Ooopsrah

OOPS Oprah hasn't been doing very well lately. There was James Frey and her on-then-off defense of him, and then Dr. Phil, another Oprah find. And then there was Twyana Davis. You might remember her- she wrote Sacred Womb, a book about her experiences, and appeared on television's 20/20 and Oprah. That was before it turned out that the child she had after a supposed rape turned out to be the result of the rape of her own 12-year-old cousin. She's now officially a sexual predator and doing 10-25. But she still has a page at Oprah's website.

Now there's the Angel of Soweto who, well, isn't. A recent South African documentary revealed the extent of the fraud as the Guardian reports. Oprah's Angel, apparently, had frequent brushes with the law.   And her school isn't exactly what it appears.

Essay of the Month

Right Wing Nut House on Stringing Us Along on the media and Capt. Jamil Hussein and the arrogance of the AP. Read the whole thing.

Gullibility is not really the issue. I believe the issue is laziness. And perhaps a lack of passion that enables the reporter to simply go through the motions of being a journalist instead of living up to what his editors and readers expect.

This story is revealing of many things, not the least of which is that our free press is in trouble. Partly from infringements by government but also by lousy stewardship of this precious right being carried out by many the current practitioners of the craft. Not all, of course. There are still some excellent journalists writing for the top publications. But by and large, those whose responsibility it is to inform us, to keep us abreast of what’s going on in the world, are failing and failing badly.

They are just stringing us along.

State Department
More State Department misconduct. that a blogger nails perfectly. Read the whole thing. He's got more information than you can find in the AP story mindlessly and shamefully reprinted in newspapers who are too damned lazy to do their own research.

Just Wondering
Why is it that when Europhiles at the State Department are speaking they never mention European reality? Possibly because most of them are so enamored with Socialism that the impact, the reality of it, is something they feel is as an acceptable cost. In Germany, the good news is that unemployment fell to -- get this -- 10.2%

Donald Trump does Scotland. (The commenters aren't impressed.)

Zimbabwe
More joys from having a Marxist president. Or as one commenter put it, "The people must be WISHING they were still living under the old apartheid government of Ian Smith's........"

Proposition A Upheld
In San Diego, they voted 75% for Proposition A transferring Mount Soledad cross to the Federal government in order to save it. It's been a battle since 1989. Today an appellate court upheld the Proposition.

Briefly Noted

Britain In the continuing probe of the death of Alexander Litvinenko, authorities have found traces of radiation on two British Airways has found jets. The jets were grounded.

Mexico Violence continues in Mexico. This time, in Mexico's Congress. In Tijuana, two more police officers were gunned down. That brings to twelve the number of law enforcment officials killed in Tijuana just since September. In Monterey, the police chief, a councilman, were just a few of the officials murdered or beheaded in the last four months.

The Disney Folks - - just in time for the holidays, folks -- Danny DeVito on The View talking about "wrecking" the Lincoln Bedroom when he and his wife were guests of Bill Clinton. In his drunken appearance on The View -- ironically plugging his Christmas movie for kids -- he fondly recalled that he and and his wife "utilized" (had sex) e-v-e-r-y place in that that bedroom.

Ford Motor Nearly half of Ford's unionized workers have accepted buyouts. In all, 38,000 accepted the offer. Another 34,000 had accepted buyouts over this last summer. Ford plans to mortgage most of its assets in North America. . As security to refinance loans

Scotland The joys of socialized medicine includes a 265-day wait for cancer treatment.

Blogosphere Who is Jamil?

Clinton Crackpot Judge

A 1994 Clinton appointee to the Federal court, U.S. District Judge James Robertson, ordered the U.S. Treasury come up with ways for the blind to tell bills apart. He said he wouldn't tell officials how to fix the problem, but he ordered them to begin working on it. It's a perceived discrimination. /snort

You might remember crackpot Robertson. He resigned from Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to "protest" against "President Bush's secret authorization of a warrantless domestic spying program. If it was such an abomination, why didn't he stay on to fight for what he believed? Can't you just tell why?? More More

For the Left, making grandiose statements is about as effective as they can get.

New York Times adjusts language on Iraq

This just in: From the self-adulating, ant-war, anti-Bush, Dutch-owned Editor & Publisher, stark news that the war in Iraq is now a "civil war".

In the wake of the highly-publicized NBC and MSNBC decision to start referring to the conflict in Iraq as a "civil war," other media outlets, which have long used phrases such as "sectarian violence," are re-considering their language in this regard.

Quick to embrace the phrase, Bill Keller of the anti-war, anti-Bush, America-bashing New York Times, happily agreed. No other paper seems to have scurried to make that choice. And for good reason.

"Words have power, and naming it a civil war does begin to shape people's perception of what's happening there," Thomas Hollihan, a professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication who studies political rhetoric, told the Los Angeles Times.

But is it true? Shouldn't that be the criteria? You'd bloody well have thought so.

But, then, the New York Times' Walter Duranty failed to even notice a deliberate famine in the Soviet Union that killed an estimated 20 million because he was so enamored with the grand new experiment of communism. It's likely he, too, stayed in the green zone in Moscow all that time.

We're Not Biased

An Associated [with terrorists] Press story, "Newspaper Stocks Fall After Analyst's Warning on Profits" notes that some, ah, disturbing losses.

Shares of Gannett Co. . . . shed 8 cents to $58.99.
Shares of Dow Jones & Co. . ..were flat at $34.44
Shares of Tribune Co. . . . slumped 13 cents to $31.65
New York Times Co.,. . . dropped 26 cents to $23.64
News Corp. . . . fell 31 cents to $21.11
Media General Inc., . . . added 11 cents to $36.46
McClatchy Co.,. . . , tumbled 30 cents to $41.10
EW Scripps, . . . lost 10 cents to $48.33

Notice the descriptions. The biggest loser is News Corp (fell) while McClatchy (tumbled), but you'd think the New York Times (dropped), would have been described as "slumped" at least. The AP reserves that for the hated Tribune Co.  

We just can't understand....

Kommersant, Russian daily, is perplexed about why "The West Is Ready to Believe the Worst about Russia" in an article entitled, "Russia's Poisonous Foreign Policy". It's a particularly odd title when the story is about the poisoning of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko. And it's chilling when they list the following famous poisonings:

On August 4, 1995, head of Rosbiznesbank Ivan Kivelidi was poisoned with a nerve agent that had been placed on the telephone in his office. Vladimir Khutsishvili, a member of the board of directors of the bank, was arrested on suspicion of murder in October, but later released for lack of evidence. On June 30, 2006, Khutsishvili was arrested again after new evidence came to light, and is now awaiting trial.

On April 11, 2002, the FSB reported that field commander Khattab had been liquidated in Chechnya. According to the media, he was killed with a poisoned letter. Militants shortly thereafter shot Dagestani resident Ibragim Alauri, who allegedly sent the poisoned letter to Khattab on instructions from the FSB. The FSB denied having any ties with Alauri.

On July 3, 2003, Novaya gazeta newspaper writer and State Duma member from Yabloko Yury Shchekochikhin died of what was called a brain hemorrhage. Many of his colleagues suspected that he was poisoned. His investigation of smuggling by the Three Whales stores and publications about corruption in law enforcement bodies were thought to be the motives.

On June 1, 2004, Khizri Aldamov, representative of Ichkerian President Aslan Maskhadov in Georgia, along with his son and nephew, were hospitalized in Tbilisi for “poisoning.” The Georgian Interior Ministry determined that Aldamov's car had been poisoned with a phosphorous-containing substance. The victim claimed that he was poisoned on orders of the Russian FSB.

On September 24, 2004, general director of Baltic Escort private security company Roman Tsepov died in St. Petersburg. The cause of his death was poisoning by a medicine used to treat leukemia. Tsepov did not have leukemia. The company headed by Tsepov provided protection to the leaders of the city, including mayor Anatoly Sobchak and his deputy Vladimir Putin. The murder is still under investigation.

They left out the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko.

It's not like it's a pattern or anything. Ya think?

Favorite postings

(Sometimes I have to remind myself to be outraged.)

a The Russiafication of the EU Here
It is particularly relevant after what British Intelligence are calling the "state-sponsored assassination" of Alexander Litvinenko. Ironically, or maybe not, Putin was meeting with EU leaders in Finland at the time of Litvineko's death. The Times of London notes that "his hosts did not bring up the murder in the talks on Russia’s long-term relations with the EU". And it's just the beginning.

a The Russiafication of Hollywood Here
a When is War Not a War? Pt. 1 Pt 2
a Teaching - New Orleans Style Here
a Media Blackout Here

Self-Delusion

I can't decide if it is self-delusion or deliberate amnesia. Or panic. Edward Lucas is Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist, writing in the Times of London, that the West should fight Putin's menace. By?

"the West must stick together." [And] "British eurosceptics must drop their defeatist disdain for a common European foreign policy, especially in the field of energy security. "

The problem is that, in all reality, Britain and the rest of the EU are no longer part of "the West." The common European foreign policy is dictated by France and Germany, both firm supporters of Putin. Any deviancy is not tolerated without generating strong EU pressure on member countries to confirm. Witness Poland's attempt to exert pressure on Russia and how quickly that spark of independence was squashed in the interests of "harmony". Not to mention, gas supplies.

That Britain is no longer a self-governing nation is evident. An example will suffice. New rules from the EU will cost city regulators £1bn with no discernable benefits and no actual legislation having been passed in Britain. Consequently, there is no recourse for British citizens to protest the newest EU Rule-that-nobody-voted-for. That's one of the joys of international socialism - you suffer under the same insufferable rules and regulations dictated by petty bureaucrats. And, when you think about it, there really isn't much difference between East Germany as a Russian satellite and Britain as an EU-satellite country. The independence is pure illusion.

Reason #4851 - to Cancel your Newspaper Subscription

One of the really nice things about cancelling your newspaper subscription is that the in-your-face PETA stories - aren't.
It's funny how when you aren't bombarded with their self-seeking publicity stunts, you can find a lot to laugh about.

I just never knew they had captive animals in entertainment specialists.

Why tryrants love the UN

By a vote of 77-62 with 26 abstentions, a UN human rights committee voted a draft resolution to go to the Genral Assembly to "discourage UN human rights bodies from condemning any country on human rights." The resolution was sponsored by Belarus and Uzbekistan, both serial human rights violaters. John Bolton had some choice words.

The new Human Rights Council in Geneva, which earlier this year replaced the discredited Human Rights Commission, has met three times to pass resolutions condemning Israel but hasn't dealt with human rights in Myanmar, North Korea or Sudan, Mr. Bolton said.

Of course not. When even the notoriously leftwing Human Rights Watch condemns Belarus, and warns of the abuse by Uzbekistan, you know they are outrageous in their violations.

They, no doubt, feel right at home at the United Nations.

Lies and Liars

The defense attorney warned jurors that they were being asked to rein in the 1st Amendment freedoms "that founding fathers granted to newspapers and the to the press."

"The 1st Amendment of our Constitution guarantees our right to criticize politicians, especially elected politicians,"Rosenfeld told the jury. "We must be able to tee off against the government in the press. That's what freedom of the press is all about."

The jurors, unlike the attorney, understood all right that freedom of speech is for every individual, not reserved for newspapers and the press. They also understood defamation when they saw it.

They found the Kane County Chronicle and reporter Bill Page guilty of defamation, finding that two columns were false and published with actual malice. The jury awarded Chief Justice Robert Thomas $7 million.

I guess in teeing off against politicians, they'll just have to tell the truth. Or, as Thomas' attorney said. "Lies and liars are not protected under the First Amendment."

Eeee Ewwwwww

Oh those bothersome details. For all their endless meetings and moral superiority and smugness, the EU isn't doing so much for the environment.

Some industries and lobbying groups opposed to mandatory limits point out that emissions in the United States grew just 1.3 percent during that period, far less than the 2.4 percent measured in the European Union.

But environmentalists said economic growth in the United States was slow in those years, and they noted that Europe's binding restrictions took effect only this year.

In other words, while the EU talked -- endlessly -- about emissions, the U.S. was actually doing something. Bush's fault.

European Pretensions

Instead of worrying about global warming, maybe the EU should be worried about keeping the lights on? Ya think?

Good for Stephen Harper

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has decided against attending a planned Canada-EU summit. The meeting was to have been held on Nov 27 in Finland. Most news stories report "critics slam" and "annoyed European Union leaders". But you know it's mostly annoying to the critics in the media.

On Friday, Britain and Germany announced that global warming would be at the top of the international agenda. It was clearly going to be a means to pressure Harper into the global emission trading scheme that they hope will yield them trillions of dollars. And, as Christopher Monckton in the Sunday Telegraph, puts it,

Last week, Gordon Brown and his chief economist both said global warming was the worst "market failure" ever. That loaded soundbite suggests that the "climate-change" scare is less about saving the planet than, in Jacques Chirac's chilling phrase, "creating world government".

Read the whole thing.

Just your usual Democrat politics

Senator Barack Obama Dem-IL bought a $1.65 million house last November. On the same day an adjoining vacant lot was purchased for $625,000. In January the Obamas paid $104,500 for a portion of that lot.

The problem is the lot was owned by Antoin "Tony" Rezko. Rezko donated to Obama's Senate races and federal fund, but what he's most famous for is when he pleaded not guilty to charges of squeezing investment firms who wanted to do state business for millions. He is also is charged with fraudulent loans and swindling investors. Tony is well-connected in Chicago politics. In particular, to Dem. Gov. Blagojevich. Rezko "has extensive ties in the Middle East, according to the Chicago Tribune. He has since filed for bankruptcy, a claim that few believe.

East German politics in the U.S.

East Germans were famous for their honeypot traps used to ensnare targets in sexual liasons. The purpose was to diminish the individual and trap him or her into working for the foreign intelligence service. There's a suspicion of that in the Mark Foley and Rev. Ted Haggard scandals. In both, the timing was designed to affect the too-close-to-call race. In both, the events were several years in the past. So the moral outrage was delayed at best. And both are sexual liasons where it is unclear who was the aggressor. In Foley's case and in Haggard's there is no question that the actions were legal and consentual. What is debatable is whether Foley and Haggard were set up.

One that obviously not set up and wasn't even genuine was the accusation days before the election that Arnold Schwartzenegger groped a woman. Turns out she was not only ugly but the wife of a union official. The public didn't buy it.

Other ads and election techniques make you wonder about the veracity of the Democrats in this election. In the Missouri Senate race, Claire McCaskill is running ads with Wesley Clark and what is described as an Iraq war veteran identified as Josh Lansdale. A separate Landsdale ad is on Utube. After investigation by local Kansas City TV station, KMBC, it turns out Lansdale was found to be less than credible. The Dems must have thought so, too, as the McCaskill campaign which later cut him from the ads.
Hat tip: Michelle Malkin here

European News

Paris airport staff included some 72 who were suspended for, among other things, making trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan and, oh, by the way, spending time at terrorist training camps. One-fifth of the 83,000 employees are Muslim, according the the International Herald-Tribune.

If you have Naples on uour itinerary, think again. They're in the grips of a mafia war. Romano Prodi, leftwing Prime Minister, is considering sending in troops to quell the violence.

Doing time isn't so bad in the Netherlands. You just pay someone to do serve your sentence. Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Balin: It's a person permutation or incorrect data. Really???

In what should be a preview for the EU, Russia is doubling the price of gas they sell to Georgia. This, after a diplomatic spat. They have promised, sorta, not to cut off supplies of electricity or gas as they did to the Ukraine last year. In mid winter.

In Spain, a judge ruled downloading music was legal as long as it was for private purposes. In response, the government is drafing a new law to abolish the right to personal copies of material. On the side of the people, as usual.

Cowardice

Hamas terrorists are brave when they strap bombs to school children and then pay off their families. They are incredibly photogenic to Western media when they parade around a flag-draped coffin. But when it comes to hiding behind women, they is no one like them.

Holed up in a mosque and under Israeli fire, Hamas appealed to women to converge on the mosque so the men could be smuggled out. They did, with the expected results.  There were the usual celebrations as men fired in the air with their Kalashnikovs.

Comeuppance

Woman pleads guilty to assaulting city manager and director of human resources. But when it came to assaulting a reporter, she was acquitted.   No doubt because at one time every one of 'em wanted to slap a reporter alongside the head.

Angry as Hell

The Wall Street Journal pulls no punches with Acorn , the liberal activist group.

In reality, Acorn is a union-backed, multimillion-dollar outfit that uses intimidation and other tactics to push for higher minimum wage mandates and to trash Wal-Mart and other non-union companies. Operating in at least 38 states (as well as Canada and Mexico), Acorn pushes a highly partisan agenda, and its organizers are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party.

Four Acorn workers have been indicted in Missouri.
Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin.
Acorn workers have been convicted in Colorado.
Investigations are under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

As part of the Fannie Mae reform bill, House Democrats pushed an "affordable housing trust fund" designed to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits to subsidize Acorn, among other groups.

So why is Houston Mayor Bill White teaming with Acorn?

The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) alleges fraud in 12 states in a recent report.
Terence Scanlon, president of the respected Capital Research Center, details some of their 2004 activities.

So why hasn't the Justice Department done more about this before? And why are our media so intent on playing gotcha political games when our political process is being corrupted?

Associated Idiots

File this under: Associated [with terrorists] Press trash.

AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll is calling on news organizations to protest the continued imprisonment of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein. He has been in custody for 6 1/2 months.

Among the images that likely drew U.S. military interest in Hussein was a 2004 photo he shot of masked insurgents firing on U.S. forces, which was among those that won AP a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

In an interview with NPR, Kathleen Carroll, she discussed the circumstances of his arrest.

MARK JURKOWITZ: Let's talk about the specifics of this case. What happened? Where was he when he was detained? Can you give me the circumstances of that day?

KATHLEEN CARROLL: Sure. The most detail we have about that comes from the U.S. military, which says that he was in a building with two other people when he was arrested in the morning.

MARK JURKOWITZ: Two other people that the military have characterized as enemy combatants or insurgents. Is that correct?

KATHLEEN CARROLL: That's what they told us, yes. We have been in touch with them, but he says that, you know, he was doing his job as a journalist, which involves talking to all kinds of people, and making himself available to talk with them so that he can make pictures of them without endangering himself.

MARK JURKOWITZ: Are you aware to any extent what his relationship with members of the insurgency might be? Do you know, frankly, whether he has just sources within the insurgency or would have any special knowledge about what's going on there?

KATHLEEN CARROLL: I would say two things about that, Mark. One, we are not particularly interested in trying to suss- out the details and evidence and try Bilal, you know, on your program or any other way in the media.

As for his close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnapping, smuggling, improvised explosive attacks and other attacks on coalition forces, Carroll had this to say.

Bilal grew up in Fallujah. I don't know about you, but not all the people that I grew up with turned out exactly well. You know, some of them ended up doing things that our mothers might not like. I don't know whether that's the case with Bilal, because we've never had any names associated with this.

What she doesn't say is that Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged"\ leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, something NPR kinda left out when they were discussing the e-mail from the military. Nor does she mention that bomb-making materials were found in the apartment where he was arrested and how he tested positive for traces of explosive.

Why I AM NOT A DEMOCRAT #3481

A Maine attorney, Thomas Connolly, 49, was arrested for criminal threatening after dressing up as bin Laden, brandishing a toy assault rifle (Reuters: gun that turned out "was fake").    Even the Associated (with Terrorists) Press got the "fake assault rifle" right, as well as the plastic dynamite and grenades and the replica AK-48.   Reuters did admit that Connolly was a Democrat and ran for governor in Maine in 1998. Connolly frequently dons a Bush mask and "dances herky herky" to make political statements.

Local paper: Police officers "had to order Connolly to drop his weapon several times before he complied."