Category Archives: Military

The moral of the story? If you’re going to trash America and the troops, use Smurfs. The Wrap: Universal’s “Green Zone” became the latest Iraq War-themed movie to fall down the box office...

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You can watch these very troubling 25 seconds below and understand why Tom Hanks would never have the backbone to leave the comfortable echo chamber of MSNBC and enter an environment where he might...

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In an interview with Matt Damon near the end of Thursday's CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith helped promote the actor's latest film, 'Green Zone,' which attacks the Bush administration over the Iraq war: "What was it like to make a movie like this? Because it's a little – it's – I'm not sure if this is an apt analogy, but it's a little 'Bourne' meets 'Hurt Locker.'"

Smith alluded to Damon's role as Jason Bourne in the action movie series and the Oscar-winning film 'Hurt Locker,' which chronicles bomb defusing teams in Iraq. Smith introduced the pre-recorded interview by touting Damon's latest film as a "new Iraq war thriller."

Lending credibility to the 'Green Zone' screenplay, Smith noted the movie was: "loosely based on a book that was written by a correspondent for the Washington Post, but the characters in it are fictional." Damon explained the premise of the film: "The guy I play is based on a real guy, he's leading a mobile exploitation team. We had these teams follow the Army....exploiting these sites where we thought the WMD were....they start realizing that there aren't any weapons there." Smith added: "Yeah, and he's a true believer." Damon replied: "Oh, absolutely."

While Smith and Damon worked to promote the "based on a true story" line, a trailer for the film shows Damon's character, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, being targeted for assassination by his U.S. military colleagues and corrupt government officials after not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the interview, Damon explained: "what we're trying to do is make a big action thriller like the 'Bourne' movies but set it in the real world."

Smith was impressed with Damon being part of a movie with a message: "Some of your last several movies, it seems like the movies have to make a point....are you at a point where 'well, if I'm going to do x or y or z, then a, b and c have got to be movies that make a point? Is there part of that in the decision making process?" The last time Smith talked to Damon was to promote the actor's involvement in a left-wing revisionist documentary on American history based on the late Howard Zinn's liberal tome 'A People's History of the United States.'

Here is a portion of Smith's interview with Damon:

SMITH: Let's talk about 'Green Zone' because it's based – loosely based on a book that was written by a correspondent for the Washington Post, but the characters in it are fictional.

DAMON: Yes. Yeah.

[CLIP FROM 'GREEN ZONE']

DAMON: Jerry, why the f**k do we keep coming up empty on all these sites? There has got to be a reason.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Chief, we're here to do a job and get home safe, that's all. The reasons don't matter.

DAMON: They matter to me.

[END OF CLIP]

DAMON: The guy I play is based on a real guy, he's leading a mobile exploitation team. We had these teams follow the Army and right – you know, right on their heels and – and start exploiting these sites where we thought the WMD were. And so – so I play a guy who, you know, is hitting these sites, you know, as fast as he can and they start realizing that there aren't any weapons there.

SMITH: Yeah, and he's a true believer.

DAMON: Oh, absolutely.

SMITH: What was it like to make a movie like this? Because it's a little – it's – I'm not sure if this is an apt analogy, but it's a little 'Bourne' meets 'Hurt Locker.'

DAMON: Okay. I like those movies.

[LAUGHTER]

SMITH: Okay.

DAMON: Great. Yeah, because what we're trying to do is make a big action thriller like the 'Bourne' movies but set it in the real world.

SMITH: Some of your last several movies, it seems like the movies have to make a point. Is – do you – is there – are you at a point where 'well, if I'm going to do x or y or z, then a, b and c have got to be movies that make a point? Is there part of that in the decision making process?

DAMON: No. I really go kind of movie to movie. There's not a big strategy. I think that's what's helped me the most. I think if I planned it out, it wouldn't work very well.

UPDATE: “The Congressional Medal of Honor” is now listed as the ”Medal of Honor” and the “Gladiator” film mentioned is no longer listed as the version directed by...

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The New York Times published a scathing editorial Sunday condemning Americans who have the audacity to request that attorneys who represented terrorists not set national legal policy. The Times smeared them and their elected representatives as McCarthyites, and criticized them for noting that colossal conflict of interest.

"It is not the first time that the right has tried to distract Americans from the real issues surrounding detention policy by attacking lawyers," the Times states of controversy over Attorney General Eric Holder's reluctance to inform Congress who in the Justice Department has represented alleged terrorists, and in what capacity are they now serving.

But the left has done just that -- use nominees' records as means to block their appointments -- and the Times hasn't complained. So why the sudden outrage? Well, the paper's liberal editorial board doesn't mind when the left attacks. But when conservatives demand answers, they are evil McCarthyites on a political witch hunt.

Of course the Times uses nice-sounding terms like "democratic justice" to argue that detainees deserve the same rights as criminal defendants, conspicuously ignoring not only rationale to the contrary, but in fact the chief complaint of Holder's critics: people who argued for the release of individuals waging war on the United States are now in charge of prosecuting those same aggressors. Holder knows that the American people would not approve, so he has been stonewalling.

But the real dishonesty in the Times's complaints is the paper's glaring double standard on executive appointments. It seems that when nominees or appointees are criticized for some past position that the Times supports, the attacks are reminiscent of McCarthyism and designed to score "cheap political points."

But when the Times agrees with the attackers, well, this sort of outrage is noticeably absent.

Where was the paper's disdain for the ideological and political attacks on Carolyn Kuhl, President Bush's nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? As a 29-year-old lawyer with the Justice Department, Kuhl had urged the Attorney General to reverse an IRS decision denying tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University.

The Times doesn't like Bob Jones University, so there was no outrage over the use of Kuhl's stance on the issue to block her nomination.

Or what about William Myers, nominated to the same court -- why was the Times not outraged over his blocked nomination? Well, the Times didn't like him either because he was a former lobbyist for the mining industry.

The Times even made sure to quote Sen. Charles Schumer condemning Myers's record: ''Your record screams 'passionate advocate' and it doesn't even whisper 'impartial judge,' '' Schumer said. Why didn't this spark an angry editorial from the Times? Aren't lobbyists agents of our First Amendment right to redress, just as the "Gitmo 7" are supposedly agents of the Sixth?

Former Bush Administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen, author of the new book Courting Disaster, provided another stark example of the Times's double standard in a column for the Washington Post:

Where was the moral outrage when fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack? Their critics did not demand simple transparency; they demanded heads. They called these individuals "war criminals" and sought to have them fired, disbarred, impeached and even jailed. Where were the defenders of the "al-Qaeda seven" when a Spanish judge tried to indict the "Bush six"? Philippe Sands, author of the "Torture Team," crowed: "This is the end of these people's professional reputations!" I don't recall anyone accusing him of "shameful" personal attacks.

The standard today seems to be that you can say or do anything when it comes to the Bush lawyers who defended America against the terrorists. But if you publish an Internet ad or ask legitimate questions about Obama administration lawyers who defended America's terrorist enemies, you are engaged in a McCarthyite witch hunt.

Thiessen also dispels the Times's claims that alleged terrorists are entitled to legal defense of the same order as everyday criminals.

Some defenders say al-Qaeda lawyers are simply following a great American tradition, in which everyone gets a lawyer and their day in court. Not so, says Andy McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney who put Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheik," behind bars for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. "We need to be clear about what the American tradition is," McCarthy told me. "The Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused -- that means somebody who has been indicted or otherwise charged with a crime -- a right to counsel. But that right only exists if you are accused, which means you are someone who the government has brought into the civilian criminal justice system." The habeas lawyers were not doing their constitutional duty to defend unpopular criminal defendants. They were using the federal courts as a tool to undermine our military's ability to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield in a time of war.

If lawyers who once sought to free captured terrorists are now setting U.S. policy when it comes to the release of Guantanamo detainees, moving terrorists to the United States, trying senior al-Qaeda leaders in civilian courts, and whether to give captured terrorists Miranda rights, then, as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) put it, the public has "a right to know who advises the attorney general and the president on these critical matters." Only when this information is public can members of Congress judge whether these individuals have properly recused themselves or whether they should be involved in detainee matters at all. The charge of McCarthyism is intended to intimidate those raising legitimate questions into silence. But asking such questions is not McCarthyism. It's oversight.

Of course for the Times, oversight was only important when Republicans were the ones setting policy.

The New York Times published a scathing editorial Sunday condemning Americans who have the audacity to request that attorneys who represented terrorists not set national legal policy. The Times smeared them and their elected representatives as McCarthyites, and criticized them for noting that colossal conflict of interest.

"It is not the first time that the right has tried to distract Americans from the real issues surrounding detention policy by attacking lawyers," the Times states of controversy over Attorney General Eric Holder's reluctance to inform Congress who in the Justice Department has represented alleged terrorists, and in what capacity are they now serving.

But the left has done just that -- use nominees' records as means to block their appointments -- and the Times hasn't complained. So why the sudden outrage? Well, the paper's liberal editorial board doesn't mind when the left attacks. But when conservatives demand answers, they are evil McCarthyites on a political witch hunt.

Of course the Times uses nice-sounding terms like "democratic justice" to argue that detainees deserve the same rights as criminal defendants, conspicuously ignoring not only rationale to the contrary, but in fact the chief complaint of Holder's critics: people who argued for the release of individuals waging war on the United States are now in charge of prosecuting those same aggressors. Holder knows that the American people would not approve, so he has been stonewalling.

But the real dishonesty in the Times's complaints is the paper's glaring double standard on executive appointments. It seems that when nominees or appointees are criticized for some past position that the Times supports, the attacks are reminiscent of McCarthyism and designed to score "cheap political points."

But when the Times agrees with the attackers, well, this sort of outrage is noticeably absent.

Where was the paper's disdain for the ideological and political attacks on Carolyn Kuhl, President Bush's nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? As a 29-year-old lawyer with the Justice Department, Kuhl had urged the Attorney General to reverse an IRS decision denying tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University.

The Times doesn't like Bob Jones University, so there was no outrage over the use of Kuhl's stance on the issue to block her nomination.

Or what about William Myers, nominated to the same court -- why was the Times not outraged over his blocked nomination? Well, the Times didn't like him either because he was a former lobbyist for the mining industry.

The Times even made sure to quote Sen. Charles Schumer condemning Myers's record: ''Your record screams 'passionate advocate' and it doesn't even whisper 'impartial judge,' '' Schumer said. Why didn't this spark an angry editorial from the Times? Aren't lobbyists agents of our First Amendment right to redress, just as the "Gitmo 7" are supposedly agents of the Sixth?

Former Bush Administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen, author of the new book Courting Disaster, provided another stark example of the Times's double standard in a column for the Washington Post:

Where was the moral outrage when fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack? Their critics did not demand simple transparency; they demanded heads. They called these individuals "war criminals" and sought to have them fired, disbarred, impeached and even jailed. Where were the defenders of the "al-Qaeda seven" when a Spanish judge tried to indict the "Bush six"? Philippe Sands, author of the "Torture Team," crowed: "This is the end of these people's professional reputations!" I don't recall anyone accusing him of "shameful" personal attacks.

The standard today seems to be that you can say or do anything when it comes to the Bush lawyers who defended America against the terrorists. But if you publish an Internet ad or ask legitimate questions about Obama administration lawyers who defended America's terrorist enemies, you are engaged in a McCarthyite witch hunt.

Thiessen also dispels the Times's claims that alleged terrorists are entitled to legal defense of the same order as everyday criminals.

Some defenders say al-Qaeda lawyers are simply following a great American tradition, in which everyone gets a lawyer and their day in court. Not so, says Andy McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney who put Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheik," behind bars for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. "We need to be clear about what the American tradition is," McCarthy told me. "The Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused -- that means somebody who has been indicted or otherwise charged with a crime -- a right to counsel. But that right only exists if you are accused, which means you are someone who the government has brought into the civilian criminal justice system." The habeas lawyers were not doing their constitutional duty to defend unpopular criminal defendants. They were using the federal courts as a tool to undermine our military's ability to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield in a time of war.

If lawyers who once sought to free captured terrorists are now setting U.S. policy when it comes to the release of Guantanamo detainees, moving terrorists to the United States, trying senior al-Qaeda leaders in civilian courts, and whether to give captured terrorists Miranda rights, then, as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) put it, the public has "a right to know who advises the attorney general and the president on these critical matters." Only when this information is public can members of Congress judge whether these individuals have properly recused themselves or whether they should be involved in detainee matters at all. The charge of McCarthyism is intended to intimidate those raising legitimate questions into silence. But asking such questions is not McCarthyism. It's oversight.

Of course for the Times, oversight was only important when Republicans were the ones setting policy.

Over the weekend, Time Magazine published a long, glowing profile of Tom Hanks to help promote his upcoming HBO miniseries “The Pacific.” And as with all things entertainment media, the subject is never challenged or even made to shift uncomfortably in his seat. The push to ascend Hanks to “national treasure” status is clearly on.

Hanks does seem to be a genuinely nice man and the work he’s done to bring American history to life on film is impressive, especially during a time when the singling out of America’s exceptionalism is more and more frowned upon in artistic and academic circles. ”From the Earth to the Moon,” “Band of Brothers,” and “John Adams” are not only artistic achievements, but in this MTV-addled culture, might be the best hope of teaching America’s youth about the unique history and greatness of this nation. And I suspect ”The Pacific,” the 10-part miniseries premiering this Sunday on HBO (which Big Hollywood’s Michael Broderick will cover extensively) will be a worthy addition to what came before.

But when it comes to leftist Hollywood, whenever Tinseltown and America meet, you have to brace yourself for it — and by “it” I mean the leftist sucker punch. Throughout, Hanks sounds perfectly reasonable, intelligent and even patriotic for a couple of thousand words. But of course that’s just the lure to get us on his side before we’re walloped with this left cross: [emphasis mine]

[Hanks] doesn’t see the series as simply eye-opening history. He hopes it offers Americans a chance to ponder the sacrifices of our current soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. “From the outset, we wanted to make people wonder how our troops can re-enter society in the first place,” Hanks says. “How could they just pick up their lives and get on with the rest of us? Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

There’s no such thing as a definitive history. But what was once a passing interest for Hanks has become an obsession. He’s a man on a mission to make our back pages come alive, to keep overhauling the history we know and, in the process, get us to understand not just the past but the choices we make today.

No matter how many times you read this passage the context is clear. By “different” Hanks is clearly referring to race, culture and religion, not ideology.

Really, we wanted to annihilate the Japanese because they were different, because we saw them as “yellow, slant-eyed dogs that believed in different gods?” I thought it was due to the fact that “we viewed them” as barbaric imperialists who had attacked us first and wanted to enslave the world.

But there’s no reason to speculate about America’s motivations during WWII because history has proven Hanks wrong. We had every opportunity to annihilate these “different” people. Instead we chose, at great expense, to rebuild Japan and return the sovereignty of that nation over to the “yellow, slant-eyed dogs who believed in different gods.” Or, as most people prefer to call them: our newly liberated allies.

And to answer Hanks’s question: No — annihilating people who are different sounds NOTHING like what’s going on today.

This country spends billions and billions of dollars on weapons designed to target the enemy and save the lives of  people who are “different” — those who are not our enemy but still manage to look different, speak languages we don’t and worship in ways unfamiliar to us. The irony is that as Hanks spoke those slanderous words, the American Military remains in the middle of two conflicts that have cost us thousands of precious lives and hundreds of billions of dollars all towards the noble goal of liberating 50 million “different” people in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we all know that had we practiced a more selfish and barbaric form of war the enemy would’ve been destroyed faster, American lives would’ve been saved, and the financial cost would not have been nearly as high. 

But that’s not who we are.

Whether they’re “yellow, slanty-eyed dogs that worship different gods” or the people of the Middle East who share the same language and religion as those pledged to murder us, America selflessly protects the innocent who are “different” and as humanely as possible seeks to “annihilate” only those — even if they’re not “different” (like, say, Germans and Italians) – who practice an ideology that actually does believe in annihilating those who are different.

You almost get the sense that Hanks suddenly felt uncomfortable talking about America so extensively without throwing a bone to his MSNBC fanbase. Or maybe he misspoke, or maybe he really does believe it. Douglas Brinkley, the man who wrote the Time profile, sure found those words important. Important enough that the excerpt above is what closes the piece – the thought Brinkley chose to leave us with.

This piece was originally posted on March 9 at Big Hollywood, where Nolte is Editor in Chief.

Over the weekend, Time Magazine published a long, glowing profile of Tom Hanks to help promote his upcoming HBO miniseries “The Pacific.” And as with all things entertainment media, the...

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Today’s New York Post: Even for Hollywood, “Green Zone” is dumbfoundingly brazen in its effort to rewrite the facts. As any reasonably informed person knows, many intelligence...

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Usually when I’m moved to write a searingly original piece for Big Hollywood, I do a quick search of the Internet to see if my thoughts might not really be as groundbreaking as I thought. More...

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The real fun of the Oscars isn’t the cut-throat competition for the little gold naked man but guessing who will make the biggest idiot of himself.  The Academy Awards show has a fine tradition of...

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The September 11 attacks apparently were merely "criminal acts of terrorism" to the mind of MSNBC host Chris Matthews. They were not acts of war. 

What's more, according to the "Hardball" host, "acts of war are not bad in themselves." [audio available here]

"We never said that in our country's history," Chris Matthews insisted on the March 5 "Hardball" program.

"Well, of course acts of war are bad, if they're committed against innocent American civilians," Republican strategist Ron Christie responded.

Matthews refused to concede the point, however: "That's right, that's called a criminal act of terrorism."

—– The Wall Street Journal: The ensemble cast of actors in HBO miniseries “The Pacific” all have a similar look…dirty. “In my memory I was dirty for a year. I could not get the dirt off...

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“Despite persistent violence and a critical election coming up, President Obama hardly ever mentions the war in Iraq,” Joseph Curl reports in today’s Washington Times, and the news media are largely aiding in this neglect. Curl discloses that “the last time a White House reporter asked about the Iraq war was June 26,” while ABC, CBS and NBC aired just 80 minutes of coverage in all of 2009.

The near-media blackout means that the success of President Bush’s “surge” policy in 2007 — a policy opposed by President Obama and Vice President Biden when both were presidential candidates and ridiculed by the networks as a "Lost Cause" — has gone virtually unreported in the past year. This week’s Newsweek is an exception, with a big Iraq War cover story declaring “Victory at Last.”

According to Newsweek’s Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry  and Christopher Dickey: “It has to be said and it should be understood – now, almost seven hellish years later -- that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East."

Curl documents the lack of media interest in a war in which nearly 100,000 U.S. troops continue to serve:

The White House press corps hasn't asked Mr. Obama about the Iraq war in months. The president was last asked about the conflict on Dec. 7, during an Oval Office press availability with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But the question came from a Turkish reporter - after an Associated Press reporter asked about the economy.

In fact, the last time a White House reporter asked about the Iraq war was June 26, when National Public Radio's Don Gonyea asked an Iraq-related question during a joint news conference of Mr. Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to records kept by CBS Radio reporter Mark Knoller....

The three main broadcast networks - ABC, NBC and CBS - have moved on to other topics as well. In 2008, the Iraq war was the seventh most heavily covered story, with the three networks devoting 288 minutes to reports about the war, according to the Tyndall Report, which monitors the weekday nightly newscasts of the networks. In 2009, the Iraq war dropped off the top 10 list, with just 80 minutes of coverage.

The New York Times wrote 374 "substantial" stories on Iraq in 2008 (meaning the word "Iraq" appears at least 10 times in article), according to the Nexis database. In 2009, that dropped to 208. The same went for The Washington Post - 422 "substantial" stories on Iraq in 2008; 169 in 2009, after Mr. Obama had taken office.

You can find the full article at The Washington Times.

At the bottom of this L.A. Times piece there’s a fascinating story explaining why “The Hurt Locker” lost their support from the Defense Department at the last minute. It appears as...

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Dale Robertson, the racist nut who many in the media have paraded as emblematic of Tea Party attendees, claims to be a "leader" of the movement. In fact, he is a loner who has been rebuffed by every Tea Party group with which he has associated.

Of course that did not dissuade the liberal media from unquestionably presenting him as the "leader" he dubiously claimed to be. The Washington Post and liberal blog Talking Points Memo both portrayed him as such, despite the fact that numerous Tea Party groups have publicly denounced him (none, as far as I can tell, have backed him).

It turns out his "leadership" is not the only thing Robertson embellished. In a brief bio on his website, he lies about his military career. According to the website,

Dale served his nation first as a U.S. Marine. After completing his duties with the Corps, he reenlisted into the U.S. Navy and became a U.S. Naval Officer. During his distinguished time of service, Dale’s Battle Group was first to the scene on 9/11 as well as first to launch an offensive in Afghanistan. He was stationed on the USS Sacramento which was the life blood of the Battle Group. He faithfully served our nation with Honor and Integrity, retiring after 22 years.

But a Freedom of Information Act request by blogger Jonn Lilyea at This Ain't Hell reveals that Robertson was discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves after serving less than a year. That is quite an embellishment from the record he claims on his website. Robertson's statement is, in fact, riddled with falsehoods.

 

 

Jim Hoft asks, "what are the odds that the state-run media ignores this, too?" Yes, it was a rhetorical question.

TPM, WaPo, and others in the liberal media will no doubt ignore Robertson until he pops up again with another derogatory sign, or runs in front of television cameras shouting racial slurs. That, after all, has been the extent of Tea Party coverage thus far--we've been given no reason to believe that facts will change a thing.

This weekend, on the recommendation of a friend, my wife and I went to see “Dear John”.  I know, I know… I’m a little late to the game.  It seems this is the movie that briefly unseated the mighty...

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“The Hurt Locker” lost me when the David Morse character, a Colonel in the field, ordered his men to stop treating a wounded prisoner — ordered that the prisoner be left to bleed to...

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I meant to post this yesterday, but time got away from me: many, many, many congratulations to the Marines and their Afghan allies for the Marjah victory. I never doubted that they would win, but I certainly understood that each Marine and Afghan soldier faced the risk that he would make the ultimate [...]

Hollywood’s problems are such right now that the only way they can make any money is through soul-killing popcorn films that everyone sees, no one likes, and fewer of us are buying on DVD. We...

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Americans for Prosperity has this hilarious slice of lefty disconnect that is just so typical of how folks on the left really just don’t have a grasp on rarity. Just outside of Blair House, across the street from the White House at the corner of 17th St & Pennsylvania Ave., we see young lady from a [...]

Earlier this afternoon, NB's Tim Graham noted how NPR's Robert Siegel and Pew Research pollster Andrew Kohut were congratulating "Millennials" on being "less 'militaristic' and less religious."

At end of his post, Graham noted that Siegel and Kohut "somehow" forgot to discuss the key political finding in the poll, namely that the demographic's 32-point favoritism towards Democrats (62% to 30%) has declined by more than half (to 54% to 40%) in just one year of living in Obamaland. Shoot, if that trend continues for another nine months, it will be almost all even by Election Day in November.

Why is the meltdown occurring? Get a load of the answers the Associated Press's Hope Yen identified in an early Wednesday dispatch (HT to Mark Levin, who mentioned this on his Wednesday evening show):

Dem youth support waning amid gov't gridlock

Whither the youth vote? A year after backing Barack Obama by an overwhelming 2-to-1 ratio, young adults are quickly cooling toward Democrats amid dissatisfaction over the lack of change in Washington and an escalating war in Afghanistan.

A study by the Pew Research Center, being released Wednesday, highlights the eroding support from 18-to-29 year olds whose strong turnout in November 2008 was touted by some demographers as the start of a new Democratic movement.

The findings are significant because they offer further proof that the diverse coalition of voters Obama cobbled together in 2008 - including high numbers of first-timers, minorities and youths - are not Democratic Party voters who can necessarily be counted on.

While young adults remain decidedly more liberal, the survey found the Democratic advantage among 18-to-29 year olds has substantially narrowed - from a record 62 percent identifying as Democrat vs. 30 percent for the GOP in 2008, down to 54 percent vs. 40 percent last December. It was the largest percentage point jump in those who identified or leaned Republican among all the voting age groups.

Young adults' voting enthusiasm also crumbled.

So it's all about gridlock and the war in Afghanistan? Give. Me. A. Break. To invoke James Carville from 1992, "It's the economy, stupid."

Pew's own report (a very big PDF) fails to support Yen's yearnings, particularly this paragraph from Page 39 (page 46 of the PDF; bold is mine):

A Pew Research Center survey in 2006 found that half of all 18- to 29-year-olds were employed in full-time jobs. Then came the Great Recession. In our 2010 survey, as a battered economy struggles to rebound, about four-in-ten (41%) people in the same age group say they are working full time—a decline of 9 percentage points. In contrast, about the same proportion of older adults reported working full time in both the 2006 and 2010 surveys.

That statement would almost seem to indicate that Millennials have borne a very disproportionate share of the pain associated with the economy's decline.

It's interesting how Pew failed to reveal data more recent than four years ago that might have told us how much of the decrease in full-time employment has come more recently. What it looked like a year ago would tell us how much of the might be pegged to the overall economy, while a two- or three-year lookback would provide a clue as to how much of the decline is tied to federal and state increases in the minimum wage. Given that 2006 and 2007 were pretty decent years for the economy, it wouldn't surprise me if almost all, all, or even more than all of that nine-point drop occurred in the past couple of years.

Yen waited until her 19th and final substantive paragraph to note the following:

About 37 percent of young adults are unemployed or out of the workforce, the highest share among this age group in more than three decades. A record share - 39.6 percent - was enrolled in college, and one in 8 millennials ages 22 and older say they had "boomeranged" back into their parents' home because of the recession.

Regardless of initial political inclinations, that's not a formula favoring whoever happens to be in power.

That certainly didn't come through in the NPR interview Tim Graham cited, nor in Ms. Chen's AP report. I'll bet the folks at the DNC and RNC have figured it out anyway.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

It’s one thing to advocate for the repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" (DADT). It’s altogether another to maintain that you find the other side of the argument “incomprehensible.” But that’s what Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus did in her Feb. 24 column, “The Inevitable Backlash on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

While stating that DADT should be repealed, Marcus professed to be perplexed at why some are hesitant to repeal the military’s policy and frustrated that the top brass chose not to precipitate the change all at once.

“I don’t spend a lot of time chatting up generals,” Marcus wrote. “But I’ve spent enough to know that, just below the top-most ranks, there remains an enormous, if incomprehensible, amount of squeamishness about letting gay men and women serve openly in the military.”

And she found it “disappointing” that those generals she doesn’t kibbutz with have attempted to slow down the process of repeal. She apparently thinks they should rush into things without understanding the impact.

Marcus even went back 17 years ago and stated that the generals managed to, “intimidate them out of lifting the ban, or at the very least putting a moratorium on its enforcement.”

She also bashed the current generals and wrote, “Do Casey and Schwartz really have so little faith in their troops that they think serving with people they probably already know are gay will impede their performance?”  Marcus continued to ask, “Do they think U.S. personnel are less capable of adapting to this change than those in the many countries – including Israel, Argentina, the Philippines, South Africa and the entire European Union, with the exception of Greece – that allow gays to serve openly?”

She didn’t mention that, except for Israel, none of those militaries has particularly heavy defense responsibilities. Some of those EU countries she sited have militaries in roughly the same way Britain has a monarchy – more out of nostalgia than anything else.

Marcus maintained that ending DADT would increase the troop levels, although she failed to give the number waiting to join. And anyway, it’s only old cavemen that could possibly be opposed. “In the military, as elsewhere, this is, thankfully, a generational issue. Casey is 61, Schwartz just a few years younger. Younger officers, I suspect, are not much different from younger people outside the military: more comfortable with gay colleagues and friends.”

On Monday’s NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams updated viewers on possibly the most decorated American war hero of the modern era, Colonel Robert Howard, as the Vietnam War veteran was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetary. Williams had taken a moment on his show in December to commemorate his passing. On Monday, Williams recounted:

Robert Howard was laid to rest today at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Bob was a recipient of the Medal of Honor. He died back in December. He was the most heavily decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. He was wounded 14 times over 54 months of combat. He received eight Purple Hearts, four Bronze Stars, nominated for the Medal of Honor three separate times. Twenty of his fellow Medal of Honor recipients were there today to see their old friend off. The American flag was presented to his son Robert Jr. Bob Howard was 70 years old.

If you read nothing else today, please read David Bellavia’s poignant piece on Iraq: Our Mission is Finally Accomplished… Anyone Care? It’s mostly directed at the doubters and naysayers, those who didn’t believe the US could and would win there, but it’s also an important read for those of us stateside who never gave [...]

Between its January 31 and February 20 reports on developments in the "interrogation memos" saga, the Associated Press may have learned a lesson in basic journalism from a NewsBusters commenter. I'll describe; readers can decide.

The wire service's unbylined report three weeks ago opened with this paragraph:

NB commenter "TE" took justifiable umbrage at that opening:

This Associated (with terrorists) Press editorial also swallows the allegation that Bybee and Yoo "showed poor judgment". The Associated (with terrorists) Press conveniently failed to place quotation marks around its unsubstantiated allegation that Bybee and Yoo "showed poor judgment". "Showed poor judgment" according to whom? The Associated (with terrorists) Press?

Lo and behold, today's report by the wire service's Matt Apuzzo, with help from Devlin Barrett and Pete Yost, does things a little differently:

Imagine that. The AP actually put quote marks around something it quoted.

Other verbiage in the report's second paragraph demonstrates that if the folks at AP are taking journalistic tips from NewsBusters, they are either very slow learners, or can only handle one lesson at a time.

Apuzzo's second paragraph reference to "giving CIA interrogators the go-ahead" demonstrates a second failure to pick up a crucial point raised after the first AP report in two comments (here and here) by NB commenter "CobraMan." The wire service completely misrepresents the memo writers' true level of authority at the time they composed their missives:

Ahh, excuse me, but the lawyers didn't "craft" anything that "allowed" the use of any "harsh interrogation tactics." Those men didn't have that authority. Those lawyers only wrote a legal opinion, they didn't write legal policy. That's like claiming that the people who draft war plans are the ones who "allow " the use of those plans. But that's not how it works.

.... That's the whole issue here, punishing someone for offering an opinion others don't agree with. Two men wrote a legal opinion that others disagree with, and that's all that they did! Because they disagree, other people want those men punished.

Yea, that's a proper response to differing legal opinions, NOT. The thing that bothers me about this the most are all the LAWYERS who insist that these men be punished simply for writing a legal opinion! They better hope that this doesn't become precedent! Half of all criminal and civil attorneys (and Judges!) will be punished for issuing opposing opinions if it does become precedent. You would think that college educated law "experts" would realize this and try to stop this obvious First Amendment violation in its tracks.

There are other weaknesses in Apuzzo's coverage that I'll leave to commenters -- items we may find AP heeding in the future. In the meantime, be on the lookout for other possible evidence that "The Essential Global News Network" is getting schooled by NewsBusters commenters.

Maybe a fee for ongoing training and development is in order.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

OK, we were just bunking, actually. In a trailer surrounded by cement t-walls in Baghdad. As gigs went, this one was a little OUT there. I’ve recently returned from eight days entertaining the...

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“I have nightmares sometimes you know. I’m gonna wake up and everyone’s gonna be driving Priuses…living in a condo…we’re all getting health insurance,” musician Kid Rock lamented during an interview with Fox News.

Kid Rock has been a constant presence overseas, offering his talent and support to lift U.S. troops in war.  Always loath to discuss or pontificate upon politics publicly, the rock star sat down with Megyn Kelly Wednesday for a short segment on “America Live.”

Citing the recent CBS/New York Times Poll which shows that Americans want a smaller government with fewer services by a wide margin over big government, Kelly asked her guest: “When you’re out there, you’re talking to people, what are they saying to you? What is your reaction to all this government spending?”

“Counting these politicians, it just seems like we’ve been eating out of the public trough for year after year,” Kid rock told Kelly.  “It seems like that’s something your supposed to do to help your country, something that’s good — not to make a career out of it, you know — just sit there and get reelected.”

On the subject near and dear to his heart — his home state of Michigan and the unending deterioration of Detroit — Kid Rock said it was extremely tough to go back and see the changes.

Kid Rock clearly feared that Detroit has become a microcosm of Detroit threatening the values and culture of the American dream: “Such ingenuity you know, cool stuff, ’57 Chevys, it came in 17 colors, every one of them red, white, and blue.  But now…it just reminds me of Europe.  Now it’s like, they’re just trying to…it just reminds me of Europe. Everyone’s gonna be driving a smart car and living in a condo.  And that’s not the American Dream, and you see that kinda starting to die.  At least it’s left for a little while from Detroit with everything that’s been going on.”

So James Cameron was just on “The View” Wednesday morning, and he was disarmingly frank about the premise and purpose of his film, “Avatar.” He plainly explained it was anti-corporate, and that his...

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I had the great privilege of meeting Liz Cheney and hearing her speak at the Red State convention in Atlanta this past August. She’s surprisingly tiny, but, in that small package, is an incredible mind and a hell of a backbone. I adore [...]

The New York Times has apparently discovered its inner patriot. The paper decided after a request from the White House to hold off publishing key information about the war effort in Afghanistan for fear of alerting the enemy to key U.S. intelligence.

The Times and its executive editor Bill Keller, who defended the decision, have left the nation collectively uttering, "It's about time." Now that's change we can believe in.

Keller told WNYC radio today that two Times reporters had a story ready to go on Thursday about the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's top military commander in Pakistan. The paper decided to hold off on running the story until today, the date the White House requested.

The National Security Council, Keller recalled, "thought it had been a clean snatch and they were afraid once the word got out, other Taliban officials would go deeper underground or take measures to cover their tracks. So they asked us to hold off for a while."

The paper's decision not to compromise such vital information is admirable, and has surely aided in the fight against the Taliban in the Af-Pak region. But where was this patriotic desire to cooperate with the nation's war effort when the Times made public the SWIFT terrorist finance tracking program (TFTP), or a host of other highly sensitive programs designed to rout the nation's enemies?

"The Swift story bears no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals," the Times claimed in its defense in 2006 after it came under fire for exposing the TFTP.

But making the Taliban aware of last week's key capture would not jeopardize lives any more than the disclosure of the TFTP would have. Awareness of either would allow enemies to adjust their strategies accordingly; the Taliban would go further underground in the latter case, while al Qaeda and other terrorist groups would better mind their finances in the former.

Yet the Times agreed to hold off on last week's story having brushed off Bush administration requests not to disclose details of the TFTP.

"Our news colleagues work under the assumption that they should let the people know anything important that the reporters learn, unless there is some grave and overriding reason for withholding the information," the Times added in its 2006 apologia.

But once again, it is not clear that the capture of a Taliban commander is any more "grave and overriding" a reason to withhold information than details about a program intended to stop the flow of money to terrorist groups.

However, the Times made a strange contradiction in its response to critics who said it exposed TFTP for political reasons:

It is certainly unlikely that anyone who wanted to hurt the Bush administration politically would try to do so by writing about the government's extensive efforts to make it difficult for terrorists to wire large sums of money.

From our side of the news-opinion wall, the Swift story looks like part of an alarming pattern. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

So the Times insisted that exposing the TFTP would not hurt the Bush administraiton politically, then it went on - in the next paragraph! - to attack the administration on political grounds for using measures such as the TFTP to combat terrorism.

The Times also implied that Bush used terrorism to enhance executive power, not enhanced executive power to combat terrorism. There is a big difference, and the Times's implications are rife with political antagonism.

One need not take a political stance on the Bush administration's terror policies, however, to note the hypocrisy in the Times's standards for the publication of national security information.

The Times finished its 2006 defense with a spirited appeal to freedom of the press:

The United States will soon be marking the fifth anniversary of the war on terror. The country is in this for the long haul, and the fight has to be coupled with a commitment to individual liberties that define America's side in the battle. A half-century ago, the country endured a long period of amorphous, global vigilance against an enemy who was suspected of boring from within, and history suggests that under those conditions, it is easy to err on the side of security and secrecy. The free press has a central place in the Constitution because it can provide information the public needs to make things right again. Even if it runs the risk of being labeled unpatriotic in the process.

So why is it that when the Bush administration asked the Times to hold off on publication - and the Times refused - the paper was defending a critical right to free speech? But when the Obama administration made the same request, the paper erred on the side of security rather than "civil liberties"?

The answer, of course, is that the Times believed what the Bush administration was doing - the program the paper revealed, as well as other enhanced executive powers designed to prosecute the war on terror - was wrong. It is clear about its stance on those policies in the paragraph quoted above and throughout the 2006 editorial.

The Times believed the administration was infringing on the rights of Americans, and felt the public should know.

But these differences of opinion are political differences - how much power is a president permitted to amass in time of war - and the decision to publish a story revealing presidential powers the paper found disagreeable was still a political decision.

Concern for Americans' liberties pertained not to the right to publish information - why defend this right in 2006 but not in 2010? - but rather to the information that was being published.

For the Times, political differences were the key determinant, not an apolitical and absolute reverence for the First Amendment, the public's right to that information, or the paper's right to print it.

In my role as Executive Director of Ride 2 Recovery, a mental and physical rehabilitation program for injured veterans that makes a difference in the lives of those who come thru our program (more...

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James Cameron kids about his blockbuster “Avatar” being “Death Wish for environmentalists” (kind of). But in one of those unique L.A. Times’ interviews only leftists...

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James Cameron kids about his blockbuster “Avatar” being “Death Wish for environmentalists” (kind of). But in one of those unique L.A. Times’ interviews only leftists...

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Kandahar, Afghanistan 08 February 2010 American troops are spread widely across Afghanistan.  Some are remote and accessibility is difficult.  In 2008, I was with six soldiers in Zabul Province who...

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Kandahar, Afghanistan 08 February 2010 American troops are spread widely across Afghanistan.  Some are remote and accessibility is difficult.  In 2008, I was with six soldiers in Zabul Province who...

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David Rogers glossed over the late Rep. Jack Murtha's (D-Pa.) Haditha Marines smear in an obituary published yesterday and updated this morning at Politico:

Rather than lie low, Murtha further made himself a target with public comments in the spring of 2006 pressuring the Marine command to investigate allegations of civilian casualties at Haditha, Iraq. This infuriated many Marines, and critics argued that the congressman had become more partisan himself out of loyalty to Pelosi.

But Murtha went beyond pressing for a formal military investigation, which is a legitimate call any congressman could and should make after an incident like Haditha. The former Marine practically declared the Marines at Haditha guilty by saying they have killed "in cold blood." 

Yet Murtha's baseless smear is not substantiated by the facts. As the Washington Post noted yesterday in an update to its obituary on Murtha:

Eight Marines were originally charged with murder or failing to properly report or investigate the killings. Charges against six were dropped, and one was acquitted. A court martial for sole remaining defendant has not yet scheduled. 

Updated: Washington Post adds mention about Murtha's Haditha comments, thanks me for me pointing out omission (see bottom of post).

Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) passed away earlier today, and the Washington Post has already published a 26-paragraph obituary.

Post staffers Martin Weil and Carol Leonnig don't gloss over some of Murtha's political controversies, such as his penchant as a pork barrel appropriator and his role in the Abscam scandal.

Yet oddly enough, Murtha's most profoundly jarring political scandal -- his insulting and untrue smear of U.S. Marines at Haditha as cold-blooded killers -- went unmentioned.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press, for its part, noted the controversy...:

Murtha's criticism of the Iraq war intensified in 2006, when he accused Marines of murdering Iraqi civilians "in cold blood" at Haditha, after one Marine died and two were wounded by a roadside bomb.

Critics said Murtha unfairly held the Marines responsible before an investigation was concluded and fueled enemy retaliation. He said that the war couldn't be won militarily and that such incidents dimmed the prospect for a political solution.

...although it failed to mention that the Marine officers charged with a coverup of the supposed massacre have been acquitted.

Update (19:15 EST): The Post tweeted the following from their @PostPolitics account about two hours ago thanking me for noting the omission:

Good point, Ken; thanks for the heads-up. Obit is updated to include mention of "in cold blood" remark. http://ow.ly/15e7M

Below is the paragraph the Post added:

In 2006, he accused Marines of murdering Iraqi civilians "in cold blood" at Haditha, after one Marine died and two were wounded by a roadside bomb. Critics said he unfairly held the Marines responsible before an investigation was finished. Eight Marines were originally charged with murder or failing to properly report or investigate the killings. Charges against six were dropped, and one was acquitted. A court martial for sole remaining defendant has not yet scheduled. 

Remember when Obama called for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Remember how it was discussed briefly, then most moved on? Yeah, us folks on the right are bigots because we didn’t discuss it enough, says Frank Rich: Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called [...]

I’m pretty sure Obama knows it’s not Peace  Corpse or Obama Youth Corpse, yet he doesn’t know how to pronounce corpsman properly.  He read corpsman as corpse-man in his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. Telling. When Bush mispronounced nuclear, the left went bananas. It became someone he was bashed for non-stop. Obama’s misspoken plenty of [...]

Dana Milbank of The Washington Post couldn't contain his glee over Joint Chief of Staffs chairman Admiral Mike Mullen's Feb. 2 testimony in favor of overturning "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

"Mike Mullen's 42 years in the military earned him a chest full of ribbons, but never did he do something braver that what he did on Capitol Hill on Tuesday," began Milbank's Feb. 3 ode to the admiral. "In a packed committee room, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff looked hostile Republican senators in the eye and told them unwelcome news: He thinks gays should be allowed to serve openly in the armed forces he commands."

"If they awarded decorations for congressional testimony, Mullen would have himself a Medal of Honor," concluded the columnist.

Mullen explained his "personal belief" to the Senate Armed Services "that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do."

"No matter how I look at the issues, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens," he elaborated. "For me personally, it comes down to integrity - theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."

Milbank's praise of Mullen's testimony is a complete 180 from how he characterized the testimony of Elaine Donnelly at a House Armed Services personnel subcommittee hearing about the same topic in 2008.

Donnelly, the founder and president of the Center for Military Readiness, testified in favor of keeping the current policy that bans openly gay and lesbian people from the nation's military.

In "Sorry We Asked, Sorry You Told," Milbank urged his readers, "Whatever you do, don't ask Elaine Donnelly to tell you what she thinks about gays in the military."

Milbank continued to vilify Donnelly throughout his account of her testimony, stating that she "treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage," that she "amused lawmakers the most," and "it was tempting to think that Donnelly had been chosen by the Democrats to sabotage the case against open military service for homosexuals."

The insults directed at Donnelly didn't stop there. Milbank also noted the comments of the Democrat Arkansas Rep. Vic Snyder who "labeled her statement ‘just bonkers' and ‘dumb.'" 

In contrast to his take on the 2008 House hearing, Milbank noted the "challenges to [Mullen's] integrity" and heralded that "Mullen did not bend." Milbank also claimed that "opponents" of the current ban on gays in the military "will doubtless point to [Mullen's testimony] - until now heresy for a top military officer - as a turning point."

"Supporters of the policy evidently grasped that, too, for they turned against the admiral with caustic words," he continued.

Milbank failed to praise Donnelly's unbending nature as she presented her case, as he did with Mullen. He didn't note the challenges to her integrity. And he surely did not recommend that Donnelly receive honors for her testimony.

There are at least two sides to every argument, unless the issue is homosexuality. Then, according to CNN, there's only one side and it's the homosexual activists who get to tell it.

CNN advocated a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy in 12 different reports between Jan. 28, the day after President Barack Obama reiterated his pledge to end the current military policy of banning openly gay citizens from the United States military in his State of the Union address and Feb. 2.

CNN allowed spokespeople from gay advocacy organizations such as Servicemembers United, the Log Cabin Republicans and the Palm Center, as well as several former and active gay military personnel, to plead their case without challenge

Of the 12 people CNN chose to appear on air (nine were military personnel) to discuss "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," only one expressed support of the current policy. Despite a Military Times poll that indicated 58 percent of military personnel are opposed to allowing openly gay people in the military, 78 percent (7 out of 9) of the military personnel featured in CNN's recent reports expressed their desire to allow homosexuals in the armed forces. One person remained neutral.

"Our deployed soldiers deserve to have their full rights," an anonymous female soldier told CNN's Ted Rowlands.

CNN's Pentagon reporter Barbara Starr implied on Feb. 1 that it didn't really matter what the military had to say about the possible repeal.

"We know the [Joint] chiefs have a lot of concerns about it," Starr reported. "They're worried it'll be disruptive to the force, in their view."

Starr later declared: "The bottom line ... is the chiefs, no matter what, will salute smartly, say they support the President, and try and figure out a way to make it work."

CNN's blatant advocacy was timely since the Senate Armed Services Committee was scheduled to meet with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen Feb. 2 to discuss military concerns about changing the policy.

 No Room for Debate

Over and over throughout the past six days, CNN viewers heard only one message from the cable network: repeal "don't ask, don't tell."

A segment by CNN reporter Ted Rowlands featured three anonymous gay service members, complete with blurred faces and changed voices because the service members did not want to jeopardize their careers. That one segment aired at three separate times since the president's announcement during the State of the Union.

Despite expressing fear of their commanders finding out about their sexual orientation, the service members told Rowlands they were speaking out because they, "really think it is the best thing for the military, all services and the best thing for this country for this [DADT] to be repealed." 

"Gays, lesbians, transgenders are in the military now. People know about it and the people who are against it who don't want to take a shower with us, that stuff already happens. It's not going to change," elaborated one soldier.

 

Rowlands did not include a point of view from a current soldier, airman, Marine or sailor that reflected the opposite view: that gay and lesbians should not serve in the United States military.

CNN's Rick Sanchez also lauded the efforts of gay serviceman Lt. Dan Choi, crowning him "Most Intriguing" person of the day Jan. 28, the day after the State of the Union. Choi famously came out as a gay soldier last spring on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show." He is awaiting a decision from his commanders with regard to his job in the Army National Guard.

"While serving in Iraq, he had to lie to fellow soldiers in his platoon and refer to his boyfriend as his girlfriend," Sanchez said. "That was a lie."

"The case is still pending, so this might be what saves my career and platoon," Choi reportedly texted to CNN after Obama's announcement that DADT would be a priority for this year. "If Congress or the president ends ‘don't ask, don't tell,' then I will have a job, again." 

On Feb. 2, Starr turned to Michael O'Hanlon of the liberal Brookings Institute to tout DADT as an "old-fashioned" policy.

"We can talk about this directly or we can just be fairly direct," O'Hanlon told Starr. "There are a lot of 18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden men in the military who are tough guys. They are often politically old-fashioned or conservative. They are not necessarily at the vanguard in many cases of accepting alternative forms of lifestyle."

Later that morning correspondent Carol Costello turned to Nathan Frank of the Palm Center to argue that "Repealing the ban would save money in the long run, absolutely." Costello didn't point out that the Palm Center is a research outlet based at the University of California at Santa Barbara that advocates for gay, lesbian and transgender inclusion in the U.S. armed forces.

Alex Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United, and a former Army intelligence officer who was discharged after being outed told CNN Feb. 2 that "don't ask don't tell" is "much more all inclusive and encompassing" than it sounds. "It was more like don't ask, don't tell, don't happen to be found out any time, any place, in any way," he said.

No one appeared on CNN to counter claims like former Defense Secretary William Cohen's, who told anchor Don Lemon on Jan. 30, "The notion that someone can be gay in the military and not anyone know about it, you can sacrifice or she can sacrifice their lives, but if they say they're gay, then they're out. I think that's a policy which needs to be reviewed. And I would advocate [it] to be repealed."

Lemon later hosted a discussion between three gay activists about the policy. Charles Moran, from the Log Cabin Republicans, Michelangelo Signorile, host of a daily radio talk show on Sirius Satellite Radio's OutQ channel, and Neil Giuliano, former president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation who all argued the military should do away with "don't ask, don't tell."

Moran, for his part, claimed equality was the most important factor in this debate.

"Regardless of people's personal hang-ups and feelings, we have a commitment as Americans to support a structure that is going to be best preserve and defend what America is. We didn't take a poll to see if it was popular to let integrate the military with African-Americans" Moran said. "We didn't take a poll to see whether or not it was going to be popular to let women serve side-by-side along with men in a combat zone. It's doing what is best with representatives of our country, and doing what's best for the military and for our nation."  

Signorile attempted to use polls to prove his point that America is ready for gays to serve openly in its military.

"The public has come dramatically far since the ‘90s. We now have polls that show 75 percent of Americans support this. Many Republicans support it," the radio host claimed. In 2008, an ABC News/Washington Post poll did find that 75 percent if Americans are okay with gays openly serving in the military.

But while 75 percent of Americans may favor a change in policy, it doesn't reflect the military's own opinion of such a change. Signorile referenced an unnamed poll that found 66 percent of service members would not have a problem with open homosexuals serving, but that's wasn't in agreement with other surveys of military personnel.

In the summer of 2009, a survey conducted by the Military Officers Association of America, an organization made up of active-duty officers, reservists, military retirees, and veterans, found 52 percent of respondents "supported an outright ban on military service by homosexuals." Even more, 68 percent said changing the law to allow openly gay service members would have a negative effect on troop morale and military readiness.

A 2008 Military Times poll found that 58 percent of respondents oppose the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell."

Costello referenced the Military Times poll in her Feb. 2 report, but noted only that "24 percent of military personnel would eventually leave the service if gay troops served openly."

CNN also ignored a statement of support for the current "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy signed last March by more than 1,000 retired flag and general officers.

What CNN Excluded

Brief mentions were made about the "divergent opinions" held by Congress and the military on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" but arguments in favor of the policy were almost entirely missing from the reports.

Nothing was said on CNN about the effect open homosexuality in the military could have on troop cohesion, morale and readiness. No active member of the military appeared on CNN to speak in favor of the policy, even though polls indicate service members are largely in favor of keeping the policy in place.

Clearly there are widely divergent opinions on the topic. CNN failed its journalistic responsibility to represent all sides of the controversial topic.  

ABC, CBS and NBC all aired full stories Tuesday night on Admiral Mike Mullen’s testimony against “don’t ask/don’t tell” before the Senate Armed Services Committee, but only ABC led with the comments from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) as anchor Diane Sawyer called it “a dramatic day on Capitol Hill” and reporter Martha Raddatz trumpeted: “This will be dramatically-debated for days to come, but what we heard today from the military on Capitol Hill was truly historic.”

Katie Couric set up the CBS Evening News story: “It's been U.S. policy for nearly 17 years now, gays and lesbians may serve in the military but only if they keep quiet about their sexual orientation. Today, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made an impassioned plea to Congress to change the law.”

On NBC, Brian Williams drew historic parallels: “62 years ago today, President Truman ordered the Defense Secretary to take the needed steps to remove discrimination in the military. He was talking about race. Today the topic was sexual orientation, specifically the Clinton-era policy known as 'don't ask/don't tell,' a policy that is now on borrowed time.”

From the top of the Tuesday, February 2 World News on ABC:

DIANE SAWYER: Good evening. For the first time ever, America's military leaders said today it is time to end the Pentagon's 'don't ask/don't tell' policy toward gays. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, said men and women in uniform should not be forced to lie. They want time for the ranks to absorb what this means, but Martha Raddatz says it was a dramatic day on Capitol Hill. Martha.

MARTHA RADDATZ: It was Diane. This will be dramatically-debated for days to come, but what we heard today from the military on Capitol Hill was truly historic. It was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officer in the nation, who said today what no one in his position has ever said before.

ADMIRAL MIKE MULLEN: It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.

RADDATZ: Admiral Mullin's statement ran into stiff opposition from Republican Senators...

Hugo Chavez’ inspirational debt to Ernesto “Che” Guevara is such that he titled his regime’s socio-economic model, “Mision Che Guevara.” Don’t look for much of this in the MSM–but as I write...

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Quoting from the film A Few Good Men, on Tuesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith asked openly gay Army Lieutenant Dan Choi if the U.S. military was prepared for the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy to be overturned by the Obama administration: “Older members of the military are not very interested in seeing this policy changed at all....Do you think the military can handle the truth?”

The policy, created by Bill Clinton’s administration in 1993, allows homosexuals to serve in the military as long as they do not publically come out. Choi, who is facing discharge from the Army for doing just that, replied to Smith’s movie reference: “Well, I think that there are some people in the military that might have grown up in a different era, and they have fear, obviously, with the change they might think that it’s too difficult for them....Don’t assume that because you might be uncomfortable or certain people might be uncomfortable that that translates to unprofessional or lack of discipline.”

Smith began the segment by proclaiming “the beginning of the end” of the policy as Defense Secretary Robert Gates began to reexamine it. A headline on-screen read: “Do Ask, Do Tell? Pentagon Plan To Be Unveiled Today.”

Here is a full transcript of the segment:

7:00AM TEASE:

HARRY SMITH: The beginning of the end for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’? Defense Secretary Gates announces plans today that could end the ban of gays serving openly in the military. We’ll talk to an Army lieutenant who is fighting to keep his job.

7:06AM SEGMENT:

HARRY SMITH: The military’s controversial ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy could be phased out. At a Senate hearing today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will unveil plans that could mark the beginning of the end of the policy that bans gays from serving openly in the military. He will also reportedly announce that third party outings will no longer be grounds for dismissal. Joining us now from Washington is Lieutenant Dan Choi, who currently faces discharge for publicly announcing he’s gay. Lieutenant, good morning.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Do Ask, Do Tell? Pentagon Plan To Be Unveiled Today]

DAN CHOI: Hey, good morning, Harry.

SMITH: You’re a graduate of the U.S. military academy at West Point. Did you – were you aware of your own sexual orientation when you were at West Point?

CHOI: I was. At my very first day at West Point, I learned that the honor code says a cadet will not lie and will not tolerate those who lie. They didn’t say that a cadet who was gay could lie, whereas straight cadets didn’t have to lie. I think that when somebody makes a decision to join the military, they don’t join the military because they’re gay or they’re straight or to be more straight or to be more gay. They do it because they believe in the values of our country, that it’s worth protecting, and that’s the reason why I joined.

SMITH: You came out publicly. Why was that such a dangerous thing to do?

CHOI: Well, I don’t think it’s a dangerous thing to do. I think it’s a very healthy thing for people to be able to tell the truth and to come to terms with who they are. I think it’s a sign of maturity. For me, I started a love relationship right when I got back from Iraq. I finally understood what everybody meant when they said a committed relationship, maturity and growth, and sacrifice and love. I finally understood that. It made me a better person. It made me understand my soldiers when they said that they fell in love. It made me understand romance novels or some of the things that people sing about in pop culture. It made me a better officer. And it made me a better person. So why should I hide that? Why should I lie about that?

SMITH: It’s interesting, because you look at the polls, older members of the military are not very interested in seeing this policy changed at all. Younger members of the military seem to – it doesn’t seem to matter to them that much. Here’s the interesting question. You talked about telling the truth. Do you think the military can handle the truth?

CHOI: Well, I think that there are some people in the military that might have grown up in a different era, and they have fear, obviously, with the change they might think that it’s too difficult for them. But my message to anybody in the military or anybody who’s waking up and realizing that this might be a little bit scary for them, don’t bet against our military. Don’t assume that because you might be uncomfortable or certain people might be uncomfortable that that translates to unprofessional or lack of discipline. Our soldiers are the best in the world and we look all around the world and we see even in Israel and all of our allies in NATO, they have no problem with this. And I think we’re just as good, we can show leadership and we’re disciplined and there's no reason to discount our soldiers that are serving.

SMITH: Lieutenant Choi, we thank you for your time this morning.

CHOI: Thanks, Harry. Have a good day.

SMITH: You bet.

It ain't easy being a laid-off hack leftist cartoonist with a penchant for slandering 9/11 widows and equating U.S. soldiers with suicide bombers. But Ted Rall got a big break on Friday when he got a chance to do a fundraising pitch for his planned trip to Afghanistan as an "unembedded" journalist.

On his January 29 program, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan introduced Rall as "an award-winning cartoonist who caught our eye with cartoons like this one showing some Wall Street types chatting about President Obama's bank tax."

But Ratigan must be ignorant of or apathetic regarding Rall's penchant for soldier-smearing left-wing screeds. After all, he all but personally endorsed Rall's fundraising pitch (audio available here):

RATIGAN: You're also a writer and a journalist who's reported from places like Afghanistan. Newspapers and magazines no longer put much money up for this type of work, so you're now using public donations to finance your journalism? How does that work?

RALL: Well, there's a Web site called kickstarter.com that I've been using to ask for donations, pledges, to help send me back to Afghanistan this summer, to do some independent, unembedded journalism of the kind that I think is sorely missing, especially since so many magazines, as you said, just don't have the money anymore. 

RATIGAN: Alright, kickstarter.com.  Ted, a pleasure, thank you so much.

That genius from Milwaukee with the creepy basement who put the final stake in the heart of “The Phantom Menace” now turns to “Avatar.” —– Part two is here.

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Networks like ABC have hyperventilated about the "outrage" of "endangering" soldiers with rifle sights with "secret Bible codes" on them. They worried about Christian proselytizing on the campus of the U.S. Air Force Academy. Will these TV reporters notice as the Air Force responds to the liberal-media complaints by opening an outdoor chapel space for Wiccans and Druids?

If Christians in the military were emblematic of George W. Bush, would the media suggest that this great Pagan Opening is symbolic of the Obama era?

From an offical Academy press release:

The Air Force Academy chapel will add a worship area for followers of Earth-centered religions during a dedication ceremony, which is tentatively scheduled to be held at the circle March 10....

Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, NCO in charge of the Academy's Astronautics laboratories, worked with the chapel to create the official worship area for both cadets and other servicemembers in the Colorado Springs area who practice Earth-centered spirituality...

The presence of diverse worship areas reflects a sea change from five years ago, when reports surfaced alleging religious intolerance at the Academy. Sergeant Longcrier became Pagan shortly after arriving at the Academy in 2006 and said he believes the climate has improved dramatically.

"When I first arrived here, Earth-centered cadets didn't have anywhere to call home," he said. "Now, they meet every Monday night, they get to go on retreats, and they have a stone circle. ... We have representation on the Cadet Interfaith Council, and I even meet with the Chaplains at Peterson Air Force Base once a year to discuss religious climate."

Earth-centered spirituality includes traditions such as Wicca, Druidism and several other religious paths that, while relatively new, trace their roots to pre-Christian Europe, Sergeant Longcrier said. Gerald Gardner founded the first Wiccan tradition in England in 1952, with neo-Druidism following in the early 1960s.

Some Earth-centered traditions involve the worship of gods and goddesses, whereas others may involve only one deity or none at all. Reincarnation is a popular concept, as is rebirth and celebrating the cycle of the seasons.

Well if you can't win the propaganda war by twisting the content of something you don't like, you can at least plant a presumptive seed in the heads of those who will only see a story's headline.

That seems to be the logic behind an unbylined Associated Press report this morning. Its headline ("Report: No sanctions for lawyers who OK'd torture") would tend cause anyone not reading further to believe that what was under review is indisputably considered "torture." But that is not the case, and the underlying article itself proves it.

What follows is a graphic capture of the first few paragraphs of the AP report:

Note that the second paragraph refers to "so-called torture memos." The word "torture" does not appear anywhere else in the report.

There is widespread disagreement as to whether waterboarding fits the legal definition of torture. The AP report also fails, as so many other reports relating to the controversy have, to note three important points the linked Newsmax article makes:

Only three terrorists have been subjected to waterboarding, and the technique has not been employed since 2003.

.... In fact, U.S. special forces are subjected to waterboarding as part of their training in case they are captured and experience the procedure.

.... The three terrorists who were subjected too waterboarding are Abu Zubaydah, Osama bin Laden’s chief of operations; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole; and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

In these cases waterboarding and other coercive techniques, such as forcing prisoners to stand for hours, succeeded in extracting intelligence that led to the capture of key al-Qaida operative planning terrorist attack against Americans.

.... “Waterboarding was employed on only three terrorists who were not cooperating, and the information they ultimately provided helped stave off attacks that could have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.”

In a later sentence, the AP writes (hopes?) that "The finding is likely to unsettle interest groups who contended there should be sanctions for Bush administration lawyers who paved the way for tough interrogations, warrantless wiretapping and other coercive tactics."

An honestly headlined report would at least have put quotes around the word "torture." A more accurate headline would have replaced the T-word with "enhanced interrogations," either with or without quotes. But excuse me for questioning whether honesty or accuracy was the headline's goal.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Based on the two pictures seen at the right, it doesn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the people at the Associated Press who decide on what pictures to use to tease the wire service's assorted video clips are not all favorably inclined towards Tony Blair.

Rather than show a picture of the former UK Prime Minister, the AP chose pics of a demonstrator outside where the inquiry was held.

As of about 8 PM ET, the "Raw Video" feed was still in the rotation and easily accessible at many hosted.ap.org pages carrying an international story. An accessible link to that vid is here at YouTube.

The "Blair Unrepentant" story is no longer in the rotation, but can be found here.

Here is a transcript of that "Unrepentant" video:

AP Reporter Martin Benedict: This was billed as "Judgment Day" for Tony Blair, and protestors outside the hearing offered their judgment that Blair was a war criminal for invading Iraq on the false premise that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

But inside, the former Prime Minister was unrepentant, telling the inquiry panel he'd do it all again if he had to.

Blair: It's really really important I think to understand this as far as understanding the decision I took, and frankly would take again. If there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction we should stop him, that was my view. That was my view then that's my view now.

Benedict: Outside the mood turned somber, as protestors including actor Samuel West held a naming of the dead ceremony.

Samuel West (speaking to AP): I find it extraordinary that a man who saw 1-1/2 million people march past his office go to war with no more justification than that he, he thought he was doing the right thing. Every war criminal in history has said the same thing.

Benedict: Blair's successor Gordon Brown is due to give his evidence before the election which will be held by May. Martin Benedict, the Associated Press.

Blair appears in all of 23 seconds of the 1:22 video. It's enough to make one almost relieved that the AP has little direct presence (so far) in broadcast television.

As to Benedict's breezy assertion about Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction being a "false premise," here the short version of the required routine debunking of the tired leftist claim, historically accurately phrased as "There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” (with no qualification of any kind) any time yours truly sees it made:

• April 2, 2007 -- "Munitions Found (in Iraq) Last Year Were Officially WMDs."
• In a mid-August 2006 post called "The 'No WMD' Lie (With Linked Proof) -- The Sequel," I identified six establishment media press reports describing items found in Iraq after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. The conclusions concerning these items were that 3 of them were "undisputable definites" as WMDs, that one related to raw materials definitely usable for creating WMDs, that one was inconclusive, and that a final item was not a WMD, but a clue to to the existence of hundreds of WMDs that were subsequently found.
• And of course, there were the 550 tons of yellowcake uranium taken out of Iraq in the summer of 2008. Investors Business Daily deadpanned noted that its "the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel, at a facility in Tuwaitha outside of Baghdad," and that "it was bought by a Canadian company for further processing into nuclear fuel — thus keeping it from potential use by terrorists or unsavory regimes in the region."

Thus, the claim that there were no WMDs in Iraq is demonstrably and indisputably false. Martin Benedict or anyone else at the Associated Press are welcome to come by BizzyBlog or NewsBusters any time to show why my work based primarily on reports by others in their profession is wrong.

They won't be able to. Thus, they must resort to showing immature caricatures and providing excessive face time and air time to the same people who have been wrong all along, both about the existence of WMDs and who was on the noble side in the military victory known as the Iraq War.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan are having a hard time understanding what is a strange Afghan cultural practice to them. The practice can be summed up in the ages old Afghan phrase, “women are for children, boys are for pleasure.” Yes, that phrase means what you think it means. It has been well known for a long [...]

Maybe it’s just happy coincidence. Maybe Hollywood really is taking White House suggestions for its scripts. Or maybe liberal group think has evolved to the point where they don’t just think the same things, they think them at the same time.

Whatever the case, just a day after President Obama’s “surprise announcement” in his State of the Union speech that he intends to overturn the military’s “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell” policy, the issue surfaced again in prime time. And the inclusion of propaganda in a TV drama was even more incongruous and gratuitous than Obama’s sop to his left wing.

The Jan. 28 episode of Fox’s forensics-based crime drama, “Bones,” centered on the murder of a gay man, and the writers took the opportunity to inject some standard talking points about the inequity of gays being unable to marry and the threat of physical violence from straight men.

But in their zeal to cover the gay rights bases, they shoe-horned in an out-of-place shot at “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell.” A discussion of a suspect’s possible motives included this extraordinarily weird exchange:

BRENNAN (Emily Deschanel): Native Americans believed homosexuals were of two spirits, held them in high esteem. So what’s the problem?

BOOTH (David Boreanaz): There’s no problem. Why are you looking at me like that? I was a soldier. I mean gay guys, they saved my life in battle more than once. 

Right. He probably once shared a foxhole with a transgendered sergeant, too. And the Native Americans probably had some profound wisdom about cross-dressing machine gunners.

If Hollywood writers feel compelled to lard their offerings with liberal propaganda, they should at least try to do it a little more artfully. Dropping labored references like that into the dialogue is as jarring as, well, making a statement about “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell” in the middle of a speech on the economy.

 

In 2008, she achieved a 100% liberal rating by the group Americans for Democratic Action. The same year she voted with conservatives just 4 percent of the time, according to the American Conservative Union. Her lifetime ACU rating is also in the single digits at a mere 9.06.

So let's not tell Chris Matthews, shall we. [audio available here]

The "Hardball" host today described the California Democratic senator as a "level-headed" "centrist," indeed the "true north of American politics" in a segment in which he showed Feinstein saying that President Obama reconsider the arrangements for the federal criminal trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan:

I often look to Senator Feinstein for sort of the true north in American politics. People think she's a liberal. She's very centrist in her thinking. And I think very mature in her outlook in terms of jurisprudence and all.

Managing Editor's Note: The following was originally published at Greyhawk's Mudville Gazette blog on January 25, 2010.

Wow - growing evidence that multiple identical letters appearing in multiple different newspapers under multiple names implies some sort of astroturf campaign. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, at this development.

The story of "Ellie Light" was exposed in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer and Politico, but from there it has really taken off in the blogosphere and Facebook - with the numbers of "Ellie Light" sightings now above 60, and new examples of similar campaigns being identified fast and furiously.

Just wait 'til the even bigger news sites discover this story. I don't have to wonder what will happen - I know - and whoever launched these various letter-writing campaigns should be well aware of what's coming, too. After all, it's happened before, and not long ago... (screen wavers, fades out... and...)

*****

...back in, to 2003:

The letters appeared in roughly 12 newspapers across the country. From Massachusetts to California, and many places in between, family members and local newspapers received letters from soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Infantry Regiment detailing their successes in northern Iraq.

Each letter was signed by a different soldier, but the words were identical...

Here's a surviving copy of the infamous letter. It was huge news in October, 2003. That quote above is from ABC News, but here's coverage from CBS, the New York Times, and even the BBC (and we could go on).

The story (remarkably identical in original numbers to our news of today) of this earth shattering fraud was blown open in USA Today, when a sharp-eyed reporter "found identical letters in 11 newspapers."

It's not clear who wrote the letter or organized sending it to soldiers' hometown papers. If they are part of an organized effort to sway public opinion, it could raise ethical questions for the military, whose officers are trained to refrain from partisan politics.

Ultimately in an e-mail to ABC news a battalion commander in Iraq confessed that the letter-writing initiative was all his idea, but claimed he just wanted to give his soldiers "an opportunity to let their respective hometowns know what they are accomplishing here in Kirkuk." Fortunately the real plan in which he was participating (willingly or not) - to destroy the very foundation of American democracy - failed as a result of the heroic efforts of the global mainstream media watchdog.

The commander was unapologetic, ABC reported, "saying that the letter perfectly reflects what each of these brave soldiers has and continues to accomplish on the ground." In fact, in their story ABC even acknowledged that "Kirkuk has seen improvement over the past several months, and is far less violent than other areas of Iraq" - and even the original USA Today story acknowledged that the soldiers they contacted "directly or through their families said they agreed with the letter's thrust." But the evil intent behind the campaign was made clear - and it went far beyond the level of a lowly battalion commander: "The Bush administration is engaged in a broad campaign to boost what polls show is sagging public support for the occupation in Iraq" - and obviously they were willing to stoop so low as to use the troops in Iraq to do their dirty work for them.

"Firm endorsements of the letter's description of the situation in Kirkuk have since been re-registered by most of the soldiers who were supposed to have written letters," explained the editors of the New York Times, "but that matters little to anyone who ever marched in the military command system." I shudder at the thought of what we owe those courageous reporters, of how close we came to the end of freedom as we know it, and the complete destruction of all that we hold dear.

And I'm sure that soon enough we're going to see a similar response to this latest outrage. With over 60 "Ellie Light" letters identified, multiple "Mark Spiveys," and who knows how many additional discoveries over the past week I'm certain the dam is ready to break - the identical letter from 11 GIs in their hometown papers seems to pale in comparison. For now the only further "mainstream media" coverage is in a blog on the website of the LA Times. But hell hath no fury as a news reporter who discovers he - and his entire profession - has been duped - used even, by the evil machinations of the powers that be. And I'm certain that the explosion is coming.

Any minute now.

Update: if the Chillicothe Gazette and the Green Bay Press Gazette have addressed the story, can the New York Times, ABC, CBS, and the BBC be far behind?

The piercing roar of the C-17 jet engines rattled my skull as it went to full throttle and lifted off into the amber sky back towards Miami.   The awesome machine had just delivered its precious...

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This is from last week’s Jay Leno Show. Leno interviewed “Avatar” director James Cameron and the relevant parts quoted below start at the 5:50 mark. —– Cameron: The...

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So while Republicans rejoiced over a huge victory in Massachusetts, a far bigger win took place at the Pentagon. The winner, sadly, was political correctness – that infectious mist of...

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CNN’s Jack Cafferty blasted the Defense Department’s report on the Fort Hood massacre as a “joke” on Thursday’s Situation Room, singling out how there was “no mention in the report of the suspect’s [Major Nidal Hasan] views of Islam.” Cafferty also highlighted a recent Gallup poll that found that “43 percent of Americans admit to feeling at least a little prejudice toward Muslims.”

The CNN commentator wasted no time in criticizing the 86-page report released by the Pentagon on the Fort Hood shootings: “The Pentagon report into the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas that left 13 people dead- it’s a joke. No mention in the report of the suspect’s views of Islam- none- in fact, the 86-page report doesn’t even once mention Major Nidal Hasan by name. It lumps in radical Islam with other fundamentalist religious beliefs, and instead, focuses on things like military personnel policies and the emergency response to the November shootings.”

Cafferty later read a quote from 9/11 Commission member John Lehman, and continued his attack on the report: “Lehman...told Time magazine the Pentagon’s silence on Islamic extremism- quote, ‘shows you how deeply entrenched the values of political correctness have become,’ unquote. What a shame....The Pentagon acknowledges it did not focus so much on Hasan’s motives, as on what it called ‘actions and effects.’ The report says they didn’t want to interfere with the criminal probe into Major Hasan. Garbage.”

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President Obama's handpicked intelligence czar blames officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice for failing to permit the gathering critical intelligence from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called Underwear Bomber who attempted to down a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009.

What's more, neither Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair nor FBI director Mueller or Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano were "consulted about the charging decision" for Abdulmutallab, a decision which may have resulted in the loss of a golden opportunity to collect intelligence from the would-be bomber before he was able to lawyer up.

Oh, and did I mention that the special task force that President Obama commissioned precisely for these situations isn't fully operational yet?

Yet in reporting this story on page A3 of today's Washington Post, the paper gave readers a bland headline and subheaders to sell readers on the story:

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Did you hear about this travesty in Haiti? Earthquake victims, writhing in pain and grasping at life, watched doctors and nurses walk away from a field hospital Friday night after a Belgian medical team evacuated the area, saying it was concerned about security. The decision left CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta as the only doctor at [...]

My ex-wife pulled off one of the most diabolical stunts ever perpetrated on one human being by another.  When she was a kid, she took it upon herself to teach her younger brother the names of all the...

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Now that we have your attention. Andrew Klavan’s written a terrific piece for City Journal looking at Katherine Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker,” which tanked at the box office, is a...

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15 January 2010 Cobra Battery at FOB Frontenac Arghandab, Afghanistan Artillery is called “The King of Battle.”  When it comes to the delivery of force, probably nothing outside of nuclear weapons...

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My Dear Readers,  Happy New Year, and I hope you all have a blessed 2010.  I wrote the following article and it deals with one of the most crucial issues of our day. I may have been excessive in...

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In his farewell address, the late President Ronald Reagan reflected on the state of America as his country entered the 1990s:  “Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of...

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To fully appreciate the absurdity of the statements uttered by “Avatar’s” writer/director James Cameron in defense of his film the other night, you have to get a feel for the...

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For several days now the Old Media has been indulging in a steady attack on former Mayor Rudy Giuliani that tends to misdirect readers away from his criticism of President Obama. First by making what Giuliani said of Obama seem more adulatory than it was and second by focusing on a rather unexceptional remark that [...]

First of all, sorry for the delayed release of this, I got a few big ideas for some big changes, and technical issues that arose in the process prevented me from meeting the series debut date of the...

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Having served 23 years in the military and in Vietnam, and having a son who leaves for Afghanistan this month, I look at this film through the eyes of a patriot (one who loves and defends his...

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Let this end the inane hair-splitting over how it’s okay to smear the United States Marines by making them “former” Marines in the form of mercenaries. The Marine Times: Lost amid...

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[Ed. Note: See below for a special DVD purchase promotion for Big Hollywood readers. Own a great film, save a little money, and best of all, support our troops and their families.] The moment I saw...

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Despite finding saarin, mustard gas, and other chemical weapons, and despite various prison sentences for those who used them in Iraq or those who sold them, apparently, the only thing that would have satisfied the left that Saddam had WMDs would have been discovering a giant SPECTRE-sized Ken Adam-styled laboratory with men in white lab coats hard at work caught in the act. But as Elizabeth Blackney, AKA "Media Lizzy" notes on her Facebook page, my how the definition of WMDs has changed...

Despite finding saarin, mustard gas, and other chemical weapons, and despite various prison sentences for those who used them in Iraq or those who sold them, apparently, the only thing that would have satisfied the left that Saddam had WMDs would have been discovering a giant SPECTRE-sized Ken Adam-styled laboratory with men in white lab coats hard at work caught in the act. But as Elizabeth Blackney, AKA "Media Lizzy" notes on her Facebook page, my how the definition of WMDs has changed...

Some highlights form today’s must read article on Oliver Stone’s new Showtime project from the Hollywood Reporter’s Live Feed: Director Oliver Stone’s upcoming Showtime...

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Award winning war correspondent Michael Yon was detained and handcuffed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Yesterday by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel. Yon was returning...

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Arghandab, Afghanistan New Year’s Eve, 2009 On this small base surrounded by a mixture of enemy and friendly territory, a memorial has been erected just next to the Chapel.  Inside the tepee...

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The end of the year brings us all sorts of fun “best of” lists and annual “awards”. We have “The Best Films of 2009″, “The Worst Films of 2009″,...

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It has been interesting watching the Associated Press reports on the attempted takedown of Flight 253 devolve in the past 12-plus hours.

In its 8:56 a.m. report (likely dynamic and subject to change), it looks like the assemblage of AP writers who worked on the story have succeeded in:

• As Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters noted earlier this morning in the case of the New York Times, ridding the report of the M-word ("Muslim").
• Minimizing to nearly zero the possible relevance of the suspect's home country of residence and of the possibility that he might be affiliated with what one publication refers to as the "Nigerian Taliban."

The wire service's 11:04 p.m. report (not linked, as original was revised by AP), had this to say about the relevance of Nigeria in its 23rd paragraph of 26:

At least it has the M-word, and at least it seems to imply that Nigeria might have some current AQ activity.

That verbiage remained but went to the second-last paragraph of the 3:07 a.m. version of the report (linked, but may change), but disappeared without replacement from the 3:54 a.m. dispatch. The 8:56 a.m. report also has no text discussing circumstances in Nigeria, and has been purged of the M-word.

Kaney Obaji Ori at Afrik.com lays out the relevance in the final four paragraphs of his update on the incident (internal link added by me; bolds are mine):

The Nigerian Diaspora have meanwhile expressed disappointment and concern over the susceptibility of al-Qaeda sleeper cells amongst predominantly Northern Muslim Nigerians. The Nigerian Taliban known as Boko Haram, an anti-western extremist Muslim group that sprung up in Northern Nigeria in July and threatened state civility in Nigeria were armed with machetes, knives, home-made hunting rifles and petrol bombs.

The group went on rampage in several states across Northern Nigeria, attacking churches, police stations, prisons and government buildings, and demanding sharia law for all Nigeria as opposed to democratic western-styled education and ideals.

After the sects uprising in northern Nigeria, many beheaded bodies were found in the sect’s headquarters, including at least three Christian preachers and the second in command of the military operation. Hundreds of sect members were also killed by Nigerian security forces in a major clampdown to dismantle the sect. Over 700 deaths related to the violence was (sic) reported.

The presence of an al-Qaeda branch operating across the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, Morocco, Mali and Niger and Nigeria’s porous borders was confirmed when a report submitted to top government officials in 2007 had identified and classified the Boko Haram sect as a "murderous religious group" that had been train by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. State Security Service of Nigeria stated that "the group was linked to Al Qaeda through some of its members including Barah Abdul and Mohamed Al-Amin who were in Afghanistan and have strong links with some Al Qaeda leaders".

After the July violence, during which Boko Haram leader Mallam Mohammed Yusuf was killed, the group declared total jihad (HT Jihad Watch):

The Islamic sect Boko Haram has declared total Jihad in Nigeria, threatening to Islamise the entire nation by force of war.

In a statement dated August 9, 2009, .... the sect whose activities led to the lost of hundreds of lives in northern Nigeria recently declared that their leader Yusuf who was killed in controversial circumstances during the crisis, lives forever.

In what looked like a declaration of war on the rest of the nation, the Boko Haram sect said it will unleash terror in Southern Nigeria this August, beginning with the bombing of Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu to make good its words.

The group's statement also says that "We support Osama bin Laden, we shall carry out his command in Nigeria until the country is totally Islamised which is according to the wish of Allah."

AP also couldn't find space in its 1,100-word report to tell us that many passengers claimed to have heard the suspect "screaming about Afghanistan" during the ordeal. Uh, don't Afghanistan's extremists also call themselves "the Taliban"?

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

On Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams took a moment to remember Vietnam War veteran, retired Colonel Robert Howard, who was awarded many honors for his heroic service, including the Medal of Honor, eight Purple Hearts, four Bronze Stars, and two Dinstinguished Service Crosses. Williams began his tribute: "We have a brief special word tonight about a very special man whose story you should know about, in part because his story will be told for generations to come. Robert Howard might have been the toughest American alive while he was among us. Bob was the only man ever to be nominated for the Medal of Honor three times for three separate acts of staggering heroism in combat."

After recounting some of the honors bestowed upon Colonel Howard, Williams related: "It's believed Bob Howard was the most heavily-decorated American veteran of the modern era, period."

The NBC anchor further recounted: "In one 54-month period he was wounded 14 times. He served five tours of duty in Vietnam. And in recent years, he loved his trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit the men and women in uniform and in the fight there."

Williams concluded: "That old expression, ‘They don't make them like him anymore,’ well, they don't. Bob Howard died today. He was 70 years old. Cancer did what the enemy never could do. It got him and brought him down. He leaves behind three children, several grandchildren, a lot of us who were proud to be his friend. In addition, Bob Howard leaves behind a grateful nation."

Below is a complete transcript of the piece by Williams from the Wednesday, December 23, NBC Nightly News:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: We have a brief special word tonight about a very special man whose story you should know about, in part because his story will be told for generations to come. Robert Howard might have been the toughest American alive while he was among us. Bob was the only man ever to be nominated for the Medal of Honor three times for three separate acts of staggering heroism in combat. But you can only receive one Medal of Honor per lifetime, and so that's what he got in 1971 from President Nixon. That's not all he got, though. He received eight Purple Hearts, eight of them. There were Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, two Distinguished Service Crosses. It's believed Bob Howard was the most heavily-decorated American veteran of the modern era, period.

He was a proud product of Alabama, and he let you know it. He was a Green Beret, Special Forces. While technically he fought in the Vietnam War, he fought in Laos and Cambodia and all kinds of other places where we were once told U.S. forces weren't fighting at the time. In one 54-month period he was wounded 14 times. He served five tours of duty in Vietnam. And in recent years, he loved his trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit the men and women in uniform and in the fight there.

Bob had two master's degrees, but for the most part he was a soldier with only one employer. When he retired from service back in 2006, as a full colonel, he'd been an employee of the US government in all for 50 years. That old expression, "They don't make them like him anymore," well, they don't. Bob Howard died today. He was 70 years old. Cancer did what the enemy never could do. It got him and brought him down. He leaves behind three children, several grandchildren, a lot of us who were proud to be his friend. In addition, Bob Howard leaves behind a grateful nation.

It looks like the PC Police will have to put out an APB for Time Magazine's Bobby Ghosh, his layers of editors, and his managers.

First, Ghosh had the unmitigated gall to write an item called "Domestic Terror Incidents Hit a Peak in 2009." In it, he notes that the "2009 saw an unprecedented surge in terror 'events' on U.S. soil." Clearly Ghosh doesn't understand that we're in a new era where the rest of the world reflexively loves us, thanks to our ever-apologetic president.

Ghosh compounded his error by saying that the November killings at a U.S. military base were t-t-t- .... terror-related:

.... by the calculations of Rand Corporation expert Brian Jenkins, more terrorist threats were uncovered in the U.S. during 2009 than in any year since 2001.

"There appears to be an increase in [terrorist] activity in the U.S.," warns Jenkins, who calculates that there have been 32 terror-related "events" on these shores since 9/11, and that 12 of those occurred in 2009.

Some of the more noteworthy "events" of 2009:

.... In November, Maj. Nidal Hasan, the son of Palestinian immigrants who had grown up in the U.S., was accused of going on a shooting spree at Fort Hood, killing 13 and wounding 30.

Keith Olbermann --who has obsessively gone after anyone and everyone who tries to claim that the Ft. Hood killings were terror-related, including Dana Perino several weeks ago -- call your office.

Ghosh does throw a bone to the PC crowd when he asserts, while providing only one example, that "the American Muslim community has become better at nipping potential threats in the bud."

But the math is pretty stark. In the seven-plus years from 9/11/01 to the end of last year, there were 20 "events" (32 total minus this year's 12). That's an average of less than three a year. This year's total more than quadruples that Bush era average. One might argue that many of the thwarted plots are never made public, but even if that's the case, there's no reason to believe that this occurred with more annual frequency during Bush 43's tenure than it has during Barack Obama's first year.

It would appear that kowtowing, bowing, and apologizing the rest of the world are not cost-free exercises, but instead embolden those who would capitalize on perceived weakness.

Also noted at BizzyBlog.com (fourth item at link). 

It looks like the PC Police will have to put out an APB for Time Magazine's Bobby Ghosh, his layers of editors, and his managers.

First, Ghosh had the unmitigated gall to write an item called "Domestic Terror Incidents Hit a Peak in 2009." In it, he notes that the "2009 saw an unprecedented surge in terror 'events' on U.S. soil." Clearly Ghosh doesn't understand that we're in a new era where the rest of the world reflexively loves us, thanks to our ever-apologetic president.

Ghosh compounded his error by saying that the November killings at a U.S. military base were t-t-t- .... terror-related:

.... by the calculations of Rand Corporation expert Brian Jenkins, more terrorist threats were uncovered in the U.S. during 2009 than in any year since 2001.

"There appears to be an increase in [terrorist] activity in the U.S.," warns Jenkins, who calculates that there have been 32 terror-related "events" on these shores since 9/11, and that 12 of those occurred in 2009.

Some of the more noteworthy "events" of 2009:

.... In November, Maj. Nidal Hasan, the son of Palestinian immigrants who had grown up in the U.S., was accused of going on a shooting spree at Fort Hood, killing 13 and wounding 30.

Keith Olbermann --who has obsessively gone after anyone and everyone who tries to claim that the Ft. Hood killings were terror-related, including Dana Perino several weeks ago -- call your office.

Ghosh does throw a bone to the PC crowd when he asserts, while providing only one example, that "the American Muslim community has become better at nipping potential threats in the bud."

But the math is pretty stark. In the seven-plus years from 9/11/01 to the end of last year, there were 20 "events" (32 total minus this year's 12). That's an average of less than three a year. This year's total more than quadruples that Bush era average. One might argue that many of the thwarted plots are never made public, but even if that's the case, there's no reason to believe that this occurred with more annual frequency during Bush 43's tenure than it has during Barack Obama's first year.

It would appear that kowtowing, bowing, and apologizing the rest of the world are not cost-free exercises, but instead embolden those who would capitalize on perceived weakness.

Also noted at BizzyBlog.com (fourth item at link). 

You know what? I have no patience for a female soldier who gets pregnant while on active-duty. You are a soldier. It is your job. You chose this job. It’s called birth control. It’s called make him glove up even if you’re on birth control. More here.

The climate change conference is long gone, but with Christmas just around the corner, I figured there had to be a connection. Also, I’m writing this after a holiday party, so I’m...

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20 December 2009 Arghandab, Afghanistan As Christmas approaches, many people are thinking about the troops, who in turn are thinking about loved ones at home.  Cards and letters are tacked up on many...

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It is pretty much the end of 2009. It is also the end of the first decade of the Millennium. Hard to believe that we’ve gone through ten years since the Y2K scare. Also, hard to believe we had three...

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A few months ago, a friend of mine told me about an online show called “The Dirty Bomb Diaries.”  While I was skeptical at first, as I had not watched much online media, I was pleasantly surprised by...

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Chicago politics now guides our national security. From The Weekly Standard’s blog: Twenty Republican senators have requested that the Senate Armed Services Committee launch an investigation into reports that the Obama White House threatened to close Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force base unless Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson fell into line on health care. Those reports first appeared [...]

Chicago politics now guides our national security. From The Weekly Standard’s blog: Twenty Republican senators have requested that the Senate Armed Services Committee launch an investigation into reports that the Obama White House threatened to close Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force base unless Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson fell into line on health care. Those reports first appeared [...]

Imagine the story of a soldier sent to fight native tribes for their land, but finds that once he actually meets and gets to know them, he respects them too much to follow through with his mission....

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In his swan song interview with President Barack Obama, which consumed more than ten minutes of World News, ABC's Charles Gibson couldn't have provided a friendlier or more empathetic platform to Obama on the “weight” of sending troops to war and how “devilishly difficult” it's become to pass a health care plan because of a few rogue Senators. Gibson, set to retire Friday, teased his last Wednesday newscast:

Welcome to World News. Tonight, we broadcast from the White House. And in the headlines, one on one. Our conversation with the President in which he says he lost sleep over his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, and makes a dire warning about health care.

That “dire warning,” which Gibson did not challenge in the interview: “If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee: the federal government will go bankrupt.”

Gibson began with Afghanistan, recalling how commanders don't “commit kids to war,” they just follow the President's orders, “and I thought, 'Holy God, what a weight that is on your shoulders.'” After Obama ruminated at length on the “gravity” of the “tough” analysis process he went through, Gibson wondered about the inner Obama: “How did you change from the beginning of that analysis and process that you went through to the end, inside you?”

Moving to health care, Gibson fretted the emerging bill doesn't have enough government intrusion: “If there's no government insurance program, if we're not even going to expand Medicare to keep insurance companies competitive, how does the cost curve bend?” He then sympathized with what Obama is up against with Joe Lieberman and a few other Senators: “Then there's the problem of getting the darn thing passed, which is proving to be devilishly difficult.” And lamented: “Do you feel like they're holding you hostage on this?”

Gibson opened, from inside the White House:

Good evening. We report from the cabinet room in the West Wing of the White House, and normally these days, around this table would be Obama, Clinton, Gates, Holder, Sebelius and the rest of the cabinet. The Oval Office is right nearby. Earlier today, I interviewed the President here, talking about the weight of a decision to send young people to war, knowing some will not return alive. And, about the difficulties of trying to corral 60 Senate votes for a health care bill.

The questions from Gibson aired on the Wednesday, December 16 World News, all followed by lengthy responses from Obama:

– Mr. President, a year ago today, you were in Chicago. You knew you were going to be President, but you weren't. What didn't you anticipate? What did you underestimate? What didn't you know?

– You surprised me a little, because I think -- and I've heard other Presidents say -- the thing that you can't anticipate is the weight of the job when it comes to you, particularly when it comes to committing young men and women to war.

– It's an enormous responsibility. And before Gulf War I, I went to Kuwait, and I talked to the commanders -- Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force -- and I asked them, what does it feel like to commit kids to war? And they all said, “We don't. The President does. It's his job. We just carry out his order.” And I thought, “Holy God, what a weight that is on your shoulders.”

– As you went through that assessment in recent weeks, is there a calculus in your mind? Do you have to go through it? What is this worth in terms of human life? Is this goal worth 500 lives, a thousand, 1,500 lives? Does that go through your head?

– How did you change from the beginning of that analysis and process that you went through to the end, inside you?

– Let me turn to health care. When we talked in the White House and throughout the early stages of health care reform discussion, you talked about the absolute need to bend the cost curve of health care, that we had to bring costs into line or we'd break the country. If there's no government insurance program, if we're not even going to expand Medicare to keep insurance companies competitive, how does the cost curve bend?

– And then there's the problem of getting the darn thing passed, which is proving to be devilishly difficult. You thought you had a compromise last week that was going to expand Medicare to younger people, and Senator Lieberman says, “Well, I'm not sure I want that,” and then all of a sudden, we hear it's out of the -- out of the bill. Do you feel as if individual Senators are holding you hostage?

– Which leaves you needing all 58 Democrats and two independents...Every one of them...Every single one....Anyone can say to you, “If I back off, you have to do what I need you to do.”...But do you feel like they're holding you hostage on this?

– But when you need every vote like this, and when Senators can do this to you -- and those are my words, not yours -- a lot of people worry that what you're going to wind up with is hash. There's even some Democrats saying now we've got a bill that's so compromised that it's not worth signing.

ABCNews.com summary of the interview, with video.

ABCNews.com's posted transcript (differs in parts from above since I corrected some errors in it)

It is with heavy heart that I report the following: Two great CBS television dramas, NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles, went the way of Law and Order last night (hat tip to NewsBusters reader Chris Reising).  If you’re a fan and have not seen last night’s episode, be warned that this blog contains plot spoilers. [audio clip available here]

Now is the time of year when the network dramas are running the “Happy Holidays” message episodes.  The NCIS franchise, a sort of military CSI show, ran with this message in each of last night’s episodes – with a twist.  On NCIS, a young Marine is found murdered.  He is found to be a recent convert to Islam (formerly a Christian), and the son of a retired Christian Marine chaplain.  As the plot progresses, we find that the widow (also a Christian) has been, shall we say, unfaithful during her husband’s deployment.  The father (the chaplain) has been paying his son’s unit members to harass him into quitting the Marines.  And the murderer, we find, is the brother of the deceased.

Why did one brother kill the other?  Simply put, the deceased Marine had dishonored his family’s name by converting to Islam – so the Christian brother killed him for it.  That’s right: NCIS featured a Christian honor-killing last night.

Next, CBS ran the Los Angeles-themed spinoff of NCIS.  The plot of this episode is particularly heinous.  Four wounded Marines (Explosive Ordinance Disposal technicians, essentially the bomb squad) return from Iraq.  One of the four is killed by an exploding cell phone (a favored tactic of Israel’s Mossad, incidentally), and the other three appear to have been targeted by the bomber.  This time, as the plot unfolds, we discover that one of the three remaining Marines appears to be the bomber – but which one could it be?  The Muslim, who appears to be eluding the NCIS agents, or one of the two Christians?

In an interrogation scene with the NCIS forensic psychologist, we find out that the Muslim is innocent – and that the Bible-quoting (and distributing) Christian is actually a demented bomber, seeking absolution for the things he did in Iraq.  Later, the concluding scene shows the mad bomber with an improvised suicide-bomber vest, attempting to kill himself and one of his unit members.  In the end, it amounts to an insane religious fanatic, trying to gain access to paradise by killing himself and as many “infidels” as he can.

The issue with this is clear: I have yet to see a report citing a Christian suicide bomber, or a Christian honor-killing, anywhere in the world.  And while not all Muslims are terrorists hell-bent on killing all non-Muslims, an inordinate amount of terrorists are Muslims.  Nor are these terrorists particularly upset with a lack of acceptance of Muslims by the Christian West – in fact, the issue seems to be more based non-religious points.  In the end, equating Christians to extremist Muslims is more than a stretch – it’s intellectually dishonest.

Of course, with the rest of CBS being in ratings shambles, I probably should not have underestimated their ability to screw this up too.  Political correctness may have just claimed another good show.

Managing Editor's Note: The following is a reprint of Michael Moriarty's original December 14 post to Big Hollywood. Moriarty, you may recall, played a prosecutor in the first few seasons of the long-running NBC drama "Law and Order."

Well, I think I’ve been fairly calm and forgiving of "Law and Order" for about fifteen years. Living outside of the U.S. has certainly helped in more ways than one. Out of sight, out of mind. "Law and Order" has, for years, been just a press of the remote away from non-existence.

However, recent events have "Law and Order" just begging for my reassessment. I hardly expected my old television series to be the clown act that leads the American viewing audience into an increasingly predictable pile of hard left propaganda.

Why?

["Law and Order" creator and executive producer] Dick Wolf is basically a follower of usually high-level talents such as Joe Stern, Robert Nathan and Ed Sherin.

Those men, I believe, are no longer regulars on "Law and Order." The guy who apparently wears the pants in that family is now Rene Balcer. That’s clearly the hypnotist in whose deep pink trance Dick Wolf is irretrievably drowning.

Given the number of truly talented people that Wolf Productions has fired – versus the number of mediocre puppets and propagandists he’s hired – it should be no wonder that not just the Left but the French Left of a Rene Balcer should be running things.

However, with Le Balcer (pronounced Ball-Say … Say-Whaa?) now the head Ringmaster … and Dick Wolf in some kind of quasi-retirement … or early senility … the show has gone beyond hell. Such a plight is possible if, in the inferno, you cut a deal with the devil. Balcer, as even his own words might convince you of, has worn the Red credentials … minus the horns, of course … for most of his life. Only Lucifer could give him his opinions on terrorism.

Wolf, on the other hand, has, for his entire life, been merely a careerist, chasing the unsurpassable achievements of his mentor, Steven Bochco, and being obviously surpassed by numerously more brilliant TV producers. Such careerism would infer that even his own mother’s not safe if it means the record-breaking survival of a Dick Wolf production. "Law and Order" will soon outrace Gunsmoke to the category of longest-running television series.

Methuselah was the longest-running star of the Bible … but I hardly think his memory brings either a smile or a tear to anyone’s eye.

Recently Bill O’Reilly took profoundly justifiable umbrage – a good word, Mr. O’Reilly – at Law and Order’s lumping his name in with other talk-show hosts, describing them all as “a cancer spreading ignorance and hate … they have convinced folks that immigrants are the problem, not corporations that fail to pay a living wage or a broken health care system.”

Well!!

O’Reilly called those charges “simply defamatory and outrageous,” and labeled Wolf “a coward” and “a liar.”

As for Wolf’s cowardice, he buckled before the profoundly unconstitutional behavior of Attorney General Janet Reno and he and NBC lied about my having quit "Law and Order."

Wolf and NBC announced that they fired me because of behavior that seems to have resembled Glenn Beck’s.

If only we had all been working for FOX!!

That I was fired is a lie.

I had quit Universal Television and NBC and the "Law and Order" series before they could even come up with an excuse for hiring Sam Waterston.  An advertisement I placed in both Variety and Hollywood Reporter announced my leaving the United States, which I did within a year.

If anyone can find those ads, I submit them as exhibit A in the proof of … how shall I say … Dick Wolf’s and NBC’s lack of, well, a certain talent for the truth.

It is all laid out in my memoir, The Gift of Stern Angels, now unfortunately out of print. No one was interested then.

By the way, The Gift of Stern Angels is quite a hurly-burly ride through the politics of network television, not to mention my own losing battle with alcohol.

Poor "Law and Order" has been drifting and now tumbling downhill into the ever-deepening waters of America-bashing. The blatant disgust for America’s hard-earned and hard-won sovereignty as a nation, credentials that certainly demand strict and unashamedly clear immigration laws … the Red "Law and Order" seems to be spitting on the very nation that defined a decent meaning to the words “law and order”.

As for Dick Wolf’s Empire and its future?

There might very well be numerous episodes on the 9/11 terrorists and their New York Trial.

I can now see the cops, ending the first half of the show, reading the Miranda rights to some grotesquely veiled excuse for Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

When KSM gets to trial?

No doubt, he and his defense lawyers… there’ll be more than one at the defense table … will get their day in court!!!!!

Dick Wolf’s point of view?

He might say, “Our shows on the trial of KSM will make its viewers at least as angry as the pre-trial demonstrations have shown!”

For Dick Wolf, such a stunningly  simplistic achievement is all he’s really been looking for his entire life: upsetting his audience.

He sure as hell upset Bill O’Reilly!

Our very own John Nolte has taken a close look at an L & O episode, Memos from the Darkside.

Please read his frank estimate of the Rene Balcer turn on the infamous Torture Memos. In addition, John’s article contains a long clip of Rene Balcer being interviewed by an Australian journalist [see below].

After describing his job as Executive Producer much like “herding cats … and anxious types”, Mr. Balcer refers to the war on terrorism as “so-called”, and claims that “cultural misunderstandings” lead to labeling innocent people as “terrorists”.

The “fallout of 9/11” is “pretty big business in America”.

It’s obviously earning Rene Balcer a living as terrorism’s apologist.

 “Americans of Middle Eastern descent … being held incommunicado and being abused by prison guards”, this, according to Balcer, was happening, under Bush of course, in Guantanamo, Iraq and Brooklyn!

However, according to Balcer, “you get in trouble (with a lot of people) if you attack President Bush by name …”

Hmmm … apparently talk show hosts like Bill O’Reilly are another matter.

Yet Balcer claims he shies away from “ad hominem” attacks.

Really?!

“Our best shows make the audience question what’s going on” … upstairs, right?

He admits to finding another show about the upstairs in Washington D.C., 24, “offensive”.

“24 supports torture!”

And therefore, Mr. Balcer, must "Law and Order" say that torture doesn’t save any American lives?

However, the most chilling points of view he expresses are his ideas about what makes a terrorist.

“Most people commit crimes … whether it be terrorists … or knocking over the local grocery store … they do it for intensely personal reasons.”

Hmmmm, indeed!!

A mere, ten minute glimpse into CNN’s documentary on the youthful terrorists in Mumbai and their horrifying phone conversations with their “Controllers” … whew … this would reveal no “intensely personal reasons” for mass murder but, indeed, a robotic, brainwashed and monomaniacal mindset instilled by their Jihadist instructors, the same mindset that filled the World War II kamikaze pilots of Japan.

Obviously Mr. Balcer has his own “personal problems” … and he’s “working them out” on "Law and Order."

Finally, the "Law and Order" episode on ACORN?

President Obama’s very own Van Jones and Andy Stern might have written portions of it.

Yet Dick Wolf still wonders why producers like Steven Bochco and Jerry Bruckheimer always received better reviews, bigger ratings and vastly greater respect.

Dick, from the guy you used to describe as “the conscience of the show”, perhaps it’s because Bochco and Bruckheimer have had a conscience in the first place.

Where "Law and Order" has been treading is unconscionable.

In an unusually tough interview with President Obama on Sunday’s 60 Minutes on CBS, correspondent Steve Kroft described the President’s West Point speech as being “greeted with a great deal of confusion” and that “some people thought it was contradictory.” He later said of the health care bill: “some people think is incomprehensible....I’ve not met anybody who’s read it.”

Kroft began the interview by asking about the new Afghanistan strategy and made some observations about Obama’s announcement of the plan: “In your West Point speech, you seemed very analytical, detached, not emotional....There were no exhortations or promises of victory. Why? Why that tone?” Obama argued: “...that was actually probably the most emotional speech that I’ve made.” And then hit the Bush administration: “...one of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war. There was a tendency to say, ‘We can go in. We can kick some tail. This is some glorious exercise.’”

Kroft went on to note that the speech: “was greeted with a great deal of confusion.” A testy Obama interjected: “I disagree with that statement.” Kroft rephrased: “...it raised a lot of questions. And some people thought it was contradictory. That’s a fair criticism.” Not according to the President: “I don’t think it’s a fair criticism....There shouldn’t be anything confusing about that.” Obama then touted a Bush administration success to make his point: “...that’s something that we executed over the last two years in Iraq. So, I think the American people are familiar with the idea of a surge.”

In the second half of the interview, Kroft focused on domestic policy, particularly the struggling health care bill: “You wanted to change the status quo in Washington. Then you came in, and you turned over your top priority, health care, to the Congress.” Obama tersely replied: “That’s not true.”

Kroft further explained: “...well, you laid out what you wanted and what – you set the guidelines....And then stood back and turned it over to 535 people who produced a 2,000-page bill that is-” Kroft paused, causing the President to urge him to continue: “Finish your thought, Steve.” Kroft went on: “Well, I haven’t read it....I’d say some people think is incomprehensible. Not very many people have read it. I’ve not met anybody who’s read it.”

Kroft concluded the interview by asking about the White House security breach. As soon as the topic was mentioned, Obama sarcastically remarked: “It’s really a shame that I had to go through a whole 60 Minutes interview without talking about the gate crashers. Good catch.”

Kroft wondered about the role of White House official Desiree Rogers in the scandal: “Were you unhappy with your Social Secretary?” Obama dodged: “I was unhappy with everybody who was involved in the process....it was a screw up.”

Here is a transcript of portions of the interview:

7:25PM

STEVE KROFT: As President Obama approaches his first anniversary in the White House, some of the public’s enthusiasm for his ambitious agenda at home and abroad is on the wane. While he helped avert a worldwide financial collapse, and may well achieve his goal of health care reform during his first year in office, the U.S. economy is still very weak, with double-digit unemployment, and his approval ratings are at the lowest point of his presidency. This past week, before he left for Europe to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, we sat down with the President in the Map Room at the White House for a wide ranging discussion, much of it focused on his decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Was that the most difficult decision of your Presidency so far?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely.

KROFT: Why?

OBAMA: Because when you go to Walter Reed and you travel to Dover and you visit Arlington and you see the sacrifices that young men and women and their families are making, there is nothing more profound. And it is a solemn obligation on the part of me as Commander in Chief to get those decisions right.

[CLIP OF WEST POINT SPEECH]

OBAMA: I do not make this decision lightly.

KROFT: In your West Point speech, you seemed very analytical, detached, not emotional. The tone seemed to be, ‘I’ve studied this situation very hard. It’s a real mess. The options aren’t very good. But we need to go ahead and do this.’ There were no exhortations or promises of victory. Why? Why that tone?

OBAMA: You know, that was actually probably the most emotional speech that I’ve made, in terms of how I felt about it. Because I was looking out over a group of cadets, some of whom are going to be deployed in Afghanistan. And potentially some might not come back.

There is not a speech that I've made that hit me in the gut as much as that speech. And one of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war. There was a tendency to say, ‘We can go in. We can kick some tail. This is some glorious exercise.’ When in fact, this is a tough business.

KROFT: Most Americans right now don’t believe this war is worth fighting. And most of the people in your party don’t believe this is a war worth fighting.

OBAMA: Right.

KROFT: Why did you go ahead?

OBAMA: Because I think it’s the right thing to do. And that’s my job. If I was worried about what polled well there are a whole bunch of things we wouldn’t have done this year.

KROFT: Do you feel like you’ve staked your Presidency on it?

OBAMA: There are a whole bunch of things that I’ve staked my Presidency on. Right? That are tough and entail some risks. There’s no guarantees. But that I’m confident we have addressed in the best possible way.

KROFT: The West Point speech was greeted – it was greeted with a great deal of confusion.

OBAMA: I disagree with that statement.

KROFT: You do?

OBAMA: I absolutely do. 40 million people watched it. And I think a whole bunch of people understood what we intend to do. Now-

KROFT: Well it – it raised a lot of questions. And some people thought it was contradictory. That’s a fair criticism.

OBAMA: I don’t think it’s a fair criticism. I think that what you may be referring to is the fact that on the one hand I said, ‘We’re gonna be sending in additional troops now.’ On the other hand, by July 2011, we’re gonna move into a transition phase where we’re drawing out troops down.

KROFT: Right.

OBAMA: There shouldn’t be anything confusing about that.

KROFT: Well-

OBAMA: That’s – first of all, that’s something that we executed over the last two years in Iraq. So, I think the American people are familiar with the idea of a surge.

In terms of the rationale for doing it, we don’t have an Afghan military right now, security force, that can stabilize the country. If we are effective over the next two years, that then frees us up to transition into a place where we can start drawing down.

...

KROFT: You mentioned Congress and health care. You ran for office based on – on the fact that you were going to try and reform the system. You wanted to change the status quo in Washington. Then you came in, and you turned over your top priority, health care, to the Congress.

OBAMA: That’s not true.

KROFT: 535 – well, you laid out what you wanted and what – you set the guidelines.

OBAMA: Right. Exactly.

KROFT: And then stood back and turned it over to 535 people who produced a 2,000-page bill that is-

OBAMA: What?

KROFT: Well, I haven’t read it, so-

OBAMA: Finish your thought, Steve.

KROFT: I can’t really. I’d say some people think is incomprehensible. Not very many people have read it. I’ve not met anybody who’s read it.

OBAMA: Steve, let’s – let’s be clear here. Seven presidents have tried to reform a health care system that everyone acknowledges is broken. Seven presidents have failed up until this point. We are now that close to having a bill that does all the things that I said, and most experts said, needed to be done when we started this process. It is not only deficit neutral, but will actually bring down the deficit according to the Congressional Budget Office.

KROFT: Do you think it’s going to pass?

OBAMA: Yes.

KROFT: Do you do you think it’s gonna pass before Christmas? In the Senate?

OBAMA: I think it’s – I think it is going to pass out of the Senate before Christmas.

KROFT: Are you going to be involved in that process?

OBAMA: I’ve been involved the whole time.

KROFT: At that point, we thought the interview was over, and then our executive producer suggested one more question. The gate crashers.

OBAMA: Yeah.

KROFT: By now, you must know-

OBAMA: It’s really a shame that I had to go through a whole 60 Minutes interview without talking about the gate crashers. (laughter) Good catch.

KROFT: You must know – you must know what happened. Can you share that with us?

OBAMA: I think that what I know is what everybody knows. Which is that these people should not have gotten through the gate.

KROFT: Were you unhappy with your Social Secretary?

OBAMA: I was unhappy with everybody who was involved in the process. And so, it was a screw up. Now, I don’t think that from a policy perspective, this was the most important thing or even the fifth or sixth most important thing that happened this week, although it got the most news.
                    
KROFT: Were you angry when you found out about it?

OBAMA: Yes. That’s why-

KROFT: Seriously angry? Right.

OBAMA: Yes. That’s why it won’t happen again.

Liberals don’t even bother to hide their intense hostility toward the military. Their moral avatar Bill Clinton has averred that he loathes it. Chris “Tingles” Matthews, whom they trust to install their opinions, refers to West Point as the “enemy camp.” The challenge for progressives is: how is a herd of squishy-soft degenerates to overcome [...]

13 December 2009 Kandahar, Afghanistan People are confused about the war.  The situation is difficult to resolve even for those who are here.  For most of us, the conflict remains out of focus,...

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Following in comedian Jon Stewart's footsteps, Al Gore's Current TV mocked President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony Friday.

In a "SuperNews" segment, animator Josh Faure-Brac showed Nobel Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland getting uncomfortable with the idea of giving the President a peace prize while he's sending 30,000 more troops to war.

Frustrated by the exchange, Obama turned the tables on Jagland asking him to solve the problem in Afghanistan.

After fumbling for an answer, Jagland marvelously said, "Maybe if we found a charismatic leader who had the entire planet shouting, 'Hope' and 'Yes we can,' maybe then we would be in a position to change things. But where we going to find a guy like that?"  

This angered Obama, who said, "I am not the Messiah," and eventually grabbed his prize storming off the stage claiming, "I got s**t to do" (video embedded below the fold, h/t Story Balloon; pay particular attention to the changing chyrons in the bottom left of the screen):

In the end, much like Stewart's marvelous segment Thursday, Current was attacking Obama from the left.

When Jagland did his "charismatic leader" bit, the chyron read, "Thorbjorn Flips It: Wants 'Campaign Obama' back." 

Isn't that what most media members want? 

Which is what makes this kind of satire safe: folks can poke fun at Obama by saying he's not liberal enough, and that makes it okey dokey -- especially if you include a poke at the previous administration, i.e. "That feels very Bushy to me, you know, like Bush." 

Yeah...I know.

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