Thursday, August 31, 2006

Americans Hate Their Fabulous Economy (Thanks To The Treason Media!)

While I frequently identify most liberals properly for their fascist beliefs, not all liberals are fascists. (Compare this to the Treason Media refusing to acknowledge that ANY Muslims are terrorists.) One liberal who must have been missing his Kool-Aid rations is a blogger by the handle of "Engram" who says of himself, I am professor at a major research university, a registered Democrat, a liberal by most measures, but a radical conservative relative to the large majority of my colleagues.

Well, this neocon Nazi (as the Left would call him) has posted an interesting piece with graphs that point out that despite economic numbers equivalent to the vaunted "Age of Clinton" economy, Dubya gets no love and people when polled give thru the Looking Glass responses as to whether they're satisfied with the economy.

Polls consistently show that Americans are rather negative about the economy, and many have wondered why that might be considering that our economy is the envy of the world (as well it should be). The source of our pessimism is a bit of a mystery, and it is one that I am going to pursue. For the moment, I'll simply note that I have identified what may be a contributing factor to our unwarranted despair: reporters rarely use charts, and that allows them to wax poetic about the "jobless recovery," "worrisome signs of inflation," "record setting deficits," and other such nonsense. Charts anchor the mind to the raw data, which makes it hard to use bumper-sticker slogans that mislead (and demoralize) more than they clarify. In any story about the economy, there is never an excuse not to use a chart, but reporters almost never do.

So, in 1998 (during the Clinton era), Americans were 65/35 on the optimistic side, but now (during the Bush era) we are 65/35 on the pessimistic side. A complete reversal. Are things really that bad? No. In fact, the evident pessimism is borderline ridiculous, but it's hard to appreciate that unless you look at some simple charts.

[snip - go to the link and see the charts and comments]

Inflation during the Bush administration has been much like it was during the Clinton administration. Even so, back then, we liked the economy. Now we hate it. So, what exactly is the problem? The "record setting" budget deficits, perhaps? Not really. Stagnant wages? Maybe, but I doubt it. I'll take a look at these a bit later, but for now, my point is that any story you read about some aspect of the economy ought to include simple charts like these. Those two stories about budget deficits and stagnant wages -- like almost all stories about the state of economy -- don't do that. You can learn more from a few informative charts than you can from reading the words of a reporter who has an agenda that is advanced, not by showing you the actual numbers, but by using bumper-sticker slogans to create the impression that things are "spiraling out of control." Oh wait, that's the phrase reporters use to characterize Iraq. Well, they don't use charts for that purpose, either (and for the same reason).
Hmmmm....would the Treason Media be lying to us to get us to hate Team Dubya?

Duh.

Thus comment really pointed up the sneaky methods the Treason Media use to bamboozle their readers/viewers:
Pollster said...

It's entirely due to media bias. Every month a dozen economic statistics come out. Some go up, some go down. Whichever one does worst is the one that gets the most headlines. People don't remember the absolute numbers (and the MSM won't give them charts), but they DO remember the headlines. So in September "gas prices got worse". In October "unemployment got worse". In November "inflation got worse". In December "gas prices got worse" again. HOWEVER, in October and November, gas prices got BETTER, but that news was buried on page A18! Only those with a good memory for numbers will figure this out though. The rest will only remember "down down down down".

At this year's American Association for Public Opinion Research conference, data was presented on perceptions not of how the economy is doing, but whether it is getting worse or better. Republicans sometimes say it is getting worse, sometimes better, and that balances out over several years. Democrats consistently say it is getting worse every single month and have been saying so for several years. If they were correct, we would be in a terrible depression by now. Related data found that Republicans tend to base their perception of how the economy is doing on how they and their neighbors are doing, while Democrats claim to base their perception on "inflation and unemplyment statistics", except they don't REALLY know the actual numbers, they just remember the "worse worse worse worse" headlines and imagine the statistics are bad.
Which drew this follow-up:
Mark said...

It's worse than that. I remember about a year ago, just before Katrina, seeing Bob Schieffer on CBS News report the latest employment numbers. Behind him the graphic showed a jagged, downward pointing line with the the text "Job Losses". And Bob reported a significant increase in job growth.

To say the least, I was stunned with what I saw. How many people heard 100,000 jobs created as being jobs lost?

This was not a momentary "X" over Dick Cheney's face, this was a preplanned story. They knew days in advance what day the job numbers would be released. They knew what the economists were predicting. At the least they should have had two graphics ready. But the Jobs numbers are always released in the morning about eight to nine hours prior to the evening news going live.
How many days until the perky Katie Couric starts her stint in one of the Big Three Big Lie chairs?

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

X2 4800 HOT!!! (Geeks Only Fun)

If you're into building computers, check out this thread, visiting the link in the first post then reading the replies. Fun stuff if you can appreciate the humor.

One Mean Pussy!

Meet Grumpy - the nastiest cat on earth...

With his vicious fangs on display and weight firmly on his back legs, this tabby looks set to pounce on its unsuspecting prey.

But it is not mice, birds or any other small animals he is after. It is not even the other pet cats he has already savaged in his neighbourhood.

They were deemed too 'small' a target to terrify, so he decided to turn his attention to a much larger prey - humans.
Of course, this wouldn't be happening if John F'ing Kerry was President. (He said so!)

Friday, August 25, 2006

The Friday Fiver

Looking over my week-old notes for Morning Coffees I haven't had time to post, I realize that I still don't have time to rehash now-stale news, so to see what I was reading, check out my Del.icio.us page where I park news and articles of interest, some of which are intended for here, but may not get posted due to time shortages.

So, in lieu of heavy chin-stroking stuff, here's this week's Friday Fiver. (They didn't even post one last week, so it's not just me slacking off!)

1. Who do you live with?

The souls of my vanquished foes.

2. Do you like who you live with or do you want change?

I'd like a change, but Angelina has too many kids hanging around.

3. Describe the ideal roommate:

Angelina Jolie without the kids.

4. How much sleep did you get last night?

About 3 hours and, no, it wasn't enough.

5. Where would you love to play hide-and-seek?

An Asian brothel. With Angelina Jolie.

When Bunny Huggers Attack!

We all know that the Left is populated with violent and nasty people who view anyone who differs from them as unworthy of fundamental human kindness or respect. The latest example comes from Old Blighty as parents of a rabbit flu victim are taunted by animal rights extremists. A snip:

Animal rights activists have targeted the parents of Britain's first known human victim of "rabbit flu", with telephone callers telling them his death was a "rabbit's revenge".

John Freeman, 29, died after becoming infected with the bacteria pasteurella multocida after picking up a rabbit on his farm.

He fell ill the next day with a fever and died three days later.

His parents Joan and Peter Freeman, who farm at Aspall, near Stowmarket in Suffolk, spoke out following their son's death to appeal for greater awareness of the bacterium that caused his death.

But the couple were horrified when anti-hunting extremists telephoned them within days of their son's funeral and implied their son deserved to die.

Mrs Freeman told The Daily Telegraph that on the day they spoke out, extremists had telephoned to tell her that the couple's only child had been "popping off rabbits for fun".

In a separate call, Mr Freeman was told that the death might be "rabbit's revenge".

The couple went to a relative's house to escape the ringing telephone.

"They were implying that my son deserved to die," Mrs Freeman said. "I just can't understand how people can be so callous. To ring someone up who is devastated with grief - it is disgusting."
Yes, it's disgusting, but all too typical behavior from the folks who claim to be sooooooooooo superior due to their compassion and tolerance.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Fun From Air AmeriKKKa!

Sorry to be so scarce, but I am BUSYBUSYBUSY and just haven't had time to sleep, much less blog, but here's a quick hit to brighten your day.

I'm always accused by the ad hominem-spewing hypocritical fascists of "parroting GOP talking points" - a bogus contention since I'm 1.) not a Stupid Partier (though I've been to some stupid parties) and b.) not on any mailing lists for the Stupid Party, though I did get a campaign solicitation from Dennis Haestert today that got round-filed instantly.

However, one partisan mailing list I DO get is the Air AmeriKKKa mailers which try to promulgate the illusion that this outfit is anything but a group hug network for hate-filled moonbats. (It's good to see what lies are being lapped up by the Left before they're anonymously regurgitated in my comments area.) Anyhoo, today had a link to some site where you can type snarky messages about something involving McDonald's and Hummers and send them to McD's management to protest something.

I didn't bother reading on because I rarely eat the synthesized foodish products served there and I thought the H2 was a stupid truck when gas cost $1.70. But, why should I let their jihad determine my entertainment options? So, with thanks to the insane maniacs at Air AmeriKKKa, I present you...

Thursday, August 17, 2006

The Hollywood 84: Will the Left Punish Them For Their Apostasy?

Look at this ad placed by Nicole Kidman in the L.A. Times (click for full size):


While the Dixie Chicks have succeeded in driving away a hefty chunk of their American fans with their idiotic anti-American comments, will the moonbats who patronize the fantasy films of Michael Moore and Al Gore going to toss these people overboard for daring to name Hezbollah as the bad guys - something that Team Dubya no longer has the cajones to do?

Crazy times we're living in.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Wednesday Morning Coffee

Man, after last night's fun post - which didn't leave me depressed in its wake - it sucks to have to return to the jihad news, but this is the world we live in and will likely die in as long as feckless failures like Team Dubya bungle their Job One: Protecting the people! Let's get it over with...

"IF THE ISLAMOFASCISTS HAD HAD THEIR WAY... we’d be waking up this morning to the horrific news of 10 exploded jets and thousands of murdered Americans." - Jack Fowler @ The Corner. How many on the Left are just as angry as we are relieved?

• JIHAD IS LEGAL IN YEMEN: That's what appears to be the case as the Religion of Peace's (or is that "pieces"?) lovely Sharia Law allows for according to this WSJ story. The irony is that this Yemenese judge has a record of supporting the War Against Islamofascism, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, who ignore our Constitution and look to suicidal liberal opinion in Europe for guidance. So, if jihad is legal in Yemen and it's OK to kill Americans, when are Moby, Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin moving there to fight with their brothers in cause?

• NARAL'S FAVORITE JIHADIS: Since we know that abortion is the Holy Sacrament of the Church of the Left and every live birth is a kick in the shins of their jihad to destroy the mythical patriarchal order; the pro-abortion forces must have taken some solace in knowing that at least one baby was going to be used to kill Americans. Dead baby + dead Americans = Win-Win for the Left! Yay!

• BILL BENNETT CALLS A SHOVEL A SHOVEL: Yesterday, I was greatly annoyed on the morning drive to hear Bennett wasting time on soliciting suggestions from the audience for the name of his new dog. WTF?!?!? Sadly, this was because the listeners were more interested in that than what was going on with the Israeli sellout. Dog owners are morons. Seriously, they are as lame as their stupid dogs. I was able to learn the identity of a rabid anti-Dubya whack job who stalked me on one message board, before he decided to acknowledge his howling moonbattery publicly, when he was so dumb as to post a picture of his retarded dog that revealed his identity to anyone who looked at the properties to see the source server's URL.

But I digress...Bennett today makes up for things with this sobering post on The Corner about the Israelis loss to Hezbollah and how Team Dubya's Black Knight/Baghdad Bob strategy of calling this surrender and the unacceptable status quo a victory.

—It was said of Churchill that his greatness laid in seeing things how they really were, seeing things in their misery and seeing things in their greatness. The task is the same for us, or should be.

—Today, Condi Rice has an op-ed in the Washington Post claiming the U.N. resolution on Israel and Lebanon a success, writing among other things that the cease fire brokered, “a truly effective cease-fire, requires a decisive change from the status quo.” She claims Hezbollah has earned “the blame of the world for causing the war.”

—Someone at State forgot to give Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria the talking points.

—The status quo is changed alright, Israel is made weak, is made to look weak and Hezbollah has—far from any blame—new respect on the Muslim street. And the headline in the WAPO today is “Hezbollah balks at withdrawal from the South.”

[snip]

—If Israel has more victories like this, there will be no Israel. We need to be clear on this. Not because we like it, far from it, but because we hate it.
Read it all and keep it in mind when you hear Team Dubya lying about their latest failure. (Losers. Gonna get us all killed. May as well vote for the Dems - they've never promised anything but surrender up front.)

Yeesh. I'd rather write about Morgan Webb than this stuff. This is why we MUST defeat the jihadis!!! So we can live in peace and have more discussion of frivolous things like I covered in the next post down.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Tuesday Bedtime Snack (All Fun Edition)

After all the misery of the last post, more wallowing in the failure of Team Dubya and Israel to do what's necessary to survive isn't going to do much for anyone at the moment, so rather than glum out more, here's a few light things that have been piling up in my Del.icio.us list.

• SAMUEL L. JACKSON ON A MUTHAF*CKING ANSWERING MACHINE: After a run-up that's felt like forever, "Snakes on a Plane" is FINALLY opening this Friday and we can see if the hype was founded or not. As part of the promotion, you can have SLJ send an e-mail or voice mail to someone. I sent a VM to Hermione, but she never mentioned anything about it, so I don't know if it actually worked or not. It's been a week; maybe I'll ask her.

UPDATE: I asked her and though she had heard about this thing, she didn't get any call. Drat. I mean, F#@%!!!

• FILE UNDER "THINGS YOU DO WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND": Described as "The Most Disturbing Case Mod Ever", this thing...




...it's, well...it's something alright. Moving on...

• THE 12 GREATEST VIDEOGAME TOILETS EVER: From PC Gamer or Gamespot? Nope! Maxim has the rundown like:


12. Prey (2K Games; 2006)
Cleanliness factor: 0/10
Realism factor: 10/10

This toilet looks like Kirstie Alley and Bruce "Hollywood Squares" Vilanch were trying to spell out the words STAR JONES on it with their rectums after a midnight Arby's run. Forget trying to clean this place: Just scatter some jet fuel, light a match, and move to the next-closest state.
Isn't that special?

• "THE 25 GREATEST QUESTIONS in the History of the Universe." Hmmm, pretty big boast, no?
24. Why are Grape-Nuts® Neither Grapes Nor Nuts?

Post Company founder Charles W. Post might have been good at creating popular cereals, but he wasn’t the best at naming them.

One of his first breakfast treats, Post Toasties, was originally known by the more, er, zealous name, Elijah’s Manna.

And then there’s the misleading Grape-Nuts®, which Charles named after a key ingredient in the cereal called maltose, which tasted like nuts and, at the time, was known as "grape sugar." Hence, Grape-Nuts.

It may sound like false advertising, but it’s not. Post would likely be protected from such allegations by that precious little hyphen. The Federal Trade Commission might consider a cereal called Grape Nuts "deceitful," but that hyphen makes the name "fanciful," which excludes it from prosecution according to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.
You'll also find that the guy who is the "voice of AOL" does custom messages for hire. Perhaps it's time for him to announce: "YOU'VE GOT DIRK!"

• COOL VIDEO DU JOUR: I was a fan of OK Go's 2002 debut album - hey, how can you not like a record which includes the lyric "Mediocre people do exceptional things all the time"? They've been off my radar since then until yesterday, when I saw this awesome video:



I saw the new Hype Williams-directed Janet Jackson video the other night and it looks like it cost a million bucks, yet is utterly generic and the song forgetable. It's good to see some fun, low-budget/high-creativity videos for a change. Thumbs up.

• DIRK'S DISH DU JOUR: I've written about Morgan Webb before and haven't really been keeping up with her since G4's total annihilation of TechTV has made even searching for "X-Play" too painful an experience. So, last night, I'm trying to hook the DSL for Hermione's brother and while waiting for a reboot, I started looking thru the latest FHM and discovered this:


I showed it to Hermione and she actually startled at how buffed up Morgan was looking. I almost didn't recognize her without the stringy gothed hair. She's doing a column at their site for the kiddies who literally are yanking their joysticks. According to her MySpace page, she's "In a relationship", but we all know that means "Trying to avoid you dorks and your pathetic spazz pickup attempts."

• MAKING POLITICS FUN: As politics-free and fun I wanted to make this post, I just saw an ad on TV that has to be seen. It's for Michigan Stupid Party Senatorial candidate Michael Bouchard and it's called "The Date". Instead of the usual fear-and-gloom attack ads that we'll surely be getting as the Election draws near that warn us that a vote for the opponent will mean opening the 7th Seal, it features his daughter in a cute example of introducing oneself to the public in a way that will make later attacks against him from the incumbant seem petty and mean. I'm not sure if this is really the best way to be chosing our rulers, but it's entertaining and right now, a laugh is a precious thing to find.

G'night!

Friday, August 11, 2006

A Half-Dozen Things To Bum You Out For The Weekend.

You know, I'd rather be counting down the days until Michelle Wie was legal or posting about video games than all this depressing jihad stuff, but at the rate the treasonous Left and feckless Right are going, Wie's not gonna see the age of majority and the Wii won't matter as we cope with the global depression that will occur when WW4 breaks out. :(

Leading off, Hugh Hewitt's guest blogger Dean Barnett reports that 51% of Dems don't want Dubya to succeed:

Fox asked, “Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?” 51% of Democrats answered “No” to that question. 40% answered yes, and 9%, who are still apparently trying to determine just how deranged they are by their Bush hatred, answered “I don’t know.”

The depths to which the modern Democratic Party have sunk never lose their ability to shock me. In the 1990’s, I couldn’t stand Bill Clinton but I didn’t root for him to fail. From a purely selfish standpoint, I owned a business and owned stocks; the economy going in the crapper would not have been good. On a patriotic level, I also realized that there were far more important things than my disdain for the priapic POTUS.
He then added, "One of the 51% Who Wants Bush to Fail Chimes In":
This is good, courtesy of the comments section:
The shocking thing to me is only 51% of Dems get that right now: if (sic) Bush were to "succeed," we'd be unemployed, poor, with no security in our old age, with no health care, with no education, with born humans equated legally to blastulae and brain dead popele (sic) and constantly in "fear" of "terrorists."
Please take special note of the scare quotes around “fear” and “terrorists.” I love it when the reality-based community weighs in on matters with its characteristic thoughtfulness, subtlety, civility and firm grasp of world events.
Someone else in the comments section responded even better:
Mumon, You're a Moron
"If Bush were to 'succeed,' we'd be..."

"Unemployed": Have you failed to notice that unemploment in this country has been extremely LOW the last several quarters? Employment comes about as a consequence of robustness of the economy.

"No security in our old age": If you are referring to Social Security, you HAVE no security in your old age! SS is on track to fail catastrophically, and the amazing thing about you Libs is the way that you were able to myopically ignore a problem that you used to scream about, only because your hated GWB was trying to do something to fix the problem.

"No health care": Talk to anyone involved in the financial side of the Health Care Industry (anyone involved in billing, coding, etc.), and ask about the salutory effects of HIPPA, enacted by Bill Clinton. True, Bush has done nothing to solve the problem, but neither has he done anything exacerbate it. Pointedly, he has had bigger fish to fry.

"With no education": Your ability to hyperbolize is impressive, to say the least. In point of fact, though, this is one area where you have a valid criticism of GWB, if only because he has allied himself with the forces of the teachers' unions who fight daily in their own favor, and against the best interests of our kids.

"constantly in 'fear' of 'terrorists'": The ability of both yourself and those like you to constantly ignore the fact that there are at minimum 100 million people or so worldwide who want to see all of us in the West either dead or subjugated to Islam and Sharia law, never fails to take my breath away. This is not an invention of Karl Rove, moron; these people were chanting "Death to America" 30 years ago. If Bush fails, the odds go up dramatically that they will be chanting that while standing triumphantly over our charred corpses.

Idiot.
The fact that we even have to point out the sophistry of the Left's useful idiots makes me sad for the future.

Now, Charles Krauthammer has some thoughts about the Ned Lamont victory that spell disaster for the Dems future:
Lamont said in his victory speech that the time had come to "fix George Bush's failed foreign policy." Yet, as Martin Peretz pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, on Iran, the looming long-term Islamist threat, Lamont's views are risible. Lamont's alternative to the Bush Iran policy is to "bring in allies" and "use carrots as well as sticks."

Where has this man been? Negotiators with Iran have had carrots coming out of their ears in three years of fruitless negotiations. Allies? We let the British, French and Germans negotiate with Iran for those three years, only to have Iran brazenly begin accelerated uranium enrichment that continues to this day.

Lamont seems to think that we should just sit down with the Iranians and show them why going nuclear is not a good idea. This recalls Sen. William Borah's immortal reaction in September 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II: "Lord, if I could only have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided."

This naivete in the service of endless accommodationism recalls also the flaccid foreign policy of the post-Vietnam Democratic left. It lost the day -- it lost the country -- to Ronald Reagan and a muscular foreign policy that in the end won the Cold War.

Vietnam cost the Democrats 40 years in the foreign policy wilderness. Anti-Iraq sentiment gave the antiwar Democrats a good night on Tuesday, and may yet give them a good year or two. But beyond that, it will be desolation.
My problem with Krauthammer's formulation is that the desolation he speaks of won't be of the Dem Party, but the ENTIRE WORLD! World War is upon us and too many people are in denial as to what needs to be done. Bill Bennet has an excellent piece at NRO, "Why Israel Fights…and why the U.S. must let her.":
If Jews are the canaries in the coalmine of how a civilization, state, or country will treat religious or ethnic minorities, what is Israel — the only democratic state in the Middle East, and the only Jewish state in the world? For several years now, I have been asking the question: Will our culture and the international community allow us to fight the war we need to fight to prevail? An interim answer to that question is now playing out for Israel, our international canary in the darkest of mines.

Israel, which comprises some 10,000 square miles, compared with Arab countries that total over five million square miles — not including Iran — has shown itself to be a model of democracy and decency. Over one million Arabs live in Israel with full rights of citizenship, they vote and serve in Israel’s parliament. Syria wants Israel gone and Iran’s president openly calls for Israel’s destruction. With the exceptions of Egypt and Jordan, no Arab state officially recognizes Israel as a state. And yet, bereft of oil, Israel’s per capita gross domestic product tops 24,000 dollars (compared with the oil-rich Saudi Arabia whose per capita GDP hovers at 13,000 dollars), and it remains a thriving bastion of democratic liberalism in an ocean of oligarchies and dictatorships.

Israel has been the state sponsor of no terror, has kidnapped no innocent citizens of other countries, and has fought for its life ever since it was founded in 1948 as its neighboring states have started war after war to wipe it off the map. And yet, Israel is continually asked to cease defending itself by the United Nations, by the European Union, and by a coterie of other international organizations that have called on Israel’s neighbors to cease their terrorist activities and human rights violations almost never. It is an expectation of Israel that it act like a civilized nation. Fair enough. But the expectation of the terrorists is zero. A contemporary, international version of “boys will be boys” governs in the form of “terrorists will be terrorists.” That is all they have to live with, and up to, in the way of judgment. Meanwhile, it is illegal for Jews or Christians to become citizens of Saudi Arabia, it was Zionism the U.N. once condemned as “racist.”

While the formula for the long-sought-after goal of “peace in the Middle East,” has long been based on the trope of “land for peace,” where Israel would give up disputed land in exchange for peace or recognition, Israel has given up land time and again, and yet somehow one million Israelis are spending tonight in bomb shelters. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 there was no peace, when Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas took over the territory and used it as a base for rocket launches ever since.

[snip]

Yes, Israel’s war is our war. About this, our mutual enemies have no doubt. The same cannot be said of the international community. Now is the time for Israel to clean Hezbollah out of the Middle East, just as we are trying to clean al Qaeda out of everywhere else they have planted their soldiers. This is a long haul, and a dangerous war, but it will be longer and made more dangerous with appeasement and ceasefires being urged upon Israel and, for that matter, the United States.

Let Kofi Annan condemn Israel. Let ex-State Department officials wring their hands. Let the Security Council issue its condemnations if it must. But at the end of the diplomatic doublespeak and the denunciations of editorial writers here and abroad, let the countries on the frontlines, fighting for their existence, act like any normal country would under attack and save themselves. In so doing, they will save those who also strive to be normal, democratic, and free. For if Iran’s “frontline” succeeds, Israel and the U.S. will cease to exist on the globe below which Hezbollah’s rifle is held. And al Qaeda will cheer the outcome for its newfound ally.
Well, that's bleak and Newt Gingrich says "The Only Option is to Win":
Our enemies are quite public and repetitive in saying what they want. Not since Adolf Hitler has any group been as bloodthirsty and as open. If Holbrooke really wants a "stable and secure" Israel he will not find it by trying to appease Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.

This issue of national security goals will be at the heart of the American dialogue for some time. If our enemies are truly our enemies (and their words and deeds are certainly those of enemies) then victory should be our goal. If nuclear and biological threats are real, then aggressive strategies to disarm them if possible and defeat them if necessary will be required.
But what really, REALLY got me depressed was this lengthy article reprinted at The Corner that bluntly states, "The War Is Coming, No Matter How Hard We Try to Evade It."
British commentator David Pryce-Jones, in his blog at National Review Online, sums up the general sense of things:

I have often wondered what it would have been like to live through the Thirties. How would I have reacted to the annual Nuremberg Party rallies, the rants against the Jews, and Hitler’s foreign adventures which the democracies did nothing to oppose, the occupation of the Rhineland and Austria, Nazi support for Franco in the Spanish civil war, and the rest of it. Appeasement was then considered wise, and has only become a dirty word with hindsight….

Now Iran is embarked on foreign adventures in Iraq and Syria and Lebanon. It is engaged on all-out armament programs, and is evidently hard at work developing the nuclear weapon that will give it a dimension of power that Hitler did not have…. Appeasement is again considered wise.

What these commentators are picking up is not an exact parallel to any one event of the 1930s—hence their scattershot of historical analogies. Instead, what they are picking up is a sense of the overall direction of world events: we are clearly headed toward a much larger, bloodier conflict in the Middle East, but no one in the West wants to acknowledge it, prepare for it, or begin to fight it.

[snip]

We can't avoid this war, because Iran won't let us avoid it. That is the real analogy to the 1930s. Hitler came to power espousing the goal of German world domination, openly promising to conquer neighboring nations through military force and to persecute and murder Europe's Jews. He predicted that the free nations of the world would be too weak—too morally weak—to stand up to him, and European and American leaders spent the 1930s reinforcing that impression. So Hitler kept advancing—the militarization of the Rhineland in 1936, the Spanish bombing campaign in 1937, the annexation of Austria and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, the invasion of Poland in 1939—until the West finally, belated decided there was no alternative but war.

That is what is playing out today. Iran's theocracy has chosen, as the nation's new president, a religious fanatic who believes in the impending, apocalyptic triumph of Islam over the infidels. He openly proclaims his desire to create an Iranian-led Axis that will unite the Middle East in the battle against America, and he proclaims his desire to "wipe Israel off the map," telling an audience of Muslim leaders that "the main solution" to the conflict in Lebanon is "the elimination of the Zionist regime." (Perhaps this would be better translated as Ahmadinejad's "final solution" to the problem of Israel.)

Like Hitler, Ahmadinejad regards the free nations of the world as fading "sunset" powers, too morally weak to resist his legions of Muslim fanatics. And when we hesitate to kill Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, when we pressure Israel to rein in its attacks on Hezbollah, when we pander to the anti-Jewish bigotry of the "Muslim street"—we reinforce his impression of our weakness.

[snip]

The left also senses the impending war, but they have a very different reaction. Their favorite analogy is not the prelude to World War II, but the beginning of World War I.

It is widely acknowledged that World War II was made far more horrible by the years in which free nations appeased Hitler, allowing him to strengthen his armies before he took over Europe. That analogy lends itself to one conclusion: the sooner we attack Iran, the better.

World War I, by contrast, is largely regarded as the result of a giant, tragic mistake, a failure of diplomacy in which the great powers of Europe, seeking a network of alliances that would guarantee a "balance of power," instead trapped themselves into a senseless war.

[snip]

The larger evasion is this: the left senses that a regional war is coming, that Iran is hell-bent on starting it, and that there is no way to avoid it. But all of this runs directly counter to their whole world-view. Rather than questioning that world view, they simply assert that this can't be happening. They have to believe that something, anything—no matter how implausible—will stop it from happening. If we just get everyone together and talk, and we keep tinkering with diplomatic solutions until we find something that works, surely we can find a way to avoid a regional war in the Middle East. Can't we? Please?

And so the left confirms the right's sense that the appeasement of the 1930s is the best historical precedent for the current era.

Fortunately, George Bush is not Neville Chamberlain. He has already waged two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Imagine if, during the 1930s, the Allied Powers had already joined forces to defeat the fascists in Spain, then invaded Italy and overthrown Mussolini's regime. It would have made the coming conflict easier—but it would not have defanged our most dangerous enemy.

Unfortunately, George Bush is not Winston Churchill. It is as if, having suppressed fascism in Spain and Italy, we were still appeasing Germany and subordinating our interests to a wobbly consensus at the League of Nations. Just as Germany was the central enemy in the European theater of World War II, so Iran is the central enemy in the Middle East today.

Observing the events of today—the hesitation and uncertainty, the stubborn clinging to the fantasy that the enemy can be appeased if we just keep talking and find the right diplomatic solution—I now feel that, for the first time, I really understand the leaders of the 1930s. Their illusion that Hitler could be appeased has always seemed, in historical hindsight, to be such a willful evasion of the facts that I have never grasped how it was possible for those men to deceive themselves. But I can now see how they clung to their evasions because they could not imagine anything worse than a return to the mass slaughter of the First World War. They wanted to believe that something, anything could prevent a return to war. What they refused to imagine is that, in trying to avoid the horrors of the previous war, they were allowing Hitler to unleash the much greater horrors of a new war.

Today's leaders and commentators have less excuse. The "horror" they are afraid of repeating is the insurgency we're fighting in Iraq—a war whose cost in lives, dollars, and resolve is among the smallest America has ever had to pay. And it takes no great feat of imagination to project how much more horrible the coming conflict will be if we wait on events long enough for Iran to arm itself with nuclear technology. Among the horrific consequences is the specter of a new Holocaust, courtesy of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

The good news, such as it is, is that the air of foreboding about this new war is somewhat exaggerated. Yes, the conflict will become larger and bloodier—far bloodier than it would have been had we acted earlier. But Iran is not Nazi Germany—a large, united, economically and technologically advanced nation that could nearly equal our military capability. Iran is a poor, backward nation with a large, restive dissident movement. Its military bluster is a hollow shell hiding its underlying weakness. It's time to break that shell and kill the monster inside—before it grows any bigger and more powerful.

We can all sense that the war is coming. It is vital for America to seize the initiative and fight it on our terms, when we have the maximum advantage.

It's five minutes to midnight. The time to strike Iran is now.
Sorry to quote so much here - there's even more at the link - but when you see the backwards-looking, unhinged, rage-fueled and suicidally insane Left blow off what's plainly obvious because it doesn't fit their Bush Derangement Syndrome-corroded minds and thirst for revenge, it's hard to feel optimistic. They will lead us to annihilation if they believe that it would hurt Dubya's poll numbers.

We end where we started, with Dean Barnett's post, "Imagining Victory" (lousy title) which posits:
HE FIRST STEP TO victory on the global war terror will be dropping that stupid name “global war on terror.” This is the first war in our history where we’ve declined to even identify who we’re fighting. In the Civil War, the Union didn’t pause to label the Rebs and in World War II we willingly called out the Axis Powers.

But in this war, we resolutely refuse to identify who we’re fighting. Most of the readers of this site know that we’re fighting the followers of radical Islam; they want so badly to spread their own perverse philosophy that they want and need us dead. Most people who have seriously intellectually engaged with the current struggle know this. I don’t think it’s the tiresome braying of CAIR that’s triggered our reticence. I think it’s our own highly refined reluctance to offend that shackles us.

When the neo-cons (like me) said that we would be greeted with garlands of roses in Iraq, we meant it. We couldn’t imagine anyone preferring an 8th century theocracy to freedom and liberty. But subsequent events in Iraq and Palestine have had to give any thinking person pause. The people of Palestine democratically opted for a government that promises non-stop war with a much more powerful enemy. Where the people of Iraq stand remains opaque.

[snip]

Until the Jihadists realize they can’t win, they will continue to fight. Every instance of Western weakness succors them. Every U.N. resolution, European cry for diplomacy and academic case for moral equivalency feeds their notion that their victory is inevitable.

Getting to victory will be an ugly thing. Our weapons will kill innocents, just as they did in Nagasaki and Dresden. And we will suffer our own losses. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that America will have to suffer a grievous loss before unshackling its own might. And our first grievous loss will not be our last. Like any global conflagration, this one will be full of horrors, horrors that most refuse to contemplate.

SO WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE? Graham Allison, Joe Nye and other Kennedy School types will tell you that we can talk Radical Islamists out of this whole crazy Jihad thing with just some judicious use of our “soft power.” We can win hearts and minds, they argue, if we just try a little tenderness.

Their argument, however, betrays a spectacular ignorance regarding Jihad philosophy . There’s nothing new going on here, nothing that’s not 14 centuries old. The only difference is that a trillion dollars in petro-dollars has given the forces of Jihad power and reach that even the Prophet never imagined. To think we can jawbone our way out of this is dangerously wishful thinking.

It’s an ugly situation. It’s a miserable reality. But denying it or creating elegant professorial sophistries won’t make it vanish.

We can win and we will win, but doing so will be neither painless, bloodless or easy.
Judging from the hand-wringing and wailing about our casualties - which are much higher than they would've been if we hadn't fought this war half-assed; frozen by White Guilt; wasting our soldiers lives and bodies needlessly - it's clear that the intelligencia have have succeeded in making surrender and hopes for merciful treatment by our new masters the preferred course of inaction by the public. "NO WAR FOR OUR OWN SURVIVAL!" may as well be the chant of these sheeple. (Never cared for that term, but it fits here.)

The suicide-inducing disease of liberalism has sapped the spines and gonads of the world and the Islamofascists know it and they will sweep thru us like the armies of the dead in "Return of the King". When you've got three Palestinians getting caught in Michigan with 1000 cell phones which can be used to set off bombs, Madrid-style; Keith Olberman making the UK plane-bombing plot sound like a Team Dubya scam; Mike Wallace rushing to Iran to suck the Iranian Hitler's dick, pronounce it tasty and refer to Israel as "the Zionist state"; and now reports that the pathetic PM of Israel, Olmert, who mismanaged Israel's response to Hezbollah's terror is about to buy into a UN deal which will hand Israel it's first defeat in war (and probably not the last), the jihadis, with their single-minded focus on incinerating the future must be sharpening their daggers and smiling at the victory that will be handed to them more than won.

Yeah, try to have a nice weekend knowing all this.

Richie Rich and the two anti-semites

Power Line talks about the ascendency of the ultra-rich as the primary power base of the Dems.

[this] won't help Lamont or the Democratic Party gain the votes of Polish shipyards workers in New London or Irish insurance industry employees in West Hartford. More to the point this kind of image could make such states as New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania swing to the GOP in the next Presidential election. When [my wife] whose political sensibilities often mirror those of Blue Collar Catholics saw Lamont on the stage with Sharpton and Jackson she blurted out "there's Richie Rich and the two Anti-Semites."
Read it all.

lgf: More Death Cult Propaganda

Copied straight from here:

This AP photograph from Gaza, published yesterday, claims to show a little Palestinian girl killed by an Israeli airstrike being carried into a hospital, surrounded by armed men (probably Hamas).



A Relative carries the body of Rajaa Abu Shaban, into Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006. An Israel air strike against Islamic militants in Gaza City on Wednesday killed three people, including 5-year-old Rajaa Abu Shaban, and wounded two more, Palestinian officials and witnesses said. The Israeli army said its forces attacked a ‘terrorist training camp’ in Gaza, but gave no further details. (AP photo/Adel Hana)

Another photo, this one from Reuters, shows the dead girl lying in the morgue, again with a caption claiming she was killed by Israel.



The body of three-year-old Palestinian girl Raja Abu Shaban lies in the morgue after she was killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza August 9, 2006. An Israeli helicopter gunship fired at least one missile into a Palestinian militant training camp in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing two gunmen and a three-year-old girl, witnesses said. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES)

Today the truth came out. But the damage, of course, is already done—and you can bet the photos will soon show up in anti-Israel demonstrations.



EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** A Relative carries the body of Rajaa Abu Shaban, 5, into Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006. On Thursday, doctors said that the 5-year-old Palestinian girl initially believed to have been killed by an Israeli military strike Wednesday apparently died after sustaining head injuries during a fall from a swing in the same area shortly before the strike.(AP Photo/Adel Hana)
Ever notice that the Treason Media rarely runs photos of the dead Jews? If you base your knowledge on the slanted propaganda they're shoveling, you'd think Israel just up and started killing babies in Lebanon.

Friday Morning Coffee

Lots afoot and more surely to come, so let's get at it!

STUCK ON STUPID, LIVING IN THE PAST: About a half-dozen posts down is an item about Joe Lieberman's web site crashing on primary day. His campaign accused the Lamont campaign and supporters of hacking the site. I posted the story as it ran at a newspaper's site and went on to more pressing issues. The comments started coming in that the real problem was Lieberman's campaign chintzing out on their web hosting, but no supporting evidence (i.e. links) was provided. As usual, the Left was using Dan Rather's "cuz I said so" tactics instead of being from Missouri about it.

Last night, I had a spare moment to Google what they were yammering about and updated the post with the info they wouldn't provide: that head nutroot Kos was the source of this rebuttal. Now, with the Left's record of violence and dissent-squelching tactics - including DDoS attacks on conservative sites, vandalism and death threats - the suspicion that Lieberman was hacked wasn't a baseless one. From throwing Oreos at black Republicans to running photos of Lieberman made up in blackface...



...something that was also done to the black Republican in Maryland - racist images attacking non-liberals are standard practice from the Left because they don't believe that their ideological enemies are entitled to speech rights, personal safety or any modicum of respect.

The reason I mention this old and dead topic is because I'm still getting comment submissions - well after I declared the subject cold and old - from people still trying to float the "cheap hosting" line and proclaiming their superiority because the liberal sites looked into the issue, as they did. But what's illustrative is how backwards-looking the Left is. They have no saleable vision for the future; they have no ideas that anyone interested in survival would buy into; they can't stop picking the scabs of the past even when their grievances have been thoroughly debunked, discredited and destroyed.

Dubya was elected in 2000, yet almost six years later, the Left is STILL trying to overturn that Election as they always do when they find their Divine Right to rule challenged. They are still trying to overturn the 2004 Election based on hysterical nonsense about exit polls being an exact science - if polls were accurate, why didn't Lamont win by 15%? Five years after 9/11, there is good business in picking up "Loose Change" because in the rotted, deranged minds of the Left, there are no enemies but America and conservatives/libertarians and rather than open their eyes to the people who want them dead or enslaved, they hallucinate ludicrous fantasias of evil doings from the same "cabal" that they say are too stupid for the world's good. (Pick one, kiddies!)

The Left is all about the past and picking old scabs. The readers complain that I didn't investigate the story further, but hope no one notices that they aren't attacking the Treason Media, but those who merely quoted the Treason Media. This is a key distinction that should be noted by those who still rank the Old Media above the unruly pajama-clad rabble in the Blogosphere: It's my fault that I didn't fact-check the MSM story, despite having no evidence that it was incorrect because these ankle-biting trolls couldn't bother posting a source for me to look at. They aren't attacking the newspaper; they're attacking people who linked to the newspaper.

Also notice that thet don't seem to have the same curiosity or tenaciousness when it comes to Al Reuters diseminating staged Hezbollah propaganda photos and other "fauxtography". Nope, they're stuck on stupid and living in the past. A half-dozen stories have posted here in the meantime and they haven't said a peep about them, preferring to try and Gulliver me into battling on a long dead issue of little significance and no future value. Fine, Joe's a cheap-ass who blames others for his failings. How many lives does proving that save, Kossacks?

The difference between me and the Left is ironic: If the world operated according to my values, insane, unhinged, hate-and-rage-filled psychotic moonbats such as them would be alive to rant and rave, but if they were to be in control, they would usher in the End of Western Civilization and collaborate in genocide against anyone not mouthing their shibboleths until the moment that the sword of Islam separates their empty heads from their bodies. Funny how that works, innit? I'm working harder to keep these loonies alive than they are willing to do for themselves. Where's the gratitude?

Now for some lighter stuff...

COLIN FERRELL CAUSES BAD MOVIES THAT WASTE HOT NUDITY: I came across a video clip of Rosario Dawson's nude scene in "Alexander" last night. (Homina-homina-fwap-fwap-fwap!!!!) I never made it to that point when I endured some of the movie on cable because, frankly, it sucks donkeys. Suddenly, I realized that I'd just seen another movie that was totally lame despite having the smoking hot Salma Hayek cavorting in the altogether, "Ask The Dust". And who was the male lead of that one? Colin Ferrell!!!!

Resolved: Movies with him and hot female nudity should be trimmed down to just the skin scenes and posted online, since the surrounding movies overwhelm the hotness with general suckiness.

THE FRIDAY FIVER: Actually done on the Friday it came out!

1. Do you work hard or do you take the easy way out?

I work hard on taking the easy way out.

2. How's your day going?

It's early, but it's shaping up to suck nonetheless.

3. How many pairs of shoes do you own?

Probably over a dozen, but I usually wear a couple pairs of work shoes and sneakers. A lot of my shoes have broken laces and I can't track down replacements for them.

4. Do you consider yourself cool?

Hmmmm, if I answer yes, I'm an egomaniac; answer no, I'm emo. Actually, I don't obsess about this sort of thing. Let's just say that if you think I'm cool, then I'm cool, but if you don't think I'm cool, then it must be due to your jealousy over how cool I am.

5. What's the last song you listened to?

See the next item.


WE ARE THE INTERNET: The Internet - aka "teh Intarwebs" - has made instant celebrities of some freaky folks who have now banded together to make a music video in support of Net Neutrality that plopped into my MySpace bulletin inbox this morning. Even if you think these folks are whackos, the fact that they (and by extention almost anyone) can do something like this is a testament to the democratizing force that the Net and cheap technology has become. Anyone can be a star; anyone can be a reporter; it's no longer "give the people what they want" but "find the people who want what you've got"! The Old Media companies and the gatekeepers who worked within them despise this change and are doing whatever they can to roll the clock back to the time when they were the gods who determined who won and lost in defiance of the public's tastes.



I'm proud to say that I had no idea who the woman was, but ashamed that I knew the guys.

Do As Al Says, Not As He Does!

I've written here that "hypocrisy is the coin of the liberal realm" so many times, I should set up a macro to insert this simple Truth, which is also an inconvenient truth when Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe. Former Vice-Perp Al "No controlling legal authority" Gore has be trying to make some cash by lying to the world about something, Michael Moore style, with his sci-fi fantasy film, "An Inconvenient Manbearpig", but while he hectors us peasants to bend over and grab out ankles, he lives the phat life, yo.

Peter Schweizer, author of "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy" writes:

Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb," warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin."

Graciously, Gore tells consumers how to change their lives to curb their carbon-gobbling ways: Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, use a clothesline, drive a hybrid, use renewable energy, dramatically cut back on consumption. Better still, responsible global citizens can follow Gore's example, because, as he readily points out in his speeches, he lives a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." But if Al Gore is the world's role model for ecology, the planet is doomed.

For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

Gore is not alone. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has said, "Global warming is happening, and it threatens our very existence." The DNC website applauds the fact that Gore has "tried to move people to act." Yet, astoundingly, Gore's persuasive powers have failed to convince his own party: The DNC has not signed up to pay an additional two pennies a kilowatt hour to go green. For that matter, neither has the Republican National Committee.

Maybe our very existence isn't threatened.

Gore has held these apocalyptic views about the environment for some time. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings in Occidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.

Living carbon-neutral apparently doesn't mean living oil-stock free. Nor does it necessarily mean giving up a mining royalty either.

Humanity might be "sitting on a ticking time bomb," but Gore's home in Carthage is sitting on a zinc mine. Gore receives $20,000 a year in royalties from Pasminco Zinc, which operates a zinc concession on his property.
Tennessee has cited the company for adding large quantities of barium, iron and zinc to the nearby Caney Fork River.

The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.
And THAT is the inconvenient truth, Ruth!!!

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Thursday Bedtime Stories (Sweet Dreams!)

Man, Jay Leno sucks, doesn't he? You think a comedian would notice that his audience barely laughs at his unfair potshots at Dubya and switch directions, but since the unctuous suckup needs to get the A-list guests on his show and that means toeing the anti-Dubya line, he keeps flailing away. OTOH, Letterman constantly shows clips of Dubya slaughtering the language, etc. and those invariably geta big laugh. From me! Why? Because they're true and all good humor has an element of truth to it. Leno's jokes are based on tired myths and thus are unfunny.

Anyhoo, this is just a quick recap of a great streak of stories that ran over at Michelle Malkin's place. Rather than bother trying to condense them here, just hit the links and read on from there.

First up are the missing Egyptian "students". Look at this collage:



This comes from some web site with contacts inside the FBI, but the FBI apparently hasn't felt the need to provide these shots to the public to illustrate who they're allegedly looking for. Nice war on terror you're running there, Dubya!

Next are the "Dearbornistan" terror suspects who were selling hundreds of disposable cell phones in a hotbed of Hezbollah support. It's fun working in a city where the jihadists probably have a serious cell presence, but the local law and pols don't care to look into the mosques to see what's up. Political correctness = Death.

Of course, the big story today was the UK bomb plot. The unhinged moonbats have announced that this is all Dubya's fault and this "plot" is just a Karl Rove scam to distract from Joe Lieberman's defeat. Yeah, they're idiots, but what else is new. The one funny - because it was true - joke Leno had tonight had him saying that the Brits were able to locate the terrorists "by using surveilance methods not yet revealed by the New York Times."

Air travel is in a total shambles and "Primetime Live" was doing a special report about this and showing them making people take off their shoes. When my g/f Hermione and I flew to NYC in Oct. 2002, they left my Nikes alone, but made her take her boots off. She's about as pale as you can get without crossing into transparency and has a crucifix among her necklaces, yet politically correct security protocols demanded that she be screened while, oh, I dunno, MUSLIMS!!!! can't be scrutinized because that would be "racial profiling" and thus bad.

When a society is so emasculated as to be unwilling to look at those groups who have a record of being a threat for fear of hurting people's feelings, it can't survive.

Anyone here old enough to remember the concern about whether a Catholic President would be loyal to America or Rome? When's the last time you've heard Muslims patriotism questioned? (Or a Democrats?) Take a gander at this chart included in this post:



It's not racist to look at this and get worried, but the White Guilt that has been pounded into everyone in order to cow people into subjugating themselves to suicidal ideas makes people ignore what they know to be true. People can't live too long with that sort of noise drowning out reason, either.

Finally, here's another Hot Air video about the Treason Media's use of "Fauxtography" to spread Hezbollah's propaganda as news in order to convince the West that they are evil and the terrorists the victims.



One question: Where can I get that panda shirt she's wearing? Hermione would love it! Please post a link in comments if you know. Thanks!

Sweet dreams.......provided you can sleep after reading how at risk we are.

Jack Bauer: One Man. Two States. No Other Choice.

Blogs4Bauer is a site to get Jack Bauer elected as Senator from BOTH New York and Connecticut.



Why not Jack as Senator from ALL the states?!? I say we ditch Dubya NOW and make Jack President and win the War Against Islamofascism, secure the borders, and make Van Halen tour with Roth singing again!

np: "America, F*ck Yeah!"

Busted! What happens when WGA attacks.

A break from the jihad news to cover some corporate terrorism courtesy of Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage software which supposedly detects pirated versions. Unfortunately, it's getting a lot of false positives and people with legal licensed copies are getting threatened as if they were thieves. Such antics didn't work for the music Industry™ and they'll backfire here as well.

Read it all, of course, but here's the punchline:

The entire program is couched in language that would make Orwell proud. I’d love to spend an hour in Redmond, locked in a room with the WGA team, so I could explain exactly how wrong their approach is. If I had my way, I’d tear down every existing web page and start over. Here’s a hint: Stop treating every customer as if they were a thief.
A few posts down, I had some sport with the thin-skinned Mac users, but if there's one argument that they have in their favor, it's that Apple hasn't pulled a customer-brutalizing stunt like this. Yet.

"Green Helmet" Directs The Fake News From Qana.

Scroll down to find the earlier mentions of omnipresent Hezbollah rescuer know as "Green Helmet" who was shown waved around the bodies of dead children in order to score propaganda points against Israel with the willing assistance of the American Treason Media.

Well, apparently some German television programs aren't as down with the program - or should that be pogrom? - and are willing to show the uncut version of the structured images we're being spoon-fed:



If the saddest victims of war are the children, shouldn't the bastards who are getting them killed (by trapping them in apartments with their rockets) and abusing their bodies for the cameras be held up for scrutiny. Apparently not if it hurts Dubya, America and Israel.

Another slip was made by metro(sexual) reporter Anderson Cooper (who tacked a 360 onto his name to attract video gamers) when he revealed some inconvenient truths about the staging of the carnage:

I was in Beirut, and they took me on this sort of guided tour of the Hezbollah- controlled territories in southern Lebanon that were heavily bombed. They are much cruder, obviously. They don't have the experience in this kind of thing. But they clearly want the story of civilian casualties out. That is their — what they're heavily pushing, to the point where on this tour I was on, they were just making stuff up. They had six ambulances lined up in a row and said, OK, you know, they brought reporters there, they said you can talk to the ambulance drives. And then one by one, they told the ambulances to turn on their sirens and to zoom off, and people taking that picture would be reporting, I guess, the idea that these ambulances were zooming off to treat civilian casualties, when in fact, these ambulances were literally going back and forth down the street just for people to take pictures of them.
Dubya appears before a banner reading "Mission Accomplished" and he's bashed for staging the news. Hezbollah actually stages the news and funnels fake photos to a pliant media and they are hailed as brave freedom fighters against American/Zionist imperialism.

Madness!

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Giving Mac (L)users The Digg!

Fanatical Mac users are pitiful. End of discussion.

Oh, you want more? OK, first look at the thread referenced on this Digg thread, "First Mac Pro Unpacking Pictures". Then do a search for my nose-honking posts (ID :DirkBelig) and the hysterical reactions of the blind Apple Kool-Aid guzzlers as they try to bury my comments and gouge their eyes out to avoid ever seeing my truths again.

At this posting, I'm at -107 diggs while it has 1039 diggs, meaning 1 in 10 Apple hacks is taking the time to bury me while expressing their blind love. Funny stuff.

Conspiracy Theorists Can't Handle The Truth!

There is a sizable contingent of insane people who refuse to understand that their lives are threatened by Islamofascists and instead cling to the mad idea that 9/11 was a Team Dubya setup. (Yeah, the same crowd that can't prevent the Treason Media from spilling its secrets has somehow kept this one under wraps. Please.) Michael Moore got himself good and rich tapping into these losers wallets and when "United 93" came out, I watched otherwise sane people sail thru the Looking Glass to the Land Where It Was Shot Down To Go To War For Halliburton.

I saw at Digg this story that conspiracy theorists blog that Flight 93 photo is fake. The photo is this one...



...taken that morning by a woman in Pennsylvania. She's sold prints and donated the proceeds to charity, but now she's being beset upon by the violent lunatics that typical today's unhinged Left. They are attacking her veracity and putting her life and livelihood at risk while shielding themselves from scrutiny, hiding behind their aliases. (I've been in the same position, too. The fascist Left has no use for the privacy concerns of their targets because to them, they are ineligible for the same treatment they reserve to themselves.)

In case any of you fools who guzzle from the "Loose Change" Kool-Aid nozzle have landed here on DIRKWORLD®, here's a helpful site: "There is no 9/11 conspiracy you morons." Pretty funny stuff, but if you really want to see how threadbare and hallucinatory the tinfoil hat crowd is, check out the "9-11 Loose Change Second Edition Viewer Guide" which has literally hundreds of fact checks and debunks. Not that these loons are rational enough to understand the Truth.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Nutroots Net Hack Attack! (Update: Or Is Joe Just Cheap?)

A common tactic of the Left is to launch DDoS attacks against and/or hack the web sites of their ideological foes - that is, when they aren't slashing tires or faking up ballots - and today as part of their campaign and tolerance and support for diversity Hackers For Lamont have taken out Joe Lieberman's campaign web site in order to stifle the flow of info about ol' Joe.

Lieberman campaign manager Sean Smith said the campaign has contacted the Connecticut attorney general's office and asked for a criminal investigation by state and federal authorities.

"If Ned Lamont has a backbone in his body, he will call on these people to cease and desist," Smith said.

Smith said the site began having problems Monday night and crashed for good at 7 a.m.

"Voters cannot go to our Web site. They cannot access information," Smith said. "It is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise voters."

Lamont, the millionaire owner of a cable television company, held a slight lead of 51 percent to 45 percent over Lieberman among likely Democratic voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday.
When you hear Dems lying about their concern for the "Little Guy" and their support for freedom of speech, remember the latest Democrat millionaire to buy an Senator's office and the minions who will act as digital brown shirts to silence their opponents.

===============

UPDATE: In the comments, some Anonymous Coward (as /. would call 'em) posted that the reason for Joe's site being down was because he had his site running on a $15 account. No links to sourcing were provided and they quickly devolved into typical liberal baiting. Since life moves on and the willingness of the Treason Media to assist Hezbollah in their propaganda efforts and plots to bomb airplanes are more important, this little mouse fart in a hurricane of a story wasn't that important.

However, since this Anonymous Coward refused to provide any backing - unlike how us Truth-based people work - I did a Google and found that all stories linked back to - tada! - DailyKos and chief fascist Kos himself's post proffering an explanation as to what may've happened. Considering the fascist Dems' usual tactics of voter suppression - like slashing tires on Stupid Party GOTV vans - this seems a little pat and I haven't seen any other sourcing, take this rebuttal with a hunk of sodium chloride.

Like most of the unhinged moonbats, this Anonymous Coward, would've kept posting on this old thread, bogging down my ability to post CURRENT news - gee, do you think that was his plan? Duh. - is stuck in the past, hmmm, circa 2000 or so, and rather than waste his time deleting his fact-devoid comments (that no one would read other than him and and his sodomized gerbil), I'm tossing him a bone so that he can, you know....MOVE ON!!!!

Who's telling the truth about the server crash? A U.S. Senator or a insane fascist kook who wants to usher in the End of Civilization because he wants to live as a dhimmi on his knees before the sword of Islam? Hmmmmm??? Who to believe???

=============

UPDATE (12/21/06) - A stuck in the past Anonymous Pussy sent a link to this story that the Lamont campaign had been "cleared" of the hacking charge. This isn't too surprising since Lamont had lost and wasting more money prosecuting this prank would've been pointless, so law enforcement decided to sweep it under the rug and forgot about it like history has forgotten Ned Lamont.

Keep in mind that the Clinton Regime was also "cleared" by the hack (forget his name) who took over from Kenneth Starr. No one but fascist Dem partisans and morons believes that that gang wasn't anything less than the most corrupt pack of treasonous gangsters to ever exploit and endanger the country, but because he was so popular with the sheeple, they decided to let him slide than imprison him for his crimes.

A "Picture Kill" Is Worth A Thousand Lies.

For those too lazy (or frightened) to click around yesterday's posts to various Al Retuers photo frauds, kick back for five and watch this wrapup from Vent.



It's too bad that Hot Air is managed by a hypocritical bully boy because Malkin's pieces are usually good and she's still cute, though her willingness to let Allahpundit squelch speech is disappointing.

If you're still in the mood to read, hit this Investor's Business Daily column about Al Reuters:

Need a little anti-war, anti-Semitic buck-up? Try some Reuters coverage. The British news outlet will be only too happy to oblige.

The photo, an image of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, had apparently been altered to give the effect that the smoke was thicker and the damage worse than it was. The doctored version, credited to Adnan Hajj, a freelance Lebanese photographer, shows two heavy plumes of smoke where there was in fact but one.

Reuters' explanation? "Photo editing software was improperly used on this image. . . . We are sorry for any inconvenience."

An apology to clients is nice. But what about an apology to Israel for employing staff members who are trying to inflame world opinion against a nation that is already globally hated?

For his effort in pointing out the phoniness of the photograph, [Charles Johnson of the Little Green Footballs blog] got a warm message from a Reuters account that said: "I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut." The so-far-unidentified person used "zionistpig" as his or her e-mail address.

Another anti-Semitic misstep and another Reuters statement. This time the news service confirmed that, yes, "an employee has been suspended pending further investigation." The person "was not an employee of Reuters' news division," for whatever that's worth.

Just one episode, some might say. Means nothing. But there's a pattern:

• Thanks to the Powerline blog, we know that Reuters is either sloppy or has purposely used unaltered (we presume) photos to try, yet again, to cripple Israel's self-defense initiative by exaggerating the damage.

On July 24 Reuters issued a photo of a damaged area in Beirut with the explanation that it was the result of "Israeli attacks on a Hezbollah stronghold." Less than two weeks later, a photo dated Aug. 5 from the same damaged area but from a different angle shows a woman walking "past a building flattened during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5, 2006."

The photographer? Adnan Hajj, whose entire catalog of Reuters photos has been pulled by the news outlet. The agency also said it has "ended its relationship with Hajj."

• Reuters has not admitted to any doctoring of photos regarding the site of Israel's late July attack on Hezbollah in the Lebanese village of Qana. But the blogosphere is hot with charges that Reuters and others were duped by — or cooperated with — Hezbollah to stage the rescue and recovery of the Qana victims to stir up scorn for Israel.

The Reuters photographer this time? Hajj.

• Reuters has admitted that Hajj changed an image of an Israeli F-16 flying over Lebanon to make it appear the jet fighter dropped three flares rather than one.

• Fearing it will violate its commitment to accuracy and impartiality — which clearly are in question — Reuters refuses, as company policy, to use the word "terrorist" in news reports. Executives prefer that "individuals, organizations and governments . . . make their own decisions based on the facts." But when Reuters provides the facts, reaching a reasoned conclusion becomes a difficult task.

Is Reuters a patsy or collaborator? Either way, it is helping the cause of terrorism and undermining civilization.

Unless it wants to become just another branch of Al-Jazeera, it had better make meaningful institutional changes soon.
Yeah, that'll happen.

Tuesday Morning Coffee

Though there's plenty of heavy news items like Lanny Davis' disingenuous discovery of hate on the Left (he says it's as bad as Coulter and Limbaugh except that they simply don't spew the hate they're always accused of by the Left and no examples are cited), I'm going to keep this brief because yesterday was pretty loaded and brevity is the soul of wit.

Today is primary election day in lots of places and the big race everyone is watching is Connecticut's Senate race in which liberal, pro-partial-birth abortion, pro-everything Left Sen. Joe Lieberman is expected to be purged from the Democratic party for the thought crime of supporting the Iraq War and then not renouncing his support like the other opportunistic asstacklers who have transformed from faux-hawks to appeasing defeatists in the face of adversity. The voters are down with the surrender idea and will vote their will today. It's short-sighted and stupid, but it's their right.

Now, take a look at this picture:



No, this isn't a shot from my personal party collection - if it were, there'd be more Asian chicks in it - it's a cast photo from "The L Word", Showtime's lame show about West Hollywood lesbians. I watched exactly one episode of this show before giving up because the prospect of hot fake girl-girl action wasn't enough to endure the insipid mewlings of the characters, who would've been dull if they were straight. (Want proof? I don't watch "Entourage" either.)

Anyhoo, what does "The L Word" have to do with politics? Well, the show probably annoys the social conservative folks who complain about things like this and "Brokeback Mountain" and these complaints are used by the Left to label the Right as intolerant of diversity, blah-blah-woof-woof, when it's plainly obvious that the ones who despise freedom and genuine diversity is the Left. "Diversity" to the Left means having a group of men, women, blacks, whites, gays and straights who all parrot the exact same fascist dogmas. Just as you could get a Model T in any color you wanted as long as it was black, you can be any sort of liberal you want to be as long as you rigorously toe the party line.

For this election season, anyone concerned about gay rights, women's rights (including the Left's Holy Sacrament of abortion), freedom and diversity has only one real choice...

The Stupid Party.

As counter-intuitive as it may sound the WORST thing that could happen to gays and women (and gay women like above) would be for the Dems to win because the first thing they will do (other than move to impeach Dubya) is to surrender War Against Islamofascism and bow America down in dhimmitude to the sword of Islam. After that, all sorts of fun will begin:

* Gay rights? More like death at the hands of gay death squads.

* Woman's "right to choose"? Yeah, right. After they're covered head-to-toe, denied education, forced into arranged marriages, have their genitals mutilated, are beaten and killed for "honor" if they're raped, etc., the ability to terminate their unwanted pregnancies isn't going to available either.

As supposedly intolerant as the Right is accused of being, living under the theocratic rule of bozos like Falwell and Robertson would be like San Francisco compared to the Taliban-enforced sharia law that will be ushered in under Democrat rule. Think about it.

The Stupid Party is no prize and I'll be skipping voting today because there is nothing for someone like me to support. This post isn't meant to encourage anyone to vote a particular way, but to engage the neurons in evaluating the likely results of certain political decisions. Face it, if you like to smoke, drink, watch porn, have gay sex or simply watch some fake lesbians on cable TV, a vote for the Dems is a vote to lose everything you enjoy. But, hey, you can tell yourselves that it was worth it to punish Dubya as the jihadists blades sever your jugulars. Cheers!

SAY HI HI TO PUFFY AMIYUMI, YO (REDUX): Between putting this at the end of a very long and heavy Morning Coffee post and then shoveling a half-dozen quick hits on top of it, I'm afraid that it may be overlooked and the group, song and video deserve to be seen, so I'm reposting it. You're wecome.

I've been a fan of Japanese pop duo Puffy Amiyumi for a few years now. While some may know them from their gawdawful fourth-rate "Powerpuff Girls"-style Cartoon Network show, they're a musically fascinating outfit thanks to the hidden army of writers and producers behind their diverse sound. While they are a pair of cuties, that's not why I dig them. I'll do a more comprehensive post about them some other time to elaborate - yeah, right, but for now, take a peep at their cool video for "Nice Buddy" off their new album, "Splurge!"



Oh yeah, if you noticed on the super, they're called Puffy in Japan but because of a certain whack-ass rapper, Sean "Puff Daddy/Puffy/P. Diddy/Diddy" Combs, they had to append their combined first names of Ami (long-haired one) and Yumi (short-haired) to their band name here in the Colonies.

AND FINALLY: Isn't that sweet?

Monday, August 07, 2006

Janet Jackson Poses Topless for Vibe

Yowza! Quite the grabber headline, ain't it? Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you prefer), it turns out the reality is merely this:



BFD.

A Bridge Too Weird

Power Line has some questions about these pictures taken by Hezbollah propaganda photographer Adnan Hajj:











As part of their analysis, they have the captions that ran with the last photo:

"A Lebanese citizen gestures near the ruined Qasmiya Bridge near Tyre in south Lebanon shortly after being bombed by Israeli warplanes July 12, 2006."
And they conclude:
This is quite obviously a different bridge on a different road with different damage. Which one is the real Qasmiya Bridge? Beats me. All I know is, these pictures, when considered together, make no sense. Reuters employs photo editors, I believe. Didn't they notice that they had put out pictures of two evidently different bridges, identifying them as the same location? Didn't they notice that the overturned car turned up in different locations? Apparently not.

Reuters sends these photos out to newspapers all over the world, with captions that are supplied, I take it, by the photographer. And newspapers take both photos and captions as gospel. Here, for example, Australia's The Age reproduces the photo of the overturned car, in its second location, with the caption: "Israeli warplanes leave rubble and a wrecked car after an air strike on Qasmiya Bridge, near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, as Israel responds to a deadly Hezbollah raid." Well, maybe. But how, exactly, do we know that the car didn't come from a local junkyard? When a photographer and his subjects (or cast of players, as I suspect is the case here) start cheating, who knows where the cheating ends?
Perhaps this guy is just trying for a Pulitzer Prize?

Is Garfield Dead?

Or do some people have too much spare time and trust in the veracity of Wikipedia?

GM, Ford, Mazda, to drive acceptance of Apple's C.R.A.P.

Starting next year, you'll be able to plug your iPod into your car. Read why this is a bad thing and to learn what "C.R.A.P." stands for.

Doctored Beirut Photo: The First Draft

Little Green Footballs has the scoop!



Note to Al Reuters: When people have crossed from outrage to mocking, your time is done.

Fake News Update.

Reuters has withdrawn all photos by the Lebanese freelance photographer after getting pantsed by the Blogosphere who spotted what the Al Reuters wasn't interested in: The Truth!

This guy was likely a Hezbollah member or sympathizer and his rep company of victims that have turned up in his photos weren't noticed by Al Reuters' editors, but were by the pajama-clad proletariat.

Does Andrew Sullivan Know About This?

The title says it all - Gays flee Iraq as Shia death squads find a new target - but the now-insane Sullivan is too busy smearing everyone who doesn't wholeheartedly support gay marriage with the "Christianist" label to realize that after the hated Dubya Administration is replaced with a more gay-friendly pack of fascist Democrats, the Dems certain surrender in the War Against Islamofascism will result in the certain death of people like Sullivan and his partner. Short-sighted, hate makes one.