YankeeCon

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2007-01-07T06:47:00.000-08:00

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The Media: Biased Against America

2006-05-06T21:52:00.000-07:00

Media bias is nothing new. The depths to which they'll think is.

NYT

Not All See Video Mockery of Zarqawi as Good Strategy
An effort by the American military to discredit the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by showing video outtakes of him fumbling with a machine gun — suggesting that he lacks real fighting skill — was questioned yesterday by retired and active American military officers.

The video clips, released on Thursday to news organizations in Baghdad, show the terrorist leader confused about how to handle an M-249 squad automatic weapon, known as an S.A.W., which is part of the American inventory of infantry weapons.
The American military, which said it captured the videotapes in a recent raid, released selected outtakes in an effort to undermine Mr. Zarqawi's image as leader of the Council of Holy Warriors, formerly Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and suggested that his fighting talents and experience were less than his propaganda portrays. But several veterans of wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, as well as active-duty officers, said in telephone interviews yesterday that the clips of Mr. Zarqawi's supposed martial incompetence were unconvincing.
The weapon in question is complicated to master, and American soldiers and marines undergo many days of training to achieve the most basic competence with it. Moreover, the weapon in Mr. Zarqawi's hands was an older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising. The veterans said Mr. Zarqawi, who had spent his years as a terrorist surrounded by simpler weapons of Soviet design, could hardly have been expected to know how to handle it.
"They are making a big deal out of nothing," said Mario Costagliola, who retired as an Army colonel last month after serving as the operations officer for the 42nd Infantry Division in Tikrit, Iraq.
An active-duty Special Forces colonel who served in Iraq also said that what the video showed actually had little relationship to Mr. Zarqawi's level of terrorist skill. "Looking at the video, I enjoy it; I like that he looks kind of goofy," said the Special Forces officer, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on military matters. "But as a military guy, I shrug my shoulders and say: 'Of course he doesn't know how to use it. It's our gun.' He doesn't look as stupid as they said he looks."

Astonishing. Simply astonishing.

The Rush Limbaugh "Addiction" Saga

2006-05-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

My opinion on the Limbaugh thing is this: Much ado about nothing. A man had terrible back pain, did what it took to relieve it (as we all would), got addicted, tried to get rid of it, couldn't until forced to by the law, and is now clean. No crime, no great "moral turpitude", nothing.

The only hypocracy here is from his critics. They have no problem with illegal immigration, are constantly full of excuses for every type of violent criminal, support anarchy and rioting as "expressions of rage", but are full of righteous indignation on a suffering man for violating an arcane law to bring himself some relief. For shame.

Bombing In Egypt Claims 17 Lives

2006-04-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press:

17 Dead at Just 1 Egypt Hotel After Blasts
CAIRO, Egypt - Three explosions rocked the Egyptian resort city of Dahab at the height of the tourist season Monday night, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 150 at just one hotel, according to the doctor who runs the Sinai peninsula rescue squad.
Groups claiming links to al-Qaida took responsibility for those attacks. Egyptian authorities say new Islamic militant groups have arisen in the peninsula, but they are still trying to determine if they have any real connection to al-Qaida or other international terrorists.
This is high tourist season in the region, and hotels all along the Egyptian coasts could be expected to be at near capacity. Dahab is located on the Gulf of Aqaba on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula.

Do you think the Egyptians are sitting around and moaning "why do those people hate us"? Fat chance. I'd guess that Mubarak is telling his security people to remind the terrorists that his toture is not Abu Ghraib "torture", and they shouldn't forget that.

The Culture Of Corruption? Bring It On

2006-04-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

The "culture of corruption" meme that the Democrats have introduced had little chance of being effective in the first place. The public is aware that politics is riddled with corruption, both direct and indirect. So in the face of voter apathy on this issue, to create a backlash was bound to be difficult enough for the Democrats. As it turns out, it is blowing up in their faces. Congressmen Jefferson ,McDermott and Conyers, Congresswoman McKinney, Senator Schumer's aides, and now this.

Senior Democrat Exits House Ethics Panel

The top Democrat on the House ethics committee, Alan Mollohan, will leave the panel _ at least temporarily _ while he defends his own financial conduct, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday.
Mollohan's decision comes in an election year when his party is accusing majority Republicans of allowing a "culture of corruption" in Congress.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's reaction:

We condemn any form of corruption by any member of the house on both sides of the aisle. Congessman Mollohan should immediately step down from the ethics committee until this issue is resolved.

Oops, my mistake, this is what she really said.

"The allegations against Congressman Mollohan originate from the National Legal and Policy Center, which engages in highly partisan attacks on Democrats," Pelosi said.
"The attacks are an attempt to deflect attention from the long list of Republican criminal investigations, indictments, plea agreements and resignations which have resulted from the reported long-term and extensive criminal enterprise run out of House Republican leadership offices," she said.
Using a phrase that has become a Democratic refrain, Pelosi said, "The Republican culture of corruption has been ignored by the ethics committee for a year and a half following the decision of the Republican leadership to fire their own chairman and committee members for doing their job."

The Democrats want to raise the "culture of corruption" issue? Fine. To quote the immortal words of George W Bush: Bring It On.

The Laugh Of The Day

2006-04-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

Michelle Malkin is under attack for publishing student personal info (which they themselves released to the press, see here for the story).

Take a look at this exchange at Daily Kos.

Criminally liable?

What happens if something happens to one of the students and it's determined that it was one of Malkin's Malcontents? Could she be held both criminally and civilly liable under those circumstances?

Even now, isn't she inciting violence? Once she heard what her readers where doing (i.e. emailing death threats) and didn't remove the info from her site and continued as if it was a Free Speech issue...can't she be sued for that?

by Hedwig on Mon Apr 17, 2006 at 06:17:13 PM PDT
we can only hope! /nt

[tagline] I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. -Voltaire

by baracon on Mon Apr 17, 2006 at 07:09:08 PM PDT

I guess Voltaire was not talking about conservatives.

The War In Iraq: An Allegory

2006-04-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

NRO

Miserable Failure
The war is an unwinnable exercise in imperialistic hubris

In 1971 President Richard M. Nixon prevailed upon Congress to pass the National Cancer Act, effectively declaring war on a leading cause of death in the U.S. The goal of the National Cancer Act was to discover a cure by the year 1981, a notion that today seems almost as naïve and dated as the disco outfits we were all still wearing back then. In his declaration of war on cancer Nixon pledged that, “The same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease.”
Thirty-five years and untold billions in research spending later Nixon’s war has yielded precious little progress in defeating — or even containing — the Big C. It’s time to cut our losses and pull the plug on this unwinnable exercise in imperialistic hubris. It’s time to face the fact that the war on cancer is over, and that cancer has won......

Reason stands no chance against the die-hard antiwar crowd, maybe satire will do the trick.

Podhoretz Nails it

2006-04-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

John Podhoretz:

April 18, 2006 -- WHAT'S the dumbest thing George W. Bush could possibly do right at this moment - the action that would, more than any other, suggest his presidency was and is all but finished?
The answer: Fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Either a forced resignation or a dismissal would effectively bring the Bush presidency to an end.

Read on

A Study In Contrasts: Update

2006-04-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

Seems like the public has finally caught on to this.

Newsmax:

Critics Hit Jim McDermott on Wiretap Hypocrisy

There's at least one Democrat who unequivocally favors domestic wiretapping without a court order - and it may cost him his House seat in the next election...

No, we're not talking about President Bush's terrorist surveillance program. We're referring to leaking snippets of secretly recorded conversations between elected Republicans to the press.
That's just what Rep. Jim McDermott did in 1996, after a Florida couple intercepted a conference call among several House leaders - and he gave a copy of their recording to the New York Times.
"McDermott ought to give up the pretense of nobility and just admit he broke the law," the Tacoma Tribune editorialized last week.

The brouhaha has offered Washington Republicans new hope that McDermott's political number may finally be up.
His opponent, Steven Beren, has seized on the incumbent's wiretapping hypocrisy and calls McDermott's antics "an embarrassment."
"He opposes the Patriot Act and opposes the NSA terrorist wiretapping program. But he has no problem with illegally using tapes from real domestic wiretapping of a fellow congressman," Berens says.

It is ridiculous, isn't it? Even you friendly Dems out there can agree that if it were a Repub who'd had done this it would be headline news. Media bias? You be the judge.

Iran: Now We Know What Won't Happen

2006-04-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph

Bush 'is planning nuclear strikes on Iran's secret sites'

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts.

Considering who's the source for this piece, we can safely assume that this is *not* what's going to happen.

President Bush is a Decent Man

2006-04-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

For all you libs out there who truly believe that President Bush is evil incarnate, take a look at this story:

"What I wanted to say to you is that I -- in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by, my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and ...," the man said, as the audience began booing.

"No, wait a sec -- let him speak," Bush said.

Contrast the president's reaction with this one:

Dale Ungerer, a retiree from Hawkeye, Iowa, lectured Dean for nearly three minutes near the end of a forum aimed at winning voters for Iowa’s Jan. 19 caucuses.

Ungerer accused Dean and other Democratic presidential hopefuls of dividing the country by bashing Bush instead of outlining their own plans and showing respect for authority.

“Please tone down the garbage, the mean mouthing, the tearing down of your neighbor and being so pompous,” Ungerer told the former Vermont governor and Democratic front-runner. “You should help your neighbor and not tear him down.”

“George Bush is not my neighbor,” Dean replied.

“Yes, he is,” Ungerer said, to which Dean responded: “You sit down. You’ve had your say and now I’m going to have my say.”

The libs can demonize Bush as much as they want, but when the public sees Bush in action, it all falls apart. They cannot see him as anything but what he is - a decent guy.

My 0.02 cents

2006-04-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

All of the hullabaloo over immigration is missing one fundamental point: it's not a question of what to do, but rather if to do.

The illegals and their supporters in the business community and the special interests groups want the status quo.

The only ones who want anything done, are the American people .

So all the debate over what course of action to take and what compromise to settle on is not a dialouge but a monolouge. It's people on one side of the issue arguing amongst themselves, while the other side just continues postponing the issue by churning out worthless law after worthless law to muddy the waters and leave the impression that they're interested in reform, while all they're interested in is the status quo.

Headline of the Day

2006-04-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

Today's MSM "Fair & Unbalanced" award goes to the AP for this headline:

Grand Jury to Hear McKinney Run-In Case.

Punching a cop is called a "Run - In". Okay. Whatever.

Doing A Lott To Hurt Himself

2006-04-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

Senator Trent Lott made a comment today that is sure to win him alot of conservative support in his effort to retake the leadership.

"I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina."

While I don't see the big deal about pork being that it's such a small part of the federal budget (less then 1%), that comment is not going to win him any conservative support in his quest to retake his old position as majority leader. It says something about his tempermant as well.

A Study In Contrasts

2006-04-05T19:44:00.000-07:00

For those who worry that the President's NSA terrorist surveilance program will lead to spying on politcal opponents, I have news for you: it's already happened. But not the way you think.

The Democrats are all up in arms about President Bush's "domestic" spying program.

The Washington Post:

Senators Debate Move to Censure Bush
The Senate Judiciary Committee's top Democrat said yesterday that President Bush probably deserves censure for his warrantless wiretapping practices...
Democrats invoked Richard M. Nixon's name as they attacked Bush's decision to let the National Security Agency bypass judges to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls and e-mails when a possible terrorism suspect is on one end of the line. They said the practice violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants for U.S. wiretaps in most cases...
As a result, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the panel's senior Democrat, said he was "inclined to believe" that censure by Congress is appropriate for Bush.
"We know the president broke the law," Leahy said. "Now we need to know why."...
"If you want the words 'bad faith' in there, let's put them right in, because that's exactly what we have here. . . .[Feingold said] The lawbreaking is shocking in itself, but the defiant way that the president has persisted in defending his actions with specious legal arguments and misleading statements is part of what led me to conclude that censure is a necessary step." (emphasis mine)

But let's remember who's talking. Democrats. Keep that in mind when you read the following:

AP:

McDermott: Taping Dispute Not Personal
In a 2-1 opinion Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower-court ruling that McDermott had unlawfully obtained a copy of an illegally intercepted phone conversation between Boehner, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and other House GOP leaders in December 1996...
"The third person in line to be president was plotting a deception on the (House) ethics committee and the American people in private," McDermott said, referring to Gingrich, who was heard on a 1996 cell phone call telling House Republicans how to react to ethics charges against him.
"The people have a right to know that," McDermott said. "John Boehner says people have no right to know, because it was done in secret."...
"This is fundamental," he said. "It's not a simple fight between two members of Congress. The story is whether people have a right to know what is going on in government. Are we going to stand and fight for the rights of the people?"

So spying on political enemies is "fundamental", but intercepting calls from overseas terrorists who are plotting to kill Americans is not.

Senator Feingold, any comment?

Gallup Is A Fraud

2006-03-29T20:14:00.000-08:00

Todays big news is this headline from Gallup:

Democrats Gain Edge in Party Identification During Last Year

I have been arguing for a while (see here) that the polls the MSM constantly subjects us to are biased because they are weighted towards the Democrats.

Today I found proof.

Gallup polls are for subscribers only, so it's difficult to properly analyze them, but today's story contains some details which lets the cat out of the bag.

While reviewing the trend of voters increasingly identifying themselves as Democrats, Gallup gives us these statistics for the fourth quarter of 2005:

Democrat Independent Republican
2005-IV 33 34 32

Got that? Now look at this.

In Oct. '05 Gallup loudly proclaimed: Bush approval hits 39%, lowest of his presidency and based it on a poll with this sample:

Of those who were polled, 36% said they were Democrats, 30% Republican and 33% independent.

In other words:

Democrat Independent Republican
36% 33% 30%

Bottom line, in Oct. '05 their sample had 36% Democrats to 30% Republicans, which they now admit was really 33% to 32% in favor of the Democrats. As a matter of fact, the Democrats have not polled 36% since at least the third quarter of 2006, according to Gallup's story today.

Like I said, Gallup polls are available to subscribers only, besides which I don't have the time to devote to research this properly, but let this serve as an example for what's going on with these "polls".