Archive for the ‘media’ Category

…Joe Scarborough gives the best summery of the costs changing the intelligence tactics out there. He directly explains the cost of not holding and interrogating suspect and the moves to prosecute those who apprehend them is that we will not get the information needed to protect us from attack. He declares that it is a trade off that will cost American lives. He doesn’t judge it, but says we as a society need to understand this as we make that decision.

The video is not yet available but it should be watched by everyone and anyone who offers an opinion on Gitmo et/al.

That’s why this show is just drives you nuts sometimes.

Maybe it’s because I’ve got a birthday coming, but if you substitute the words “Afghanistan” with “Iraq”, substitute “Karzai” with “Maliki” and turn the clock back to 2006. It would be the very same conversation. The very same, why are we there, we will be there 10 years or more, why are soldiers dying, we can’t win this war, blah blah blah blah.

C’mon guys we’ve seen this show before. Let me explain a few things.

  • This is a war, in a war both sides try to win, just because we are the US that doesn’t mean the other side is going to stop trying.
  • Yes we are losing troops, that’s because unlike World War 2 we aren’t mass bombing their areas since it would kill an awful lot of civilians. If we DID use all our power the argument would suddenly be how we were killing people indiscriminately.
  • The Taliban is operating in Pakistan, we are not going to go to war or invade a nuclear Pakistan. As long as that is the case we need to be killing the Taliban in Afghanistan.
  • The Goal is the same as the “flypaper” strategy in Iraq. Attract the warriors to a place where we can kill them. We have lost nearly 1,000 soldiers in how many years of war? Does anyone here know what those numbers break down per year? Have you ever heard of a war lasting that long with a loss rate like this. How does it compare to the rates in Chicago, or the Mexican border towns?

If you only know one song people are eventually going to get tired of hearing it.

Gay rights groups are apparently hitting the WSJ over the softball picture.

Pat Buchanan talked about what playing softball meant, I guess I AM a naif, I’ve never ever heard of Softball=lesbian. This is Massachusetts, Baseball and the Red Sox are practically the 8th sacrament.

Oh and Joe agrees with me, I like the batting stance.

I’m looking at the gay rights groups response over that photo, left and right, I say the various groups were waiting for a chance to be “out-raged”

On the left you hear it:

“Personally I think the newspaper, which happens to have the largest circulation of any in the U.S., might as well have gone with a headline that said, ‘Lesbian or switch-hitter?'” grumbled the Dallas Voice’s John Wright.

On the right they are using the photo to hit the administration

“I fully expect the White House to push back and claim Kagan never played softball and that it’s a smear to insinuate she did,” emailed a founder of the conservative gay group GOProud, Chris Barron.

The response of the WSJ was classic and Morning Joe read it:

“If you turn the photo upside down, reverse the pixilation and simultaneously listen to Abbey Road backwards, while reading Roland Barthes, you will indeed find a very subtle hidden message,” said Journal spokeswoman Ashley Huston.

I don’t know what the Journal pays Ashley but she deserves a bonus, that was awesome.

I still never heard a thing about the Softball stuff, I’ll have to take Pat’s word for it, but then again I didn’t see the Spongebob connection either until a gay friend told me either.

Of course there is this report from Dan Riehl

Today on Morning Joe they were talking about movies and the statement was made concerning war movies that Americans Just didn’t want to see them.

They are missing the point. Americans don’t want to see war movies painting our troops as either evil villains or victims and that is what Hollywood has offered us.

Joe & company did make the point that heroes were not being promoted but that’s not because the Bush administration and the army didn’t decorate people. It’s because the media didn’t support the war and decided that people like Paul Smith who was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor were not worthy of a story since telling it might promote military service or been seen as support for the evil George W. Bush.

This is the reality and it needs to be expressed more often.