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Friday, 16 September 2005
I Was For It Before I Was Against It.
Topic: Iraq War
Does that sound familiar?

Let me run down this current logic train.

We should not go into Afghanistan, it will be a disaster.

We went in, it wasn't.

We should not go into Iraq, it will be a disaster, and deflect us from the important job of Afghanistan. Same folks who opposed us going into Afghanistan, then opposed us going into Iraq, because they decided to support the efforts in Afghanistan. To listen to them, they always had too,

Then the attacks shifted. We don't have enough troops in Iraq, we need more. Charles Rangles even penned a return to the Draft Bill, though I am uncertain if we really wanted to help with military levels, or engender more and larger Anti-War Protests. The Draft worked so well, as an Anti-War tool for Vietnam, I think the Left really misses it.

When Katrina hit, they suddenly noticed, that there was NOT too few troops in Iraq, but too many, which were needed in Louisiana. Did not really matter that most of the Louisiana National Guard including the Combat Engineer Battalion which had the heavy equipment to be effective in Relief and Rescue were STILL in Louisiana. I did sound good though. Righteous indignation is always good publicity, even if it's patently false.

They figure by the time the truth comes out the Public's attention will be riveted elsewhere..

But I have to admit of ALL the asinine statements I have read in recent times this one will have to take the Number One position, and I shudder to think of the level of venality something would have to sink to, to replace it.

I am truly hoping that this will remain forever in the Number One position.

Amid the Miserable Failures on the Same Planet
A Message from Cindy Sheehan

"George Bush need st to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans"


Excuse me? I do think those GIs are NEEDED there.
I wonder if she asked the people affected what their desires are?

Of course not, how silly of me, the Far Left, KNOWS what is best for all of us, They don't need to ASK us, or fool around with such undependable mechanisms such as Constitutional Government or Elections. Oh they must sorely MISS Stalin and the Politburo!

One of these days someone needs to tell them, sometimes issues and slogans do not travel well.

We need to pull our troops out of Iraq, NOW, and Terrorism wil stop,is one kind of statement

The American People do not buy it by the way,

12% Say US Troop Withdrawal Will Stop Terror Attacks
August 26, 2005--Just 12% of Americans believe that withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq will stop terror attacks like the summer bombings in London. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 71% disagree and say that troop withdrawal will not lead to an end of terrorist attacks.

The survey also found that 54% of Americans believe the situation will get worse in Iraq if U.S. troops are withdrawn. Twenty percent (20%) take the opposite view and believe the situation will get better.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of men believe a troop withdrawal will make the situation worse. That view is shared by 48% of women.

There is a sharp partisan difference on this question. By a 4-to-1 margin, both Republicans and those not affiliated with either major party say a troop withdrawal now will make the situation worse in Iraq.

Democrats are more closely divided. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of those in Harry Reid's party believe things will get better in Iraq if U.S. troops leave. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say they will get worse


Think of it something Republicans, Independents and 38% of Democrats oppose and only the DNC leadership, Cindy Sheehan, Michael More and Friends of Howard Dean, Teddy Kenendy etal believe in.

Like I said that shows them out of touch with the Hear and Soul of America, far enough

But.


"George Bush need st to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans"


Is something else entirely,

It Mis the kind of thing one expects from the Michael Moore website that is true.

I ask you. Can any political movement which rests on such sinking sand positions and platforms be taken seriously?

Can we trust them with the Security and Defense of the United States?

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Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 7:50 PM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:15 AM CDT
Democratiya
Topic: Islamic Jihad
Some time back I stumbled upon the

Communities United Against Terror Website.

This particular page of it, the "Why we signed"

Christopher Hitchens (Writer)

Association with this statement and with many of its fellow-signatories involves two commitments. The first is the elementary duty of solidarity with true and authentic resistance movements within the Muslim world, such as the Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, who were fighting against Ba'athism and Talibanism (and the latent alliance between the two) long before any American or British government had woken up to the threat. It should go without saying that, though the suffering of their peoples was intense, neither Jalal Talabani nor Ahmed Shah Masoud ever considered letting off explosive devices at random in foreign capitals. I have my political and ideological differences with both groups, but these differences are between me and them, and are not mediated through acts of nihilistic murder.

My second commitment is equally elementary. The foreign policy of a democracy should be determined only at election times or by votes in Congress or Parliament. It is one hundred per cent unacceptable even to imply, let alone to assert, that a suicide-murderer or his apologists can by these means acquire the right to any say in how matters are decided.

Both of these observations, and indeed this very statement, would be redundant if it were not for the widespread cultural presence of a pseudo-Left, and an isolationist Right, both of whom have degenerated to the point where they regard jihadism as some form of "liberation theology". The old slogans are often the best, and "Death to Fascism" is life-affirming in these conditions.

I figured any petition against terrorism signed by Christopher Hitchens was a good place for me to put my signature.


This morning I received this announcement from them.

Dear UAT signer,

One of the authors of the statement 'Communties United Against Terror',
Alan Johnson, has launched a new free online review of books. Its
called Democratiya and you can check it out at

http://www.democratiya.com/

In the first issue you will find an interview with Jean Bethke
Elshtain, the author of Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American
Power in a Violent World.

Please consider sending a note about Democratiya to your own friends
and email lists. Many thanks.


Yours,


The UAT organisers



One thing that is obvious from the Title of the Website, it is an International Website, and looks like it has some valuable and informative reading.

Peruse, and if you agree with the premises, spread the word about it.

Here in their own words is a brief bit About Them

Democratiya is a free bi-monthly online review of books. Our interests will range over war, peace, just war, and humanitarian interventionism; human rights, genocide, crimes against humanity and the responsibility to protect and rescue; the United Nations, international law and the doctrine of the international community; as well as democratisation, social and labour movements, 'global civil society', 'global social democracy', and Sennian development-as-freedom.



Democratiya aims to contribute to a renewal of the politics of democratic radicalism by providing a forum for serious analysis and debate. We will strive to be non-sectarian and ecumenical, and our pages are open to a wide range of political views, a commitment to pluralism reflected in our advisory editorial board.



Democratiya believes that in a radically changed world parts of the left have backed themselves into an incoherent and negativist 'anti-imperialist' corner, losing touch with long-held democratic, egalitarian and humane values. In some quarters, the complexity of the post-cold-war world, and of US foreign policy as it has developed since 9/11, has been reduced to another 'Great Contest': 'The Resistance' (or 'Multitude') against 'Imperialism' (or 'Empire'). This world-view has ushered back in some of the worst habits of mind that dominated parts of the left in the Stalinist period: manicheanism, reductionism, apologia, denial, cynicism. Grossly simplifying tendencies of thought, not least the disastrous belief that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' are once again leading to the abandonment of democrats, workers, women and gays who get on the wrong side of 'anti-imperialists' (who are considered 'progressive' simply because they anti-American).



This attitude is especially unfortunate at a time when there is 'reform ferment in the Arab world, an emerging democracy in Iraq, and the colour-coded democratic revolutions in post-communist societies', as Michael Allen notes in the inaugural issue of Democratiya. In this historical moment, as an editorial in The New Republic noted, '[L]iberals must realize their own future is at stake. Should democratization succeed with Democrats deeply involved, they will be able to claim a share of the credit. But, should it succeed despite their puerile detachment - or, worse, their objections - Democrats could well be branded as the party that opposes bringing human rights and responsible governance to people who don't yet benefit from them'. To which Norman Geras has added, 'For "Democrats" in the US, read "the left" in Europe'.



When over 8 million Iraqis voted in democratic elections in January 2005, at polling stations guarded by American and other foreign troops, emerging to dance for joy, their purple fingers held aloft, only for Britain's leading liberal newspaper to sneer that the election was 'at best irrelevant', it was clear that something had gone terribly awry. When Iraq's heroic free trade unionists were called 'collaborators' and 'quislings', while their torturers and murderers were hailed as a 'liberation movement', one could hear the rattling of loose political and moral bearings.



Of course our task is not to sing 'America! America!' As Irving Howe put it, 'The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have'. But this is 2005 not 1965. It is no longer enough to say 'no' where the US says 'yes'. A more self-condident and constructively critical stance is needed.



We democrats will fare better if we are guided by a positive animating ethic and seek modes of realization through serious discussion and practical reform efforts. Democratiya will stand for the human rights of victims of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity. We will be, everywhere, pro-democracy, pro-labour rights, pro-women's rights, pro-gay rights, pro-liberty, pro-reason and pro-social justice. Against anti-modernism, irrationalism, fear of freedom, loathing of the woman, and the cult of master-slave human relations we stand for the great rallying calls of the democratic revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Democracy, even for the 'poorest he'. Liberte, egalite, fraternite. The rights of man. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those precious ideas were rendered the inheritance of all by the social democratic, feminist and egalitarian revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. No one left behind. No one. We are partisans and artisans of this fighting faith and we pit it against what Paul Berman has called 'the paranoid and apocalyptic nature of the totalitarian mindset'.



In line with these aspirations, Democratiya will embrace what the Italian democratic liberalsocialist Norberto Bobbio called 'the most salutary fruits' of a certain intellectual tradition. He had in mind 'the value of enquiry, the ferment of doubt, a willingness to dialogue, a spirit of criticism, moderation of judgment, philological scruple, a sense of the complexity of things'.



Democratiya aims to be accessible to 'the common reader'. The discipline of the plain style, and a refusal of the obscurantist prose of contemporary academia, is today a political act of the first importance. We seek good writing, less adorned and more luminous, as well as thoughtful analysis, and a bit of style. Anyone seeking a model should look at Dissent. Careful exposition of the central arguments of the book under review is important. But so is the critical response of the reviewer. Authors will have a standing right of reply and reviewers a standing right of rejoinder.



Publishers may send books for review to Alan Johnson, Editor, Democratiya, Department of Social and Psychological Sciences, Edge Hill College of Higher Education, St Helens Road, Ormskirk, Lancashire, L39 4QP. All correspondence can be sent to the same address or to Alandemocratiya@aol.com If you would like to offer a review, please get in touch.



Alan Johnson

Editor


(emphasis added)


|


Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 7:08 AM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:15 AM CDT
Thursday, 15 September 2005
Things Are Not Always As They Seem
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
As more information comes out after the first flush of confusion and chaos, the perceptions of the American People are starting to shift.

Feds Get Slightly Better Marks on Katrina Response
Thirty-six percent (36%) of Americans say that the federal government has done a good or excellent job responding to Hurricane Katrina. That's up from 28% ten days ago.

While 36% say the federal government has done a good or an excellent job, just 31% say the same about the response of state and local governments

Hurricane Katrina

Federal Response----------- President Bush Response
Excellent 15%-------------- Excellent 20%
Good 21%-------------- Good 19%
Fair 20%-------------- Fair 23%
Poor 42%---------------Poor 37%


Things are not always as they seem at first glance, even when the media does not go out of its way to point things blacker than needed.

Now I realize that drama sells more advertising than good news, but you have to admit, the Mainstream Media in this country do go to extremes at times.

Not however as much as the in Europe. There they do not allow even the most trivial action, such as going to the lavatory escape their eagle eye and sense of ridicule.

BREAKING NEWS at SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bush's Bathroom BreakThere is a new standard for quality and niveau in the German media when it comes to reporting on the United States. Forget explaining the complex workings of American politics, forget trying to present diverse political viewpoints from within the world's only remaining superpower, forget serious discussion of the Bush administration's plans for UN reform. No...none of that really matters right now...put all that on hold...this is far more important...

Sigh one wonders if they checked the room to see if the sink was wet indicating he did wash his hands afterwards. It is obvious he did we would have heard about it otherwise.

While I was reading this and like matters I got to thinking how different reality is from what most of the public perceive it and I recalled some events from my youth.

I will take a moment here to reminisce. Some may find this tale humorous some may not.

First I must provide some perspective and location.
I graduated from High School in 1969, some of you will recall those days, a time of great upheaval here at home and abroad.

I did not go to the University, until the Fall of 1971, my first two years I spent at a local Community College branch of the University of Kentucky.

I missed quite a bit of the excitement by staying home those two years. One particular incident I missed at UK was the night they burned down the ROTC Building A blow for the Revolution!

I say they, because I was about 300 miles away when it happened and had no involvement. But after wards at UK and during the years later I met quite a few who were very proud that we burned down the ROTC Building. Really I thought there were far too many "we's" for all of them to have been involved but some people do like glory through Association.

What divides me from them is that I know the real truth about what was done that night. I learned it from a girl I met on campus.

Maureen was a very pretty girl, which might account for my clear recollection of the tale she told after all these years.

Was she a Revolutionary, and Anarchist, a Sister in the Struggle? No, Maureen was a Dancer. A Ballet Dancer actually with the UK Dance Company.

Maureen also had a severe handicap, which was revealed to me by one of her closest friends. Ballerinas start training when they are not much older than babies, toddlers even and Maureen was VERY good at what she did, but alas she did NOT have the Classic Ballerina Build, she was how shall I put it? Too top heavy. EXTREMELY topheavy. Believe me, when those bright blue eyes flashed and her face flushed with emotion and and the Twin Peaks moved, your attention was RIVETED.

Maureen was very bitter about the Night They Burned Down the ROTC Building. No she was not a Young Republican, she was just a Dancer, but you see, the ROTC had not used that building in YEARS.

The Fine ARTS Dept used it instead to store the Props and Costumes for the Theater and Dance Company!

It was a case of Improper Target Identification and a lack of Intelligence in ALL the definitions of the term.

Over the years I have had the great pleasure of running into people who went to UK at that period of time and look back on their Revolutionary Youth with great Pride,

I just love it when they say, "Yeah man, WE burned down the ROTC Building!" and I get to see the confusion in their face when I reply, "Yeah that certainly was a Great Blow in the Struggle Against Culture!". "Rise up and throw off the Shackles of Ballet and Theater?"

Then when I explain with disgust what actually happened that night, and how long it took the Fine Arts Dept to recoup the blow to its budget, there is that moment, when I can see ALL of their Youthly Illusions Shatter, and Die,

Now, I want you to know, I am not an unfeeling person, I get a great deal of delight from these experiences. ;-)


The Lesson of this tale is always verify,
Things Are Not Always As They Seem.

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Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 10:10 PM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:14 AM CDT
Wednesday, 14 September 2005
Isolation of the Dodo
Topic: Islamic Jihad
I ran across an interesting dialog on the Internet today.

Shannon Elizabeth comments on a post by Feministe's "Jill" arguing that, because 911 wasn't an act of war (which would come as a surprise to those who declared war on us, then attacked us with our own airliners filled with our own citizens), but was instead a simple act of terrorism, it is not worthy of being commemorated by the inaptly-named "war memorial"

Elizabeth: “Gee. And I thought I was an uninformed bimbo."*

It was responded to Shannon Elizabeth calls me a bimbo

Well ad hominen attacks are non productive. In the realm of ideas, my thoughts were as follows.

"The first military land action by the United States of America, was against a NGO of Muslim Terrorists known at the time as the Barbary Pirates.

The Congress of the day, Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton discussed whether a Formal Declaration of War was required.

They concluded that while a Formal Declaration of War was required to initiate a War, since our Shipping (the merchant marines were civilians I might add) and our Sovereignty had been attacked we were already in a STATE OF WAR
with the Barbary Pirates so no Formal Declaration was required.

Under the International Accords Customs and Laws of Land War at that time and today, A State of War ensues when either an attack occurs or a Declaration of War is issued.

Al Queda has declared Holy War upon the United States of America and has attacked us on our soil, and has attacked us elsewhere in the world.

There is now, and has been for some time, a State of War between us, there is Constitutional Precedent as I stated above for this claim."

On a more general note, during the last generation at the hands a of an Extreme Jihadist Sect, in Bangladesh, Southern Sudan, Dafur, Algeria and numerous other locales on the order of 5 million human beings have been slaughtered and about 50 million displaced.

I cannot think of a single religion that has not been attacked.

This combat has claimed the lives of citizens of almost every nationality on the face of the Earth and attacks have been carried out in North America, Europe, Asia, the MidEast, Oceania. So far I do not recall any attacks in South America or Antarctica, but give them time, they may yet hit those areas.

We are engaged in a Global War with an unprecedented range. What level of Mega Death is required for some people to actually see this?

The Forces arrayed against us divide the World into two portions

Dar Al Islam the House of Peace/Surrender/Submission
and Dar Al Harb the House of War/not-Surrendered/not-Submitted.

We used to think of the War Issue as between Hawks and Doves, then I wondered if it should be Hawks and Ostriches, due to the numbers who seemed to have their heads stuck in the Sand.

Now I think that they are not Ostriches, but Dodos.

The Dodo was just not smart enough to realize that something could be a threat.

The Dodo is now Extinct.







Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 5:52 PM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:14 AM CDT
Tuesday, 13 September 2005
Muhammad al-Dura Myth, What Took So Long.
Topic: Islamic Jihad
Michelle Malkin has a new post up today,
"WHEN PICTURES LIE"
Remember these images broadcast by French state-owned television in 2000 that inflamed the Muslim world and inspired al Qaeda recruiters?


I recall those events quite well. I did some close looking at the video and some stills way back then.

In order to avoid bias, I downloaded the video and the still at the time, from Muslim Websites.

Those links are a few hard drives in the past, but I still recall what I saw back then.

First the Video. You see the boy and the Man behind a barrel the man is looking towards the Israeli lines and hollering.

Then, as I recall the camera view is obscured, not exactly blurred because you see a brief flash of something flesh colored, like a hand blocking the lense. When the view clears the man is sagging as if wounded, the boy is laying still.

In the still photos one can see on the wall behind the man and the boy bullet holes, but not elongated slashes, which would have been made by fire from the Israeli lines to the far right hand field from the perspective of the viewer, but round holes which could only have come from a viewpoint in the same line of sight as the camera and perpendicular to the wall.

That is how I remember it.

Yes Pictures, can lie, but if you look closely they can also tell the truth.

So my reaction to this sudden flurry after all this time is, what took so long for the truth to start getting some real recognition?

Oh and as for this?


a piece of Palestinian street theater, similar to the dramatic Palestinian funeral processions that were observed after the Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp. During that public spectacle, a martyred "corpse" twice fell off the stretcher, only to hop back up and retake his place in the procession. (The Palestinians had claimed 3,000 deaths in Jenin ? the actual toll turned out to be 52.)

I have a link to that video clip, I don't know how many times I have looked at it and almost fell down laughing. Because it is obvious from the action that most of the crowd really thought the man was dead and when he is dropped off the flag colored stretcher and jumps up?

They scatter like a flock of chickens who have just spotted a hawk.

I will try to find that link and update this post with it.

UPDATE

Click here: DEAD WALK

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Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 7:13 PM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:12 AM CDT
Media Bias
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
From time to time on International Discussion Forums, someone from another country will ask questions.

There is often a difference of opinion on matters between Americans online.

Recently a few of us were trying to explain Liberal Media Bias, when one of our counterparts posted the following,


"That's so funny you keep saying this - several months ago NPR did an anonymous poll of journalist across America and found that 48% of them declared themselves REPUBLICANS"


That was a surprise and if anyone knows a source for such a poll, I would be interested to peruse it.

As far as I can determine from source I can find the situation is much different.

Studies Show Reporters Less Conservative Than General Public

A survey released in May 2004 by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press provides the most recent figures to this evidence. That study shows journalists at the local and national level consider themselves more liberal compared with the public overall and less conservative. But like the general public, most journalists call themselves moderates. (Some commentators on this survey wonder if the survey participants may call themselves moderate despite not having those views.)

"Journalists at national and local news organizations are notably different from the general public in their ideology and attitudes toward political and social issues," the survey's summary notes. "Most national and local journalists, as well as a plurality of Americans (41%), describe themselves as political moderates. But news people - especially national journalists - are more liberal, and far less conservative, than the general public."

The survey found that 20 percent of general public calls itself liberal while 34 percent of the national journalists and 23 percent of local journalists. Forty-one percent of the public calls itself moderate while 54 percent of the national and 61 percent of the local journalists do so.

That compares with how 33 percent of the American public calls itself conservative compared with 7 percent of the national and 12 percent of local journalists.



Liberal Media Evidence

THE ARGUMENT over whether the national press is dominated by liberals is over. Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press corps, it was 59 percent liberal, 18 percent conservative. A 1985 poll of 3,200 reporters found them to be self-identified as 55 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In 1996, another survey of Washington journalists pegged the breakdown as 61 percent liberal, 9 percent conservative. Now, the new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the national media to be 34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative.

Over 40-plus years, the only thing that's changed in the media's politics is that many national journalists have now cleverly decided to call themselves moderates. But their actual views haven't changed, the Pew survey showed. Their political beliefs are close to those of self-identified liberals and nowhere near those of conservatives. And the proportion of liberals to conservatives in the press, either 3-to-1 or 4-to-1, has stayed the same. That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute.


Now one retort to the above is to point out the percentage of the mediawho consider themselves to be moderate, but I wonder, is a Dubuque moderate the same as one who lives in LA, NY, or DC?

Labels such as Conservative, Liberal and Moderate are subjective and cover a range of political thougth.

Party affiliation is more definitive. Visual aids such as graphs show the demarcation more vividly.


Media Bias Basics

What is the opinion of those in the media on this topic? Let us look at a small sample of the more prominent opinions from the above source.

"I thought he [former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg] made some very good points. There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias.
- CBS's 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney

Most of the time I really think responsible journalists, of which I hope I'm counted as one, leave our bias at the side of the table. Now it is true, historically in the media, it has been more of a liberal persuasion for many years.
ABC anchor Peter Jennings

"There is a liberal bias. It?s demonstrable. You look at some statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic, they have for a long time. There is a, particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias. There is a liberal bias at Newsweek, the magazine I work for.
Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas

"Everybody knows that there's a liberal, that there's a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents...
Walter Cronkite


Now Walter Cronkite does present a reason for this,

.Anybody who has to live with the people, who covers police stations, covers county courts, brought up that way, has to have a degree of humanity that people who do not have that exposure don't have, and some people interpret that to be liberal. It's not a liberal, it's humanitarian and that's a vastly different thing

Loose translation, conservatives are not humanitarian, but of course that is not a Liberal bias, just reality as they see it.

And last but not least a complete admission from the direction of CNN

"I do have an axe to grind...I want to be the little subversive person in television."
Barbara Pyle, CNN Environmental Editor and Turner Broadcasting Vice President for Environmental Policy


All of this might explain a curious situation recently at CNN, it was either bias or journalistic incompetance of such a magnitude as defy belief.

I will let you decide.


From the "Bias? What liberal bias?" files...
On Saturday, CNN.com had a piece [9/12 clarification carried by Reuters] titled "Firms with White House ties get Katrina contracts:"

Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

The Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, CNN tells us, is a major corporate client of Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Among its Katrina-related contracts are this one valued up to $100 million from FEMA; and this one also valued up to $100 million from the Army Corps of Engineers.

But in their zeal to embarrass the Bush administration, CNN overlooks one very fat and inconvenient fact--and embarrasses only itself.

The Shaw Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, is headed by Jim Bernhard, the current chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party.
Bernhard worked tirelessly for Democrat Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's runoff campaign and served as co-chair of her transition team. Another Shaw executive was Blanco's campaign manager. Bernhard is back-scratching chums with Blanco, whom he has lent/offered the Shaw Group's corporate jets to on numerous occasions.


Now I just WONDER, how did CNN happen to miss this little tidbit?

"Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Is big news.

The Shaw Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, is headed by Jim Bernhard, the current chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party


Was not that important and so was left out of the story, or CNN could not report a PTA meeting with out missing most of it.

You choose.

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Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 8:27 AM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:12 AM CDT
Monday, 12 September 2005
Two Issues,
One Word

Topic: 9/11
At the close of last week a firestorm lit up the internet concerning the design for the Future Flight 93 Memorial.

A firestorm is not an exaggeration. It might even be an understatement.

Many different blogs weighed in. Some were enraged, some did not see the significance of the construct that was objected to.

The responses ranged from

Michelle Malkin in
(DIS)HONORING THE FLIGHT THAT FOUGHT BACK


And do you wonder how this memorial design--benignly passive at best, offensive and inexplicably clueless at worst--possibly passed muster as the best representation of the spirit, courage, and resilience of the 40 passengers who saved countless American lives?
Is this the best we can do?
Sissy Willis and Dean Esmay, both conservative bloggers I like and link to regularly, dissent from those who are troubled by the "Crescent of Embrace." Do read their critiques. Sissy Willis thinks the issue can be resolved with a name change. Dean Esmay dismisses the controversy as a "kerfuffle." Both describe critics, myself included, as "shrill."


Captain's Quarters in

Flight 93 Memorial Intended To Offend

But the architects who created the winning design say their design has nothing to do with Islam.
"A crescent is part of architectural vocabulary. It's a generic form used in design," said Paul Murdoch, one of the winning architects. "We don't see any one group having ownership of it."
Murdoch believes it's unfortunate that the design is being interpreted that way.
"You can call it all kinds of things. We can call it an arc. We can call it a circle. We can call it the edge of the bowl. The label doesn't matter to us in terms of intent. We have no objection to calling it something else."
But as Ward reports, the advisory jury which selected the design asked the architects to do just that. They specifically wrote in their recommendation for this design that the name "Crescent of Embrace" be changed to "circle" or "arc" in order to avoid references to "specific religious iconography". That sounds as if the jury, which included victim family members, recognized the potential Islamic references at once.
Why didn't Murdoch heed that request? After all, it came from the victims' families, as the rebuttals have argued in specifying their support for the overall design. Instead, Murdoch kept that nomenclature.


The Politburo Diktat in

Flight 93 Crescent Memorial - The Designer?s Own Words

I don?t get it. Why this shape? The designers had a blank slate. They could have designed anything. And they chose the symbol of the perpetrators. They essentially claim that the shape is a coincidence. That?s an absurd claim. Architects design things for a reason, with intent; every part of an architectural design serves a purpose. A wall holds up a building; a pipe carries water; a gravestone marks a person?s final resting place. To pretend there is no symbolism here is beyond ?disingenuous.? It?s ridiculous. All you have to do is look at it. I skimmed through several Leftie blogs. They are convinced it?s a coincidence, that only wingnuts would see a connection.


Over in Euorope !No Pasaran! chimed in with
Forms have MEANING


One of their commenters was even more blunt

The proposed ?artwork for Flight 93 memorial site?called the ?crescent of embrace?. Does this just make you sick to your stomach when the remains of the victims are buried here and the perpetrators were muslim extremists? How many of these victims were muslims, do you suppose and since when is this appropriate in any stretch of the imagination


Then of course there were other reactions.

If the designer had used a different word?

by Jack Grant
such as semilunar instead of crescent, would the overly-sensitive right-wing be equally outraged?
From where I stand, Dean Esmay is entirely correct when he writes, ?Guys: it?s a curved grove of maple trees for God?s sake. Get over it


Perpetual Indignance As Political Expression
by Dean Esmay
Guys: it's a curved grove of maple trees for God's sake. Get over it

For the sake of debate, and only for the sake of debate I will stipulate, "a curved grove of trees is a curved grove of trees."

Let whether or not merely changing the name will solve the problem.

For me the defining question is, "If the crescent shape has no meaning other than subjective, was never meant to imply anything, the WHY was the simple request of the families ignored?"

They did not ask to scrap this design.
They did not ask to restart the long process of selection over.

They only asked that the title

"Crescent of Embrace" be changed to "circle" or "arc" in order to avoid references to "specific religious iconography".

Those who have maintained that outrage over the design of the Flight 93 Memorial have yet to explain why this simple request was not honored.

And if it was not honored, what purpose did the jury of families serve?

Were they meant to be listened to but ignored?

Were they just one more symbolic and meaningless gesture?

I am just a simple Flyover Land Jacksonian American, where I come from the wishes of grieving families where it is possible are honored.

So those who maintain that we who are outraged are barking at nothing.

Explain this puzzle to me.

If the Crescent has no definitive symbolic meaning in the title "Crescent of Embrace", where lies the great difficulty in changing one simple word?

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Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 6:43 PM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:11 AM CDT
I'm not here to point the finger of blame
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
Howard Dean graced the American People with that statement recently.

Of course it came at the END of
Dean: U.S. must face 'ugly truth' about Katrina
"(CNN) -- Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said that in Hurricane Katrina's wake Americans need to face the "ugly truth" that race and class played a significant role in who lived and died"

I submit that has, is and will be the definitive model of the Democratic Party's tactics.

When the situation is in flux, information is incomplete or lacking, hysteria, extreme rhetoric, appeals to emotion and most definitely all the "finger pointing of blame" that they can muster.

Then when the situation stabilizes,when information is more complete and accurate, and when the fingers start pointing in directions that the DNC feel uncomfortable with, there will be an attempt to deflect the attention of the public and assume a position on the moral high ground by phrases such as


"I'm not here to point the finger of blame"

followed by a sometimes unspoken, but resounding

BUT

At the last they will utter platitudes that we need to find solutions, begin healing and find closure.

Sound familiar? It's been used time after time.
The events leading up to the Gulf War Phase II, had how many hysterical rants about the tens of thousands of US GIs who would die, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It didn't happen that way did it?

Katrina did not happen the way it has been portrayed either, and there are some VERY unpleasant "ugly truths" emerging,

Not about the President, nor the Federal FEMA effectiveness, but about the Local Authorities
in Louisiana, who happen to belong to a Party, I do not feel I have to name.

How many times have witnessed the same?

During the days leading up to the start of the Gulf War Phase II, do you recall the hysterical mantra of the tens of thousands of GIs we would lose, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that would die.

Didn't happen that way did it?

Then when our troops out ran their supplies because they had had overwhelming success, they paused and immediately the cry went out "quagmire"? And it wasn't was it?

Sometimes it seemed like the Democratic and the Mainstream Media Talking Heads were reading from the same page as Baghdad Bob. Didn't it?

9/11 happened on President Bush's watch so it was all his fault. That is until the information started coming out about the Wall that had been erected between our intelligence offices and our criminal departments.

Then just like clockwork, now is not the time to point fingers of blame, now is the time to find solutions and closure.

There is nothing new under the sun and we have seen all this so many times.

The Democratic Party plays the same games over and over again and like a broken clock that tells the correct time twice a day, there is always an element of truth in their litany.

But it is always a carefully selective truth.

Witness CNN's latest expose from Michelle Malkin in

THE DEMOCRATS' KATRINA PROFITEER

The Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, CNN tells us, is a major corporate client of Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Among its Katrina-related contracts are this one valued up to $100 million from FEMA; and this one also valued up to $100 million from the Army Corps of Engineers.

But in their zeal to embarrass the Bush administration, CNN overlooks one very fat and inconvenient fact--and embarrasses only itself.

The Shaw Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, is headed by Jim Bernhard, the current chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. Bernhard worked tirelessly for Democrat Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's runoff campaign and served as co-chair of her transition team. Another Shaw executive was Blanco's campaign manager. Bernhard is back-scratching chums with Blanco, whom he has lent/offered the Shaw Group's corporate jets to on numerous occasions.


Nice try wasn't it? Want to bet that as more and more comes out they will try to divert attention from any hint of corruption in the rebuilding effort with,

Now is not the time to point fingers of blame now is the time to rebuild?

First denunciation then deflection.

They are not engaged in Battle of Ideas with us. They are engaged in an attempt to create an image.

When one strawman is knocked down they will shift to another one.

The name for this is the Big Lie. Say anything loud enough, long enough, people will accept it as the truth.

I am willing to bet on the American People;s thirst for the truth and sense of fairplay. They seem to be betting on us being so Stupid that we won't notice what is really happening.

One of us has to be wrong.
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Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 3:05 AM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:11 AM CDT
Sunday, 11 September 2005
Never Forget, Never Falter,
Do NOT Fail

Topic: 9/11


I hear people saying we don't need this war
I say there's some things worth fighting for
What about our freedom and this piece of ground
We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down
Now they say we don't realize the mess we're getting in
Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

They took all the footage off my T.V.
Said it's too disturbing for you and me
It'll just breed anger that's what the experts say
If it was up to me I'd show it everyday
Some say this country's just out looking for a fight
Well after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

Now I've been there with the soldiers
Who've gone away to war
And you can bet that they remember
Just what they're fightin' for

Have you forgotten all the people killed?
Some went down like heros in that Pennsylvania field
Have you forgotten about our Pentagon?
And all the loved ones that we lost and those left to carry on
Don't you tell me not to worry about bin Laden
Have you forgotten?


Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten?


WAV WEBSITE


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Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 1:10 AM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:10 AM CDT
Saturday, 10 September 2005
The Bow of Blood
Topic: 9/11
There have been some interesting revelations about
further symbolic meanings hidden in Crescent of Embrace Flight 93 Memorial.

A case can be made that hidden meanings depend more on the searcher than what is examined. In this case I do believe the defining truth lies in the fact that,

the advisory jury which selected the design---specifically wrote in their recommendation for this design that the name "Crescent of Embrace" be changed to "circle" or "arc" in order to avoid references to "specific religious iconography". That sounds as if the jury, which included victim family members, recognized the potential Islamic references at once.


That from Captain's Quarters
Flight 93 Memorial Intended To Offend

Which SHOULD close the case that this interpretation is due only to the paranoia of small minded Neo-Con bloggers.

It won't though, any more than the above request by the families of the Flight 93 victims was honored.

But there are OTHER interpretations of the geometry that I find highly entreating.

Bluemerle points out that

"What would you say if you found out, among other issues of Islamic imagery being incorporated into the memorial, that the red crescent was canted on the prayer qibla to Mecca?

I know, I know.

But it is.

Shoot an arrow on the bow of the crescent and it flies along the path of the qibla. (the imaginary line to Mecca believers align themselves with when they pray.)


Really?

Etaoin Shrdlu presents us with a very impressive case.

Thus the Title of this post.

There is alot more comment on this over at Ace of Spades in
Another "Inadvertant" Feature of Flight 93 Memorial: Crescent Points Towards Mecca (CONFIRMED)

This last bit of information has changed my mind.
At first I want this version NOT to be used, now
I am thinking, yes make it EXACTLY like the illustrations and when I am there I can use
the ends of the Bow for a range finder. ;-)

Let the Left call it the Crescent of Embrace
I will think of it as the Bow of Blood.

Straight up the middle and forward!

If I ever go there I will stand on the Sacred Ground sight along the direction of an arrow laid
on the bowline and think,

Of the members of Flight 93

and my Cousin Casey who fell in Beirut in 83.

Now I say keep the Memorial just the way it is.




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Posted by ky/kentuckydan at 11:38 PM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:09 AM CDT

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