Friday, June 30, 2006

Once upon a Times...

"A man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he has based it. . . give him no news or present him only with distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propoganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning process and make him something less than a man."



Arthur Hayes Sulzberger
Publisher, New York Times
Address, NY State Publisher's Association
Aug. 30, 1948

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Charge Keller With Treason

Justice is a relative thing. In determining whether something is 'just' it is always necessary to compare a primary action against a resulting secondary action or inaction to the initial cause. An example would be a terrorist planting a roadside bomb to kill innocents only having it explode prematurely and leave him crippled. The initial action of planting the bomb becomes justice served when it does to him what he intended to do to others. That's Justice.

Now ask yourself if the two following incidents display an injustice by inaction.

Several Marines have been charged with murder in Haditha. Aside from all the irritating squeals and roar of flapping moonbat wings it is beginning to emerge that this was indeed a tragedy but not necessarily done with the degree of malice first described. These Marines are most certainly keen to the exercise of a most primal right; that of self preservation and do not have weeks to deliberate an action in defense of that right. Just a fews seconds to analyze a threat and respond. Sometimes they have no option but to take the primal course and kill or be killed. It is wired into the most elemental parts of our brains. Fight or Flight.

When this decision goes terribly wrong then a society of laws feels compelled to serve Justice by charging those Marines with murder. Because if they did this in this manner then they also threaten the lives of those serving the same mission by inflaming the hatred of occupation in the populace. If they in fact did maliciously kill innocents then the charge is Just.

Now comes the New York Times' Bill Keller claiming from his loafty heights that acting in his capacity as arbiter of the public interest and for our own common good it is quite alright to reveal national security secrets. In the article the Times even says it is a secret program... well not anymore.

This decision endangers far more people than the actions of those Marines. It endangers all of us by giving aid and comfort to our enemiesthrough the obsesive effort to undermine the head of the American military . Now given that the liberal press thinks George Bush is the enemy and are at war with the President, the rest of us still hang on to a tinge of sanity. When the towers were attacked I don't recall those around me saying "Bush did it". Most suspected Bin Laden.

Clearly the action of Bill Keller revealing national secrets is treasonous. What does Justice require. While 8 Marines may face death for a life or death decision what does Keller face for a deliberative decision to imperil the entire nation ?

Maybe John Edwards was right... there are two Americas; one for the powerful, wealthy and influencial and their set of rules and the other being "we the people" and their set of rules. Inaction against Keller would be an injustice.

Serve Justice.... charge Keller with treason.... there are plenty of witnesses.

Friday, June 23, 2006

More UN Hubris

Free Republic: UN is not taking guns away from Americans: Annan

Hummm... perhaps they could test this theory in Gaza and the West Bank...

I don't own a weapon... maybe it's time to reconsider....

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Sins of Omission

It was early afternoon my time when I first read over at Captain's Quarters about the release of documents stating that hundreds of chemical weapons have been found in Iraq.

Late yesterday the first major news outlet reported it as well:
FOXNews.com - Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq - U.S. Senate

As of this morning there is plenty of mention that Karzai is unhappy with the way America is conducting the fight against the Taliban in his country, plenty of headlines about 8 US troops being charged with murder in Iraq, plenty of coverage of the Democrats in the Senate debating athe timing of our surrender in Iraq... but not a word about the release of this document or the political timing involved from: ABC News, CBS News, BBC, London Times, USA Today, NYT, Washington Post.

Since the 'Bush Lied' mantra has been all the rage these past 3 years one would hope that news of the discovery of enough WMD to constitute a stockpile would be worthy of at least passing mention.

How can one state with a staight face that those news organization are either objective or right leaning by the omission of something that is clearly relevant news? Yet those organization can't understand why people are drifting away from them towards blogs and Fox News for their information.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

More Justice

Yahoo! News:
Iraqi claims U.S. GIs beat wounded man
( AP RUMOR ALERT! )

My response: Excellent news if true. Even better news would be that he actually held on to life longer than reported allowing time to stuff a chunk of spam or pork rinds down his throat.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Want an Example of Elitist Arrogance?

New York Times:
Official of U.N. Says Americans Undermine It With Criticism
:

"'Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News,' he said."

What this guy fails to understand is that the malfeasance of the first Clinton administration was the catalyst of a conservative social shift. Rush and Fox News merely responded to a emerging conservative market.

Another aspect disregarded is that the internet makes geograpy meaningless in terms of information dissemination. So I don't need Rush or Fox to spoon feed me my opinions. I formed my opinion from a multitude of sources that the UN has become irrelevant. Or my opinion that the greatest resistence to the US lead effort to make Iraq abide by its UN obligations were those nations lining their pockets while issuing empty platitudes about the suffering of the Iraqi people.

He should also understand that many of us are quite aware of the other things the UN does. We are aware because it is food that WE grow that allows the UN to feed the hungry, it is our medicines and logistic abilities that the UN uses to combat human ailments and catastrophies and above all he should keep in mind that it is our youth and resources that have to carry a disproportionate share of UN peace-keeping missions like, for example, the unresolved UN police action in Korea? I hear China's prosperous, where's their contribution ?

He should also keep in mind that we brought the UN into the world and we can take it out. If a referendum came about to withdraw the United States from the UN I'd vote to get us out of there and take it to a more suited place like Paris.

We hayseeds have a saying "keep in mind which side your bread is buttered on before opening your mouth".