Clean-up on Aisle 5!

Last weekend, President Obama spoke at a Congressional Black Caucus banquet, where he said the following:

"If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew, uh, as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that."

Today he also released a video greeting for the Jewish New Year, where he said: "Happy Rosh Hashana. There is clean-up on aisle 5...Jew, uh, janitor to aisle 5 please."

Ok, he didn't say that. But if a Republican had said made the first statement at a conservative banquet, this whole week would have been filled with media undertones of "Is the Right anti-semetic?". Instead, we have lavish media tongue-baths that declare Obama to be "The first Jewish President".

No bias there.... I am sure there is no conflict of interest...

When Pigs Fly

Culturally-insensitive vandalism using a common food item might now be considered a hate crime:

Bacon attack on an American mosque: prank or hate crime?

Strips of bacon spelling 'PIG' and 'CHUMP' were found in front of a South Carolina mosque Sunday. In post-9/11 America, pork – which is unclean in Islam – is a primary form of anti-Muslim protest.

So I guess this means Pink Floyd should avoid booking reunion concerts in stadiums where Muslims might be nearby?



And really CS Monitor...does bacon lying on a sidewalk in a organized fashion constitute a "Bacon Attack"?? It is like you are trying to push a certain agenda with an inflammatory headline....nah, that couldn't be!

Press' Predominating Storyline About Beck Rally

Jim Treacher has ferreted out the MSM's "un-diverse" implications about a rally held in the capital city of this predominantly white nation....

Presented without comment:

“Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and tea party champion Sarah Palin appealed Saturday to a vast, predominantly white crowd on the National Mall to help restore traditional American values and honor Martin Luther King’s message.” — Associated Press

“Attendees at the rally Saturday largely honored organizer requests that they not bring banners or political signs. Instead, the predominantly white crowd, many seated on folding chairs and accompanied by their children, wore t-shirts with slogans including ‘Got principles?’ and ‘Restoring Honor.’” — AFP

“Meanwhile, many in the predominantly white crowd bent over backward to insist that they are not racists and to note that the crowd was courteous, despite heat and density.” — James Hohmann, Politico

“Beck says he and his overwhelmingly white followers ‘are the inheritors and protectors of the civil- rights movement.’” — Ben Adler, Newsweek

“Though the audience at the event was overwhelmingly white, many of the speakers were African-American, including a woman who sang a song about unity.” — Brian Montopoli, CBS

“Claiming the legacy of the nation’s Founding Fathers and repeatedly evoking civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., the speakers at the ‘Restoring Honor’ rally exhorted a vast and overwhelmingly white crowd to concentrate not on the history that has scarred the nation but instead on what makes it ‘good.’” — Philip Rucker & Carol Morello, Washington Post

“A relatively dense and overwhelmingly white crowd stretched from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial out past the Washington Monument.” — Mark Benjamin, Salon.com

“The speaker list was diverse, including African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans; Jews and Christians; clergymen, military veterans and sports stars, including Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals. The crowd, however, was overwhelmingly white.” — Michael A. Memoli and Kim Geiger, LA Times

“Out in the overwhelmingly white audience… politics was everywhere, with Tea Party supporters describing the damage they envision for President Barack Obama’s Democrats in upcoming midterm elections in November.” — Mitch Potter, Toronto Star

What are they really trying to say?

Bees in Barry's Bonnet

From Instapundit:

KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH THE COMMON PEOPLE: The White House now has a beekeeper. “The idea for a White House hive came up not long after the Obamas moved in.”

Gee, and here I thought all the drones were down in the White House Press Room.

I guess they had to go somewhere after the Queen Bee was driven off....

"We Are Not The Enemy"

Here is a video of CNN's Anderson Cooper bemoaning the fact that the Obama Administration is restricting press access to oil spill clean-up efforts...


(H/T: Allahpundit at HotAir)

The best part is when Cooper repeatedly says "We are not the enemy here!"

Poor Anderson. Surely you have to be intelligent enough to realize you *ARE* the enemy here. Your reporting will no doubt show the recovery efforts in a negative light. Even if you only show a couple of oil covered gulls, that is enough to convey that after a month and a half progress is not being made, and that is not the narrative that this "transparent" Executive Branch wants on the airwaves.

Perhaps you felt a kinship because the President yucked it up with you a the Correspondents Dinners, or you are invested in the idea that things would be different because the President could give some idealistic campaign speeches. However understand this...no matter how much of a sycophantic acolyte you are, if you break their rules and go off of their narrative, you *ARE* the enemy here, and you will end up under the bus.

So you have two choices here....one, do your job and accept your place on the journalistic enemies list, or two, toe the line and enjoy the laughs and Crème brûlée at next year's White House Correspondents Dinner.

Restrepo - One Platoon, One Valley, One Year

Acclaimed author Sebastian Junger, widely known as author of 'The Perfect Storm', has put together what looks to be a most interesting look at an isolated U.S. Army platoon that he embedded with during 2007/08 in eastern Afghanistan.

The movie 'Restrepo', filmed by Junger and co-hort Tim Hetherington, will be released next month. The film has already won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.

Here is a trailer:



Another (better) version of the trailer can also be viewed in HD here.

Junger has also released a book about his embedded experience titled 'War'.

AP Tries to Incite Israelis to Hate Silvio Berlusconi

Perhaps the AP couldn't fathom a European leader actually having an affinity for the state of Israel, but for whatever reason, they are trying desperately to put a negative taint on Silvio Berlusconi's trip there.

Here is how their article opens:

Italy's prime minister links Gaza war to Holocaust

By Dalia Nammari
Associated Press Writer / February 3, 2010

BETHLEHEM, West Bank—Italy's prime minister on Wednesday called for empathy for all victims, whether from the Nazi Holocaust or Israel's war in Gaza, drawing a link that threatened to tarnish a visit that has cemented his already warm ties with Israel.

Silvio Berlusconi's comments, while avoiding direct comparisons to the Holocaust, nonetheless could touch a raw nerve in Israel -- a country that was founded in the wake of the Nazi massacre of 6 million Jews and that is home to more than 200,000 Holocaust survivors.

"Could"...."could"...

Is the AP so hard up that they have to try to manufacture a non-existent controversy? Nowhere in the entire article does the AP actually present an Israeli who objects to Berlusconi's statement. They only imply that someone "could". Since when is a reporter's conjecturous implication a substitute for actual news content?How about we wait for an actual uproar before reporting that uproar....

In fact the article does go on to say:

"Berlusconi has been warmly welcomed throughout this three-day visit to Israel, and he has repeatedly spoken of his strong affinity for the Jewish state and expressed sorrow over the Holocaust.

[...]

Throughout his trip, Berlusconi received a welcome afforded to few other leaders. He was wined and dined by Israeli leaders, brought eight government ministers with him for a joint Israeli-Italian Cabinet meeting and got a standing ovation for a speech to the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem.

With all of the positive things mentioned in the article with regard to Berlusconi, if find it puzzling that the AP would lead with such as forced attempt at manufacturing a controversy.

The AP could have struck the first two paragraphs entirely, and more legitimately opened their story with the headline "Berlusconi Warmly Welcomed in Israel; Warns Against Nuclear Iran".

But I guess that wouldn't have attracted as many eyeballs.....

Shocking CIA Torture News

ABC News bring us the shocking news of a CIA secret prison....

EXCLUSIVE: CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy

The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.

[...]

"The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton.

They go on to reveal the horrors that went on there...

They included eye-gouging; piercing of hands with an electric drill; suspension from a ceiling; electric shock; rape and other forms of sexual abuse; beating of the soles of feet; mock executions; extinguishing cigarettes on the body; and acid baths.

Oooops. That last quote wasn't from the ABC report, it was from an old Daily Mail report on the torture under the Saddam Hussein regime.

Here is the *torture* Mr. Sifton says happened at this alleged CIA location:

The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."

Oh the horror!

Let us compare those two again.

- eye-gouging; piercing of hands with an electric drill; suspension from a ceiling; electric shock; rape and other forms of sexual abuse; beating of the soles of feet; mock executions; extinguishing cigarettes on the body; and acid baths

- sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions

Yeah, I can see the equivalence now.

Let be realistic. One is torture, and one is essentially severe inconvenience.

Actually, the second example sounds like most C-130 flights I had in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan....

FT Hood MSM Meme Non-Sequitur

Noah Pollack at Commentary's Contentions blog points us to the tip of the MSM's excuse iceberg on the FT Hood story. According to Time Magazine, Hasan had "Secondary Trauma"...

Gateway Pundit provides us with a good screen shot of the Time webpage of the story.



One thing I find interesting, and totally out of place, is Time's additional link in the story, 'See pictures of suicide in the recruiters ranks'.

This will take you to a Time story from April about the issue of recruiter suicide. I ,for the life of me, cannot figure out why that would be relevant to the discussion of a mass-murdering Army psychiatrist with Jihadi tendencies. Does Time not know enough about the military to think that two are somehow related? Talk about an inappropriate non-sequitur.

And as far as their search for a to excuse Hasan for his actions, pehaps they ought to consider that Hasan's "Secondary Trauma may not have come from listening to his patients, but rather from listening to the Wahhabist clerics at the mosques he liked to attend...

MSM: Move Along..Nothing to See Here!

So...what are the biggest news stories of the weekend according to the nation's leading media outlets?

A missing graduate student, dirty water, and nicer treatment for terrorist detainees. And...if you look a little closer...you might notice the acknowledgment that "thousands" of people marched on the National Mall to protest many items being pushed by the Obama Administration.

While the CNN article makes absolutely no mention of crowd size, it has been estimated by some that it could approach 2 million people. That may seem high, but even if the crowd surpassed 1 million, it could arguably be the largest crowd ever to assemble on the National Mall. In fact it would be higher than the crowd for President Obama's Inauguration.

Even if it were simply close to being the largest ever, one would think that might merit the leading headline on a slow news Saturday. Alas no, but lets take a look at what was on the major news webpages this evening....













Not a whole loota Tea Party in there is there? At least the WaPo put a Tea Party slideshow up there.

But I suppose we should not be at all surprised that these news tools organs would provide aid and comfort to the Administration.

Healthcare Coverage Fairness Doctrine

Last night Instapundit linked to a report on Obamacare protest at Heath Schuler's local office in Asheville, NC.

In an update to the report the blogger gives a link to a local tv news story about their protest. After viewing this video you might wonder, as I did, if the Fairness Doctrine may have already passed and put into effect without us knowing it.

The coverage of the actual protest was sparse, and actual sound bites were quick and selectively edited. But the worst part was how the "reporter" went out of her way to give "balance" to the story, complete with a formal sit down interview with couple who has a sad story and wants Obamacare in order to cover their health needs. Since there was no "counter-protest" going on arguing for ObamaCare, one wonders why a supposedly impartial news organization felt it had to provide that "balance".

And this is where it starts to get interesting....

The "balance" that reporter Courtney Brennen gives, the older couple (Steve & Tricia Minnick) and their sad story, turns out not to be new to Brennen's reporting resumé. However their story seems to have changed slightly since their previous apperance.

Back in May, Brennen interviewed Tricia Minnick at a Jobs Fair. At the time, the Minnick's story was:

Tricia and her husband retired early and moved to Mexico a few years ago. Healthcare is cheaper there, and her husband is not well. But Tricia now finds herself back in the rat race. "Well, we moved back because our 401-K tanked. We had to come back and find jobs."

However, now when Brennen needed to find some balance to the FreedomWorks protest, her reporting on the Minnick's story has suddenly changed.

Steve and his wife, Tricia, had to move to Mexico because healthcare is cheaper. When their 401k's tanked, they had to move back to the mountains and get full-time jobs. Tricia has been denied insurance coverage several times because of a "pre-existing condition." The new legislation would stop that from happening.

Apparently Ms. Brennen studied Journalism under a Glass/Blair Scholarship at my alma mater of Syracuse University. In the initial story that was not related to health care, the Minnick's "retired early and moved to Mexico", which sounds like the American dream. But now that Hope & Change are being protested in the streets Brennen changed the Minnick's story to one of forced relocation in order to find health care. A sad testimony to journalism in our time.

Those folks in this country who do not like the direction that President Obama us have a right to pronounce to opinions in the street, and to their elected officials. All they would really like out of the Media is an unvarnished portrayal of their message. Is that too much too ask? Apparently it is in western North Carolina.

Update: For anyone who might wonder about reporter Courtney Brennen's motivations in presenting the story as she did, need only to read her official bio. In her off time she likes to "...read anything by Anna Quindlen, Maureen Dowd, and Anne Lamott." Yikes! No wonder she felt she had to put the progressive spin on this news story.....

Meet the New School, Same as the Old School

A NYT article from earlier in December was linked to by Instapundit to show how an unruly mob was threatening a disabled vet by chasing him through the streets.

However, that article has so much more to offer than just that juicy tidbit.

1) Has anyone noticed how journalism has slipped over at the NYT? I haven't, since I tend not to read it. But based on its former reputation, and this offering, I can only imagine it has. I would challenge anyone reading this article to figure out exactly what these spoiled children (i.e. students) were protesting about. Beyond citing a "list of grievances", which included Bureaucracy and some vague references to administrators support for the launching of the Iraq War (Dude, that is so 6 years ago...MoveOn already!), it is not exactly clear.

The article is entirely focused on the details of the protest action, not the reasons behind it. It s almost as if these reporters were trying to re-stoke memories of earlier heady days of elite university protest. Almost as if they wanted them to return.

Well NYT readers didn't have to wait long. The very next day, the same primary reporter on the byline produced an entire article (over 500 words longer than the first) comparing this small protest with the one that occurred at Columbia University in 1968.

When students at the New School staged an occupation in an academic building Wednesday night in an effort to bend the administration’s ear and will, it was difficult not to look back to the famous sit-in carried out in 1968 by students at Columbia University.

It just seems to me that perhaps that is the environment that some want to re-establish in these *new* heady days of liberal ascendancy. And the NYT will be there (maybe) to stoke the fires. Ya gotta love agenda journalism....

2) Ya also gotta love how liberals define things. Like how they define 'bipartisan compromise' to mean 'Republicans supporting everything the Democrats want', but never the other way around.

In this article we get the following fantastic utterance:

“This is about starting a dialogue, and to do that you have to be seen as an equal,” he said. “People just don’t give equality, you have to take it.”

So lets see, according to this graduate Philosophy student, 'dialogue' is now defined as 'a conversation between equals, just so long as your equal is bound and gagged in a chair, and is forced to listen to your list of grievances'. Ahhhh....Liberal Fascism in full bloom. What a beautiful sight....and it is not even spring.

Pass the Blame Game

This morning Ace of Spades is pointing out a convergence of two of Instapundit's favorite topics: Chris Dodd and the demise of Newspapers.

It seems that the Connecticut Post does want to give equal time to those whom might view prominent Democrats as the cause of the current fiscal crisis.

“All letters are welcome. But there are code words hidden in some that are signals to stop paying close attention — “Chris Dodd” and “Barney Frank.” According to one school of thinking, these two, more than anyone else in America, are to blame for our current troubles.

If you want to castigate their decision-making, fine. If you want to say they and they alone are to blame for the recession, that’s crazy. They didn’t even take over their congressional committees until early last year, and our problems started long before then.”

That's right, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank were only wet-behind-the-ears, babes-in-the-woods Congresscritters before 2006, and could do nothing to stop the evil Bush profiteers. And people continue to wonder why no one bothers to read Newspapers anymore...

Now, the Post's rant is not entirely without merit, as it is true that there are many fathers/mothers to this crisis. However what the post is really trying to say in the text above is "All the blame lies with President Bush and Congressional Republicans. They have been in power for a long time, how could the Democrats be to blame?".

But, as many rational people know, national level problems of this nature do no pop up overnight, or even in 8 years. Things of this magnitude take years and years of bureaucratic mismanagement, political chicanery, and downright ineptitude to produce.

So to be fair to the Republicans as well, I think that the Post should also post the following graph:

“All letters are welcome. But there are code words hidden in some that are signals to stop paying close attention — “George Bush” and “Karl Rove.” According to one school of thinking, these two, more than anyone else in America, are to blame for our current troubles.

If you want to castigate their decision-making, fine. If you want to say they and they alone are to blame for the recession, that’s crazy. They didn’t even take over the White House until 2001, and our problems started long before then.”

Yes, the Post is right that this mess started before 2006, but that conveniently ignores Dodd's and Frank's (and others) actions (and inactions) before that point.

Holy Crap!

In some small irony I have been 'published' in the New York Times....



Not sure how that happened...

Foresight is 20/200

After getting off shift today, I went over to the US morale area to poke around, and see what might be on AFN.

I happened upon a copy of the 2007 'Man of the Year' edition of Time Magazine. Given the events this week, perhaps this would be a good time to review that decision.



Now Time does throw out the caveat that "TIME's Person of the Year is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse", but I remind people once again that they had a chance to pick this man.



Maybe this year he will get recognized for his actions in 2007.

Other notable items from a look back at the Putin spread:

- The title of the Putin article "Choosing Order Before Freedom". Hmmmmm, I guess Time was right on this one. The Georgians chose freedom instead of the order of their former Russian masters, and they ended up getting the Budapest treatment.

- "Russia needs Putin -- His firm hand will smooth the transition to democracy..." - Mikail Gorbachev. Good call Gorby....Vlad is doing wonders for the democratic ideal this week.

Maybe Putin is just flexing his muscles this week as he has realized that he is far behind Barack Obama in this year's MoTY race. Because of this, if I were Obama, I'd be wary of getting the Litvinenko treatment. When Putin wants something...he takes it.

An Ignorant Wind Blows

Glenn Reynolds links to an interview with T. Boone Pickens in the New York Times, allegedly concerning his new wind power project.

Only the first quarter of the interview by Deborah Solomon covers actual substantive wind issues, before it devolves into politics and personal minutia. The most fascinating part of the interview has to be this exchange concerning Pickens involvement in the 2004 election:

You helped re-elect Bush in ’04 when you gave $3 million to the Swift Boat campaign to discredit John Kerry’s Vietnam service. Do you regret your involvement?
-Why would I?

Because it’s such an ugly chapter in American political history.
-Oh, I see. Well, it was true. Everything that went into those ads was the truth.

Really? I thought it was all invented.
-I never did anything dishonest.

[…]

If not the Swift Boats, what do you regret?

You get the drift….

I find it jaw-droppingly honest to have a journalist (or perhaps Ms. Solomon is an aspiring HS student who's journalism class interview project accidentally ended up in the NYT) admit their bias, or their ignorance, by saying "Really? I thought it was all invented" about the Swift Boat allegations. You certainly couldn't tell by their reporting.....not.

It shows the thought process and lack of intellectual/journalist curiosity that would dismiss such things out of hand as political sabotage. No wonder the use the phrase "Swift Boating" in such a derogatory fashion….

My only question is, if this is something that is considered an "ugly chapter" worthy of obvious regret, I wonder how Ms. Solomon and the NYT feel about Rathergate and evidence that was clearly "invented"?

I suppose it is better not to ask....

Heller Brings out Hysterical Ignorance

Now I am not a big gun advocate. I don't own any, but I currently carry one or two everyday due to my current deployment, and I know how to use them.

However, I do know idiocy on guns when I hear it. And we are hearing plenty of it now in the aftermath of the Heller case concerning gun ownership in D.C.

One such display of ignorance can be found in the Washington Post, courtesy of Colbert King.

King says:

"If D.C. street thugs are pleased by anything, it's probably the fact that five of the justices -- a slim majority, but that's all it takes to win -- have come around to seeing things their way."

and

"The court's ruling doesn't affect the dudes who have been blowing away their fellow citizens for three decades."

Unfortunately Mr. King does not realize that he is actually making the case for Heller with his argument.

Perhaps he has heard the old adage, "If guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will have guns." This has been the reality for DC residents, as King points out, for 3 decades. But not because of gun ownership (since it does not exist), but because of the very gun control that Mr. King would like to see continue. That he is unable to make this logical connection is disturbing.

The bottom line is that people who think like King don't realize that there is a huge difference between gun OWNERS and criminals who POSSESS guns. Gun Control always restricts ownership, but never has any significant effect on the gun violence which is perpetrated by the criminals who are already possessing their guns illegally. More and stricter gun laws usually only ever affect the law abiding, and not the law breakers.

As for Mr. King's assertion that the Heller case will have no effect on "the dudes" who have been spilling blood in DC for years, perhaps he should consider this. If you are a thug/dude who has been terrorizing your local populace because you knew that the innocent among them can do nothing to defnd themselves, you can pretty much act with impunity. But if you are that same thug, and you are faced with the prospect that one of your law abiding fellow citizens might legally have a gun in his home, or perhaps tucked in his belt, you might definitely have second thoughts about how or if you conduct your reign of terror.

King ends his column with the refrain: "...the NRA has taken aim at San Francisco and Chicago. See what we have unleashed, D.C.? America, more body bags, please." Perhaps he should take a few minutes to ruminate on why it is that the cities with the strictest gun control laws have been the ones that have been filling the body bags already, and those with stronger guns rights tend to have less violence.

Good News is No News in Iraq

It has always been readily apparent that the major news outlets were more than willing to broadcast/print any bad news that emerged from Iraq. And it has been equally apparent recently that there is a reticence to give equal treatment to the good news that turned from a trickle to a regular flow. The MSM have scoffed that there could be any bias influencing their reporting from this war zone, and equal scoffing from the conservative blogosphere at that claim.
Well apparently there was a copy editor asleep at the switch over at the Old Grey Lady, because they have published a very interesting article titled "Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner". I guess no one sent them the memo on obscuring any evidence of bias....

Other mainstream blogs like Powerline and Danger Room are right to point out the amazing numbers:

"According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007."

However no one I have seen yet (though my reading time is limited here in Afghanistan) has noted the real smoking gun, found in the quote from a CBS news bigwig:

"Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.”

Oh I see. So we finally have an admission of guilt on the bias front.

CBS news has now admitted that good news from a war zone does not merit coverage. Death, carnage, mis-doings of individual soldiers, and lack of good planning all drown out positive stories when they happen at the same time. But when those negatives all dry up and disappear, and the positive stories are left standing alone, the "journalists" lose interest and can't "justify" sticking around to do their jobs. If you can't justify a bureau because not enough reports from Iraq get on television....then put more reports from Iraq on television! This magically wasn't a problem a year ago. There were plenty of stories then. Gee, if we could only figure out what has changed during that time.....

Sad. Shameful. Disappointing.

How the once mighty have fallen.

In deference to Glenn Reynolds, we don't need and "Army of Davids". We desperately need an "Army of Yons", and "Army of Roggios", and an "Army of Tottens"....

Copyright...blah,blah, blah

A couple of weeks ago there was a dust-up concerning the Associated Press and their rather selective interpretation of the Copyright laws of these United States. It seems the AP had been very hostile to a blogger who had been posting and commenting the AP's news photos, and then had almost immediately turned around and mis-appropriated the personal photos of one newly famous call girl that had been posted on a personal blog.

As usual Instapundit has a good synopsis: "WHEN A MEDIA ORGANIZATION DOES IT TO AN INDIVIDUAL, IT'S NOT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT"

The best part is that if you check out the Spitzer article in the March 24th print edition of Newsweek, you can again find one of Ashley Dupré's personal photos, but Newsweek is kind enough to give photo credit to "AP". I guess there is honor among thieves...

Now I related that copyright story to bring up another one.

Many years ago, the U.S. Navy stood tall and shot down some Libyan MiG-23s. I remember it distinctly as I was a High School military geek, and even got the first CNN airing of the Pentagon release on videotape. This was before videos of military action were commonplace, and I remember the pilot's audio comms vividly.



So why would I bring this up after an unrelated story about copyright?? Well, some audio from that actual Mediterranean dogfight (some of which is at ~1:00 of the video above) can be found in the movie "Under Siege" in the scene when an F-18 does a flyby of the USS Missouri.

So my question is, if you are a member of the U.S. military, and your likeness/voice/etc is used by the media or Hollywood in a commercial venture, are you entitled to any royalties from that venture??

Should the pilot of that F-14 be owed royalties for his 'performance' in "Under Siege"?

Selective Ignorance on Human Rights

A man is held in a military prison for decades and subjected to abuse, humiliation, and lack of needed medical care.

What do the great liberal newspapers of record (New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe, and SF Chronicle) have to say about this to their readers who more than likely care greatly about human rights?

Zip, Zero, Nada, Niente, & ничего.

Why would they turn a selective blind eye to this? Because it happened on the wrong side of a fenceline in Cuba.

You can damn well bet that if this happened at Guantanamo Bay, this would have been above the fold....again. Instead, it puts their Caribbean Comandanté in a poor light.

Omar Pernet Hernández spent a total of 21 years as a 'guest of the state' in Fidel's Cuban prisons, and suffered untold abuses. Yet he gets ZERO column inches from the finest bleeding hearts in journalism.

Read about Hernández and 3 other thankfully former Cuban prisoners...in a European newspaper.

Four dissidents freed this week after five years in inhumane conditions in a Cuban prison have revealed the dark side of Fidel Castro’s regime.

The four - José Gabriel Ramón Castillo, Omar Pernet Hernández, Alejandro González and Pedro Pablo Álvarez - described regular beatings, humiliation and arbitrary punishment with long periods of solitary confinement in cramped cells with cement beds.

You would think that the aforementioned news organizations would want to trumpet these sorts of abuses.

Here is the sad gallery of their search results:











The shame...the shame.

(Hat tip: Powerline)