Anti-War Bias In Media Helps U.S. Enemies

I realize most conservatives already know this, but now there’s a study by two Harvard University economists that confirms it. And the worst part is, the anti-war reporting helps by inspiring more attacks on U.S. troops:

“It shows that the various insurgent groups do respond to incentives and shows that a successful counter insurgency strategy should take that reality into account,” Jonathan Monten, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, told US News and World Report.

Insurgent attacks increased between 7 and 10 percent immediately after a spike in “antiresolve” statements in the media, according to the findings.

Related:

MAF has a report on the attacks on military recruitment centers all across America.

Michelle Malkin has covered the left’s war on military recruiters extensively, and is covering The Winter Soldiers II hearings that kick off today.

The Audacity Of Hillary

In the wake of her wins in Texas and Ohio, Hillary has received some grudging respect from the MSM, as her recent appearances on the covers of Time and Newsweek can attest:

I say grudging, because everybody knows what it will take for her to win the nomination, her chances are slim, and whatever the outcome, the party suffers by her staying in the race.

And that’s pissing some people off, even die-hard Cintonistas:

She has no idea how many times I defended her. How many right-leaning friends and relatives I battled with. How many times I played down her shady business deals and penchant for scandals — whether it was Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Cattle Futures, Web Hubbell, or Norman Hsu. She has no idea how frequently I dismissed her husband’s serial adultery as an unfortunate trait of an otherwise brilliant man. For sixteen years, I was a proud soldier in the legion of “Clinton apologists” — who believed that peace and prosperity were more important than regrettable personality traits.

And then she ran for president.

Cry me a river, chump.

Does she have a chance? Dick Morris is keeping hope alive, by saying, no. Others are not so sure:

The stage is set for some world-class skullduggery. Indeed, the procedural funny stuff is no doubt already under way.

I don’t know if she has a chance, myself, but I’m leaning towards, no. And while I was once enthusiastically rooting for her to win the nomination, as she has appeared to be the more beatable candidate…(I can’t bring myself to say “weaker candidate as they’re both weak), now that she’s rather conspicuously hinting that she’d be happy to have Obama as her V.P., I’ve changed my mind. I think the two of them on the same ticket would be a nightmare for the Republicans, and I can’t imagine Obama wanting Hillary on his ticket, although Hillary is apparently perfectly willing to be.

Newsbusters has a clip of what The Today Show thinks of Hillary’s gambit to float Obama’s name as her V.P. pick: “Ignorant, arrogant, illogical, and condescending”. The Politico has Obama’s response:

“Now first of all with all due respect, with all due respect,” he said here during a town hall meeting. “I won twice as many states as Sen. Clinton. I won more of the popular vote than Sen. Clinton. I have more delegates than Sen. Clinton. So I don’t’ know how someone in second place can offer the vice presidency to someone in first place. If I was in second place I could understand but I am in first place right now.

She has the “audacity of hope”?

“They have been spending the last two or three weeks” arguing that he is not ready to be commander in chief, Obama said.

“I don’t understand. If I am not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?”

Good point.

While I’m not really looking forward to the general election, this primary season has been heaps of fun to watch. I think it has been a season of audacity. Not “audacity of hope”…just plain audacity.

On the one hand, we’ve got a guy “running for president even as he was still getting lost in the Capitol’s corridors” . . .and a gal who refuses to give up even if she takes down the whole Democratic party, “a political suicide-bomber, happy to blow herself to bits — as long as she takes everyone else with her”.

Fun times, fun times.

The Cause of Hillary’s Downfall

Steve Holland, in an analytical piece for Reuters, asks How Did Hillary Fall So Far?

As if it’s a huge mystery.

When she opened her candidacy 13 months ago, she did so with a brash statement: “I’m in, and I’m in to win.” By August, she was the absolute front-runner, enjoying an 18 percent lead in the polls over Obama, her closest challenger.

With her politically brilliant husband at her side, she was considered by Republicans to be the candidate to beat in the November election. She and her aides projected an aura of inevitability and she tried to stay above the fray of her chattering rivals.

Many Washington pundits assumed she would defeat the Republican nominee to win the presidency, with Americans looking to turn the page after eight years of President George W. Bush.

Then voters started confounding the pundits and pollsters.

And I have to say…I was relieved, but not terribly surprised. Even last fall, when she was at her most “inevitable”, I had my doubts.

So what ultimately caused her demise? A badly run campaign? Her obnoxious husband? Race? Bad luck? How about none of the above. One Democratic strategist said:

“I think that fundamentally she just missed her moment. There’s a lot of people who say she ran a bad campaign, should’ve introduced herself better. But I think fundamentally that her time passed, and that the day Barack Obama got in the race, at some level for both (ex-Democratic candidate John) Edwards and Clinton, it was over.”

I would just beg to differ on one minor point. She never had a moment where she could be elected as President of the United States.

I think the real reason her candidacy tanked is because most people really don’t like her very much. They’ve heard the stories of her foul-mouthed tirades, they’ve heard the stories of corruption, the scandals, etc. They sense the phoniness. Her front runner status was always a reflection of the aura of “inevitability” she helped foster with her willing accomplices in the media. It wasn’t because people genuinely “loved” Hillary. That bubble was destined to burst the minute a more likable candidate appeared.

And it was a pretty sure thing that a more likable candidate would appear.

GASP!!! Double Standard At The NYT’s?

Newsbusters says, yeeeehp:

So The New York Times has released a story by a four-person investigative team alleging a potentially inappropriate relationship between Sen. John McCain, the apparent GOP nominee for president, and a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman, three decades his junior. There is no proof of an inappropriate romantic or sexual relationship, merely suspicions by staff members now said to be disgruntled. So why is the Times biting on this story? A look back at a few Clinton sex scandals suggests a different standard for Republicans and Democrats.

When Arkansas state troopers told The American Spectator and the Los Angeles Times in 1993 they secured sexual conquests for Gov. Bill Clinton, we found:

As in the Gennifer Flowers case, the Times initially buried Clinton’s sex scandal in small wire stories on the back pages. Washington Bureau Chief R.W. Apple proclaimed “The New York Times is not a supermarket tabloid.” But the Times ran a front-page Maureen Dowd story the day before the release of Kitty Kelley’s book — without any of Kelley’s critics, or any attempt to prove Kelley’s allegations [that Nancy Reagan had an affair with Frank Sinatra]. The Times also ran a 1991 Fox Butterfield article which revealed the name of William Kennedy Smith’s accuser and described her “wild streak,” her fondness for drinking, and her speeding tickets.

More at Newsbusters.

No, none of this is surprising, or even that aggravating anymore, because it is so expected.  Still, it’s hard to believe anyone takes this “newspaper of record” seriously, anymore.

Soros Funded Bile Treated As Hard News

I know this story has been covered pretty extensively by practically every conservative blogger in the rightwingblogosphere, but I can’t resist the urge to get a few licks in myself.

There is something very, very wrong in this country.

Let’s face it. Most people don’t pay attention to the news as closely as we blog readers, and talk radio listeners do. Most people just hear the sound-bites, and consider themselves educated, and informed. And when I say “most people”, I mean the vast majority…90-95% of the folks out there just are not paying attention to the degree that they need to. Note, that I didn’t say, “to the degree that they should”. People should be able to get honest reportage from the MSM. But they don’t, so they need to look deeper to find honest sources.

When still respected news outlets like the the AP and The New York Times treat a study funded by George Soros, a man who has said bringing down the Bush Administration is the “central focus of my life.” as hard news, when it’s clearly propaganda, and even neglects to mention Soros as a source for the funding of the study… we’ve really got serious problems.

The Soros-funded Lancet study helped to erode support for the Iraq War effort, here in the US, and all over the world, while it encouraged our enemies. The 650,000 civilian death toll has since been thoroughly discredited, but that number will still be used by protesters of the war for years to come.

Now, the MSM is doing it again, and they won’t apologize because they agree with Soros’s version of the “truth”.

How are conservatives going to stand a chance in November, under these circumstances?

I am most seriously displeased!

MORE:

Want the truth about what our leaders believed about Iraq before the war? Here, watch this video. Then come and try to tell me with a straight face that “Bush lied, people died”.

Saturday Morning Must-Read

Mark Stein: Some Fictional Horrors Of War

 Well, it’s in the New York Times: “a series of articles” – that’s right, a whole series – “about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.” It’s an epidemic, folks. As the Times put it:

“Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: ‘Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.’ Pierre, S.D.: ‘Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.’ Colorado Springs: ‘Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.’”

Obviously, as America’s “newspaper of record,” the Times would resent any suggestion that it’s anti-military. I’m sure if you were one of these crazed military stalker whackjobs following the reporters home you’d find their cars sporting the patriotic bumper sticker “We Support Our Troops, Even After They’ve Been Convicted.” As usual, the Times stories are written in the fey, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone that’s a shoo-in come Pulitzer time:

“Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.”

“Patchwork picture,” “quiet phenomenon.”… Yes, yes, but exactly how quiet is the phenomenon? How patchy is the picture?

You already know the answer, but grab a coffee, and read the rest, anyway, because there’s no one better than Stein when  he’s got his mad on.

Bill Kristol Gets NYT Op-Ed Slot - Liberal Heads Explode

Apparently the announcement that Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol will be writing for the NYT’s Op-Ed page has caused “a frenzy” in the liberal blogosphere.

“The Gray Lady has been hijacked by neo-cons”!!111!!

………*Joooooooos*.

Katha Pollitt of the Nation wants to be shot:

Just shoot me. First, it was Sam Tanenhaus, conservative editor of the New York Times Book Review being put in charge of the News of the Week in Review section. That means one conservative will determine how politics,culture and ideas are covered in TWO of the most important sections of the supposedly liberal newspaper of record.

Cool!

Now, says the Huffington Post, the Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will be writing a weekly op-ed column. That’s Bill Kristol ,Fox commentator , editor of the the Murdochian agitprop factory Weekly Standard, George W. Bush’s propagandist in chief, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, relentless promoter of the war in Iraq , ideological bully and thug. This is the man who blamed american liberals for the Khmer Rouge and the Ayatollah Khomeini (!),

And your problem is…????

who will say just about anything, however bizarre or illogical or wild or (I’m guessing) cynical, to push the only ideas in his head: everything bad is the fault of Democrats and never mind the question, war is the answer.

She then goes on to list some of Kristol’s standard conservative opinions on a host of topics which she treats as intolerable outrages, proving his unfitness for the job.

Truly amusing.

More from Politico:

But Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal sees things differently.

Rosenthal told Politico shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand “this weird fear of opposing views.”

“The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual — and somehow that’s a bad thing,” Rosenthal added. “How intolerant is that?”

This Rosenthal person sounds like he might have some Neo-Con type leanings to be saying such things!

“I was flattered watching blogosphere heads explode,” Kristol told Politico. “It was kind of amusing.”

Unlike The Times’ stable of biweekly columnists — including Maureen Dowd and fellow Standard alum David Brooks — Kristol will write only once a week, with his first column set for Jan. 7.

Well, once a week is still obviously too much for our tolerant friends on the left!

Hat Tip: Lucianne

Fox News Voted ‘Most Balanced’

But for how much longer?

The Center For Media And Public Affairs at George Washington University:

“found that Fox News Channel’s evening news show provided more balanced coverage than its counterparts on the broadcast networks.”

Could it be that allowing conservative viewpoints to grace the airways once in a while, isn’t the dark night of fascism, after all?

Well of course it isn’t.

But Fox’s “fair and balanced” m.o. is in danger of taking a turn in the wrong direction.

As FrontpageMagazine reports today:

In September of 2005, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal purchased 5.46 per cent of Class B voting shares in News Corp, the company that owns Fox News and a number of other media and entertainment entities. This had replaced the three per cent stake in Class A non-voting shares bin Talal had previously held through his investment corporation, Kingdom Holding Company (KHC).

In April of 2002, bin Talal had donated $27 million during a Saudi telethon that was raising money for the families of suicide bombers. As well, he had given $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to be used towards the distribution and propagation of a set of Islamist books for American libraries. The set included Jamal Badawi’s Gender Equity in Islam, which sanctions the beating of women by their husbands, and a version of the Quran, Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s The Meaning of THE HOLY QURAN, which has been banned by the Los Angeles school system.

Utilizing his position of power within Fox News (today, he is the second largest shareholder), bin Talal has worked to influence programming at the station. An infamous example of this was reported in a December 2005 article found in WorldNetDaily, stating:

During the violent street protests in France one month ago, the prince said, Fox News ran a banner at the bottom of the screen that said “Muslim riots.”

“I picked up the phone and called Murdoch … [and told him] these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty,” al-Walid said.

“Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots.”

See how that works?

Also slipping in under the radar is News Corp’s December 4th acquisition of Beliefnet, an internet-based religious information source:

Today, Beliefnet’s Islam section is entirely controlled by, and the content of it is entirely consumed by, radical Muslims.

The editor of Beliefnet-Islam is Dilshad Ali. Besides being affiliated with Beliefnet, Ali is also a correspondent for Islam Online, a site that issues religious rulings (Fatwas) in support of Palestinian suicide bombings, terrorist attacks against American troops, and the death penalty for homosexuals, including the throwing of homosexuals from tall buildings (“Death Falls”).

Indeed, as Fox Entertainment Group’s well recognized logo was pasted to Beliefnet, the face of Siraj Wahhaj adorned the site as an “Islamic Inspiration.” Wahhaj, a Brooklyn imam, was named as an “Unindicted Co-Conspirator” to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and served as a witness for the spiritual leader of the attack, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, during Abdel-Rahman’s trial.

And so on and so forth…there is cause for concern.

UPDATE: 

Hmmmm….I checked out the Islam section of Beliefnet and found it to be quite tame. Maybe I’m catching it on a good day, but even the article that is critical of Ayan Hirsi Ali is nothing worse than you would see at the Huffington Post.

Still, Fox News…..I’m watching you.

Shouldn’t CNN Be Getting Annoyed With Hillary?

What with her sneaking plants into CNN’s debates, without their knowledge….first at the Democrat’s debate, and now even at the Republican’s debate….you’d think that they’d be getting plenty pissed.

Anderson Cooper says they had NO IDEA that retired General Keith Kerr was affiliated with the Clinton campaign.

I mean…poor CNN… completely hornswoggled by Hillary, AGAIN!

Ace doesn’t believe that CNN was being an “honest broker”. Can you believe that guy?!
UPDATE:

A commenter (GoldenSt8r #9) at Lucianne’s suspects another plant at the debate last night:

I’m not sure if this was a plant or not, but I have my suspicions about another one of the questions. A kid from Manhattan Beach posed a question about farm subsidies. I know Manhattan Beach very well, and that is the last subject that is on people’s mind in this area. So I decided to Google him and discovered that he was an intern on Jane Harman’s staff. I don’t know why he asked that question, or why he chose to act like a lunatic when asking it. I just know that he did not make Manhattan Beach proud.

Just another “undecided” voter.

Michelle Malkin has even more plants from Silky, and Obama, now!

One of them can actually be seen in her own Youtube video wearing an Edwards ‘08 teeshirt.

Nice job, vetting, CNN.

Wait a minute….how can this be? The activist background of the good General was already known to CNN? He’s been a guest on the network as a proponent for gays in the military???

But that would suggest that they’re not unwilling dupes……next you’ll tell me that they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

*Word on the street about the General Kerr:

“He was never an active duty Army General of any flavor. He retired from the Reserves in 1986 as a Col. and given an appointment to the California National Guard in 1991. He never attended any sort of Military Academy instead receiving his educational credentials with questionable degrees from Berkley and San Francisco State.
To sum Mr Kerr up in the simplest terms, his entire career from the time he was a private, to this very day is that of a fraud, and a con artist. I am confident that his claim to the Special Forces Tab will now be investigated and he will be unmasked for exactly what he is”.

*See comments for source.

I’d certainly like to see this man’s credentials investigated more fully.

Here’s The Stooge who asked the question about the Confederate flag, in his own words, in the YouTube comments, admitting his motive for asking the question:

this was actually one of my mor eunimportant issues. THe real intintion of this was to get a major candidate to attack me or blow me off and therefore hurting their southern base

I’m guessing the guy was experiencing keyboard issues.

Thanks to Forged Rite on that one.

UPDATE:

Ace has the shill count at nine, so far. Purple Avenger wants to start a pool on the final count. A conservative estimate being, twelve.

We may as well laugh at this point.

The MSM And The Pope On The Iraq War

When I saw the headline at Hotair, Pope: End The War, I thought, “uh-oh, what’s Up”?  The link took me to the MSNBC article, Pope Calls For End Of Iraq War, Makes Cardinals.

The implication, based on that headline, is that the Pope is calling for the U.S. to leave.

He isn’t.

I don’t want to pick on MSNBC, because my google search produced many more examples of this.

You have to read the whole article to see that the Pope does no such thing. He simple prays for the same thing millions of Catholics pray for every week at Mass:

“Let us together reaffirm the solidarity of the whole Church with the Christians of that beloved land and invoke from the merciful God the coming of longed-for reconciliation and peace for all the peoples involved (in the conflict),” he said in his homily.

Of course, we all pray for peace, but peace through reconciliation is not what I think those headlines were implying. The implication was: The U.S. needs to get the hell out of there.

The Middle East Times had it right with Pope Voices ‘Closeness’ to Iraqis:

“I think now with affection of communities entrusted to your care and, especially, to those most tried by suffering, challenges and difficulties of various kinds,” he said.

“Among them, how can one not turn one’s gaze with apprehension and affection, in this moment of joy, to the dear Christian communities in Iraq?” he asked, drawing loud applause from the prelates assembled in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

These brothers and sisters of the faith are experiencing in the flesh the dramatic consequences of a lasting conflict and live in a fragile and delicate political situation,” he said.

If you’re trying to find some big infallible statement about the Iraq War being unjust, and the U.S. needing to leave immediately, you’ll just have to look elsewhere.

Nice try, MSM.

 Photo: (AFP Christophe Simon)

“Holy Damnation!” says Jim Hoft, of Gateway Pundit, who says even the Pope isn’t safe from the MSM’s bias, and has more on the new Iraqi Cardinal.

“Every Question Pre-Planned Or Censored”

Most of you have heard by now that the “Diamonds and Pearls” questioner at the CNN Democratic Debate has written about the questions being “pre-planned and censored” on her My Space page:

“Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN,” Luisa writes. “I was asked to submit questions including “lighthearted/fun” questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance.”…

In fairness, the diamonds or pearls question was one of the five that she had come up with, but only because CNN requested that one question be light hearted.

And that is the question CNN chose to use because…why? Because it makes Hillary seem less frosty, and more feminine, that’s why.

The question is reminiscent of the infamous 1992 MTV Rock the Vote query of Bill Clinton: “Boxers or briefs?”

To the old fogies, that seemed like an inappropriate, undignified question (it was), but Rock The Vote drove millions of young voters to the polls, never a good thing for Republicans.

The diamonds or pearls question, while not as odious, seems geared at garnering sympathy from women.

Googlemeister, Dan Riehl made some interesting discoveries:

A.) That another questioner, a Ms. LaShannon Spencer, who was presented as an “Undecided” voter is actually the Political Director of the friggen’ Democratic Party in Arkansas.

And

B.) CNN trotted out Another questioner, a Ms. Catherine Jackson, to ask a question about Iran, with the moral imperative only a woman whose son has served three tours in Iraq can have. Only, now we find out that she’s an anti-war activist who appeared with Dingy Harry back in May with the same three tours in Iraq shtick:

“My son was in Iraq three times,” said Catherine Jackson of Las Vegas.“I thank God he’s home now. Enough is enough. We need to bring our troops home.”

Allah’s willing to give CNN a pass on that one. He would.

I understand that with live T.V. you have to plan and coordinate things carefully…you can’t have any loose cannons going off….you don’t want political ideologues on either side, and it is possible to miss an activist or two, or three…..so why bother with questions from the audience at all?

The whole thing plays like (as El-Rushbo would say) phoney baloney plastic banana Barbara Streisand. And the MSM are very willing accomplices. It’s a total farce.

Why must they subject us to it????

*Spit*

Picture courtesy of El Rushbo.

UPDATE (Nov. 18):

It’s even worse than we thought. For instance:

The Diamonds or Pearls “my space” college coed, Maria Parra-Sandoval is a member of Harry Reid’s staff.

More crap about more plants, here.

This is why I can’t watch more than 15 minutes of a Democratic debate. You know the fix is in, you’re being lied to, and your BS detector starts spinning so wildly, you need a heavy dose of Dramamine to recover.

House Dems Pass Their Iraq Withdrawl Bill

Let’s hurry up and get that white flag up before we win, damnit!

Of course, the retarded bill is ultimately doomed to fail, and make them look bad, but that doesn’t stop them….the nutroots must be assuaged.

Michelle Malkin has the roll call.

The New York Times covered the rancorous debate on the House floor.

Get this:

The debate over war financing also provided a forum for Republicans to praise recent developments in Iraq, including what they called a decline in violence.

Oh. My….GOSH!!!

Tip Of The Iceberg

Although the AP story neglects to mention the party affiliation, we can all guess, and Newsbusters can confirm:

The AP reports a story on two Democrat election officials convicted of recount rigging and neglect of official duties for their actions during the 2004 elections but, for some hard to determine reason, few if any news sources are mentioning that these two are Democrats.

Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreame have pleaded guilty to the charges after an aborted conviction from last January, the original trial having been granted a retrial on grounds not connected with the pair’s actions.

Look at their defiant faces. They’d do it again in a heartbeat. And so will their comrades in arms all across the country:

Missouri - Four Democratic election workers found guilty on all four counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud.

Wisconsin - Local and federal law enforcement authorities look into potential fraud (more than 1,200 votes came from invalid addresses, among other problems) in Milwaukee.

California - Crooked Secretary of State Kevin Shelley investigated for his mishandling of federal voting act funds, among many other charges.

Minnesota - Same day voter registration shenanigans.

Washington - Ballots counted exceed the number of voters who voted.

Evidence of such fraud was found in 2005, when a Washington state judge ruled that 1,678 illegal votes were cast on Election Day in 2004. Not enough to make a difference? Democrat Christine Gregoire was elected governor that year by a mere 129-vote margin. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer found that at least eight dead people “voted” in King County.

Alabama - Husband, candidate/wife, absentee election manager team up for mass quantities of extra votes.

New Mexico - Crooked canvasser for a liberal group signs up tens of thousands of voters (some as young as 13 and 15) for the presidential election in this swing state.

Ohio - ACORN (need I say more), registering voters in Franklin County, turns in more than 500 forms with nonexistent addresses and potentially fake signatures.

Kansas - Democrats urge people to register to vote after the legal deadline.

Pennsylvania - Democrats collect absentee ballots in prison.

New York - Dead Indians vote for Hillary!.

Florida - Thousands of people illegally registered to vote.

New Jersey - Voting machines prevent voters from casting ballots for Republicans.

I could go on, but my well known google-fu grows weary. I don’t want to wear myself out. Besides, you already know it to be true.

Before some idiot shows up to simper that Republicans do it too (honest Clod, anyone?), save your breath. Sure, there have been few and far between examples that you can point to, but voter fraud on a massive scale is a Democratic tradition that has a long, (not) proud history.

Here’s further proof from a 368 page report from a non-partisan group, not that it’s needed.

As someone once said, the Republicans need to have about a five point edge in every major election to make up for the fraud on the Democratic side, which is getting harder and harder as the voting public becomes more and more batshit crazee.

UPDATE (January 8, 2008):

Indiana:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments on Indiana’s voter identification law. If the justices don’t get this one right, they could open the door to a future with more fraud.

Naturally Democrats oppose this law.

Arguing in opposition to the law will be attorneys for the Indiana Democratic Party. This is not to say that Democrats are in favor of voter fraud.  (really?!)

But they do seem to want voting to be as easy and painless as possible. And they don’t seem to be too picky about verifying the identities or citizenship of those casting ballots.

Good News In Iraq = No News

The TimesOnlineUK has a good article, today, about the recent successes in Iraq:

There has been striking success in the past few months in the attempt to improve security, defeat al-Qaeda sympathisers and create the political conditions in which a settlement between the Shia and the Sunni communities can be reached. This has not been an accident but the consequence of a strategy overseen by General David Petraeus in the past several months. While summarised by the single word “surge” his efforts have not just been about putting more troops on the ground but also employing them in a more sophisticated manner. This drive has effectively broken whatever alliances might have been struck in the past by terrorist factions and aggrieved Sunnis. Cities such as Fallujah, once notorious centres of slaughter, have been transformed in a remarkable time. Indeed, on every relevant measure, the shape of the Petraeus curve is profoundly encouraging. It is not only the number of coalition deaths and injuries that has fallen sharply (October was the best month for 18 months and the second-best in almost four years), but the number of fatalities among Iraqi civilians has also tumbled similarly. This process started outside Baghdad but now even the capital itself has a sense of being much less violent and more viable. As we report today, something akin to a normal nightlife is beginning to re-emerge in the city. As the pace of reconstruction quickens, the prospects for economic recovery will be enhanced yet further. With oil at record high prices, Iraq should be an extremely prosperous nation and in a position to start planning for its future with confidence.

All of this is incredibly inconvenient to Democrats like the Presidential contenders, who have predicated their whole campaigns on the idea that the Iraq War is a complete disaster, and the US needs to withdrawal ASAP, and Dingy Harry who announced the War was lost last Spring. (GRRRR, don’t get me started).

Congressional Democrats have spent most of this year trying (and failing) to impose a timetable for an outright exit. In Britain, in a somewhat more subtle fashion admittedly, Gordon Brown assumed on becoming the Prime Minister that he should send signals to the voters that Iraq had been “Blair’s War”, not one to which he or Britain were totally committed.

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have to appreciate that Iraq is no longer, as they thought, an exercise in damage limitation but one of making the most of an opportunity. The instinct of too many people is that if Iraq is going badly we should get out because it is going badly and if it is getting better we should get out because it is getting better. This is a catastrophic miscalculation. Iraq is getting better. That is good, not bad, news.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, if it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead.

That’s why you won’t see stories like this in the MSM.

H/T: Speedo Wearing Fool

No Bail For Goose Creek Pipebomb Suspect

Anybody hearing about this case in the MSM? I didn’t think so.

Michelle Malkin’s covering it, though:

On Friday, Judge Steven D. Merryday denied Goose Creek jihadi suspect Youssef Megahed’s bid for bail. He called him a flight risk and said he posed a danger to the community (hat tip: reader Lynne S.):

A University of South Florida student charged with transporting explosives will not be released on bail, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

In ruling that Youssef Megahed poses a flight risk and a danger to the community, Judge Steven D. Merryday overturned a Sept. 14 ruling by federal Magistrate Elizabeth Jenkins, who said the defendant could be released on $200,000 bail under strict conditions.

If you’re wondering why nary a word about this case is being covered in the MSM, Joel Mowbray from the Washington Times has some ideas:

When someone with seething anger toward U.S. soldiers drives a car filled with explosive materials two states away to a naval station, how is that not major news?

Contrast that to the coverage afforded the recent mistrial in the government’s case against Holy Land Foundation, an alleged front for Hamas.
The mistrial was spun by most mainstream media outlets as a major defeat to U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The New York Times dedicated over 1,200 words in a page-one story. The Washington Post was a bit more restrained, putting its coverage on page three, but the editorial page ran a stinging criticism by Georgetown Professor David Cole of supposed government overreach.

So how does this work exactly?

What is an appropriate terror related news story?

-American soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan…..check.

-American soldiers accused of malfeasance…….check

-Defeat of counterterrorism efforts……. check.

-Success in counterterrorism efforts……crickets

-Capture of suspected terrorists…….crickets

-Major attack on US soil………check, check, and double check.