a daily fact of life. Our MSM is silent. In the Philippines, the same liberation theology followers communists are systematically terrorizing populations. Our MSM is silent. In Columbia, the same liberation theology followers communists have killed tens of thousands in the past forty years. Our MSM is silent.

Let's face it. The Left has no credibility. Our MSM has none. Their heroes are Joseph Stalin (Marxist), Pol Pot (Marxist), Mao (Marxist), Robert Mugabe (Marxist), Fidel Castro (Marxist), Nelson Mandela (Marxist), FARC (Marxist), the IRA (Marxist), and the Islamofascists who have killed hundreds of thousands of their fellow Muslims in bloody wars in Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, and China. Their heroes are the bloody terrorists who blow up schools in Russia.

Screw em.

London Bombings

Four separate bomb blasts in London this morning have shattered the illusion that the UK would be immune to terrorism, primarily due to their tolerant muslim immigration policies. Admittedly, the attacks were fairly mild, the death toll minor compared to what the casualty rates could have been, might have been, if the terrorists had wanted thousands of deaths. They would only have to target a single soccer or other sporting event to do that. This was a demonstration of solidarity of a cause.

Naturally, those on the Left will insist it is because of the U.K.'s participation in the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. But, then the Left is so blinded by their hatred that they are irrational at best, deluded always, and miserably, selfishly hateful at all times, that they are irrelevant to any rational discussion. Anyone could make just as persuasive an argument that the French encouraged the bombing because they lost the Olympics bid. In the end, the only known fact will be that the terrorists are probably islamofascists who hate everything Western, a blinding hatred greatly encouraged by the Left in general, the French who despise anything not French, and every disfunctional Arab country eager to focus the fanatacism of their disaffected youth on other, more distant, targets.

In the meantime, Americans everywhere are devastated by the attacks. For most of us, London is, in our hearts, a second home, one where the soul migrates to find enduring historical roots. An attack on London is an attack on us. We share more than the English language. We share a common history, shared values, and, once, Christian values. In the last fifteen years the British seem to have lost their way, a detour in history toward socialism, a denial of their own proud heritage, a reversal of their independence and entrepeneurship and a diminished spirit. Much of what I admired about the British is no longer part of the British character. Instead, sadly, I think of holligans and hateful Leftwing politicians and destructive immigration policies that threaten to eliminate a culture that was once the envy of the world. I think of political correctness that negates much of our human learning experience and common sense solutions, and the disease of multiculturalism that make all things equal, good and bad. And I think of the cries of "institutional racism" that form a thin excuse to thin the ranks of authority and supplant it with ideologues, all promoted by the disgrace of the BBC that has degenerated into Pravda-like propagranda.

No bombs, no terrorist attack, no assault on Britain can be as destructive as secularism, socialism, and apathy have been to the U.K.

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

A Der Spiegel interview with a Kenyan economist is a must read.

"As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit."

AND,

SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.

Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it's not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...

SPIEGEL: ... corn that predominantly comes from highly-subsidized European and American farmers ...

Shikwati: ... and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle.

SPIEGEL: If the World Food Program didn't do anything, the people would starve.

Shikwati: I don't think so. In such a case, the Kenyans, for a change, would be forced to initiate trade relations with Uganda or Tanzania, and buy their food there. This type of trade is vital for Africa. It would force us to improve our own infrastructure, while making national borders -- drawn by the Europeans by the way -- more permeable. It would also force us to establish laws favoring market economy.

He also notes that AIDS infection rates are vastly overestimated. "AIDS is big business, maybe Africa's biggest business. There's nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical."

My respect for Der Spiegel has soared this morning.

Junk news

Why does stuff like this even make the news? Irish rock star Bono told the Canadian PM that he was a pain to deal with. Now by what stretch of the imagination is this relevant? Who the hell cares what Bono thinks? Or Bob Geldorf. Or Cher. Or any rock star. The fact that the Left has annointed them as celebrities doesn't automatically endow them with any intelligence, moral authority, or even credibility, on any issue, let alone poverty. What next? A rewritten Catholic mass by Madonna because she sang a song about a virgin?

I realize that our Peter Pan press has taken a vow to never grow up, but sheeze.

Best newspaper

A Swiss survey of 1000 "executives, politicians, university lecturers, journalists and advertising professionals" rated the best newspapers. And the New York Times was not #1.

Position Publication, country Mentions (pct) [last () figure is 2003 result]
1 Financial Times (U.K.) 19.4 (20.7)
2 Wall Street Journal (U.S.) 17.0 (7.5)
3 Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany) 16.2 (10.9)
4 Le Monde (France) 12.5 (2.1)
5 Neue Zuercher Zeitung (Switzerland) 12.1 (15.0)
6 New York Times (U.S.) 8.1 (21.3)
7 Intl. Herald Tribune (France) 5.2 (11.3)
8 Asahi Shimbun (Japan) 2.6 (0.4)
9 El Pais (Spain) 1.9 (4.8)
10 Corriere della Sera (Italy) 1.3 (0.7)
Other papers 3.7 (3.8)

Twice as many people rate the Wall Street Journal higher than the New York Times or the New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune. It was a precipitous drop for the New York Times from 2003.

Patriotism

A recent poll found "that 81 percent of Americans believed patriotism is “in,” meaning it is an important factor in their individual identities, compared with 14 percent of Americans who believed patriotism is “out.”

I didn't realize that there were so many Democrat politicians, actors, journalists, and academics in the U.S.

When voters are alienated against a political class that is out of touch, corrupt, inept, or indifferent to their voters, it's the voters fault. Inevitably, there are solutions. Geoff Hoon, leader of the Commons, is suggesting compulsory voting in the U.K., following Australia and Belgium. This is in response to a low turnout in the British May elections (61.5%) up from 2001 (59%). So, what good would compulsory voting do except alienate even more voters and give undue importance to the indifferent, uneducated, uncaring vote?

Maybe that's exactly why politicians want it. A voting public that reflects the undistinguished crop of candidates.