Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

Speakers at big rallies urging "guest worker" status for illegal immigrants remind me of no guest I have ever seen, except Sheridan Whiteside, the overbearing title character in "The Man Who Came to Dinner."

Thomas Sowell

Quote of the day - C.S. Lewis

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

C. S. Lewis

Guest posting for Alicia at Blonde Sagacity

I am guest-posting today for Blonde Sagacity. While it seems odd that I have time to guest post somewhere else, but not enough time to post something here, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to guest post for Alicia. She is a "Large Mammal" and attracts tremendous traffic (and lively debate). I consider it an honor.

Quote of the day - Jesse Helms

On Ted Kennedy: "Let me adjust my hearing aid. It could not accommodate the decibels of the Senator from Massachusetts. I can't match him in decibels or Jezebels."

Jesse Helms

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter - conservation vs. civilization

We're Americans. This is a prosperous country. We will not live like Swedes. We want 18-ton Ford Exploro-cruisers, cell phones, CDs, hot showers, blow dryers, DVD players and jet skis.

Fuel is the metric of prosperity, and conservationism is an acknowledgement that we are in decline of prosperity -- that this is the beginning of the long bleak twilight of civilization. If you posit that we have fixed energy sources and we have to ration them, then we are dying as a species.

The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view.

Producing oil isn't so bad for the environment anyway. During World War II, our boats were going at breakneck speed to get oil to England (what with the war and all). There were oil spills everywhere. Half the beaches in the United States were slathered in oil. Six weeks later all the birds were back.

You couldn't get rid of the environment if you tried. Alaska is immense, caribou love the Alaskan pipeline, they've grouped there, frolicking and leaping over the pipeline ... but I'm lost in an irrelevancy. The point is: We need oil for our CAT scan machines, airplanes, computers and refrigerators.

Ann Coulter - October 12, 2000

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

If Judge Taylor's ruling stands, if the U.S. government intercepts a call from Islamabad to London about a plot to blow up Big Ben, it can alert the Brits. But, if the U.S. government intercepts a call from Islamabad to New York about a plot to blow up the Chrysler Building, that's entirely unconstitutional and all record of it should be erased.

Mark Steyn - August 27, 2006

Quote of the day - Ayn Rand

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

Ayn Rand

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

Marriage means a permanent union between people of opposite sexes. That’s the whole idea. The advocates of same-sex marriage aren’t really complaining about discrimination; they’re complaining about marriage.

Joe Sobran

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

One of the maddening things about computer programs and computerized products is their making you fight your way through a maze of complications to do simple things.

Thomas Sowell

Quote of the day - C.S. Lewis

It is only when you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt. Human minds. They do not come from nowhere.

C. S. Lewis

Quote of the day - Jesse Helms

From the Robert Mapplethorpe/NEA controversy: "Come up here and see what your tax dollars are paying for. But no ladies, please! Only men can come up and see this. This will turn your stomach."

Jesse Helms

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Without the ethnic profiling going on outside of airports, no security procedure currently permissible inside airports would have prevented a terrorist attack that would have left thousands dead.

Ann Coulter - August 17, 2006

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

Of course, if Bush sneered that John Kerry and Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi's constant companion is the white flag, they'd huff about how dare he question their patriotism. But, if you can't question their patriotism when they want to lose a war, when can you?

Mark Steyn - August 20, 2006

Quote of the day - Ayn Rand

He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.

Ayn Rand

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

Let's put it this way: you don't hear the word
"usurpation" in Congress for the same reason you don't
hear the word "fornication" in Las Vegas. When a vice
becomes popular and profitable, it loses its proper name.

Joe Sobran

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

The biggest enemy of real equality is make-believe equality. Some peoples, such as the Scots and the Japanese, lagged far behind for centuries before moving to the forefront of achievement. Pretending that they were equal during the centuries when they were not might have prevented the changes that developed their ability.

Thomas Sowell

Quote of the day - Jesse Helms

"I've never heard once in this chamber [The U.S. Senate] anybody say to the homosexuals, 'Stop what you're doing.' If they would stop what they're doing there would not be one additional case of AIDS in the United States."

Jesse Helms

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

Absent a determination to throttle the [Pan-Islamist] ideology, we're about to witness the unraveling of the world.

Mark Steyn - August 13, 2006

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

When we were at peace, Democrats wanted to raise taxes. Now there's a war, so Democrats want to raise taxes. When there was a surplus, Democrats wanted to raise taxes. Now that there is a mild recession, Democrats want to raise taxes.

Ann Coulter

Reutersgate widening and deepening

This story from the Jerusalem Post will not be new to most of you, but it will be important years or months from now when we try to summarize the events of August 2006:

At first everyone thought they were just blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the mainstream media.

Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over Beirut was doctored to enhance smoke above the city. The Web site www.LittleGreenFootballs.com is credited with first revealing the scandal, which has been dubbed Reutersgate, but the affair has spread far wider than the Reuters News Agency and into several of the most esteemed media outlets.

More than a dozen accusations of staged or doctored photographs have made their way through various Web sites in the past several weeks. None has been treated by the news outlets as seriously as the original Reuters incident, which saw the photographer Adnin Hajj fired and over 900 of his photos removed from the Reuters wire list. But numerous other outlets - including the BBC, The New York Times and AP - have been forced to recall photos or change captions following inaccuracies pointed out in online forums.

The fact that the online community rather than fellow mainstream media has become a watchdog of accuracy has surprised many who originally derided blogs as being "devoid of accuracy."

emphasis added

For the MSM/DNC to be replaced as the main source of news for Americans, we must not only expose fraudulent incidents like Reutersgate, we must follow through and take credit where credit is due. Summaries like the one above can place a week's worth of scandal into the proper context.

We must also tie each new scandal into the context of the previous scandals.

Previous - MSM/DNC scandal quiz.

- MSM/DNC scandal summary.

- "Anything we do . . . anything we see".

Quote of the day - C.S. Lewis

It is hard to have patience with people who say "There is no death" or "Death doesn't matter." There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.

C. S. Lewis

Quote of the day - Lee Alcorn

"If we get a Jew person [as the Democratic V-P candidate], then what I'm wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know? We need to be very suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with money."

Lee Alcorn, president of the Dallas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People - speaking of the Joseph Lieberman nomination for V-P in 2000.

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

For liberals, the Constitution as written is boring old
music. They want the Court to play ingenious new
variations on it, jazzing it up with penumbras and
emanations until it sounds like a totally different work,
one they can really dig.

Joe Sobran

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

As rising rates of intermarriage erode race as a biological reality, political hype makes it an increasingly heated issue.

Thomas Sowell

Reutersgate; a quiz to keep the MSM/DNC scandals in perspective.

As Reutergate rages, it is helpful to place this issue in the broader context of the old MSM/DNC news monopoly. The issue is not just Reuters. Most of the major MSM/DNC outlets have endured some scandal involving fake photos, fake documents, plagiarism, invented sources, invented facts, etc. over the past two years. As we approach the two-year anniversary of Rathergate, we must realize that the old MSM/DNC is cracking up before our eyes. Incidents of this type will accelerate in quantity as the old media struggles to retain power and pursue its political agenda.

In order to help you keep these scandals straight, here is a quiz for those who might have forgotten which scandal accompanies which "news" organization. I do not have the technical ability to include an automatic scoring mechanism, but you can check your answers at this post or this one.

The object is to match the media scandal on the first list with the MSM/DNC outlet from the list at the bottom. Some of the media outlets can be used more than once.


1. This network's President falsely accused
American soldiers of purposely shooting at
journalists.

2. This newspaper altered a photo of Condi Rice
to make her eyes appear "demonic."

3. This organization published the photo of an
unrelated car to dramatize the aftermath of
shots fired at an Italian journalist.

4. This organization falsely reported that a Koran
had been flushed down the toilet, thus touching
off riots and death across the middle east.

5. This network staged a fake canoe ride in 4
inches of water.

6. An anchor at this network attributed the Paris
riots to "African-Americans."

7. A columnist from this newspaper resigned after
she was discovered to have invented characters
for her columns.

8. Invented "fake, but accurate" standard.

9. This newspaper printed analysis of Iraqi
election results prior to the elections.

10. This network coached guests to sound angry
in the wake of Katrina.

11. A writer from this newspaper invented a story
about baby seal hunts in Canada.

12. A reporter from this newspaper faked quotes,
interviews and sources, forcing the resignation
of the executive editor. The remaining editors
and reporters remain at large.
-----------------------------------------
Match the scandals above with the MSM/DNC outlets below.

a. Los Angeles Times

b. Boston Globe

c. CNN

d. USA Today

e. New York Times

f. CBS

g. AP

h. NBC

i. Newsweek

j. Sacramento Bee

If you don't know the answers, remember, "we can't be sure of anything we do . . . anything we see."

Quote of the day - Little Green Footballs

"The rocks are getting turned over, and what’s underneath isn’t pretty. Reuters has a major scandal on their hands."

Charles from Little Green Footballs

Reuters' doctored Beruit photo vs. AP, NYT, Bill Moyers, Walt Handelsman, USA Today, etc.

This weekend's "journalistic" events have proven one thing - a Reuters photo is worth about as much as -

1) a CBS 60 Minutes report where a presidential election is at stake.

2) an AP report on crowd reaction.

3) a CNN analysis of U.S. soldier conduct.

4) a Newsweek report having anything to do with the Koran.

5) a USA Today photograph.

6) a Walt Handelsman cartoon.

7) an AP photo.

8) a Harper-Collins book photo.

9) an ABC report on urban rioting in the U.S.

10) a Bill Moyers commentary.

11) Election results in Washington State.

12) Opinion polls.

13) The New York Times.

Anything we do . . . anything we see . . .









The point is that replacing one photographer is not the answer.

--------------------------------
Update - midafternoon Monday - Reuters is withdrawing all photos taken by Adnan Hajj. H/T Michelle Malkin. We all know that this is still insufficient. It takes more than one photographer to slant the news coverage. But I am happy for the progress. At least we didn't see 12 days of stonewalling like we did during Rathergate. But the only reason Reuters reacted so quickly was the firestorm created in the blogosphere and the precedent of disgrace and shame that CBS endured as a result of that scandal.

Most of the major MSM/DNC organizations have now been bloodied by some major scandal involving fake documents, fake photos, fake sources or simply invented facts.

We are still in the middle of a long term media revolution. The old MSM/DNC is on the way out. The Reuters photo scandal is one more step on the road to wherever we are going. The post-Rathergate world will take shape one piece at a time.

Quote of the day - Naveed Haq

''These are Jews. I want these Jews to get out. I'm tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.''

Naveed Haq - RoP practitioner phone call to 9-11 after killing Pamela Waechter and wounding five other women at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.

Quote of the day - Jesse Helms

On Clinton-era HUD appointee Roberta Actenberg: "She's not your garden-variety lesbian. She's a militant-activist-mean lesbian."

Jesse Helms

Notes from around the blogosphere - terrorist profiles, Eric Hoffer, Jimmy Carter, Social Security

1. Sweet Spirits of Ammonia posts a terrorist profile. This is a regular feature of that blog.

2. Atlas posts a 1968 editorial from Eric Hoffer.

3. Environmental Republican rebuts Jimmy Carter.

4. Willism posts another in a continuing series on the need for Social Security reform. This week he explores the negative impact Social Security has on private investment.

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

According to The Times, at his [Saddam Hussein's] last Presidential election seven years ago, the old butcher got 99.89% of the votes. As the 0.11% foolish enough to write in Pat Buchanan have since been killed, you'd have thought Saddam would do even better this time. But who knows? Perhaps there's a Zogby poll with him plummeting to 99.83%. Perhaps Dick Morris has some internal numbers showing Iraqi soccer moms want more spending on education and less on anthrax.

Mark Steyn - October 13, 2002

Quote of the day - Ayn Rand

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.

Ayn Rand

Saad bin Laden; Al Qaeda/Hezbollah/Iran alliance

Apparently, Osama bin Laden's son Saad bin Laden has left Iran for Lebanon to aid in the war effort against Israel. H/T New York Post.

Saad bin Laden






The history of Iran's cooperation with bin Laden (both Osama and Saad) has been confirmed by Richard Miniter:

Why would Iran, a predominantly Shi'ite Muslim land, work with a predominantly Sunni Muslim terror organization like bin Laden's? The short answer is personal connections, shared goals, and a common enemy. Ayman al-Zawahiri, a bona fide Sunni extremist, has received financial support from Iran since 1988. Bin Laden himself is believed to have met with Iranian intelligence officials at Islamic conferences in Khartoum, Sudan, in the early 1990s. Both bin Laden and the mullahs share an Islamist worldview that calls for the armed overthrow of Arab dictatorships and the restoration of a single caliph who will rule according to Shari'a law.

Finally, they share enemies, including many Arab leaders, the United States, and the rest of the Western world.

ABC confirms the story while ignoring the Iran/bin Laden history.

Bin Laden and Saad







This arrangement creates a very important question - Why is the U.S. pushing for a cease-fire in a war in which Al Qaeda is an active participant? Al Qaeda has been fair game since prior to 9-11. Israel is attacking Al Qaeda's ally and Al Qaeda operatives in Lebanon. Why would we stop them?

Does U.S. policy now favor a negotiated settlement with Al Qaeda? If not, why is this particular battle an exception?

I think the answer is that we have drifted into this policy after five years of MSM/DNC browbeating for "peace." The MSM/DNC calls for "restraint" began on U.S. network broadcasts on September 11th or 12th, 2001. Watch the old videos and see for yourself. Those calls have never stopped. They have only increased in intensity.

Five years of MSM/DNC demands for "restraint" and 3.5 years of "Bush lied, kids died" have led to the unthinkable. The U.S. is now negotiating with Al Qaeda's allies (and, by extension, Al Qaeda) for a cease-fire. Try to imagine that scenario in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. Try to imagine the public's reaction to that scenario at that time.

On 9-11, we were told that we would destroy not only the terrorists, but those who harbor them. Now we know that Iran/Hezbollah harbors Al Qaeda. Yet MSM/DNC pressure for a U.S. negotiated cease-fire mounts.

Future historians may record that the U.S. did not choose suicide. We were lulled to sleep by the siren song of peace.

Bomb shelter in Shanghai, China - 200,000 capacity

WKMG-TV in Central Florida cites a Shanghai Morning Post report that reveals a 200,000 person underground bomb shelter in Shanghai:

Shanghai has constructed a massive underground bunker complex capable of sheltering 200,000 people from a nuclear attack, a local newspaper reported.

The million-square-foot complex connects to shopping centers, office buildings, apartment buildings and the subway system via miles of tunnels, the Shanghai Morning Post said in an exclusive report.

The newspaper said the complex has water, electricity, lighting, ventilation and protective doors, and can support life for as long as two weeks.

This report calls to mind a WorldNetDaily report from last year that revealed the existence of old shelters elsewhere in China. These items, together with the ongoing Chinese military buildup, raise questions as to whether China is preparing for war.
---------------------------

previous - Varyag - Chinese aircraft carrier.

The Clinton-China scandal

Chinese troops in Haiti

Chinese control over Panama Canal.

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

If I were a Democrat, I wouldn't have an opinion on this [the favorite Presidential candidate for 2008]. I'd wait until one candidate emerged from the pack as a front-runner, then pretend I'd been supporting that candidate all along, like the sniveling, gutless little America-hater I would be if I were a Democrat.

Ann Coulter

Fidel Castro; awaiting the MSM/DNC post-mortems; Nathaniel Weyl; Red Star Over Cuba

With Fidel Castro's health problems, rumors have circulated regarding his mortality. Stories continue to circulate as to who might succeed Castro and the transition to the post-Castro Cuba.

If and when Castro dies, I expect the usual MSM/DNC post-mortems on his life. His nearly five decades in control of Cuba will be glorified and whitewashed. His longevity will be trumpeted as an insult to the United States. Matt Lauer's teleprompter will tell us that five (or ten) Presidents tried to get rid of Castro and he survived anyway. Diane Sawyer's teleprompter will tell us of Castro's deep Catholic faith.

Charles Gibson's teleprompter will refer to Castro's Soviet bosses as his "allies."

Katie Couric's teleprompter will remind us that Elian Gonzalez has been safely reunited with his father.

All of the teleprompters will downplay Castro's instigation of revolution in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

None of the teleprompters will mention this [referenced also here].

For a more reliable history of Castro, check out "Red Star Over Cuba." It has been 18 years since I read this book, so I can't quote much of what Weyl wrote. The book covered Castro's early history, his role in the Bogota revolution in 1948, his conquest of Cuba and the tyrannical early years of his rule. (His entire reign has been tyrannical, but the book was written in 1960).



"Red Star" puts the lie to the myth that we somehow pushed Castro into the arms of the Soviets.

Weyl's explanation of the "cult of dirt" remains useful today, not only with regard to Castro, but much of modern culture.

"Red Star" provides enough history to see past the MSM/DNC spin.

Quote of the day - C.S. Lewis

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

C. S. Lewis

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

Why doesn't "realism" demand that movies show people praying with something like the frequency with which they pray in real life?

Joe Sobran