Nom de plume: Rivrdog

True words from Cold Country

Not AK and Gov. Palin this time, the Coyote Kid passes these words along from SD.

I think it is remarkable that the press can find every woman with whom Tiger has had an affair in the last few years, with photos, text messages, recorded phone calls, etc. They know not only the cause of the family fight, but they even know that it was a wedge from his golf bag that she used to break out the windows of his Escalade. Not only that, they know which wedge!!!

This is the same press (or is it?) that cannot locate Obama's birth certificate...or any of his papers while in college. Truly remarkable.

Yep, that's remarkable, all right, and a fine commentary on selective objectivism.

A statistical aberration, I'm sure

This story tells us that all the Congresscritters currently being investigated by the Ethics panel are black.

Really?

Then the article gets into the Mark One Mod Zero pushback of the Black Caucus (deny, deny, deny, counter-accuse).

Actually, I'm going to do the Black Caucus a favor. First, I'm going to take their side, then I'm going to point out that this is nothing more than a statistical aberration.

If you start with the proposition that ALL Congresscritters have ethics issues, which is VERY easy to demonstrate, it is just the Black Caucus' bad luck that the current crop of investigatees are all black.

Oh, by the way, they are all Democrats, also. That fact is of FAR greater importance than the color of their skin.

BTW, my comments here are about a Liberal Congress, reported on by a Liberal news organization (Yahoo!).

Make a note of it.

Typo or Freudian Slip? (Updated !)

First look at the news this morning brought this. I'm sure it will change in the next few moments, but the headline originally read:

"Iraq wraps up election with major violence"

The first sentence of the AssPress story reads:

"BAGHDAD – Iraq's provincial elections have wrapped up without any reports of serious violence."

The photo accompanying the article was of a woman in traditional garb holding up her ink-stained finger (they ink a finger at the polls there so you cannot immediately go and vote again).

A screen-capture of the article is here:

Download AssPressBooBoo

A simple typo, right? They meant to write the word "without" in the headline, right?

Or was this headline pre-written because the stringer who wrote it believed that there WOULD be major violence?

I don't think either one of those explanations are any good. I think that this news outfit is so used to the idea that we can't change the old ways with our nation-building in Iraq, that when the nation-building has actually succeeded, no one can believe it because they've been immersed in the negative side of reporting from Iraq the entire way before today.

It's a Freudian Slip. Especially when one considers the number of layers of editing that this had to go to before being published on the Internet, as the lead story of the hour, no less. The ENTIRE STAFFS of the Associated Press and Yahoo! News had this Freudian Slip. The desire for the USA to fail in Iraq is THAT strong with these organizations, and they just proved it with prima-facie evidence.

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UPDATE: 013109 1037 PST: There's a re-do of the boo-boo. You can see the redux screenshot below. Note that they must have had an an Imam or two call in with a complaint of how wrong it is to display the unveiled female face, because the accompanying photo is now a male:

Download AssPressRedux

That is all. Should I re-title this post, "How many ways can the AssPress screw the pooch in just one story?"

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The MSM stirs the pot...

...over the church shooting in TN. The DA there already said that the crimes, horrible as they were, do not fit the State definition of "hate" crimes. A defense attorney on TeeVee on Fox News (part of said MSM) patiently explained why the crimes don't fit that category.

Meanwhile, all the infobabe conducting the interview could do was whine and piss and moan that it seemed to be a "hate" crime to her, and others.

Just another reason to hate the MSM. If you thought Fox News was on the side of the culture and it's tough fight for self-preservation, think again.

When the cow chips are down, they're still cow-chips. The MSM still tries to manufacture news, and still thinks that such attempts sell their soapsuds.

Obama "Packs 'em in" again

Or did all those estimated 200,000 Germans come to see the super-mega rock band Reggeasanger, or the pop band Reamonn, or the very famous Brit DJ Mantu, all for FREE (where free concerts are rarer in the EU than they are here)?

Of course, all the MSM did was focus on the giant crowd, without looking into it's reasons for being at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

But, it's an old trick, the Obama-messiah pulled the same trick in Portland, OR back in May, and there, also, the MSM failed to point out that most of the crowd came to hear the music.

My question for today has remained unasked too long: when are we going to declare the MSM a Mortal Enemy of these United States?

Some of you will cry foul at that, because, after all, Obama isn't elected yet, and if all goes in our favor if he DOES get elected, even a lefty Congress shouldn't swallow all his proposed trashing of the US Constitution.

I don't think it will turn out that well, and I think that the Lefty Congress WILL rubber-stamp most of his proposals, which are nothing but steps in a plan to toss said Constitution into the shitcan and run the nation forever as a leftist dictatorship, a one-party rule.

When that becomes obvious, (and a compliant MSM won't be able to hide it as he raises taxes through the roof to re-distribute all the private wealth here, confiscates guns so he or his acolytes can remain in power forever, and forces British-style correctness on all citizens on pain of being made into criminals for things which wouldn't have been considered insults, let alone crimes, a generation ago), then we will obviously look back and see the MSM's culpability in the destruction of our Nation.

I say get ahead of it now, and treat the MSM for what they have become, enemies of the State and it's Constitution.

Members of the MSM should be hated with all the fervor which now goes into hating child molesters. They are WORSE predators on this culture and this successful society than child molesters.

Yep, that's radical, but so is chucking a 232-year successful run of mostly-free Liberty and Justice for All into the dustbin of history.

Without the MSM, Obama would still be a grunt-level, ward-heeling politico in the Daley Machine in Chicago.

Now, he is poised to RULE this nation, which is not supposed to have any rulers, for only the second time in it's history (the first was FDR, of course). Unlike FDR, though, who had five million smart GIs poised to come back from winning WW2 to dampen his dreams of hegemony, and a strong GOP opposition to any further (D)onk predation on the Constitution, Obama will have an entire generation of lemmings (our sons and daughters) ready to take their little shred of the Constitution over the cliff when he says "jump".

No, FDR came close to autocratic rule, especially when he packed the Supreme Court (I look for Obama to try THAT also), but we already have more autocracy in the Executive than FDR ever had, thanks to a do-nothing Congress which has given most of it's authority away. GWB didn't abuse much of that excessive authority which he was given, but Obama has already PROMISED us that he will.

And the MSM has made it all possible, and all quite likely.

I hate the MSM.

A hen in the foxhouse

Watching Fox news just now, their morning show, and first off, there's a story about some climbers lost on Mt. Hood. Only problem, the news babe moved the mountain, from 60 miles east of Portland to "west of Portland". I guess the ability to read a map as to the cardinal directions thereon is not a pre-requisite for being a newsbabe.

These newsbabes are also permitted some editorializing as they read the news.

A story came up about some organization (the bulletin didn't say which one) that has reported that if concealed carry had been allowed at WVU, chances are the death toll would have been less. That's old news, that point was made within 24 hours of the massacre.

The new news today is that the newsbabe reading the bulletin took it upon herself to use a heavily sarcastic tone of voice when reading it, a voice that just dripped "yeah, like THAT'S going to work".

Up to this point, most of us have at least not counted Fox News as an enemy in the R2KBA wars, but as of now, I'm not so sure.

By my lights, Fox now moves smartly left into the MSM folder with the rest of the liars.

Here's the nuts and bolts of conflict, folks. When both sides debate evenly, conflict stays at a civilized level, which is where it ought to be on R2KBA. When all the rhetoric sharpens up from debate to sarcasm, that's a step towards ending the debate.

When this debate ends, folks, the bullets fly and the conflict will be settled by force.

Can I sue here?

We're being robbed here in Oregon, and it's at the gas pump.

Not news, you say, and you might be right, but let's think of this from a legal tort perspective.

I'm now forced to buy "E-10" gasoline (10% Ethanol blend) to power two vehicles not designed for it, a 1999 Mazda B-2500 pickup and a 1968 Volkswagen Type 1100 ("old bug"). They both run on the re-blended fuel, but not as well. I suffer a loss of 4 mpg in the Mazda and a whopping 5 mpg in the Bug using the blend (17% in the Mazda and 25% in the VW).

But this is not about ME, it's about the ENVIRONMENT. I am an environmentalist, and have been since before Earth Day 1970, the official start of the Environmental Movement. I could drive a big-hog V-8, but choose to drive vehicles with smaller, more efficient engines because they do the job for me, and in engine size, for me it's all about doing the job at hand. Since I don't tow anymore, or carry humongous loads, I don't need pavement-shifting torque from a big engine, so I don't have one.

I DO like to get the peak efficiency from my engines, so I keep them in perfect tune, use the correct fuels, and drive conservatively with the minimum throttle to get down the road safely.

It bothers me when the dot Gov decides I don't know doodly squat about engines or their use, and they mandate the use of an inferior fuel that will not allow me to get the most efficiency from my engines, and to boot, it is a fuel that does not improve the per-mile emissions one bit, but rather, degrades them, adding to the pollution burden in our atmosphere.

To me, this is a clear case of the so-called Environmental Movement (not the one I'm a part of) NOT walking their talk. They should be in there suing the State of Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to get this law repealed.

But they won't, because they are corrupt, the Sierra Club and all the rest of the "mainstream" enviro outfits. They are in bed with Archer Daniels Midland, and it wouldn't surprise me if their coffers haven't been enriched by donations traceable to ADM. If you just got to this planet, ADM is behind the idiotic Ethanol movement, foisting off on a gullible (dumbed-down) public the idea that alcohol is a perfect substitute fuel for engines designed to run on gasoline. Of course, it isn't. Engines designed to run on gasoline produce maybe 80-88% of rated power on ethanol, and that's a fact, look it up. Since Ethanol produces somewhere upward of 90% of carbon emissions of gasoline in a modern gasoline engine, it's use is a negative to the atmosphere, as well as a negative to the wallets of vehicle owners, because it sells for about the same as gasoline. The ONLY advantage to Ethanol is that we are making it here in the US of A instead of importing it from overseas (that will change, the Mexicans are using NAFTA to undercut ADM and "dump" Ethanol here), but we COULD be making ALL our gasoline 100% from petroleum domestically if we had the cojones to stand up to the faux-enviros and drill in the ANWR and offshore all along the Pacific Coast.

So the atmosphere takes a hit because we refuse to stand up to the unholy coalition of ADM and the Sierra Club.

You won't read this anywhere else.

Any lawyers out there think I can sue? The price of gold is soaring and I might have a few bucks to throw into this, if for no other reason than to be a bigger burr under ADM's and the Sierra Club's saddle.

New York Times, thy name is "Skulduggery" (Updated!)

Skulduggery, look it up here.

With this article, the anti-culture New York Times is up to something (heh, MY skulduggery is to discuss the NYT's article without linking to them, props to Yahoo! for the link). You might say that this anti-military piece is a not a new tactic for them, but it is. The NYT, you see, usually attempts to denigrate the military LEADERSHIP, not the lower ranks. When it has delved into the lower ranks with it's smear-brush, it is usually some case of note, not a broad-brush attack like this one.

No, this attack, which does nothing less than try to paint the military as a den of thugs, is a general anti-military attack meant to destroy our view of the military as a vital part of our culture.

Anyone who has had even a minor lesson in statistics can see through this. First of all, the NYT article lumped all forms of homicides together, something which is never done anywhere else in crime-statistic reporting. That stands out as a huge red flag. The article puts intentional murder into the same class as a careless hunting accident resulting in a death. We don't do that in this society, which is why we have carefully separated the different classes of homicides by level of criminal intent within our penal codes. The NYT does it here, though.

Secondly, for such a comparison to be valid, the NYT would have had to take a similar group of the population from somewhere, and compare THEIR rate of all types of homicides. The most probable comparison would be to take the size of the active-duty military, take a city of the same size, and compare them.

The active duty military is about the same size as Washington, DC metropolitan area. Do you, for a moment, think that the number of reported homicides of all types in the military comes close to that of DeeCee? I'm not even going to look it up, but I'll make a blind wager right here that DeeCee's rate of homicide is several times that of the military, at least.

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UPDATE: 011308 2108 PST: I appear to be one of the first to react to this bullshit, but I wasn't the last, and the real statistical analysis is beginning to come in now. In this article in Rantburg, one commenter says that the actual rate of homicides of all types in the age group in question is 27 per 100,000. Given 750,000 returning veterans (corrects my above screed which said all the active duty military was being slammed), and the fact that the 121 homicides were over 6 years, that works out to just under 2.7 homicides per 100,000 per year, or one tenth of the homicide rate for the age group taken from the nation as a whole. One tenth. The NYT says we should be disturbed that these returning vets are so disturbed. I say that we should be disturbed that WE are so homicidal compared to the vets and especially disturbed that the New York Times has fomented another Big Lie.

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No, the NYT is up to something here. I'm going to hazard a guess as to what that motive is.

When the war in Iraq winds down, we are going to have a LOT of Iraq veterans re-assimilating into the culture. Some of them will want to run for Congress (some already have, and have been elected). The (D)emocrats among them are known as the Blue Dog Democrats. Those veterans WILL unite in a voting bloc, and they WILL have some political power when they do, maybe even enough political power to offset the worst of the leftards in the party. It could make for an interesting time in the leadership of the (D)emocratic Party in a few years.

The NYT wants to get ahead of this, of course, so they are smearing the military as often as they think that they can get away with it. They are terribly afraid that we might have a repeat of the political stability and conservatism of the 1950s again, when returning veterans ran the country and boosted it out of the Steam Age into the Information Age.

They say that there's an exception that proves every rule. If the rule is: "Freedom of Expression is Good", then the New York Times is the best current example of why we have it, because in any other nation, this foul excuse for an information source would have been broken up a long time ago.

New York Times, you aren't fit to tongue-polish the boots of the lowliest recruit in the US military, so quit trying to tear us down.

Fox News Storm Screamers, the sequel

As I noted here, Fox News tried to scream up a few more viewers by lying about the weather forecast for Texas two days ago. If you're very generous, you might have forgiven them then, because there was a very tiny possibility that Hurricane Dean could take a hard right turn and hit the Texas coast. Not likely, but possible.

However, today they outdid themselves. Hurricane Dean, which made landfall hundreds of miles south of Texas, did NOT destroy the oil field in the Bay of Campeche as Fox stongly hinted it would, hasn't even killed a single victim in Mexico, is a non-event, but Fox News is determined to get some mileage out of the underachieving hurricane anyway. This time, a different news babe seriously intones (not a quote, but a close approximation), "Hurricane Dean will not affect the US, as it travels across Mexico, but heavy rains associated with it could be devastating to Texas."

Hmmm, the general upper air pattern does NOT look favorable for that, so I turned immediately to the Weather Channel, which was just cranking up it's Tropical Update. The forecaster at the Weather Channel immediately put the lie to Fox News by declaring that moisture from the remnants of Dean is too far south to bother Texas.

There must be one news director at Fox who is determined to bump viewership with these weather lies.

Fox News: Fair, Balanced, Inaccurate. To say the least. The management there needs to ferret out this lying chump and show him or her the door, and apologize to viewers for the now-obvious deceptions.

Fox News storm screamers

And the Ridiculous Storm Screamer Award goes to...Fox News! At about 0900 PDT, their news babe teased the Hurricane Dean story with "headed for Texas", just as NOAA was plotting (and broadcasting) an ever-more southerly track that will actually take the hurricane well south of Cancun, then across the fattest part of the Yucatan Peninsula, into the Bay of Campeche, and ashore hundreds of miles south of the border at Browsville, TX (the border city). Brownsville might get wet, but they get a lot of rain there and know how to handle it.

You are all idiots at Fox News. Every time you cry "wolf" like this, people believe the real warnings even less, and YOU idiots are then responsible for un-necessary deaths and injuries.

Boneheads!