Drudge is alarmed over a picture on Rosie O'Donnell's blog that apparently shows her daughter in some sort of military fatigues, festooned with a a bandoleer of small caliber ammunition.

Presumably, this is some sort of anti-war protest on the part of O'Donnell, but she seems unable to write anything more coherent than the headline, "A picture says a thousands posts."

Considering her storied track record of being unable to write complete sentences or even complete words (the Big Ro seems to think the blogosphere charges by the letter, like some demented form of text messaging), I suppose this could be considered at least a grammatical improvement.

But what, precisely, is the message is she trying to send?

Based upon the reaction of her readers, it seems to be either "I'm willing to pimp my child for a cheap political stunt," or, "I'm so nutty, even my own demented fans are disturbed over how I'd use my child."

Whatever her point, few seem to understand it, and I wonder if that cluelessness extends to O'Donnell herself.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:21 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Undaunted by the facts, Glenn Greenwald attempts to shore up his demonstrably false claim that, "...the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as 'Al Qaeda.'" with an update to his already debunked post:

Posts from other bloggers who previously noticed this same trend demonstrate how calculated it is and pinpoint its obvious genesis. At Kos, BarbInMD noted back in May that Bush's rhetoric on Iraq had palpably shifted, as he began declaring that "Al-Qaida is public enemy No. 1 in Iraq." The same day, she noted that Bush "mentioned Al-Qaida no less than 27 times" in his Iraq speech. As always, a theme travels unmolested from Bush's mouth into the unexamined premises of our newspapers' front pages.

Separately, Ghillie notes in comments that the very politically cognizant Gen. Petraeus has been quite noticeably emphasizing "the battle against Al Qaeda" in interviews for months. And yesterday, ProfMarcus analyzed the top Reuters article concerning American action in Iraq -- headline: "Al Qaeda fight to death in Iraq bastion: U.S" -- and noted that "al qaeda is mentioned 13 times in a 614 word story" and that "reading the article, you would think that al qaeda is not only everywhere in iraq but is also behind all the insurgent activity that's going on."

Interestingly, in addition to the one quoted above, there is another long article in the Post today, this one by the reliable Thomas Ricks, which extensively analyzes the objectives and shortcomings in our current military strategy. Ricks himself strategy never once mentions Al Qaeda.

Finally, the lead story of the NYT today -- in its first two paragraphs -- quotes Gen. Odierno as claiming that the 2004 battle of Falluja was aimed at capturing "top Qaeda leaders in the city." But Michael Gordon himself, back in 2004, published a lengthy and detailed article about the Falluja situation and never once mentioned or even alluded to "Al Qaeda," writing only about the Iraqi Sunni insurgents in that city who were hostile to our occupation (h/t John Manning). The propagandistic transformation of "insurgents" into "Al Qaeda," then, applies not only to our current predicament but also to past battles as well, as a tool of rank revisionism (hence, it is now officially "The Glorious 2004 Battle against Al-Qaeda in Falluja").

You'll note that Greenwald's supporting "evidence" for his comes in the form of links to liberal blogs, letters to Salon.com, selected articles from the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and yet, he completely fails to address the fact that Multi-National Corps-Iraq's own press releases debunk his claims on a daily basis.

Sadly, like a dog returning to re-ingest its own vomit, Greenwald cannot get enough of his own rotting bile. Greenwald continues to insist that there is a conspiracy by the government, the world media, and the U.S. military to turn all enemy forces in Iraq into al Qaeda, and stands by his claim that:

...every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

Again, this daft claim is hardly supported by the facts, and is easily refuted by the military's own primary means of information dissemination about the War in Iraq, the MNF-I PAO press release system.

Today, Monday, June 25, MNF-I has 13 listed press releases. Of those, one is a duplicate post, while the remaining 12 press releases break down enemy activity in Iraq for the day as follows:

• four releases discussing Sunni insurgent activity;
• one release discussing Shia militia "Secret Cells;"
• four where a specific group enemy group is not named;
• ...and only two where Al Qaeda is mentioned.

Far from making the enemy "almost exclusively" al Qaeda, MNF-I PAO's releases for the day link less than 17% of their stories to al Qaeda activity.

Greenwald ignores the key source that would prove or disprove his "all of our enemy's are being labelled al Qaeda" meme, which are the archives of press releases, of press briefings, Pentagon briefings, daily news, and feature stories from the U.S. military, which make it clear that al Qaeda is not the only extremist group being fought by Coalition and Iraqi forces in Iraq.

Instead, he bumbles forward, doggedly bucking reality, insisting upon some grand conspiracy being orchestrated by the White House, international news services, the American press, and the United States military to repaint all extremist activity in Iraq as being orchestrated by al Qaeda.

As the links above clearly show, Multi-National Corps-Iraq is failing to uphold their end of this alleged conspiracy by consistently citing other extremists groups in their daily press releases and news stories.

Whoever is in charge of this grand conspiracy (perhaps the Freemasons? Maybe the Illuminati? Yale's secretive Skull & Bones Society? Boy Scout Troop 111 in Arlington, Virginia?) should also castigate the media, as they are failing to insist that everything in Iraq is "all al Qaeda, all the time," including this story in the Boston Globe where a suicide bomber targeting Sunni tribal sheiks aligned against al Qaeda was the perfect opportunity to flog this claim, if such a conspiracy was indeed "on." Sadly, the media is failing to uphold their end of the bargain.

Glenn Greenwald seems doggedly intent on descending into his own brand of "trutherism" regarding a grand government, media and military conspiracy to re-brand the Iraq War.

In doing so, he may finally get the notoriety he so desperately craves, if not for the reasons he'd hoped.

Update: I hardly find it surprising that the empty heads at Editor & Publisher lap up Greenwald's bile, with nary a thought to whether or not it's true.

Considering that E&P editor Greg Mitchell has his own track record of manufacturing news and indeed, wrote a post advocating that the media should attempt to undermine the Presidency, I'm not exactly shocked they'd grasp at any straw they could to support their nakedly partisan political objectives.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:36 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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Glenn Wilson McEllensburg has suddenly become a terrorism expert, and can't wait to get a conspiracy off his chest:

Josh Marshall publishes an e-mail from a reader who identifies what is one of the most astonishing instances of mindless, pro-government "reporting" yet:

It's a curious thing that, over the past 10 - 12 days, the news from Iraq refers to the combatants there as "al-Qaida" fighters. When did that happen?

Until a few days ago, the combatants in Iraq were "insurgents" or they were referred to as "Sunni" or "Shia'a" fighters in the Iraq Civil War. Suddenly, without evidence, without proof, without any semblance of fact, the US military command is referring to these combatants as "al-Qaida".

Welcome to the latest in Iraq propaganda.

That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term "Al Qaeda" to designate "anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq" is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

Actually, that isn't obvious, Glenn. What is obvious is your own industrial-strength ignorance, which apparently seems to be quite contagious among the more irrational actors of the far left.

The reason that we've been reading more over the past few days about attacks directed against al Qaeda—more than Sunni insurgents, more than Shia militiamen—is that elements of al Qaeda have been specifically targeted by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Diyala Province, in Operation Commando Eagle southwest of Baghdad, Operation Marne Torch southeast of Baghdad, and in other operations throughout the country.

If Glen Greenwald or Josh Marshall weren't above a Sullivaneque "floating of a theory" by a conspiracy-minded reader (to excuse their own inherent distrust of our military, of course), they might have bothered to recognize, or God forbid, research a few key facts.

The first of those facts is that we are in offensive operations surrounding and targeting al Qaeda cells specifically, often with information provided by their former allies in the Sunni insurgency.

Second, the military is consistently releasing stories about contacts with both Sunni insurgents and Shia militiamen, and our military is calling them such as they contact them.

Let's got back "10-12 days" and see what Multi-National Force-Iraq has been saying in their press releases. According to Greenwald, the enemy the military talks about is "almost exclusively now" al Qaeda.

And yet, when we go back 12 days to Monday, June 11, we find that in MNF-I's three combat-related press releases, only one addresses al Qaeda. The following day, U.S. forces raided an insurgent weapons cache, came under attack from an insurgent VBIED, and engaged "enemy fire" coming from a mosque, without ever specifying who that was.

On Wednesday, June 13, MNF-I published 17 press releases. Of those a Grand total of four mentioned al Qaeda. Five others mentioned Sunni insurgents, five more couldn't specify the attacker, and one wrote about Iranian-affiliated Shia militias.

I invite Greenwald, Marshall, and others who seem to like this meme to do their own digging through MNF-I's archive of press releases, where they'll find more days very similar to this.

As the offensive operations cited above--part of an overall operation called Phantom Thunder--are specifically targeting al Qaeda cells, we will be reading about those terrorists that our soldiers are directly targeting. But as accounts from Saturday show that we are still encountering Shia militias and Sunni insurgents even today, the theory being aired by Greenwald and his conspiracy-minded followers is shown—with only passing research—to be complete and utter bunk.

Update: Undaunted by the facts, Greenwald attempts to shore up his flimsy argument by citing other liberal conspiracy theorists and letters to Salon.com, forcing yet another debunking of his claims.

Reality. He should check into it sometime.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:11 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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The six-month contract I was hired into in 2005 is finally closing at the end of this month after three extensions, and a few folks have suggested that I should investigate attempting to find a new media journalism gig, either here in the Raleigh area, or one from which I could telecommute.

I know via Sitemeter that a few media outfits check in on this site on occasion, so I'm wondering...

Any takers?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:01 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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At Daily Kos, "BarbinMD" went to bat this afternoon for an embattled Harry Reid:

Since its inception a few short months ago, Politico, the online soul-mate to the Drudge Report, has gotten into the habit of creating news stories through innuendo, omission, outright error, and now today, out of thin air.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "incompetent" during an interview Tuesday with a group of liberal bloggers, a comment that was never reported.

Reid made similar disparaging remarks about Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said several sources familiar with the interview.

Of course the reason this comment was never reported is quite simple: the bloggers on the call don't remember this quote. I, along with mcjoan and Kagro X, participated in that conference call and none of us heard Reid say it. And of the four other bloggers who were there, Joe and John from AMERICAblog and Jonathon Singer, have no recollection of it.

Please make note: according to this Kos frontpager, she and two other prominent Daily Kos bloggers never heard Harry Reid call General Pace "incompetent," and of the other four bloggers on the call, the two representing Americablog, and one from MyDD, didn't recall anything, either. "Ain't nobody heard nothin,'" as it were, from six of the seven highly respected liberal bloggers on the conference call with the Democrat Senate Majority Leader. But don't question their integrity.

The last man standing, Bob Geiger, recalled things a bit differently, but still attempted a fanboy's "I don't think that word means what you think it means" defense of Reid:

Here's exactly what Reid said:

"I guess the president, uh, he's gotten rid of Pace because he could not get him confirmed here in the SenateÂ… Pace is also a yes-man for the president and I told him to his face, I laid it out to him last time he came to see me, I told him what an incompetent man I thought he was."

So, did Reid utter the word "incompetent" in the same sentence with General Pace's name on the conference call? Yes, he did.

Geiger then went on to make a pathetic attempt to wrangle Reid's mangled syntax into an attack on President Bush instead of Pace.

The seven liberal bloggers on the conference call with Harry Reid either suffered from a convenient form of group amnesia, or from the inability to honestly parse the English language, but perhaps what was important from their perspective is that they rallied together for Harry with strongly-worded claims of "I can't recall," and "I don't remember," and "It depends on what the definition of the word 'is,' is."

But sometimes irony and justice come hand in hand, and Harry Reid soon did to these radical anti-war bloggers what they are collectively trying to do to the American military and the Iraqi people: he cut and ran:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Thursday that he told liberal bloggers last week that he thinks outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is "incompetent."

Reid also disparaged Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of Multinational Forces in Iraq.

But Reid, whose comments to bloggers first appeared in The Politico, also told reporters: "I think we should just drop it."

For the Selective Memory-Based Community, Reid's betrayal must have been awful.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:49 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Many of us have heard the term "spearchucker" used as a racial slur against African-Americans, so when I saw via Memeorandum that Fox News anchor Brit Hume used the term, my immediate reaction was to cringe.

The context:

Hume: …he had a mixed record in the Senate and he's a man who always seems somewhat frustrated and bored by the Senate...I particularly remember an investigation that occurred after the Clinton/Dole campaign. We were new here at FOX news and we carried a lot of the hearings live. It was in the campaign finance alleged irregularities with monies supposedly seeping into the American political campaign of Bill Clinton from Chinese sources and so on—it was pretty juicy stuff it looked like a very big deal.

Fred Thompson was the chairman of the Investigating committee and it went absolutely nowhere. he was effectively buffaloed in that investigation by none other than John Glenn—who was a wonderful man, but not somebody normally you would think capable of being a real partisan..ahh…ahh.. spearchucker, who could, who could undo an investigation. So it didn't go very well and I think Fred Thompson has acknowledged since then that it wasn't his finest hour...

But how could Crooks and Liars get all indignant considering the comment was directed at this guy?

To put it mildly, it seems a stretch, but any chance to slur a conservative--especially one on the hated "Faux News" network--on even the flimsiest of grounds is a good one, isn't it?

John Amato, after making the weak case that Hume (an older white guy) was being a racist for calling Glenn (an even older white guy) a spearchucker, then goes on to provide the word Hume was must likely looking for all along, a spear-carrier. That Hume was fumbling for the right term was obvious in the transcript that Amato provided (my bold this time):

...he was effectively buffaloed in that investigation by none other than John Glenn—who was a wonderful man, but not somebody normally you would think capable of being a real partisan ..ahh..ahh.. spearchucker, who could, who could undo an investigation.

Hume fumbled, and produced an embaressing slip, but a purposeful slur? I don't think so.

What should be embarassing...but obviously won't be... is Amato's probable little "white lie" about why he wrote this entry to begin with.

I had to watch it a few times for it to sink in. I looked up "spearchucker," on Dictionary.com, but they didn't recognize it so I wonder how he will explain this one away?

Really, John? You had to look up the term to know it was offensive?

If you didn't know it was offensive, then why did you key in on it in the first place, instead of letting it waft by as the one of the dozens of idiomatic expressions one hears in an average week that most normal people never bother to look up?

No, I suspect that Mr. Amato was well aware of what that slur meant all along, and that he was well aware of what it meant long before Brit Hume spoke it on Fox News.

What is far more likely is that Mr. Amato, as a representative of the politically correct progressive blogosphere, instead decided to play dumb and act as if he had to look it up. Why?

Hume made a mistake, and grabbed the wrong term.

John Amato, on the other hand, acted as if he didn't know what "spearchucker" meant, when clearly he knew it was a slur all along, or he wouldn't have keyed in on it.

Here's another word for John Amato to look up: "honest."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:01 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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My wife and daughter and I begrudgingly left Orlando yesterday morning and rolled back into North Carolina late yesterday afternoon. It was fun to visit with my sister-in-law's family in West Palm Beach for a couple of days before introducing my wife and seven-year-old daughter to Uncle Walt's dream. My only regret that we couldn't stay longer. Things have changed a lot in the 24 years since I last visited ORlando, but the experience of this past week is one I'll treasure for years to come.

Here's a picture we snapped of ourselves in Epcot at the Kodak Incredible Picture Lab in Epcot.

I'm just as ugly as ever, but the wife and kid sure are cute.

I'll be back online and back up to my normal posting frequency within the next 48 hours or so, and will try to get something out later this afternoon.

I want to thank my brother and blog designer extraordinare "phin" for keeping you all entertained with his guest-blogging. Should you ever want a web or blog design or your own, consider contacting him and his partners in crime at Apothegm Designs.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:54 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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