Confederate Yankee

May 03, 2008

Hmmm...

Last month as Michael Yon's Moment of Truth in Iraq came out, I provided links so that you guys could go to Amazon.com and buy a copy.

Buy you did.

One person bought seven copies; another bought six, another bought three, and of course most people bought a single copy for themselves. On behalf of Mike I'd like to thank you for buying what I personally feel is an important book, one that tells the truth of what is going on in Iraq far outside the range of most news organizations and pundits.

And while it's a crappy segue, Amazon is pushing their "Wireless Reading Device" (we used to call that "paper", didn't we?) to me via email, a device called Kindle that they've developed. It looks petty interesting, but I don't know much about it.

Anybody got any experience with this?

Who is going to be the brave soul to test-drive this thing and let me know if it lives up to its promise?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:49 AM | Comments (38) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

May 02, 2008

Bomb Detonates in Front of NC School, Moron Bombers Injured

May Day. A great day to relax, enjoy spring weather, and attempt to throw pipe bombs at schools.


Acting on an anonymous tip, Sampson County deputies found a Chevrolet minivan outside Sampson Regional Medical Center with a side window blown out and blast marks on the outside of a door, authorities said.

Inside the hospital emergency room, Martin Bryant Boyette and Julio Frentez Morales were receiving treatment for injuries from a bomb blast, authorities said. An investigation determined that the pair had made several bombs at Boyette's house, where both lived, and Morales tried to throw one out the window of the minivan on U.S. Highway 701 as they drove past Hobbton Schools, authorities said.

The bomb went off in Morales' hand, seriously injuring him, and a piece of shrapnel hit Boyette in the back of the head, authorities said.

"It's scary to think that these individuals were going to throw an explosive device out of a vehicle in front of a school," Sampson County Sheriff Jimmy Thornton said in a statement. "What were they thinking? What possible thrill could be worth potentially injuring an innocent person, especially a child?"

Follow the link, and you'll be shocked, shocked to discover that other explosives—and drugs—were found in a search of their home. Luckily this special class of moron is mercifully rare everywhere, and getting rarer day-by-day.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:06 PM | Comments (34) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Silly Question I Know...

...but why was Hillary Clinton campaigning in Mexico?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:00 AM | Comments (31) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Another Gaza Media Moment

Three days ago, I contacted Associated Press Director of Media Relations Paul Colford, asking him about photos taken by AP photographer Khalil Hamra, in Beit Lahiya, a town in the northern Gaza Strip, on Monday, April 28, 2008.

The caption for one Hamra photo read as follows, without a hint of uncertainty:


A Palestinian woman reacts as she stands next to a house hit by an Israeli shell that killed a mother and her four children, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, April 28, 2008. An Israeli tank shell slammed into a tiny Gaza Strip home on Monday, killing a Palestinian woman and four of her children as they prepared to sit down for breakfast, officials and relatives said.

I asked Mr. Colford to "please acquire the other photos Mr. Hamra shot outside that home and send them to me... I should be able to tell which account is true by the simple differences between blast signatures of HEAT rounds used by Israel tanks impacting buildings, and the kind of blast that would be consistent with the Israeli account of a gunman carrying explosives that detonated." Responding via email, Mr Colford suggested I should acquire the images somewhere else. It was a polite brush-off.

But the story told with such apparent certainty by Associated Press photographer Hamra and apparently deemed insignificant by Colford was never as certain as the media tried to make it sound.

An Israeli military inquiry into the incident has concluded that the family was indeed killed by a Palestinian militant's explosives detonating. Tank shells were not fired into the home, a fact neither side now alledges. According to the IDF, a single airborne missile was fired from a drone at a cluster of four armed militants. How small was the missile? According to these video stills from an al Jazeera story, showing the missile's impact point, quite small.




The "crater" according to al Jazeera.

A bemused civilian inspects the same missile "crater" as the reporter moves away.

Al Jazeera repeats Palestianian claims a that second missile was fired by the Israelis, but the visual evidence of the missile strike is not very convincing.



An alleged second missile "crater" outside the family home, estimated to be four inches deep.

As Noah Pollak pointed out in his Commentary story Factless in Gaza, "There is a deeper problem here:the manner in which news is gathered from Gaza, which has been inhospitable territory for western journalists for quite some time (remember what happened to Alan Johnston?). News organizations like the AP and Reuters rely, for their on-the-ground Gaza coverage, on Palestinian reporters and stringers whose objectivity and professionalism, to put it charitably, are in doubt."

Adnan Hajj was by far the most obvious example of dishonest journalism by the Palestianian media as he manipulated images he sold to Reuters, but the facts are that very essence of news reporting in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon are conducted primarily by reporters with a deep and personal interest in the stories they are reporting, often under the direction of terrorist groups that are not above "suggesting" stories and guiding media coverage with the barrel of a gun.

Internationally respected news organizations such as Reuters, AFP the Associated Press, and the BBC have proven themselves time and again to be very susceptible to being manipulated by agenda-driven journalists and photographers. Moreover, they seem not to care very much about passing along staged photos and biased information as long as it allows them to publish something. They the news organizations will likely never admit it, hating Israel is big media business, and stories alleging that Israeli military forces are killing innocent Palestinians sell very well in the global media market.

As a result, initial reporting of this incident squarely places the blame for the blast on the Israeli military, without seriously looking for any other possible cause. It is both a business decision (these kinds of stories sell) and a practical one (unbiased reporting is not allowed by militant media handlers that guide and spy upon reporters and photographers).

That armed militants were moving among civilian homes for cover is never mentioned, and their argument that "it couldn't have been our explosives, because I have some pictures of some explosives that didn't blow up right over here" is readily digested with a degree of acceptance because there is no viable alternative.

Truly, truth is not an option.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:43 AM | Comments (63) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 30, 2008

The Greatest Story Ever Sold

It isn't "what did he know, and when did he know it," but instead appears to be "he knew it all along, and is trying to hide it."

That is the impression left when reading this article in the NY Post today.


The Rev. Jeremiah Wright would be happy to see Barack Obama's presidential campaign derailed because the pastor is fuming that his former congregant has "betrayed" their 20-year relationship,

The Post has learned. "After 20 years of loving Barack like he was a member of his own family, for Jeremiah to see Barack saying over and over that he didn't know about Jeremiah's views during those years, that he wasn't familiar with what Jeremiah had said, that he may have missed church on this day or that and didn't hear what Jeremiah said, this is seen by Jeremiah as nonsense and betrayal," said the source, who has deep roots in Wright's Chicago community and is familiar with his thinking on the matter.

And perhaps most damning:


"Rev. Wright, as well as other senior members of his church, believe that Obama has betrayed over 20 years of their supposed friendship."

If the source is correct, other senior leaders of Trinity United Church of Christ know that Barack Obama was familiar with the radical content of Jeremiah Wright's sermons. For Obama to say otherwise is a betrayal of the pastor and the church.

The obvious implication is that Obama knew precisely what Wright's views and positions were for 20 years, and Obama "never batted an eye" until Wright's positions became too much political baggage for the Senator's presidential aspirations.

The implication is obvious. Either:

  • Barack Obama believes in the angry, paranoid and racist teachings of Jeremiah Wright and the Marxist liberation theology of his church, and is lying about it in public in hopes of getting elected, which is essentially the betrayal Rev. Wright accused him of in front of the National Press Club Monday morning, or;
  • Barack Obama's membership in Trinity United Church of Christ and his relationship with the pastoral staff and congregation were nothing more than a 20-year lie of convenience and exploitation of the Church and Wright of Homeric proportions.

No matter how you slice it, Obama is guilty of an epic deception in his quest for power, and potential supporters should start to wonder just how much he's willing to lie to them to get elected if he's already betrayed a 20-year-old relationship in that pursuit.

I don't know if the United Church of Christ has a process for excommunication, but it would be interesting as an intellectual exercise to speculate about Trinity excommunicating Obama for his actions. He has obviously embarrassed the church and the man who grew it into what it is today, and has done as much as he possible can to separate himself from the church, short of locking the door and burning the congregation inside (a tactic, by the way, actually used by his cousin's supporters in Kenya this past January).

Exit Question: If TUCC did excommunicate Obama, would it hurt him or help him as a candidate?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:54 AM | Comments (73) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 29, 2008

Hangman


"No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching."

Rev. Otis Moss, Trinity United Church of Christ, March 23, 2008




"The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," he said. "His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."

"They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs," he said.

"If Reverend Wright thinks that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either."

"I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church," he said. "But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism – then there are no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced, and that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally here today."

Barack Obama, Winston-Salem, NC, April 29, 2008

Ace pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter, if in language a bit more colorful than I typically use.

Too little, too dishonest, and too late. Obama cuts into Wright for being precisely the man he has been for the past 20 years.

Wright has been consistent, and Obama has proven to be precisely what everyone feared—just another cheap empty suit, willing to say or do anything according to the requirements of the polls.

Far from being the Messiah, he makes for even a shoddy secondhand Brian.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:10 PM | Comments (53) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The DNC IED

Several people have forwarded me a link this morning to the Democratic National Committee ad against John McCain that shows two American soldiers at the moment an explosion goes off beside them.









The soldiers are on screen for just a split-second, just long enough for viewers to see that there was an explosion, but not long enough to know if the soldiers pictured survived uninjured, if they were wounded, or if they were killed (note: Both soldiers survived. See final update below).

More than 3 full decades after the last U.S. soldier left Saigon, the party of Bill Ayers still revels in the imagery of blowing up U.S. soldiers as part of their political expression.

Update: RNC slams ad as deliberately distorting what McCain said (a fair charge) and demands that the networks pull the ad off the air.

As for the source of the video clip, we're a little closer to running that down—it was used in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, a movie completed no later than April of 2004. The clip came from the first year of the war.

Additional Update: Charlie Foxtrot notes that the same networks who placed restrictions on 9/11 imagery did not apparently have the same problem with this Democratic National Committee ad.

And because it matters, both U.S. soldiers survive the blast (h/t Political Punch).

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:09 AM | Comments (56) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 28, 2008

Sorry, Barack: NC Gov Goes For Hillary

I first heard the suspicion that North Carolina Governor Mike Easley would buck the huge advantage Barack Obama has in North Carolina's polling to support Hillary Clinton late this afternoon. The Associated Press now confirms it:


Hillary Rodham Clinton has won the endorsement of North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, a surprise boost to her candidacy in a state where Barack Obama is heavily favored to win the Democratic primary.

Easley was expected to announce the endorsement Tuesday morning in Raleigh, the state capital, one week before North Carolina's primary on May 6, according to people close to the governor and to Clinton. The individuals spoke on condition of anonymity because the formal announcement was pending.

With its liberal white enclaves and large population of black voters, North Carolina has been viewed as exceptionally favorable to Obama. Public polling in the state has him leading the former first lady by 10 points or more.

But Clinton has contested the state in hopes of an upset. Short of that, her campaign aims to peel off enough pledged delegates to stay competitive with Obama.

The former first lady spent Monday campaigning across North Carolina and has run a heavy television advertising campaign in the state. She was headed Tuesday to Indiana, whose May 6 primary is viewed as much more competitive.

Easley is relatively well-liked—or at least, isn't heavily disliked—by both Democrats and Republicans in North Carolina, and has enough political capital that his endorsement could actually make things interesting if Clinton continues to close on Obama.

And yes, she very well should continue to close.

Obama looks weak and scared for dodging another debate with Clinton. His dodge ie occuring even as Jeremiah Wright's latest rants give Tarheel voters good reason to find Obama's judgment suspect for the two decades (and counting) he has spent at Wright's radical church, where paranoia, anti-Americanism, racism, and conspiracy-theorizing has proven to be not only accepted, but a bizarrely lucrative business.

I'm not convinced that African-American voters will turn on Obama for Wright's lunacy even as few buy into his hatred, but I suspect that some white and Latino Democratic voters who had been leaning towards Obama now realize that his hopes of prevailing in the general election have been heavily damaged, and they may flip to Clinton instead of throwing away their vote. Thus does Easley's endorsement become important for Democrats on the edge.

A few weeks ago, North Carolina was predicted as a blow-out victory for Barack Obama. Now?

Anything's possible.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:30 PM | Comments (29) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

When Jesus Drove a Porsche

I am not a very good Christian. I can't confidently flip to the right book, chapter and verse Sunday mornings without looking at the index as some others in my congregation can.

Still, I'm fairly confident that Rev. Jeremiah Wright is not a religious martyr. He has never been publicly crucified. Hoisted on his own petard, perhaps, as he's been caught damning our nation and accusing our government of genocide and racism, even as he has profited handsomely from a theology based upon a devious blend of Marxism and racial politics, but not crucified.

I'm pretty sure he isn't Jesus, even as he would like to make himself a messianic martyr. Last I checked, Jesus didn't drive a Porsche, and wasn't building a mansion in the exclusive neighborhood of Tinley Park while lecturing his inner-city flock about the evils of aspiring to "middleclassness" in the US of KKK-A.

Though certainly grist for the media mill, I can't hold Wright's more recent outbursts directly against Obama. Wright's most recent vitriol has come after Obama has made at least minimal attempts to distance himself publicly from Wright's worst comments, even as he clings to the pastor and his warped theology.

What I can question, however, is Obama's judgment in associating with such a man and other radicals throughout his adult life.

As a nation, we've only known Jeremiah Wright for a few months now, but Barack Obama has known him for two decades. He knows the man's theology, his ministry, and after two decades, at least something of the man as an individual. Whether or not Obama heard any of Wright's specific rants is frankly irrelevant. In the larger picture, he should know who and what Wright is as a man.

If the self-righteous, vitriolic narcissist we continue to see in the news is the real Jeremiah Wright, then we have every reason to question Barack Obama's devotion to a racial and radical theology well outside of the mainstream of the American religious experience. It is a matter of his personal judgment and his character.

Barack Obama promises "change we can believe in" and a new spirit of bi-partisanship in politics.

Were he a more mature candidate, we would have his record and his experience as a national legislator to judge him on as someone capable of making such a change, but his record is almost non-existent. He has taken few stands (if any) on issues he now claims to be important. The meager voting record he has compiled shows him to be anything but bi-partisan. Instead, he boasts the most liberal voting record in the Senate, to the left of even self-described democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

With no record of bi-partisan accomplishments, all Barack Obama has to stand on is rhetoric—"just words."

With mere words being insufficient, few actions to his credit and what little record he has compiled showing him to be a radical leftist instead of the inclusive moderate he claims to be, we're left to judge Barack based upon what we can divine of his character by the company he keeps.

Radical violence-promoting priest Father Michael Pfleger, whom Obama has known even longer than Wright, and Wright is a man made rich by exploiting Chicago's urban poor via religion. Terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who formally declared war on the United States, and still despise this nation. Michelle Obama, who has an Ivy League education and a job that pays her hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but still finds this to be a "mean" country.

Barack Obama's minister may have made a mint off of preaching hate and may also be his greatest continuing public relations embarrassment, but his relationship with the man who would liken himself to being martyred like Jesus is just one example of Obama's poor character judgment, or perhaps just poor character.

A man of few accomplishments to support his rhetorical promises, no proven leadership skills, and a past, present, and future filled with radicals more interested in fighting America than fighting for it, Barack Obama is not a candidate America can trust.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:02 AM | Comments (64) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 27, 2008

Comments Closed...

...due to Chinese spammers.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:56 AM | Comments (40) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 25, 2008

New Iranian Weapons Captured in Iraq



Iranian 107mm rockets recovered after attack on U.S. FOB Hammer in Iraq, July 2007

Playing a very dangerous game:


The U.S. military says it has found caches of newly made Iranian weapons in Iraq, leading senior officials to conclude Tehran is continuing to funnel armaments into Iraq despite its pledges to the contrary.

Officials in Washington and Baghdad said the purported Iranian mortars, rockets and explosives had date stamps indicating they were manufactured in the past two months. The U.S. plans to publicize the weapons caches in coming days. A pair of senior commanders said a presentation was tentatively planned for Monday.

The allegations, which couldn't be independently verified, mark a further hardening of U.S. rhetoric on Iran, which senior American officials now describe as the greatest long-term threat to Iraq.

This month, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iranian support for Shiite extremist groups had grown. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said for the first time that he believed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew about the shipments.

Iran has long denied that its government knowingly funneled weapons into Iraq or trained Shiite militants there. It has derided the U.S. claims as propaganda. Several senior U.S. military officials said the weapons caches would undercut the Iranian denials and provide new evidence of continuing Iranian support for Shiite militants across Iraq.

"You can see the manufacturing dates right on the armaments themselves," one senior commander in Baghdad said. "These are very clearly weapons that were made in the last month or so."

Markings, of course, are easy to fake, and the truther fringe of the "Bush lied, people died!" sect are sure to accuse the Administration and/or elements of the military with doing just that. Much harder to fake, however, are the materials used, certain tool marks, and other mechanical and electrical components. Taken together, the component pieces form a unique signature that EOD experts can read like a fingerprint. As far as our military is concerned, the markings only serve to confirm what explosive experts could already tell from even unmarked weapons.

This is a stupid mistake by Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime, coming at a time when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is celebrating stunning military successes in Basra and other parts of the Shia south against Iranian-backed "special groups" within Muqtada al-Sadr's Madhi Army militia. The recovery of this cache can only help Iraq's central government grow even more cohesive, upsetting hopes for a failed Iraqi state and U.S. defeat.

Iran's foreign policy is turning out to have been very poorly calculated as of late. One can only wonder what their next gaffe will be, and what affect it may have on the hardline regime in Tehran.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:06 AM | Comments (114) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 23, 2008

Hack

Eric Boehlert starts off his article cracking on warbloggers for the "Jamil Hussein" fiasco, claiming that it imploded. Well, he's half-right: Jamil Gulaim Innad al-Jashami embarrassed the Associated Press when I outed him as a man hiding behind a pseudonym when they swore his "Hussein" identity was real. AP has refused to discuss "Hussein" since I published that story.

Boehlert also wants to attack some bloggers for not covering Bilal Hussein and his release under Iraq's new amnesty law, but isn't it Boehlert himself being deceptive when he "forgets" to mention that 300 other suspected insurgents were given amnesty that exact same day, undermining his thesis that it was Bilal Hussein's innocence, not amnesty, that set him free?

"Imploded."

I think he understands what that word means, but not to whom it applies.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:33 PM | Comments (29) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 22, 2008

ABC News Caught Lying About Guns... Again

I've really had it with ABC News and Brian Ross.

Last year in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, Ross and the crack staff of The Blotter lied about the effect 1994 Crime Bill as it related to pistol magazines used by the shooter, refused to issue a retraction, and deleted blog comments warning them of how wrong they were while continuing to get basic facts of the case wrong through carelessness.

Today, Ross and accomplice Richard Esposito continue that fine ABC News tradition of making up the news, in a story claiming that the U.S. Second Amendment is to blame for Mexico's drug cartel problems.

The deception starts with the picture at the beginning of the article.



The focus of the story, according to ABC News, is that U.S. dealers of civilian firearms are to blame for Mexico's drug cartels and their violence problems... so why do they highlight an M60 general purpose machine gun, a weapons still in use in Mexico's military, but impossible to find in the open U.S. civilian market?

From that visual deception, we'll transition to outright lie number one in the text, an attempt to smear the Bush Administration:


Assault weapons made in China and Eastern Europe, resembling the AK-47, have become widely and cheaply available in the U.S. since Congress and the Bush administration refused to extend a ban on such weapons in 2004.

AK-pattern rifles were legal to own or import during the entire life of the 1994-2004 "Crime Bill," something that Ross knows for a fact... or should. This claim is a blatant falsehood.

The only effect of the law was to outlaw the importation or manufacture of certain specific firearms by name, and cosmetic features found on other firearms, without banning their manufacture, important, or purchase once these features were removed or replaced. The result was that the same functioning firearms were imported the day after the "ban" went into effect without a bayonet lug or flashhider, and with a thumbhole stock instead of a pistol grip. Functionally, the weapons were identical, with no reduction in firepower, magazine capacity, controlability, or or lethality. The "Crime Bill" outlawed virtually nothing, and was merely a fig-leaf for anti-gun politicians.

As for Bush, he was in favor of extending the ban. ABC News failed to get that fact correct, either, even though checking it would have taken less than ten seconds on Google.

Now, to the second visual deception by ABC News. Once again, this article is about how common U.S. civilian weapons are being used by Mexican drug cartels.



So why does ABC News insist on displaying highly-restricted SBRs (short-barreled rifles), automatic weapons, what appears to be no less than 4 M-203 grenade launchers, and at least 20 40mm grenades, military hardware not readily available on the civilian market?

Once again, they post pictures designed to deceive, but we're not quite done with ABC's print deceptions, either.


The drug cartels' weapons of choice include variants of the AK-47, .50-caliber sniper rifles and a Belgian-made pistol called the 'cop killer' or 'mata policia' because of its ability to pierce a bulletproof vest.

"It's in high demand by your violent drug cartels, their assassins in Mexico," said Newell of the ATF. The gun can fire a high-powered round used in a rifle. "

Again, more fiction, aided and abetted by a law enforcement officer that is either incompetent, or who is as dishonest as ABC News.

The FN Five-seveN (their punctuation, not mine) does not fire rifle bullets as the article claims. It fires a tiny 5.7mm personal defense round designed for light carbines, submachine guns and pistols.

It is not any more armor-piercing than many other pistol cartridges, and less powerful than all centerfire rifle cartridges. Furthermore for the 5.7 cartridge to be truly armor-piercing, it must fire special ammunition that is only available to military and law enforcement sources.

There are multiple inaccuracies in this story that display outright incompetence on the part of ABC News, or a willful desire to deceive. Based upon prior performance, the blatantness of the misrepresentations that far surpass simple incompetence, and a pattern of deleting comments that point out their errors in the past, an attempt to willfully defraud ABC News consumers should be inferred in this article until mere incompetence can be proven.

It may well be true that civilian weapons are making their way across the border into Mexico, but that does not give ABC News the right to manufacture or misrepresent evidence to increase their story's impact.

Update: Warner Todd Huston notes yet another fabrication in an earlier version of the ABC News story.

Also made minor edits to the text to further clarify that M60s, SBRs, and machine guns are not readily available on the open market as ABC News implies. Such firearms are heavily regulated under the National Firearms Act.

Update: Story video here.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:57 PM | Comments (64) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

How Many Military Suicides?

The San Francisco Chronicle posts this without question:


More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week while the government stalls in granting returning troops the mental health treatment and benefits to which they are entitled, veterans advocates told a federal judge Monday in San Francisco.

The rights of hundreds of thousands of veterans are being violated by the Department of Veterans Affairs, "an agency that is in denial," and by a government health care system and appeals process for patients that is "broken down," Gordon Erspamer, lawyer for two advocacy groups, said in an opening statement at the trial of a nationwide lawsuit.

He said veterans are committing suicide at the rate of 18 a day - a number acknowledged by a VA official in a Dec. 15 e-mail - and the agency's backlog of disability claims now exceeds 650,000, an increase of 200,000 since the Iraq war started in 2003.

We're looking at the conflation of multiple claims here, so lets take them one at a time:


More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week while the government stalls in granting returning troops the mental health treatment and benefits to which they are entitled, veterans advocates told a federal judge Monday in San Francisco.

There is no way to get a constant figure of X per week, but if they are presuming that 120/week figure from the beginning of the Iraq War on March 20, 2003, we're talking 1860 days (not including today), rounding down to 265 weeks * 120 suicides/week = 31,800 suicides of Iraq and Afghan War veterans.

If we instead presume they arrived at 120/week starting with the October 7, 2001 war with Afghanistan, we're looking at 2389 days (not including today), rounding down to 341 weeks * 120 suicides/week = 41,920 suicides of Iraq and Afghan War veterans.

Are they trying to tell us between 31,000-41,000 modern war veterans have committed suicide, and we're just now starting to notice, five years later?


* * *

The 18/suicides a day figure seems to quietly leave out which wars are covered, and could be construed to assume the aging veterans of WWII, Korean, Vietnam, and other campaigns as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. It would seem prudent to assume that many of these may be due to issues perhaps unrelated to PTSD caused a half-century or more before in many instances.

If they do mean all veterans, regardless of war, but measure from the start of the Afghan war at a rate of 18 suicides a day, we wind up with 43,002 suicides for all veterans of all wars during this time period. If we instead use the 18 suicides/day figure from the beginning of the Iraq War, we wind up with 33,480 suicides for all veterans of all wars during this time period.

Are they trying to tell us between 33,000-43,000 U.S. military war veterans have committed suicide in the past 5-8 years, and we're just now starting to notice?

According to the math cited here, the VA may be shorting veterans on care, but they excel at hidden burials.

We are not treating out veterans with nearly the care and respect for their service as we should, but I'd be shocked if we were losing as many as these figures suggest.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:16 PM | Comments (47) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Iraq Steps Forward, and the Media Slinks Away

Ed Morrissey notes that Iraq is continuing down the path to political reconciliation even as the media choses to largely ignore these developments in favor of more pressing stories, like the present cost of Barak Obama's half-eaten waffle on eBay.

One of those points of political reconciliation in Iraq is amnesty for some classes of detainees after determining they no longer present a threat of resuming insurgent activities.

Among those detainees released due to Iraq's amnesty law in recent weeks was Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who was arrested with a known al Qaeda terrorist leader in his home and in possession of bomb-making materials and terrorist propaganda that he presumably helped make. Part of the reason he was released is that he was no longer considered a threat; the insurgents he had (allegedly) provided propaganda for in Fallujah are long dead or dispersed.

I find it somewhat amusing the amount of time and legal expense the Associated Press incurred trying to free their photographer—and their reputation—to no avail, despite mounting the most deceptive, ethically-challenged of media campaigns on his behalf. It was only through the political progress of the Iraqi government that Hussein was released.

Perhaps tellingly, the Iraqi government advances that led to Hussein's release was down-played by the news organization, as it stretched the shaky boundaries of their credibility by implying his release was conditioned on innocence instead of amnesty.

Increasingly, proof of progress in Iraq is measured by how little the media talks about the nation's successes.

Enjoy the silence.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:23 PM | Comments (43) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Without Ethics

Did you read the article in the New York Times today implying that John McCain sold political favors to an Arizona real estate developer that is also big campaign donor?

I'm no McCain fan, but after reading all four pages, I'm left still waiting for some substance, some sort of bombshell, that legitimizes this story as news.

Real estate developers try to make money from land deals? They're willing to trade for properties that they feel may be more profitable to them, and discard those properties they feel aren't going to be as profitable? Real estate developers try to attract and keep the attention of politicians by raising money for them?

Shocking. I'm sure such things have never before happened in the history of earth.

For the story to have merit and legitimacy it needs a "gotcha," an impropriety, some sort of ethical or legal breach on behalf of the businessman by the politician. This story runs on for four long pages, but the authors never present anything approaching unethical conduct on the part of the candidate.

To the contrary, instead of making a solid case based upon evidence, the article editorializes, it speculates and implies, but provides nothing to support the implied thesis of McCain's corruption.

In fact, the only evidence the story supplies are specific instances where McCain rejected inappropriate interventions, including one instance where McCain allegedly stopped speaking to the developer for a year over behavior—hiring a personal lobbyist—that was self-serving but entirely legal.

This Times story sought to create a furor over shady, unethical behavior, and it has done that in spades.

Jim Rutenberg is one author of the article, and a man who has apparently discarded his integrity as a reporter to write political hit pieces. This is the second Rutenberg article attacking John McCain in the Times in recent months, neither of which has provided any actual evidence of impropriety. The first alleged an affair with a female lobbyist that was remarkably evidence free, a trait that today's article also seems to share.

Rutenberg has now twice attempted to smear McCain with charges unsupported by evidence, and twice his editors have not only elected to run the hit pieces, but gave them prominent placement in print editions.

We've been fortunate in knowing for some years now that we don't have to wonder about the editorial biases in play at the New York Times, and now because of these articles and others like them we have no reason to question their ethics... they have none.

In the end, Rutenberg and other newsroom editorialists at the Times are hastening their own demise with this kind of journalism.

I'm not sure who will miss them when they're gone.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:02 AM | Comments (33) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Heroes

Glenn Reynolds is giving J.D. Johannes' Iraq War documentary trilogy Outside the Wire a big push this morning, noting that Amazon is bundling the film with Michael Yon's Moment of Truth in Iraq, which Glenn dubs the "Iraq War Honesty Pack."

It is probably worth adding Congressional Medal of Honor nominee David Bellavia's House to House, and My Men Are Heros, a book about Navy Cross nominee Brad Kasal to that list, but those are only scratching the surface of the material out there about the conflict and the men fighting it that you won't often see reported in the larger media.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:47 AM | Comments (31) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

PA Voting Forecast

Bitter and cold, with bluster increasing throughout the evening hours, with little hope of change for tomorrow.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:03 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 21, 2008

Tarheel Dems Attempt to Cover for Obama as He Bails on NC Debate

Running from a challenge? Unsurprisingly, that's something they can believe in:


A proposed debate in Raleigh between Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has been called off, officials said Monday.

CBS had agreed to host a debate next Sunday at the RBC Center and televise the event nationally. Clinton agreed to the date, but Obama, who had earlier committed to an April 19 debate, said repeatedly he wasn't sure whether he could fit an April 27 debate into his campaign schedule.

The North Carolina Democratic Party said in a statement Monday that the logistics of staging a national event on short notice, if Obama were to agree to the debate this week, were too daunting to try to pull everything together. Democratic officials also said there were "growing concerns about what another debate would do to party unity."

That is a truckload of bovine excrement, of course.

The NC Democratic Party could have easily provided for a debate with the resources we have here in the state capitol, even on short notice, and plans were no doubt in place to do just that until Obama backed down from the challenge.

Leading Tarheel Democrats—including both Democratic gubernatorial candidates—are in the tank for Barack Obama, and they understand that another dismal performance by a faltering Obama could give the Clinton campaign the opening it needs to finish a bruising primary season strong and throw the nomination process even further into turmoil. They don't want to risk his double-digit lead and his overall viability when it isn't absolutely necessary.

The NC Democratic Primary isn't about producing the most viable candidate. It's about letting the selected candidate get the nomination with as little risk as possible.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:34 PM | Comments (44) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hey, Cracker...

...who do you hate the most?


This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men. How ironic is this? After all this time, after all these stupid articles about how powerless white men are and how they can't even get into college because of overachieving women and affirmative action and mean lady teachers who expected them to sit still in the third grade even though they were all suffering from terminal attention deficit disorder -- after all this, they turn out (surprise!) to have all the power. (As they always did, by the way; I hope you didn't believe any of those articles.)

To put it bluntly, the next president will be elected by them: the outcome of Tuesday's primary will depend on whether they go for Hillary or Obama, and the outcome of the general election will depend on whether enough of them vote for McCain. A lot of them will: white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them. And McCain is a compelling candidate, particularly because of the Torture Thing. As for the Democratic hope that McCain's temper will be a problem, don't bet on it. A lot of white men have terrible tempers, and what's more, they think it's normal.

Unreliable white men. Think of how wonderful this land would have been without them.

The author of this bigoted rant (my bold, by the way) is Norah Ephron, another Barack Obama supporter clinging to "hope" and "change" along with sexism, racism, and bitterness.

(h/t Hot Air, where Ed has fairly refined, if no doubt unreliable and hateful, thoughts on this rant.)

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:21 AM | Comments (41) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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