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By Joshua, August 13, 2010 1:35 am

As WikiLeaks plans more leaks, the criticism over WikiLeaks’ leak of Afghanistan docs, including names of civilians who collaborated with the coalition, comes from all sides:

The U.S. Government:

The Pentagon on Thursday warned WikiLeaks against releasing more documents. “It would compound a mistake that has already put far too many lives at risk,” said Geoff Morrell, deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.  “The only responsible course of action for them is to immediately remove all the stolen documents from their website and expunge all classified material from their computers,” he said. “If they were to publish any additional documents after hearing our concerns about the harm it will cause our forces, our allies and innocent Afghan civilians, it would be the height of irresponsibility.”

Reporters without Borders:

On Thursday, the international journalists’ group Reporters Without Borders wrote a letter to Assange that accused his group of showing “incredible irresponsibility,” by publishing tens of thousands documents from the Afghanistan war last month.  The letter said that “revealing the identity of hundreds of people who collaborated with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous. It would not be hard for the Taliban and other armed groups to use these documents to draw up a list of people for targeting in deadly revenge attacks.”

And human rights groups:

Other groups have asked WikiLeaks to redact names in the tens of thousands of secret documents already posted, as well as to be more careful to “protect civilians” in subsequent document reviews, according to an official from one of the other human rights groups. That official did not want to be identified because the communications were intended to be private.  The groups include Innocent Victims in Conflict, Amnesty International-Afghanistan and the Open Society Institute.

Assange says he says some criticism is legitimate, but will not do as asked:

“Every time we take on one of these big organizations, they try and try to find various ways to criticize us, and there might even be some legitimate criticism in this case,” he said. “But we did try hard to keep back some material.”

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By Joshua, July 22, 2010 1:46 am

Or is this another American Butthash Media story?  This sounds awfully fishy:

Jerusalem (CNN) — The lawyer for a 30-year-old Palestinian married father of two who has admitted in a plea bargain to rape by deception said Wednesday he will appeal his client’s sentence, which was handed up Monday.  “Eighteen months in prison is too much,” said Adnan Aladdin. He is representing Saber Kashour, the Israeli Palestinian who admitted pretending to be a single Jewish man before having sex with an Israeli woman.  Kashour already has been detained for two months, followed by about two years of house arrest, his lawyer said. “According to the bargain, he should be punished, but we expect him to receive community service on appeal in about 30 days’ time,” Aladdin added.

Kashour told CNN the relations with the woman, who has not been identified publicly, were consensual.  “The girl is the one who started flirting with me and talking to me, and she is the one who wanted the thing from beginning to end,” he said. “I met her on a West Jerusalem street, she approached me and started flirting with me. Within 15 minutes, she wanted to be with me, and we were together.”  Aladdin described his client’s liaison in more detail: “There was a short foreplay a few minutes before; during the foreplay, the guy tells a few lies, the lady tells a few lies. They both have one goal, and that is to go to bed together. After the sexual intercourse, which was totally consensual, the lady decides to claim that the guy raped her brutally. She comes to court and testifies that this was a case of rape in which there was the use of force.

“At this stage, the defense decides to make an independent investigation. The investigation came up with new facts upon which the D.A. [district attorney] decides to give up the claim the sex was not consensual. So both sides agreed that the sexual intercourse was consensual. However, the D.A. still wanted to charge him with rape by deception. So this is the best the defense could do in this case. We are appealing the very long sentence.”

Kashour, who acknowledged having told the woman he was single, said he is known as “Dudu,” a nickname for the Jewish name “David,” but also his own nickname.

“Apparently, later she discovered that I was an Arab and complained to the police,” he said.

“I did not say anything or commit anything wrong,” he insisted, adding that he did not understand how his misrepresentations could result in a rape charge. “If I told the woman I was a pilot and later she finds out that I was not a pilot, then she goes and says that ‘He raped me’? If I told her that I was a millionaire and it turns out that I am a poor man, then she goes and says that ‘He raped me’?”

“It is terrible, but the law says very clearly that if someone has sexual intercourse using deception about his identity to conduct the act, it can be considered rape,” said Leah Samael, a lawyer specializing in civil rights and human rights cases.

But, if the circumstances had been different — if a religious Jew had said he was not religious in order to woo a potential suitor — “he would not be brought to court,” she said. “And I am not sure that, on this occasion, it is a reason to charge. To have intercourse in daytime in a deserted building in the center of town — I say the circumstances speak for themselves.”

She added, “The thing that interests me in the case is the need, the necessity, of Arabs in Israel to pretend. To speak without an accent so as not to be seen as Arabs. To dress not to look like Arabs.”  She predicted Kashour would prevail. “I don’t know if he will be acquitted, but he has served his punishment,” she said.

Criminal law rarely applies to minor lies, like dyed hair or a changed name,” said Dana Pugach of the Noga Legal Center for Victims of Crime. “But it would apply to the more meaningful lies,” she said.  “For example, where a doctor persuades a woman to have sex claiming it would be a part of the medical treatment. As for this particular case, it is not the fact that he was an Arab and claimed to be Jewish. The court emphasized the fact that he claimed to be single while he was married, which would be relevant in the context of a romantic relationship.”

Kashour expressed regret, but not for the alleged victim. “I would only be upset and regret this because I have put my wife through pain and upset her, but I did not [do] anything wrong with the girl.”  His is the second conviction on the charge of rape by deception. In 2008, the Israeli High Court of Justice convicted Zvi Sliman for impersonating an official in the Housing Ministry and promising women help and benefits to persuade them to have sex with him. Sliman was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

California and Tennessee have similar laws.  In Massachusetts, a similar law was being debated:

Massachusetts legislators considered a bill Wednesday that would close a loophole in rape laws to allow prosecutors to bring charges against people who gain a victim’s consent to sex through deception.  Under current law, rape in Massachusetts can only be prosecuted if the act involves force and non-consent. The law does not protect victims who have been intentionally duped into having sex without force or violence.  “There is a myth that rape only happens in a dark alley by a stranger — this is not true,” said Rep. Peter Koutoujian.

Without the new legislation, police and prosecutors are virtually helpless when someone reports a rape that occurred because the victim was deceived or tricked into consenting. In another case of “fraud” rape, a lab technician posed as a medical doctor and sexually assaulted a woman. Legislators said they hope changing the law will prevent future rapes and bring those guilty of any form of rape to justice.

“The intent of the crime is the same, and so the punishment should be the same,” Koutoujian said. “We not only have the judicial mandate to file this legislation, we have a moral obligation.”

Rape by deception is just as damaging and illegal as rape by force, said Middlesex County District Attorney Gerry Leone.  “We have always known that ‘No means no,’ and the current law allows us to effectively prosecute those cases,” Leone said. “What this bill makes clear is that you cannot deceive or defraud a victim into saying yes.”

California and Tennessee already have “rape by fraud” legislation. If the law passes here, a common concern is that the legislation’s vague language regarding deception will result in women who have been seduced by men posing as someone else or claiming to be unmarried filing rape charges.

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By Joshua, July 1, 2010 2:20 am

Weird things in the story about 11 spies reporting to Moscow:

President Barack Obama last week took Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to his favorite hamburger joint, which turned out to be just blocks from the Arlington, Va., apartment building where one of the alleged Russian secret agents lived.

How do we know this is Obama’s favorite hamburger joint?  And what is the name of this alleged favorite? 

He said Mr. Obama was aware of the alleged spy ring, but the president didn’t discuss the topic in face-to-face meetings last week with Mr. Medvedev.

Really.  We’re really expected to believe Obama said nothing about it when he has the President of Russia right in front of him.  Perhaps the “secret message” Obama sent by taking Medvedev to Obama’s “favorite” hamburger “joint” was message enough, huh?  That showed him.  Here, Prez Medvedev:  eat this HAMBURGER.  (*hee hee*)

A criminal complaint filed Monday by prosecutors in New York showed that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have been investigating the alleged Russian agents for a decade, and have had access to communications between Moscow and the suspects.

TEN YEARS?  How many secret secrets have these secret spies secreted away to Moscow in 10 years?  They could’ve taken America’s whole secret shebang in ten years.  Bush and Obama didn’t want anyone looking at the White House guest list and they let Moscow spies run around for 10 years?  I got two words for that: FISHY.

Ten of the suspects, mostly Russians, were arrested in recent days in several U.S. cities. The 11th person, whom U.S. authorities alleged was a ringleader purporting to be a Canadian named Christopher Metsos, was taken into custody Tuesday by police in Cyprus. He was released on bond, despite U.S. concerns that he might flee.

Some judges don’t allow guys who sell an ounce of pot to be put on bail, and they let an alleged spy — whose whole business is to lie to others and disappear — out on bail?  See the two words above for what I think about that, too.

Many Russian officials and analysts said they presumed that hawkish elements within the U.S. government had engineered and timed the arrests to embarrass President Obama and undermine the “reset.”

Why not?  It’s fun to blame the Republicans!  Here’s another one:  “It’s hot today.  Must be global warming.  Blame the Republicans for not signing the Kyoto Protocol!”  Hee hee!  This is fun!

What we learned:

(1)  Spies exist, but this spy story is a bunch of low level crap.

(2)  Republicans didn’t have anything to do with it.

(3)  This is not the Cold War.

(4)  Hee hee.

UPDATE:  I exist.

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By Joshua, June 22, 2010 1:59 am

First, The New York Times reports the non-story of allegedly untold mineral riches in Afghanistan, buying the Pentagon war propaganda hook, line and sinker (NYT wasn’t the only ones).  Now, an inflammatory piece the other way:

U.S. Said to Fund Afghan Warlords to Protect Convoys

American taxpayers have inadvertently created a network of warlords across Afghanistan who are making millions of dollars escorting NATO convoys and operating outside the control of either the Afghan government or the American and NATO militaries, according to the results of a Congressional investigation released Monday. The investigation, begun last year by the House Subcommittee for National Security, found that money given to these Afghan warlords often amounts to little more than mafia-style protection payments, with some NATO convoys that refused to pay the warlords coming under attack.

The subcommittee, led by Representative John F. Tierney, Democrat of Massachusetts, also uncovered evidence suggesting that American taxpayer money is making its way to the Taliban. Several trucking company supervisors told investigators that they believed the gunmen they hired to escort their convoys bribed the Taliban not to attack.

The warlords who are paid with American money, the investigators said, are undermining the legitimate Afghan government that Americans soldiers and Marines are struggling to build, and will most likely threaten the government long after the Americans and NATO leave.  The source of the taxpayer money is a $2.1 billion contract called Host Nation Trucking, which pays for the movement of food and supplies to some 200 American bases across this arid, mountainous country, which in many places has no paved roads.

The 79-page report, entitled “Warlord Inc.,” paints an anarchic picture of contemporary Afghanistan, with the country’s major highways being controlled by groups of freelance gunmen who answer to no one — and who are being paid for by the United States.

One might think that using the terms “American taxpayer money” and “mafia-style” is over-compensating for using the terms “Saudi Arabia of lithium” and “distract from generations of war” in their war propaganda piece of June 13, 2010.

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By Joshua, June 21, 2010 3:01 am

Presented by The New York Times as a major event, a potential turning point in the Afghanistan War, the story has virtually disappeared from the news.  Was it a mirage?

Some say the story was war propaganda:

Reading this week’s New York Times headline — “U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan” — many probably wondered how this information was being presented as “news” in 2010. After all, humanity has long been aware of the country’s vast natural resources. As Mother Jones magazine’s James Ridgeway said after recalling past public accounts of the ore deposits, “This ‘discovery’ in fact is ancient history tracing back to the times of Marco Polo.”…

… Now, under President Obama, we get leaked Pentagon memos cheerily promising that Afghanistan will become “the Saudi Arabia of lithium” and generals touting the minerals’ “stunning potential” — the implication being that America is morally obligated to exploit such potential through armed occupation.

The Guardian reports that the mineral deposit is worth 3 trillion, not just a paltry 1 trillion:

Afghanistan’s untapped mineral wealth is worth at least $3tn – triple a US estimate made this week – according to the government’s top mining official. 

They also suggest war propaganda:

Geologists have known for decades that Afghanistan has vast deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and other prized minerals, but a US briefing this week put a startling$1tn price tag on the reserves. Minister of Mines Wahidullah Shahrani said today that he had seen geological assessments and industry estimates that the minerals were worth at least $3tn.Critics of the war questioned why the country’s mineral wealth was being promoted at a time when violence was on the rise and the international coalition was under pressure to prove its counterinsurgency strategy was working. US officials argued that if Afghanistan was seen to have a bright economic future, it could help convince people that securing the country was worth the fight. It could also give Afghans hope, they said.

Reportedly, Afghan President Karzai gave “priority” to Japan to develop the minerals:

During an appearance at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, Karzai focused on his country’s mineral deposits. He pointed to Japan’s status as Afghanistan’s second-biggest donor, and reasoned that Japan should enjoy special access to Afghan resources with estimated values that range from $1-3 trillion dollars.  “Morally, Afghanistan should give access as a priority to those countries that have helped Afghanistan massively in the past few years,” Karzai told the institute.  “What . . . we have to reciprocate with is this opportunity of mineral resources, that we must return at the goodwill of the Japanese people by giving Japan priority to come and explore and extract,” Karzai said.

If it’s U.S. war propaganda, then the Canadian press has bought into it, too.  Note the tone of this Montreal Gazette piece on “Golden Opportunities”:

A landlocked country the size of Manitoba or Texas, with nothing but rocks to fight over, turns out to be a treasure house of minerals. The initial conservative estimate is that Afghanistan has $420 billion of iron deposits, $275 billion of copper, $50 billion of cobalt, and $25 billion of gold. If the $3 trillion estimate proves out, there could be more than $1.2 trillion of iron alone, more than the size of the initial estimate and nearly equivalent to the GDP of Canada, one of the richest countries in the world. And our wealth derives precisely from our abundance of natural resources -including the very minerals discovered in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is rich. Who knew? Well, it seems the Soviets had some inkling during their occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s, and U.S. geologists stumbled across some of their charts and data, but have only recently put all the pieces of the mineral deposits together…

Who knew, indeed?  The story seems suspicious, and considering that not much more has been reported on the topic from the U.S. government, it could very well be a piece of war propaganda designed to bolster U.S. business and ordinary citizen support for the war that never seems to end. 

How could the Soviets, whos spent 10 years fighting in Afghanistan, not know about this?  This could be read as post-Cold War anti-Soviet propaganda: the USSR was too dumb to know they were sitting on 1-3 trillion dollars worth of minerals.  Does this sound right to you?  The USSR government was many things, but stupid is not one of them. 

For a good history on the “mineral deposit riches in Afghanistan” story, see The Atlantic :

…a simple Google search identifies any number of previous stories with similar details.  “The Bush Administration concluded in 2007 that Afghanistan was potentially sitting on a goldmine of mineral resources and that this fact ought to become a central point of U.S. policy in bolstering the government.”  The Soviets knew this in 1985, as a 2002 history of the region’s economy shows…

The way in which the story was presented — with on-the-record quotations from the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM, no less — and the weird promotion of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense to Undersecretary of Defense suggest a broad and deliberate information operation designed to influence public opinion on the course of the war.

The Obama administration and the military know that a page-one, throat-clearing New York Times story will get instant worldwide attention. The story is accurate, but the news is not that new; let’s think a bit harder about the context.

True story, truly war propaganda.

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By Joshua, June 8, 2010 4:35 am

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, French researchers into personality disorders  had too much time on their hands and made a joke:

The manipulations of  Anakin Skywalker, also known as Darth Vader in the “Star Wars”  saga, have long been ascribed to the Dark Side of the Force. Now, psychiatrists suggests that the actions of the Jedi Knight could be used in teaching about a real-life mental illness.

A letter to the editor in the journal Psychiatry Research explores just what is wrong with Vader. French researchers posit that Vader exhibits six out of the nine criteria for borderline personality disorder. Unstable moods, interpersonal relationships, and behaviors are all characteristics of this condition, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health. It affects 2 percent of adults, mostly young women.

The young Anakin Skywalker was separated from his mother at an early age, and his father was absent, factors that could have contributed to borderline personality disorder. His “infantile illusions of omnipotence” and “dysfunctional experiences of self and others” are also indicative of this condition from an early age.

The researchers argue that Vader experienced two “dissociative episodes,” one when he exterminated the Tuskan people after his mother’s death, and the other when he killed all of the Jedi younglings. He often showed impulsive behavior and had difficulty controlling his anger. He also may have showcased a disturbance in identity by turning to the dark side and changing his name.

Darth Vader may thus be used to educate the public about borderline personality disorder and help combat stigma associated with mental illness.

But Emory psychiatrist Dr. Charles Raison, CNNhealth.com’s mental health expert, has a different take. In the original three movies – which are the last three chronologically – Vader appears to be under the control of an evil emperor, making his character difficult to ascribe to a psychiatric disorder.

You can hear Darth Vader’s response here.

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By Joshua, November 18, 2009 4:11 am

On October 13, 2008, Newsweek ran this cover:

And for November 2009, Newsweek runs this cover:

For the October cover, the photo is a close-up of the populist governor of Alaska, before she prematurely left office.  It exposes the flaws in everyone’s face, and Newsweek decided not to retouch the photo.  Perhaps they were making a statement of Palin being a populist governor with nothing to hide: she likes us and is like us.  Yet, a long line of research in women and politics shows that media outlets tend to focus on the physical features of women candidates more so than men, and Newsweek’s cover for October and November follow that script.

Newsweek had this to say, officially:

“We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do,” Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham said. “We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard.”

Sarah Palin had this to say:

The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this “news” magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness – a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention – even if out of context.

Eleanor Clift of Newsweek wondered why the conservative media ran to her defense, and comes up with this explanation:

Why do right-wing men rush to Sarah’s side to defend her? My theory is that this is payback time. They’ve been called sexist and racist, and subjected to media ridicule of their allegedly retro views. Palin is their way to push back against the elites that have marginalized them.

Clift goes on to call Palin “mediocre:”

Palin embodies the backlash against the intellectual and geographical elites that the folks who live in flyover country blame for wrecking the economy and denigrating their values. She’s a vehicle for their rage. After all, there is something to be said for mediocrity, declared Republican Sen. Roman Hruska in 1970 defending G. Harrold Carswell, an undistinguished Supreme Court nominee who was ultimately rejected by the Senate. In the words that immortalized him more than anything else, he said of Carswell, “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters, and Cardozos.” Substitute whatever names you like for those legal giants, and you’ll plumb the whys and wherefores of Palin’s appeal. She’s ordinary folk, and in times like these, when the elites have messed up, the segment of society that feels most marginalized?white, working-class men who more often than not are conservative?have found their heroine.

Palin is right to call this sexism.  Could there be no other photo of her other than that which exposes her legs?  Why not the same type of photos the magazine has run of men: in business atire, with serious faces?  Newsweek wanted to poke fun at Palin, but in the process that kept to the same sexist script major media outlets use to portray woman candidates in America.  I think anyone — conservative or no — should denounce this script.  It is possible that conservatives are sensitive to being called sexist, but for the women running for office who are the victims of sexism, such sensitivity — and outrage – is justified.

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By David, October 21, 2009 5:07 pm

First, we have the White House’s communications director declaring war on Fox News:

“Let’s not pretend they’re a news network,” White House communications director Anita Dunn said on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” firing the latest salvo in the long-simmering feud.

“Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,” Dunn said.

“What I think is fair to say about Fox, and certainly the way we view it, is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party,” she added.

Then the White House’s Chief of Staff says, “It is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”

Of course, the rest of the Obamedia won’t close ranks with Fox out of professional concern; they wouldn’t want to lose their favored status.  After all, they got him elected.

The one news agency that won’t fellate the Obamessiah, and the post-partisan White House does its best to deligitimize and destroy it.  The enemies list grows longer and longer. More and more, Obama shames his office and the  presidency with his endless blame game, dishonorable conduct, and sheer pettiness.

Interesting, given the post-partisan nature of the Obamessiah’s campaign, how he gives his time to his friends in the media; they won’t dare to ask him any difficult questions or make him the least bit uncomfortable.  Note Gwen Ifill’s presence.

It’s unseemly for a president to attack a news organization.  It’s even more unseemly to pretend that this isn’t the most frightened, nasty, and rabidly partisan administration since Nixon.

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By David, October 17, 2009 8:19 am

Rush Limbaugh was bounced out of the investment group looking to purchase the St. Louis Rams on the basis of lies told by the American left:

Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.

I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.

That’s the American Butthash Media in these days of civility: spreading lies told by racists like Sharpton and Jackson.   Eric Holder was right: we are cowards when it comes to talking about race.  Too many of us are afraid to stand up and point to real-life racism and denounce its practitioners.

The left wept and moaned and bitched and cried for years about the “chill wind” that brought patriotic dissent in this country to a screeching halt during the Bush administration, but they’ve proven themselves to be extremely talented at the politics of personal destruction themselves, and aided by their allies in the media, it’s a long row to hoe to be a conservative in public life.

The left owns the House, Senate, and Presidency.  It’s also got a stranglehold on academia and the media.  It’s no longer okay for us to tolerate this kind of left-wing bias, right?  Before it wasn’t a problem when Bush was in office, because, um, Bush was in office.  He’s not any longer.  Time to stand up for a truly free press.

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By David, September 17, 2009 7:50 am

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi professes ignorance regarding the defunding of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday she is clueless about an amendment to prohibit government funds for embattled ACORN, although it overwhelmingly passed the Senate Monday and the White House is calling for the group to be held accountable.

“I don’t even know what they passed,” Pelosi told The Post yesterday. “What did they do? They defunded it?”

The amendment to suspend housing grants was a stunning blow to the community-activist group — and came as some Democrats and the White House have been backing away from the group.

News anchor Charles Gibson (the man who knew what Sarah Palin said even though she didn’t say it) was completely clueless about the recently surfaced videos of ACORN employees giving advice about how to set up a brothel:

But Gibson told a radio show Tuesday morning that he wasn’t familiar with the story — and it might be “just one you leave to the cables.”

ABC reporter Jake Tapper has filed some reports on the scandal, and Gibson was asked on WLS Radio’s “Don & Roma Show” what he thought of the story.

“I don’t even know about it,” Gibson said, laughing. “So you’ve got me at a loss. … But my goodness, if it’s got everything, including sleaziness in it, we should talk about it in the morning.”

Gibson and Pelosi can be forgiven their stupefying ignorance, of course.  The New York Times only bothered to touch on the story of ACORN’s appalling corruption yesterday, and even then framed it in partisan terms.

While campaigning, President Obamessiah had nice things to say about ACORN:

“I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That’s what I did for three and half years before I went to law school.   That’s the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it.  I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.  Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

In 2008, Stanley Kurtz wrote about ACORN, and how it grew out of the National Welfare Rights Organization:

In the 1960’s, NWRO launched a campaign of sit-ins and disruptions at welfare offices. The goal was to remove eligibility restrictions, and thus effectively flood welfare rolls with so many clients that the system would burst. The theory, explains Stern, was that an impossibly overburdened welfare system would force “a radical reconstruction of America’s unjust capitalist economy.” Instead of a socialist utopia, however, we got the culture of dependency and family breakdown that ate away at America’s inner cities — until welfare reform began to turn the tide.

Clearly, there is rot at the center of ACORN, just as there’s rot in the Obamedia that has refused to cover the story.  Imagine what would happen if that sort of corruption was uncovered in Focus on the Family?  Full-court press, 24-hour coverage, “culture of corruption”, etc. etc.  As usual, the American Butthash Media has fallen down on the job.

Alternatively, you can just call everyone racist and write it off.

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By David, September 4, 2009 7:35 pm

The Associated Press speaks truth to power.   And by “truth” I mean “telling Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the grieving father of a fallen Marine to go pound sand,” and by “power” I mean “ghouls and assorted shitbags”.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is objecting “in the strongest terms” to an Associated Press decision to transmit a photograph showing a mortally wounded 21-year-old Marine in his final moments of life, calling the decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency.”

The AP reported that the Marine’s father had asked – in an interview and in a follow-up phone call — that the image, taken by an embedded photographer, not be published.

The AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”

What’s common human decency in the face of the public’s “right” to see a dying man?

(Thanks to Dave in Texas from Ace’s for the pointer.)

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By Joshua, August 27, 2009 2:23 am

According to Stars & Stripes:

Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

Moreover, the documents — recent confidential profiles of the work of individual reporters prepared by a Pentagon contractor — indicate that the ratings are intended to help Pentagon image-makers manipulate the types of stories that reporters produce while they are embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

One reporter on the staff of one of America’s pre-eminent newspapers is rated in a Pentagon report as “neutral to positive” in his coverage of the U.S. military. Any negative stories he writes “could possibly be neutralized” by feeding him mitigating quotes from military officials. Another reporter, from a TV station, provides coverage from a “subjective angle,” according to his Pentagon profile. Steering him toward covering “the positive work of a successful operation” could “result in favorable coverage.”

The new revelations of the Pentagon’s attempts to shape war coverage come as senior Defense Department officials are acknowledging increasing concern over recent opinion polls showing declining popular American support for the Afghan war. “The purpose of this memo is to provide an assessment of [a reporter from a major U.S. newspaper] … in order to gauge the expected sentiment of his work while on an embed mission in Afghanistan,” reads the preamble to one of the reporter profiles prepared for the Pentagon by The Rendon Group, a controversial Washington-based public relations firm.

Astounding.  I hope they make this report public.

This is part of the Defense Department’s attempt to manipulate the news in the overseas operations of the War on terror, a policy that apparently crosses presidential administrations.  The Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times article, “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” documented this policy as it existed under the Bush Administration:

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.  The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.  The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

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By David, August 7, 2009 4:56 pm

While union thugs sent by the Democrat party beat up protestors of the Obamessiah’s health care plan, the ABM does its best to cover for them:

As has happened across the country the past few weeks, opponents of President Obama’s pro-government health care policies rallied at a town hall of their congresswoman, Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor.The constituents at events like Castor’s are the same ones who organized anti-spending and anti-tax tea parties in the spring. The mainstream media at first ignored those grassroots displays of taxpayer outrage and turned to ridicule when the pesky protesters refused to be ignored.

Both weapons exploded in their faces, so the St. Petersburg Times embraced the sniper rifle of subtlety in its coverage of Castor’s town hall.

Jon Henke of The Next Right heard the first shot — the newspaper changed its story, literally — and exposed the sniper. The Times (whose parent company once employed me at Congressional Quarterly) initially, and correctly, thought it fair to note that the Service Employees International Union organized a counter protest at Castor’s event.

The paper also included this explosive quote from an SEIU official hinting at plans to instigate trouble at the event: “We’re prepared [for disruption]. We have strategies to deal with it if it should come up.”

Read it all to get the whole story.

This isn’t stuff that happened in the 1960’s or last century or even last year.  It’s happening right now.

I’d be pretty embarrassed to have voted Democrat.

Comments (2)

By David, July 11, 2009 4:58 pm

From Althouse, David Brooks tells a story that’s not terribly believable for several reasons:

You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here….

So he had his hand on your thigh the whole time, Brooksie?  A cute piece of man-meat like yourself?  How did he eat his dinner?

I got hold of some of the rest of the footage, and Brooks went on to say:

And then after dinner, but before the cigars and brandy, the Republican senator bent me over the dishwasher in the kitchen and anally penetrated me for a whole hour.  And I was like, ehh, get me out of here.  But I really didn’t consider protesting too much until the Dirty Sanchez, and the Cleveland Steamer he left on my chest was really too much.  And he didn’t even call me after.

It’s as believable as the rest of it.  That’s your American Butthash Media at work.

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By David, June 21, 2009 8:15 am

As protestors are murdered in Iran, the Washington Post reports a puff piece about President Obamessiah taking his kids out for ice cream:

On the eve of Father’s Day, the First Father showed how it’s done, taking his daughters Malia and Sasha for some frozen treats at The Dairy Godmother, a boutique custard parlor in Alexandria.

President Obama and his girls motorcaded over to Alexandria from the White House this afternoon. Malia had a waffle cone of vanilla custard and Sasha had her vanilla custard in a cup.

Contrast this with the Washington Post reporting on President Bush’s golf game in 2002:

Bush, wearing khakis and a knit shirt, was holding a driver in his gloved left hand. The rest of his foursome, including his father, former president George H.W. Bush, was waiting. However incongruous the setting, the president plunged ahead. “There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started, and we must not let them,” he said. “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.”

His business out of the way, Bush barely paused for breath before saying, “Thank you. Now watch this drive.”

The abrupt segue illustrates the dilemma Bush will face over the next month as he relaxes and works at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., at a time of global political volatility.

What about the dilemmas Obama is currently facing?  What about the incongruity of reporting on ice cream flavors when the Post’s colleagues in journalism are so stifled in Iran during one of the most tenuous moments in the country’s recent history?

And while closeted English homosexual Chip Mango may claim that some concepts are being bollixed up, he’s WRONG.

UPDATE: Also, I don’t really begrudge any child getting ice cream, but it’d sure be nice if the TOTUS would look like he’s taking what’s going on in Iran seriously.   Appearances matter.