Archive for November, 2010

The throw away line that says volumes

Posted: November 22, 2010 by datechguy in Afghanistan war, media, war
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One of the things about blogs that is wonderful are the things we notice that nobody picks up on. A great example is this NYT piece of the iCasualties site and this line that I noticed right away:

Also, donations have dried up — less than $1,000, far short of the costs and down from $8,000 to $10,000 in a typical year. And no more people volunteer to enter the data and free Mr. White to improve the design of the site.

I’m shocked SHOCKED. Why would money suddenly have dried up for Mr. White? Also he is confused by another thing.

These days, Mr. White finds himself more frequently in the role of media critic. He says he is continually amazed at how little attention the war in Afghanistan has generated.

Mike Mike Mike, don’t you get it? As long as a democratic congress is there with a democratic president there is absolutely no way the left is going to support you. You may have started this on your own, but your external support is directly proportional to your propaganda value for the left.

Have no fear, if the Republicans take over in 2012 you will find the money and help will suddenly reappear like magic.

Stop Shouting writes the post of the decade

Posted: November 22, 2010 by datechguy in blogs, internet/free speech, media, opinion/news
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The blog stop shouting has only 4 posts in it over the last 3 years, but this one should be repeated everywhere.

You MUST go to her site and read this but I’m going to grab just a few pieces to share its awesomeness:

I have been silent long enough. I have bent, I have yielded, I have endured slander, dishonesty, ad hominem attacks and actual physical threats.

Anger is a powerful motivator.

She talks of an encounter with Code Pink, first via reason and then via counter protest, it is a priceless story, she continues:

The Left likes to use what they believe to be witty signage (although I am not sure how BUSHCHIMPHITLER qualifies as “witty”), props and sheer numbers of die hard believers and rent-a-students to validate the “justness” of their cause-du-jour and to manufacture a sense of widespread support for their “issue”.

So we took your tools and began to employ them against you. And you don’t like it very much. Except we don’t have to pay anyone to come to our rallies, and that just infuriates you further.

The left absolutely positively refuses to believe that the Tea Party is grass roots because none of their operation is, instead you get stuff like this via Ann Althouse:

Bill Lueders’s Isthmus article is subtitled “The Triumph of Stupidity.” He asks UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin how people could vote the way they did, and when Franklin answers “They’re pretty damn stupid,” he says “Thank you, professor… That’s the answer I was looking for.

Althouse continues:

Welcome to my world: Dane County, Wisconsin, home of people who tell themselves they are the smart people and those who disagree with them must certainly be dumb. They don’t go through the exercise of putting themselves in the place of someone who thinks differently from the way they do. But how would it feel to be intelligent, informed, and well-meaning and to think what conservatives think? Isn’t that the right way for an intelligent, informed, and well-meaning person to understand other people? If you short circuit that process and go right to the assumption that people who don’t agree with you are stupid, how do you maintain the belief that you are, in fact, intelligent, informed, and well-meaning?

What is liberal about this attitude toward other people?

Pretty damning, I’m sure the public would resent it, if they ever knew it was said as Byron York explains:

But Franklin is the real star of the story. If you read his quotes in mainstream publications, you’ll find a series of measured statements on political trends. Democrats appealing to the youth vote in the run-up to the midterms are “betting long odds, given the very long history of low turnout in midterms among young voters,” Franklin told the Washington Post recently. Final pre-election polls suggested “a Republican wave of genuinely historical proportions,” he told USA Today. Feingold’s problems had “more to do with the mood of the country than with Feingold himself,” he told the Boston Globe.

It’s all pretty unremarkable stuff. And readers would have no idea what Franklin really thinks about the voters whose opinions he’s measuring and commenting on. But now they do.

Well the Military Mom of 4 at stop shouting knows what they think and has this message to Franklin and the rest of the left in denial:

Either way, I am confident you can deduce the “tone”of my rebuttal.

Realizing that you are losing your grip on the public schools, that the youth that propelled the boy-king to victory have abandoned you, that the bitter, blue collar white workers are now Tea Party grandmas and grandpas, that you have lost control of the federal checkbook and the legislative calendar,

now you want to petition for peace?

now you cry out for civility and consensus?

I have a message for you:

Go. To. Hell.

Go read the whole thing, it will make your day!

Update: Key update from Althouse, all via Glenn

Here comes the media misrepresenting the Pope: Update Wow!

Posted: November 22, 2010 by datechguy in catholic, media
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A couple of days ago my son came to me saying its on the news that the Pope is now allowing condom use. As I was busy with show prep etc I didn’t have any time to check on it and I hadn’t seen it myself, so I told him to ignore the media and read the actual statement that the Benedict XVI made to see if that is what it actually says.

Later that day he came to me saying. “You’re right it not what the media is saying at all”

It hasn’t taken long for activists to try to spin what has been said:

British gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell did just that in his reaction to the book, saying: “If the pope can change his stance on condoms, why can’t he also modify the Vatican’s harsh intolerant opposition to women’s rights, gay equality, fertility treatment and embryonic stem cell research?”

Forgetting the hateful and false hyperbole Mr. Tatchell manages to miss that the Holy Father has not changed a thing at all, as the Anchoress points out first quoting deacon Greg who directly quotes the Pope:

“The Church does not consider at all illicit the use of those therapeutic means necessary to cure bodily diseases, even if a foreseeable impediment to procreation should result there from–provided such impediment is not directly intended for any motive whatsoever.”

Big change isn’t it? Not quite, the pope he is quoting is Paul VI in 1968.

She then quotes the best post I’ve seen on the subject:

To the son who is a male prostitute, she advises, again, the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. She tries to explain it, but he cannot understand it and completely rejects it. He simply cannot get his mind around it. He is adamant that he is going to continue in his lifestyle, no matter what. When she realizes that she is never going to get anywhere with him on this issue, she advises him that if he absolutely insists that it must be this way, then he should use a condom. He agrees that he should think enough of the other person’s value as a human person not to intentionally risk AIDS infection, and she rejoices that he, at least, understands this much about human dignity. It’s enough for her to hope that it is spark enough for him to, as the Pope said, “re-develop his understanding” and come eventually to the fullness of the Faith. Again, as assuredly as she was with her other son, she is being a good Catholic mother.

It is contraception not condoms that have and always have been forbidden. As the Anchoress put it herself this time:

I think it is a very good thing that Pope Benedict has spoken about this issue via the book – it takes the whole matter out of the world of encyclicals and exhortations (which are often either unread or mischaracterized) and brings it into the light of the public square and open discussion. If it gets a few people to pay attention, smack their foreheads and say, “wait…you mean the church was never as unreasonable and inhumane as we’d been told?” That will be something, won’t it?

The Holy Spirit uses what is at its disposal for its own purposes, and moves as it will. This pope has been all about giving the Holy Spirit room to move and work.

This is all true but it doesn’t matter we will still see more HuffPo headlines not withstanding the actual truth.
I think the problem is the media isn’t actually interested in what the Pope is saying, they have an agenda and we WILL talk about this on Saturday and on our Christmas show. That being said Willie Geist dealt with it fairly on Way Too Early. I’ll see what Morning Joe has to say.

Update: Wow! very wow!

The single most important story of the week

Posted: November 21, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news
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is this game changer:

“We came here because we are scared,” the Mier native said in Spanish. “There’s nobody there now. It’s a ghost town.”

Gonzalez, 38, talks of the drug cartels that have taken Ciudad Mier hostage since February.

That was when the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas formally split and began an all-out fight for control of territory along the Tamaulipas-Texas border.

A wave of refugees has flooded Mier’s eastern neighbor Miguel Alemán in recent weeks — the last holdouts of terrorized citizenry from Mier who, under order from the Zetas, finally packed up and left after the Nov. 5 slaying of Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta” Cárdenas Guillen, the head of the Gulf Cartel.

Many of Gonzalez’s relatives and friends remained at the impromptu refugee camp in Miguel Alemán, he said. Earlier this year, though, his sister-in-law moved to the apartment in Roma’s Los Saenz neighborhood. Now, he was helping her to clean out the two-bedroom unit.

Officials in Roma said the exodus to their city from Mier has carried on since fighting across the border picked up in the spring. Most residents from Mier and other towns along the Frontera Chica — the “little border,” as the region is known — with money or immigration papers had already fled to the U.S. before June.

“The people who went to Miguel Alemán were the ones who had nowhere else to go,” said Roma City Manager Cris Salinas.

I am totally shocked this story hasn’t gotten more attention at least I haven’t seen much. The implications are huge.

First by setting up “refugee camps” what has been known casually is being acknowledged parts of Mexico have become war zones and you have to be pretty foolish, pretty brave, heavy guarded or ethically compelled to go there.

Second of all this changes the illegal immigration equation dramatically. It’s once thing to make people who have come here go home for breaking the law, it’s quite another to force refugees fleeing a war zone to re-enter the kill zone.

This raises an interesting conundrum. Open border activists and the Mexican government have been of one mind on illegal Mexican immigration to the US (and one mind on illegal immigration into Mexico, Mexico cracks down the activists don’t care). One would think that said activists would jump at the chance to play the refugee card. Considering the stories from the border it is an excellent argument.

The only problem is said card implicitly suggests Mexico is a failed state and Mexico certainly doesn’t want to be perceived that way internationally, also it would be an excellent justification for troops on the border and neither Mexico nor the activists want that.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of this.

For myself I want to have our immigration laws respected thus illegals must be deported. We also have laws concerning refugees on the books and treaties signed. These people are refugees and I’m not inclined to force these guys back while the shooting is going on, that’s murder.

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