Licking the Competition

Ann Althouse passes along one of the more bizzare campaign slogans we’ve heard in many a year…

 (“If you like oral sex, vote Caragol for council.”) Just some political slogan in Hialeah, Florida, which the Miami Herald informs us is “no laughing matter.” The Miami Herald isn’t going to tell me when to laugh.

“People want to give it a negative interpretation, but anyone who knows me and my way of being knows that I didn’t mean for the comment to degrade or offend anyone,” [Jose “Pepe” Caragol told The Miami Herald.

“My way of being” — I love that. I’m going to use that. Anyone who knows my way of being knows….

Caragol’s opponent, Mercy Dominguez, wants us to know “that as a mother and a woman she finds the phrase offensive.”

Other than a move which could only be labeled as “hey look at me” I have no idea what this guy’s purpose is.  At the very least, he’s got a lot of people talking about him.  I suppose, it could be said that the idea worked, then.  Clearly, he’s not running a “family values” campaign.  Would it be safe to assume that the guy is a Democrat? Ummmm.. yeah.

Hey, wait a minute; speaking of that… isn’t Monica Lewinsky from Hialeah?

Even if we assume that the security firm Blackwater doesn’t belong in Iraq, (I know, I know, but just go with me for a moment…) there would appear to be some problems with how things are connected in terms of Blackwater, and those complaining publicly about their operations in Iraq.  You may remember, that one of the biggest complainers about that company and their presence in Iraq has been Hillary Rodham Clinton.  Well, Flipper rides again.

WASHINGTON -(NY POST) The company run by one of Hillary Clinton‘s top campaign officials has been providing public-relations services for Blackwater – the security firm, accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians, that has come under fire from Congress.

Burson-Marsteller, run by Clinton pollster Mark Penn, has been representing the troubled security firm in the lead-up to congressional testimony this week in which top company officials defended their policies and techniques for providing security in the war zone.

Penn is one of Clinton’s longest-serving and most important advisers, perhaps second only to her husband in influence.

He said yesterday that his company was no longer representing Blackwater.

Doubtless, this disconnection occurred within 30 seconds of the interview that generated those comments. Though, whether before or after the interview, is an open question, I think.

Personally, I’m firmly convinced that the company belongs there.  I would further suggest, as I have before, but that whole situation with these supposed civilians was a setup, designed to elicit sympathy from the American left.

Since she’s now complaining about it, the tactic would appear to have worked.

Over at the Captain’s Quarters Ed makes a discovery:

The Washington Post’s editorial board noticed something over the last few weeks that many of us have pointed out all along. They l discover that General David Petraeus told the truth about the improving situation in Iraq. They have also found out that hardly any news agency seems interested in reporting it:

NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we’ve said. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month — whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq — have gotten relatively little attention. A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that “civilian deaths have risen” during this year’s surge of American forces.A month later, there isn’t much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 — down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004. …

This doesn’t necessarily mean the war is being won. U.S. military commanders have said that no reduction in violence will be sustainable unless Iraqis reach political solutions — and there has been little progress on that front. Nevertheless, it’s looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus’s credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq’s bloodshed were — to put it simply — wrong.

Let’s put it a little more simply: they lied. Being “wrong” would have meant them saying, “General Petraeus, your numbers appear to be incorrect,” or alternately, “We don’t believe these trends will last.” That’s not what Petraeus heard. He heard a Senator — someone vying to become Petraeus’ Commander in Chief — tell him that his testimony required a “willing suspension of disbelief”. MoveOn greeted Petraeus’ testimony with a full-page ad declaring him a potential traitor to his country.

All of that was very wrong on many levels, but his critics were much more than just incorrect. They lied about Petraeus, and the Washington Post lets them off far too easily.

….

Of course they let the Democrats off too easily. First of all, they support the Democrats, (That much has been obvious to anyone to the right of FideCastro, for some years, now…) and secondly, they are guilty of the same crime.  If one has watched over the last six months, one comes to that conclusion that what’s really going on here is that the Democrat party and the press ( a redundancy) came to the conclusion that the General did, quite some time ago.  The problem is it isn’t politically expedient to admit that, just now.

They’ve been slowly letting out at admission after admission, that the president was right going into Iraq, and that there is genuine progress being had there, in dribs and drabs.  They’d never dare make all the admissions at once by saying, “we were wrong”.  To make such an admission would be a kiss of death on two counts; they would totally lose the support of the whack job left, who will under no conditions admit such a thing… and they would also lose the support of the center, who has been misled by these people, for some years now.  It would take decades to rebuild any kind of trust whatsoever in both the press and the Democrats.

My problem with the Captain’s commentary, is he treats the Washington Post and the far left, as two separate entities.  The problem is they are not. They’re both part of the same cheering section, both guilty of the same crimes, the same wise, the same distortions. it should therefore be no surprise that they defend one another when these matters are brought up.  That should have been evident, to anyone who was seriously watching this, near on a decade ago.

And it’s not like we haven’t been getting reminders all along.  Consider the article that we posted just yesterday about Lieutenant General Sanchez and his speech. What the general actually said, and what made it into the Washington post, and the other paper of their parent company, the New York Times, can only lead one to believe that those papers are running a blocker for the Democrat party.

What’s it finally going to take to get the Democrats to admit fully how wrong they were?  How far out of line they were with their charges?  I frankly doubt that anything is capable of that.  Anything, that is, short of a landslide against them in ’08 and beyond… And as for the press, that message is already being delivered, in lower subscription rates across the board.  In both cases the clear message being transmitted that their lies are the reason why, will seal the deal.

Why is it that the only Arabs the Democrat party here in the U.S. is not worried about annoying, are the ones who were working with us to stem the tide of al-Qaida?

Nobody can possibly be this stupid by accident.  I have to assume that they’re doing so intentionally.

I know… who?

It’s Chris Muir’s sister.  Chris is the one responsible for Day by Day, likely the best political cartoon on the web, anymore.  I noticed that Chris was running a slug which said he was currently dealing with a family emergency.  I didn’t know what that family emergency was, but it certainly didn’t sound good.

Captain Ed says:

 I received an e-mail from our friend Chris Muir this morning that his sister passed away yesterday. Please continue your prayers and good thoughts for Chris and his family, who will be struggling with this tragic loss. Day By Day will return, but in the meantime, he and his family need time to themselves.

Yep. Our thoughts and prayers are with Chris and his family, today.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — The former Duke University men’s lacrosse coach who resigned last year amid allegations that three of his players raped a stripper has sued the university.

Mike Pressler’s lawsuit apparently stems from a financial settlement the school reached earlier this year with him, although school officials did not give details Friday. The players were later cleared of the charges.

The Herald-Sun of Durham reported Friday on its Web site that his lawsuit alleges the university broke the terms of the confidential settlement when university senior vice president John Burness made disparaging comments about him.

The newspaper reported that the lawsuit asks the state court to void the settlement and hold a trial on Pressler’s claim of wrongful termination.

Normally, I am dead set against most lawsuits, because frankly the vast majority of them have become trivial in nature.  This, however, is one that I’m glad to see leveled.   Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing the college level a suit against the county and against Mike Nifong, as well. had they not acted inappropriately, the whole mess wouldn’t have gotten started in the first place , and the coach would’ve still had his job.

Shocking news from Two Thousand, the New York Times admits, kind of, sort of, that Al Gore lost Florida:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — Al Gore‘s seven-year journey from loser to laureate began in bitterness, settled for a time into self-imposed exile and led him in the end to rediscover his voice on climate change.

The question now is what he will do with the prestige and attention that comes to him with the Nobel Peace Prize. The answer appears to be that he will neither embrace nor reject another quest for the presidency, but harness the speculation about his intentions to become a more formidable force on environmental policy and a power within the Democratic party.

Ok by refering to Gore as a loser, the Times concedes that Gore lost Florida.   However how does winning the same award as Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, or in the Times’ eys Henry Kissinger actually enhance Gore’s prestige?

Hat Tip photo:  Michelle Malkin.

O, yes, good old Libby. She is once again showing her concern for her fellow man.  (think about it)

I swear I’m worried about McQ. I’ve always thought of him as a sort of rational voice for his side of the fence but talk about grasping at straws. His attempt to paint the left’s response to Bush having trotted out the 9 year old prodigy to sell his failed Social Security plan as equivalent to the vitriolic horde that descended on the Frost family is far removed from what I would have expected of him.
I mean, does he honestly believe there’s equivalence between young Frost making a what, five minute statement, about how a program already in place has helped him and this?

Noah will travel to a handful of states ahead of visits by the president and will go on radio programs, answer trivia questions and say a few words about Social Security. Though he is obviously not an expert (and not really a lobbyist, either), officials say the effort is a lighthearted way to underline Mr. Bush’s message.

“What I want to tell people about Social Security is to not be afraid of the new plan,” Noah said. “It may be a change, but it’s a good change.”

This is a kid Bush turned into a traveling freak show in order to sell a radical change in the largest and oldest safety net in our society. And I’m sure that the named parties can defend their own posts but to take a few words out context of a couple of parody posts, cite a couple of other low traffic bloggers and one other post critical of the president and the two other bloggers who pointed to it and claim this is the equivalent of what happened to the Frost family doesn’t suggest a frim grip on critical thinking.

If anybody digs up the posts where we posted the family’s contact information, their workplaces, their financial history and photos of their home and vehicles, along with Noah’s school records let me know.

Well, Libby, I have to tell you that I have some bad news for you.  The reason that nobody did that, in that case, was not some misguided morality or other.  The Democrats have never shown a propensity for doing that, rather being driven by a morality which states that anything that keeps them in power is moral. Let’s face it, given what we’ve seen in the last eight years, if there was any chance whatsoever of the Democrats gaining anything out of that exposure of that family, they would have done so.  The fact of the matter is that the reason they did not so expose that family, was because they wouldn’t have gained anything from it, and the situation was precisely as the White House projected it as being.

Unlike what the Democrats did with the Frost family.

I will say this is again… let there be no mistake.

If in fact the Frosts are emblematic of the type of family the Democrats think are deserving of healthcare paid for with MY money, we as a nation have bigger problems than we’re going to be able to solve by throwing your money and mine at it. We have a problem centering on honesty and responsibility.

We also have a problem with a political party willing to toss aside those concepts. Think about it; Democrats willing to toss aside honesty and responsibility. Does the concept shock you? Me, neither.

Any questions, Libby?

PS: Oh, by the way… do you actually read who writes things, over there?

That’s not McQ… it’s Henke you’re on about. While Henke and I have had stout disagreements in the past… this ain’t one of ’em.

Well, that’s what the National Enquirer is ‘reporting”.

The object of his supposed affection? Web Filmaker Rielle Hunter. The angle, here, of course, is that he’s cheating on his cancer stricken wife.

Personally, I don’t figure the Breck girl has that kind of moxie.  That’s just me… but I don’t believe the story for a ring tailed minute.
Like most of their stories, it seems to me to laughable too take seriously. I mean, aside from the fact that it’s a tabloid, famous for coming up constantly with stories about how Elvis showed up on the spaceship with a small mountain of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, did “Hound Dog” and left again saying he’d be back next year, the guy seems to me as someone who would never have the courage to try.

So, where’d the story come from? A mystery, to be sure.

But along comes Dale Franks who looks up the ownership of the paper, being the resourceful individual he is, and look at the article he finds:

American Media, the company that owns The National Enquirer and Star, is expected to announce today that it will acquire the Globe Communications Corporation for $100 million in cash, said executives close to the deal. The price is five times Globe Communications’ annual cash flow of about $20 million.

American Media is owned by Evercore Capital Partners, which is headed by former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger C. Altman, who is a close friend of President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, arguably the first family not only of the country, but of the tabloid press. Mr. Altman had no comment about the deal yesterday.

So, the big guy at the Enquirer’s parent company has close ties to the Clintons.

Hmm. Yeah. Well, I guess that’s no particular surprise…. and to be blunt, I certainly wouldn’t put it past Altman. After all, SOME of the readers of that rag have to take the thing seriously. Such a story, however untrue, will cause some damage.  And Hillary Clinton would certainly benefit….

Of course, Franks isn’t the only one saying stuff about this.  Over at The Politico, leftie blogger Ben Smith is also on the case, and got a denial out of the Enquirer, who stated for HIS record:

A spokesman for American Media, Richard Valvo, said in an email that Altman has “no involvement in editorial, ever.” He said that Evercore owns 20 percent of the company through an investment fund. Altman didn’t respond to an email seeking comment or to a message left with his secretary.

Interestingly, the plot thickens just a bit with the appearance of a couple of stories from the Huffington Post which suggest that the Edwards campaign is concerned about its relationship with Hunter.

Kaus, too, has been in on this one, and the Man from Slate is quick to point out that the stories at Huffpo stop just short of actually suggesting a relationship between Edwards and Hunter. He goes on to suggest that the story is so dubious that even Drudge isn’t jumping on it.  The other part of this, that Kaus notes is that the supposedly mainstream media, isn’t picking up on it either.  Funny thing; they didn’t wait for the other shoe to drop, when similar stories were being laid against Newt Gingrich. … no pun intended.

There’s got to be some demographic information in this, as well. Something, perhaps, which suggests that the readers of that particular tabloid are overwhelmingly members of the Democrat party.  Look… if you believe what the Democrat party is selling, particularly if you believe what Hillary Clinton is selling, you will clearly believe any damn thing that comes along.  Including the National Enquirer.

(Grumble)

I will guarantee you that Billy Beck is throwing cigarette butts at the screen, screaming at volume 11… “Yeah, and these morons VOTE, too”.  He’s correct, of course… but that’s only the half of my problem here.  You watch.  I’ve opened myself up for all kinds of e-mail from Hillary Clinton supporters who will claim to have tickets to Elvis doing his next concert at Red Rocks, and that Elvis would not have died, if George W Bush hadn’t vetoed SCHIP.

Running a blog is an awesome responsibility.

Longtime readers will understand that it’s fairly rare for me to dive into the realm of sports.  At least, within the confines of the blog.  That alone will hip you to the idea that when I do so here, there’s something special going on.

Check Jerry Bronkowski from Yahoo Sports, yesterday:

CONCORD, N.C. – NASCAR fans have been criticized for a number of things over the years, ranging from perpetuating a redneck stereotype to still showing pride in the Rebel Flag.

Now, as one Mississippi congressman would have you believe, NASCAR fans are also a threat to national security and the nation’s health.

Yes, you, Bubba. You, too, Bobbie Sue. Y’all got the cooties.

That’s what Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, would have you believe.

The seven-term Congressman recently instructed committee aides who visited Talladega Superspeedway last weekend and are also at this weekend’s Nextel Cup race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway to be immunized against a variety of diseases such as hepatitis A, hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus and influenza.

Officially, the action was supposedly part of a broader review of federal response to massive emergencies at a large, crowded venue like Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

Unofficially, Thompson unquestionably must think of NASCAR fans as a bunch of sickos – and not in a good way.

The hue and outcry resulting from Thompson’s actions have become nothing short of a political embarrassment.

Yeah, I’d heard something about this. But what Bronkowski doesn’t say is the most likely scenario of what the good representative Mr. Thompson Democrat of Mississippi was thinking… the people there are overwhelmingly Republican. What we were hearing, is the good Mr. Thompson allowing his left wing bigotry to show through.
As a friend of mine said upon reading this article;

Imagine with me a white congressman saying something like “well if any of my staffers are going to the NAACP you rally you’d better be sure to get your shots before you go…”

McQ notes that the Jenna six are back in jail.

He points up an AP article:

A judge decided the fight that thrust a teenager into the center of a civil rights controversy violated his probation for a previous conviction and ordered the boy back to jail, the teen’s attorney said.

Mychal Bell, who along with five other black teenagers is accused of beating a white classmate, had gone to juvenile court in Jena on Thursday expecting another routine hearing, said Carol Powell Lexing, one of his attorneys.

Instead, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. sentenced Bell to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said.

“We are definitely going to appeal this,” she said. “We’ll continue to fight.”

Bell had been hit with those charges before the Dec. 4 attack on classmate Justin Barker. Details on the previous charges, which were handled in juvenile court, were unclear.

Apparently, from what I’ve read, this isn’t at all the first time Mychal Bell has seen the inside of a courtroom or a jail. While I agree that the charges initially brought against him in the Barker case were excessive, I think it should be obvious to everyone that Bell is far from the innocent and wronged little angel some would like to tout him as.

Well, in that event, Bruce, I question the idea of the charges being excessive. I pointed out at the time that this wasn’t the guy’s first brush with the law. Personally, because of that questionable past, I can’t blame the prosecutors for aiming high with this guy.  This was not another Mike Nifong… it was prosecutors honestly doing their job, and I think their perception was correct.

…..
It would seem also that this is been borne out by the facts that have come to light subsequently.  Facts, which one would suspect, they knew about when they laid the charges in the first place.

Whatever else this case may have been, this was not racism on the part of the community, or of the prosecutors.

Nice to see the truth finally out.  Too bad they had to rip up a community to do it.   Also too bad that by the time the truth made it out, the cameras and microphones had already followed Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their ilk out of the room, and onto the next case of “racism” to be milked.

By way of Boortz, let’s check out another ‘offended Muslim” story.

 Muslim students at the University of Toronto demanded halal food on their campus. Fine. The school gave in and gave them a long-awaited halal option at an on-campus restaurant. The new menu started May 29th and made all chicken and beef certifiably halal.

Despite these accommodations, Muslim students are still upset and refuse to eat at the restaurant. They are upset because the establishment also serves alcohol and plays dance music. This is, according to the Muslim Students Association, an unsuitable environment for their dietary needs.

They’re not looking for concessions from western culture, they’re looking for the annihilation of western culture.

frankly, I really couldn’t care less whether you are offended or not.  You were aghast in western culture.  You’re not the one driving the bus, you’re a passenger .  If you are really that “offended”, in the words of Master  Po, “Time for you to leave”.

In watching a running battle between fellow idiots Andrew Sullivan, and Ezra Klein, my hardest choice personally would be between buttered popcorn or peanuts to consume while watching the event. There could hardly be two more vapid individuals on the face of the planet, save possibly Al Gore.  (yes, that’s a “fat joke”)

So it is with particular amusement that I make note of Klein going after Sullivan again, this morning:

If Andrew Sullivan wants to compare honesty, then let’s have at it.  I have never, not once, written or published anything I believed to have been untrue.  I have never, not once, allowed being “provocative” to stand in for being rigorous, or honest.  Has Sullivan?

The question has never been your honesty in relating your perceptions , Ezra… The question has always centered around your distorted perception of reality, and your inability, and /or your unwillingness to recognize that the perception is, in fact, distorted in the extreme.

Of course, the same could be said for Sullivan, and should be.

But for the moment, my reaction to this whole thing is:

“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! “

Yes, I saw the mess resulting from the comments of retired General Richard Sanchez.  One of the places I noticed it was at the Captain’s Quarters:

It seems that half of the message retired General Richard Sanchez intended to deliver missed the cut at most newsrooms, and with most bloggers. Typical among the reports of his blistering oration is the front-page treatment given by the Washington Post’s Josh White, the entire first half of Snachez’ speech — found in its entirety here — gets reduced to a single paragraph at the end of the story. Why? Well, it turns out that Sanchez considered his first target the media itself, which he blames for a large part of the problems he sees in Iraq

…

If Sanchez has such credibility and standing to bring this kind of criticism to bear on Washington, why didn’t the Post and other news agencies give the same level of exposure to his media criticisms as well? He basically accuses them of cynically selling out the soldiers to defeat American efforts to win the war, and made sure that those accusations came first before his assessment of the political failures, but you’d never know that from the Post.

Nor from the New York Times, who was also on that particular story this morning, and took essentially the same angle as Ed mentions about the Post article.

This kind of gamesmanship out of the press, should be a surprise nobody who has been watching the situation in Iraq, and the supposed mainstream media reporting on it, yet I am always amazed by the sheer audacity displayed by those people.  Apparently, given the comments I’m seeing around the sphere, I’m not alone.

The reason for their blatant partisanship, as opposed to the somewhat less blatant version of twenty years ago, let’s say, is clear; they no longer monopolize what passes for news in this country.  Their response, to that competition, is to get bolder in their partisanship.  The motto, therefore, of the New York Times, has become “all the news that fits the leftist narrative “.

Thus, do we see what amounts to a report card on the leftist media, being issued by the general, being buried… not on a whim, as some have charged, but rather , as a tool for survival as such. The kind of criticisms that the general issued the press in this speech could not be printed, and therefore taken seriously, without some serious introspection, and ultimately serious changes in the way the mainstream media does business.

The readers, the consumers of the mainstream media, I suspect, see this more clearly than does the mainstream media itself.  Thereby a we see ever lowering subscription numbers to the New York Times, the Washington post, and so on.  The consumer is finding the credibility of the legacy news services wanting.  This editing of reality, obviously intended as a self protective move, will do nothing but worsen that perception, and that listening position in the world.

Personally, anything that lessons their position in the world, after this kind of deception, is fine by me.

See also The Strata-Sphere Powerline ScrappleFace Right Truth, QandO, The Belmont Club The Jawa Report, Outside The Beltway,

The flip-flopping has started already?

CANTERBURY, N.H. (AP) – Hillary Rodham Clinton called Barack Obama naive when he said he’d meet with the leaders of Iran without precondition. Now she says she’d do the same thing, too.

During a Democratic presidential debate in July, Obama said he would be willing to meet without precondition in the first year of his presidency with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

Standing with him on stage, Clinton said she would first send envoys to test the waters and called Obama’s position irresponsible and naive.

But asked about it Thursday by a voter, the New York senator said twice that she, too, would negotiate with Iran “with no conditions.”

“I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don’t really understand how Iran works. We think we do, from the outside, but I think that is misleading,” she said at an apple orchard.

OK, I guess I’m not surprised.  I’d be amused, if the consequences of this nonsense were not so tragic, was this woman ever to gain real power.  But let this situation serve as a warning; The woman’s word isn’t worth the hot air she expends in uttering it.